DON'T GO VEGAN.
12/02/21 13:21 Filed in: Veganism
Don't do it.
Are you already a blissful vegan, having figured out how to weather all of the criticisms, absolutely love being the center of conversations at every dinner party — mostly about how you get your protein and why it's ok to hunt deer?
If you find cooking vegan meals a true delight, look forward to eating at restaurants with non-vegan friends, are surrounded by sympathetic and understanding family members, and are just generally in good mental health, then this is NOT the blog for you! (But we still want you to stay and contribute to the conversation.)
However, if becoming vegan wasn’t your first choice — perhaps you were coerced into it by a smart college kid (your own kid most likely) who turned you on to a book you wish now you’d never read, or a doctor recommended you not eat meat (haha, highly unlikely), or you are just a smarty pants who figured out on your own that it doesn’t take much brainpower to recognize that the world is a much better and more sustainable place when you "eat the food that food eats" (an old vegan joke) — then you’ve come to the right place.
Do you want to eat a plant-based diet but hate the word “vegan”?
Maybe before, your idea of nirvana was traveling on cruise ships and gorging on unlimited buffets of prime rib, lobster, and filet of sole while wearing a mink stole. Then, for any number of reasons, the idea of “veganism” spoiled all of that, and now your crazy vegan friend a couple of blocks over didn’t seem so crazy after all.
Maybe your crazy vegan friend was actually on the forefront of something smart and important -- a food/planet/personal health revolution! -- and for some reason it has all started to make sense to you. Then perhaps you’ve come to the right place.
Maybe you’ve always wanted to become vegan, but can’t stomach the thought of giving up cheese (and fish!). Then you’ve come to the right place.
Maybe you’re grappling with this new food “lifestyle” and understand that not consuming meat products is perhaps the very least you could do, as an easy way to reduce your personal carbon footprint and relieve animal suffering, but don’t want to throw out that comfy leather jacket, And what's all this about not eating honey?? Then you are among friends here.
Which brings us to vegan logic.
If you follow “vegan logic” to its natural end, doesn’t it mean that eliminating humans is the penultimate solution? (Dark, yes, but we gotta talk about it.)
Let’s say you get this vegan thing down, and the next logical step seems to be raw food, or maybe only eating food that has naturally dropped from a tree. And no gardening either because you don’t want to kill a spider or accidentally crush a baby vole while you’re turning over the compost (o.k., that’s something Verne actually did recently). No, the only logical trajectory is full on self-denial which only logically leads to self-elimination. Well, that’s surely one grim way to look at it, but it can’t be the only way.
Even if the exponentially growing number of people on the planet is the #1 biggest cause of greenhouse gases, those of us who came from, or propagated, giant families — we’re already self flagellating (for a number of reasons). But for young people starting to think about having families, having to also consider what size family would be best for the planet is a complicated thought experiment heavily influenced by biology that may not be in everyone’s intellectual control.
But I digress.
How to Save A Planet.
Clearly the two top things you can do to help out our dear mother Earth are:
A) Move to a plant based diet, or better yet…
B) Move to another planet.
Right now B is not a viable option, and probably not recommended. So the easiest, cheapest, and most sustainable action you can take on a daily basis to help save the planet is actually … no action at all. (Wait, what??)
It is simply to make the decision to NOT do something.
To NOT put certain items in your mouth. Do that, or more accurately, don’t do that, 3X a day for the rest of your life and you will have done your part to improve the life of our planet and your own life in the process. Multiply your simple inaction by X number of people on the planet and the environmental results become real and measurable.
Forget your morality, for a minute. After all, who thinks “Thou shalt not kill” every time they pick up a pound of hamburger? But once your moral compass has been recalibrated through your new vegan lens, many other invisible actions and habits will call out for your attention. And that's a good thing, right?
So, don't do it. Don't become a vegan!
Are you already a blissful vegan, having figured out how to weather all of the criticisms, absolutely love being the center of conversations at every dinner party — mostly about how you get your protein and why it's ok to hunt deer?
If you find cooking vegan meals a true delight, look forward to eating at restaurants with non-vegan friends, are surrounded by sympathetic and understanding family members, and are just generally in good mental health, then this is NOT the blog for you! (But we still want you to stay and contribute to the conversation.)
However, if becoming vegan wasn’t your first choice — perhaps you were coerced into it by a smart college kid (your own kid most likely) who turned you on to a book you wish now you’d never read, or a doctor recommended you not eat meat (haha, highly unlikely), or you are just a smarty pants who figured out on your own that it doesn’t take much brainpower to recognize that the world is a much better and more sustainable place when you "eat the food that food eats" (an old vegan joke) — then you’ve come to the right place.
Do you want to eat a plant-based diet but hate the word “vegan”?
Maybe before, your idea of nirvana was traveling on cruise ships and gorging on unlimited buffets of prime rib, lobster, and filet of sole while wearing a mink stole. Then, for any number of reasons, the idea of “veganism” spoiled all of that, and now your crazy vegan friend a couple of blocks over didn’t seem so crazy after all.
Maybe your crazy vegan friend was actually on the forefront of something smart and important -- a food/planet/personal health revolution! -- and for some reason it has all started to make sense to you. Then perhaps you’ve come to the right place.
Maybe you’ve always wanted to become vegan, but can’t stomach the thought of giving up cheese (and fish!). Then you’ve come to the right place.
Maybe you’re grappling with this new food “lifestyle” and understand that not consuming meat products is perhaps the very least you could do, as an easy way to reduce your personal carbon footprint and relieve animal suffering, but don’t want to throw out that comfy leather jacket, And what's all this about not eating honey?? Then you are among friends here.
Which brings us to vegan logic.
If you follow “vegan logic” to its natural end, doesn’t it mean that eliminating humans is the penultimate solution? (Dark, yes, but we gotta talk about it.)
Let’s say you get this vegan thing down, and the next logical step seems to be raw food, or maybe only eating food that has naturally dropped from a tree. And no gardening either because you don’t want to kill a spider or accidentally crush a baby vole while you’re turning over the compost (o.k., that’s something Verne actually did recently). No, the only logical trajectory is full on self-denial which only logically leads to self-elimination. Well, that’s surely one grim way to look at it, but it can’t be the only way.
Even if the exponentially growing number of people on the planet is the #1 biggest cause of greenhouse gases, those of us who came from, or propagated, giant families — we’re already self flagellating (for a number of reasons). But for young people starting to think about having families, having to also consider what size family would be best for the planet is a complicated thought experiment heavily influenced by biology that may not be in everyone’s intellectual control.
But I digress.
How to Save A Planet.
Clearly the two top things you can do to help out our dear mother Earth are:
A) Move to a plant based diet, or better yet…
B) Move to another planet.
Right now B is not a viable option, and probably not recommended. So the easiest, cheapest, and most sustainable action you can take on a daily basis to help save the planet is actually … no action at all. (Wait, what??)
It is simply to make the decision to NOT do something.
To NOT put certain items in your mouth. Do that, or more accurately, don’t do that, 3X a day for the rest of your life and you will have done your part to improve the life of our planet and your own life in the process. Multiply your simple inaction by X number of people on the planet and the environmental results become real and measurable.
Forget your morality, for a minute. After all, who thinks “Thou shalt not kill” every time they pick up a pound of hamburger? But once your moral compass has been recalibrated through your new vegan lens, many other invisible actions and habits will call out for your attention. And that's a good thing, right?
So, don't do it. Don't become a vegan!
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