The Normalization Of Horror (Warning Graphic Language)

I’ve been thinking about veganism from a different perspective. Throughout human history, horrific forms of exploitation were once considered completely normal, including slavery, child labor, forced labor, human trafficking, human zoos, forced assimilation of Indigenous children, experiments on people without their consent, forced sterilization, and even castrating boys like Alessandro Moreschi and other castrati to preserve their singing voices. I’m not saying animal agriculture is identical to these atrocities. The victims, circumstances, histories, and forms of suffering are different. I’m talking about the mechanism of normalization.

Normalization is not a moral justification. It is a psychological anesthetic.

Human beings have repeatedly built economies, traditions, laws, institutions, and entire cultures around suffering until ordinary people barely recognized the suffering anymore. And consider the contradiction today: even people convicted of humanity’s most horrific crimes, including genocide, mass murder, torture, rape, human trafficking, and the sexual abuse of children, can still have basic protections against torture and cruel punishment because we recognize that there are lines we should not cross even with the guilty.

Yet animals who have murdered no one, raped no one, tortured no one, abused no child, and harmed no one can be repeatedly impregnated, confined in cages so small they cannot turn around, separated from their babies, castrated, have tails cut off, horns burned or removed, parts of their beaks cut or burned away, and ultimately be stunned, shackled, have their throats cut, bleed out, be dismembered, packaged, and sold because humans find their bodies useful.

Their crime was simply being born a pig, a cow, or a chicken.

We call it farming, production, processing, and food, but changing the language does not change what the animal experiences.

History has repeatedly shown us how easily humans defend suffering with “we’ve always done it,” “it’s our culture,” “people’s livelihoods depend on it,” “it’s legal,” and “it’s necessary.” We are very good at recognizing the moral blind spots of people who came before us, but far less willing to consider that some of the horrors we accept as completely normal today may be our own.

Normal does not mean moral. Sometimes “normal” is just suffering we have learned not to question.

So look. Learn where your food comes from. Watch what happens when the advertisements and packaging are removed. Question what you were taught was normal. Ask whether tradition, taste, convenience, or profit can justify what happens to these animals when we have alternatives. And if the answer makes you uncomfortable, do not look away.

Let that discomfort change something. Choose compassion. Stop participating where you can.

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