My inner existentialist--I call him Jimbob--believes submitting to an outside rule is living in bad faith, the coward's way out of a dilemma. So sad, but you've got to decide those things for yourself, he says. Can't just point at a book and exempt yourself. But is it possible to be both flexible and ethical? Only children and the the small-minded insist upon consistency in all things, but how do you know when to stick it out and when to cut and run?

Or, to put it another way: sure, it's sometimes good to tell a lie, but it's hard to know when. Not everybody gets a Nazi at the door asking if you're hiding a jew.

I was a vegetarian for maybe nine or ten years, starting in my mid twenties. I got the idea after reading about the conditions of factory farms and the exploitation of immigrant workers in slaughterhouses. I've got no moral problem with killing animals--though it's not something I enjoy as a pastime--long as there's a reasonable attempt to limit the suffering. But I didn't like that the real price of mechanized farming (the suffering it creates) is always kept hidden from the consumer. I didn't feel good about contributing to that system, so I stopped.

It was easy for me: I rarely crave meat. It wasn't like I was giving up hashed browns. The hardest part about it was giving myself a label.

One of my brothers said he'd heard I "turned into" a vegetarian. It was something of a novelty; nobody in my family had ever met one in person.

I felt healthier. I could pass a Tyson's truck stuffed with live chickens on the highway and not feel guilty. I felt sure I was extending my life.

But I was sometimes insulted when meat-eaters assumed I was judging them--hard to avoid, perhaps, but you can get tired of hearing people apologize. I also didn't like feeling like I was on a diet, that food got wrapped up in guilt. I don't think I was ever a Nazi about it; I still took a bite of a soft taco or something, now and then.

And I always ate whatever my mother cooked. My mom cooks a lot of food on Thanksgiving, gets up at four to start the turkey. Mashed potatoes, stuffing, baked beans, the whole deal. It's my favorite meal of the year. Turning down the turkey would have meant refusing food my mom cooked with love--all out of an abstract ethical belief that she didn't really understand.

Still, it made me feel hypocritical to continue calling myself a vegetarian. One more thing about labels: you take one bite of a burger and you're not a vegetarian, but telling one lie doesn't make you a liar. In fact, there's quite a lot of middle ground between a liar and an honest man. And if there times when it's good to lie, the rule "never lie" is not even valid; a good rule about lying would be much harder to define, something more flexible.

A couple summers ago, two things happened that caused me to loosen up about this whole deal. One was seeing Temple Grandin speak, and the other was eating wild turkey a few hours after the bird had been shot.

Temple Grandin is an author and scientist with autism who argues that animals are basically autistic--or, rather, their consciousness can be understood as similar to autism. They both have an unusually strong dislike of certain stimuli--loud noises, fire, flashing lights. Grandin is known for inventing "the Stairway to Heaven" a curving ramp that leads cows up into the slaughterhouse. The idea behind it is that with a traditional, straight ramp, the cows can see where they're going, and they get maddened with fear. But with a curved ramp, they can't see very far ahead and don't freak out. It's been implemented in thousands of slaughterhouses--cows are easier to kill if they're calm. She also invented a device that holds a cow calm and still in a chute (or as she put it, "hugs" the animal) for giving it injections or a castration. Both these inventions, she claims, came about because of the insight her autism gives her. She also worked with McDonald's and got them to use their corporate muscle to force slaughterhouses to employ (slightly) safer, more humane techniques.

But she's not a vegetarian. That got me thinking: here was this woman who has seriously reduced the amount of animal suffering in the world, and she still eats meat. In contrast, what good had I done (other than for myself)? At the most, I'd deprived the meat industry out of several hundred dollars.

The second thing that happened was on Shiloh mountain, near Jasper, Arkansas, in a relatively remote cabin owned by a good friend. On a visit there with several buddies, a turkey hunter brought by a bird he'd shot early that morning. He'd already gutted and cleaned it, and cut it into strips. As the sun broke above the mountains and filled the valley below, we sat on the porch eating meat so fresh, hot and delicious. And it was an animal that had never seen the inside of a cage. Forgive the term, but there was something nearly spiritual about consuming that bird. The freshness of the meat and the mountain air, perhaps, lent the act a moral purity.

It wasn't overnight, but since then, my position on eating meat has slowly been changing. Sometimes it's been contradictory or hypocritical, sometimes incoherent. But all along, like an bee colony migrating to a new hive, my ideas have been assembling themselves into a new coherent belief.

I recently discovered this new belief system has a name: flexitarianism. I didn't come up with the word, just heard it used in a joking way then googled it. Basically, it's the idea that you eat meat, just rarely. Now, there's something morally lazy about this position, but there's something anti-puritan, as well.

As I define it, flexitarianism means that when the choice is available I choose the vegetarian option. I'll buy free-range when I can. I'll mostly patronize business that serve those options. But I'll eat meat now and then. I'll never have to turn down food that's already cooked. Best of all, I get to avoid the rigidity I've never been comfortable with. And I can still feel I'm being relatively healthy, still using my dollar to vote for something I believe in--at least more often than not.