OK, so I have been putting this off for a long time. Mainly because I am not a Vegan. 90% of what I eat, is what you would term plant based. But...
We as humans like putting things in boxes, and if you try and jump out of one, and exist somewhere in the existential abyss between labels, people get mad, really mad. Or just try and label you something new. Anyway, I don't care for labels. In a world that isn't black and white; where we don't just think in binary code, there is both discrete data sets (number of people in a room), and continuous (their heights). But we still feel the need to define something as fundamentally complex as a person's belief in an afterlife, or higher being, as either atheist, agnostic, or (insert appropriate religion).
Why am I getting off topic so early, well that's just it. Call me a Vegetarian. Call me whatever you like. I really don't care. It's not why I am evolving my sense of what I am doing on this planet.
Because ultimately that's all that really matters. Your born with a tiny voice in your head, that's you. And your friends, family, lovers, wife/wife's, strangers, football coach,..., whoever you encounter in life's meandering path will never know it as intimately as you do. How can they. It's yours, and it questions and nags you every day. What are you doing here, and more importantly, how do you feel about what you are doing here? Wherever here is.
That's what drove me to change my perception of what I eat. Not some movement, not other people. Just me, and that little voice that nags. It's that same one that when you see a fucked up video makes you think. Makes you evolve, and makes you grow as a person.
Yeah there are articles, and veganism is very much in the process of going from this...
To this...
But none of that is an actual reason to get involved, or simply look into it. Its the same reason I am not going to say do this or do that, any more than I could tell someone not to believe in creationism. It's your choice, if you can face the reality and still be OK with that little voice, then by all means carry on thinking that the world is only 6,000 years old.
But please don't be one of those assholes (a lovely asexual insult since we all have one) that lives in denial, or goes "ah I couldn't possibly watch that, it will make me stop eating meat".
Or an asshole that wears rubber gloves because chicken breast feels funny. I really hate those assholes in particular.
Seriously, grow the fuck up.
I'm not saying you need to know how the combustion engine works, but please don't entertain the notion that two dinosaurs called Bob and Frankie live under there, and crack wise jokes like its something out the Flintstones. Believe me I was an avid meat eater, and I was very much one of these assholes who was unconscious. I took the engine apart in so far as I read articles both pro-dairy and from vegan perspectives. The reality is something that pretty much makes me ashamed to be called human.
Not because we eat meat. Lots of animals eat meat. And yes our omnivorous makeup allows us to do the same. But its the way in which we have mechanised this process, and scaled it to such an extent that living things cease to even be considered as such that started me down this path. Evil doesn't do the most sadistic things you can imagine, apathy does. Fuck, most horror films are a cake walk. You want to see things that will burn into you brain like a Trichinella worm that's taken a detour, just watch how food is made. And I'm not talking about the brutal videos PETA puts out (which in my opinion are just sensationalist anyway). I'm talking about just a regular pig farming production line. The gold standard in "food ethics"
Which on tangent is another bugbear of mine:
There is no such thing as ethical meat, sorry doesn't exist. And if you think this isn't an oxymoron, then you really don't understand the word:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics
By its definition:
In ethics, value denotes the degree of importance of some thing or action, with the aim of determining what actions are best to do or what way is best to live.
Ethics in short isn't about compromise. So if you are thinking that you are one of the good ones because you pay more for your meat and little billy comes from here:
The also, please stop being an asshole. That place never really existed, sorry to be the one to break it to you.
Look, it may seem like I care what you do. I really don't, well not for your sake. Your either unaware, naive, or not willing to face reality (because if you did that voice would bug the fuck out of you like it did me), or you are equally as well read and versed in the realities of meat production in this modern world we live in (Sorry folks we aren't in Downton Abbey), and your little voice doesn't give a fuck about other living creatures. In which case you've probably very much like this dude here:
In which case good luck figuring out what an emotion is.
Either way, just don't be unconscious.
I apologise if I have offended any of you. To clarify, I don't think I sit on some moral high ground, I'm not some smug self gratifying dick. But I am an asshole. Why because I still do compromise on my values. I feel like crap afterwards, and that voice, well lets just say it doesn't hold back.
But that's OK, because in the end I am trying to be open about things and learn. So to that end I will start to post some of the things I have learnt as I have gone down this road.
I'm not going to post instagrammable food recipes, or selfies of how ripped I am (I'm not, merely OK). Fuck there are a tonne of people already doing that. Instead I am just going to waffle on, and in the next post start breaking down some of the things that held me back to begin with.
I should add, I am not looking to hold a debate, or engage in dialogue on this. Feel free to comment, and if it is a genuine question, I will reply as best i can. But I should add there are people who have been doing this longer, and are better at it than me.
Anyways I digress. What I meant to say is read this, get pissed off, disagree with me. I don't own the monopoly on "RIGHT".
Just trust me when I say this, "Look into it on your own terms, and fuck the terms and the words, and the what's "in style" now. Seek out knowledge. Its a powerful thing. Its what drove me to change.
And for the love of whatever deity you believe in, start sending a big fuck you to all the marketing bullshit out there.
Literally the only negative thing I will link:
https://theirturn.net/2016/06/15/2016061420160613the-rape-rack/
This is why I feel like an asshole when I still drink milk in the office, rather than stop giving a shit about what others think and bring in my own soya. I told you asshole.
Now go and figure it out for yourself....
www.google.com
Its your voice, I don't know what it's saying.