Mr Chloro

Vegan Discrimination

Fri, 06 May 2011 20:55:00 -0700

It’s been almost 2 years since I’ve stopped eating all animal products.

The hardest part however, has not been eating more healthily, but the discrimination I have faced during this time.

In our society discrimination against races, religions, disabilities or sexuality are both taboo and illegal. Sadly, choices of ideologies don’t benefit from the same protection, and people are happy to take advantage of it.

Last year I lost an opportunity at a fortune 100 company because they believed I would bring the ideologies that I publicly state on twitter and blog posts into work. They would be within their rights to ask me whether that would be the case, but they didn’t. They just assumed I would and said they wouldn’t hire me because of that.

I have friends inside that company, who say that now they make jokes when interviewing candidates, requesting to the recruiter that they are not vegan. Can you imagine that being said about Muslims?

All my friends respect me for who I am and what I stand for, and it’s great to have their support. But some people chosen not to be my friends because of their intolerance towards my ideologies. One guy didn’t even want me to talk about choosing a restaurant that catered for vegans - that was already too much for him. He went on to make fun of me with his other friends, who then created a twitter account just to mock me. This someone, worked for the very company that didn’t hire me, yet that company is clearly more tolerant of a bully than of a vegan.

Now I work in an office complex that’s several miles from the center of town, so the only choice of restaurant I have is the one inside the complex. They have a salad bar and a place where you can order warm meals. However, all of their warm meals have animals or animal excretions in them, so my only choice is to eat salad every single day. It may come to many as a surprise, but vegans don’t live on salad. So I made some simple requests to the complex’s manager:

In the salad bar, bundle all items that contain animal products together so there are no accidental spills.
Label vegan and vegetarian items - or list full ingredients for every item.
Make the vegetarian option vegan friendly, or make a vegan option. Or offer vegan meats such as seitan, fried tofu, scrambled tofu, boca burgers, etc.
Grill vegan foods in a clean frying pan.

Although those requests may sound absurd to a “meat-eater”, they are also not at all hard to accomplish, so why not comply even if just to keep everyone happy? The answer I got back from them is that I was a minority, and that because this was MY choice, they could not meet any of my requests, however easy.

Had I instead said that I was a Hindu, or that I had severe allergies or a medical condition, they would likely have met my requests, if anything because they could be accused of discrimination if they did not. But the fact that I follow an ideology based *not* on a supreme being’s wishes, but my own, is not considered discriminatory.

In summary, I am a vegan. I am not a monster, I am not a nazi or a racist. I am not deliberately trying to inconvenience anyone just for the kicks. I am not going to show you pictures of dead animals while you eat your meal nor will I chant “meat is murder”.

I know I can be very vocal about the subject on twitter because I know that if people don’t want to be educated about the consequences of their diets and purchases, they can unfollow me - and believe me, many do - believe me too, many do like to be educated and have changed their habits because of my tweets. But outside of twitter, I am a designer, I am a nerd and an Apple fanboy and I’m a nice guy. The fact that I care about the well-being of animals (humans or not) should not be a reason to make fun of me, to discriminate against me, to not be my friend and most definitely not to hire me nor fire me.

Matrix / Post Darwin Morality

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 00:39:26 -0800

You know in the film The Matrix, Neo learns to understanding the world around him and all its inner workings in a way that others can’t (or don’t know how to)?

Today I was looking at my cat, Amma, simply admiring her as I often do - and I realized that I don’t see her as my inferior or “just an animal”. I see her as a little person, with her individualities, quirks, likes and dislikes. I see her as an equal.

Of course I can see that she belongs to a different species than me. But in the same way that when I look at a woman or a black person I don’t focus on our differences, I do the same when I look at Amma or any other animal; I am able to focus on all the thousands of really incredible and important things that we share in common. And I know that whether I am in my shoe or theirs, I’d want to be respected - so I respect everyone back regardless of their gender, race or species.

But why don’t others do the same?

Almost 150 years ago Darwin shook the world with his publication that proved humans are simply another animal and not the special creation of a God. Unfortunately, although all well educated people today fully comprehend this, the majority still follow the moral principles of a society that saw humans as those supreme beings who were above all other creatures of earth. These people are Darwinists stuck in a pre-Darwin morality.

I just wonder how many more years it will take for all educated humans to see the world with new eyes and follow a set of moral conducts compatible with scientific findings? Because it’s hard to watch as my friends and peers make choices in life that directly impact individuals who are equally capable of suffering as they are. It’s hard to visualize that suffering every day at lunch time when I go to the restaurant as see body parts of these individuals who were so terribly discriminated against.

Taking the red pill means being aware of those horrors - but it also means you are no longer a part of it.

What have I done?

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 01:26:55 -0800

What have I done really? By the way people have treated me one would rightfully assume that I had stolen from the elderly, conned their best friend or was found in possession of child pornography.

But do you want to know my crime? Trying to protect non-humans from being used, tortured and killed by the hands of a species that calls themselves superior. Who on the surface value kindness, compassion, solidarity and love, but who are quick to forget those values when their own selfish interests are at stake.

The difference between me and the average person is that I am constantly questioning my morals and my actions and making sure they are in line with each other. I am willing to change my daily actions in order to change the world.

And I get in trouble when I try to nudge people into questioning their morals and their violent actions, and sadly it seems that some of these people just can’t face their own tyrannical selves. They don’t want to do what they believe is right, they just don’t want to feel bad about doing what they do.

Does this mean I hate fellow humans? No, not at all. We are capable of wonderful things, every single one of us! Do I think humans, as wonderful as we are, should discriminate non-humans because they are different from us? No, not at all either. They are capable of wonderful things, every single one of them!

And I am not one bit ashamed of protecting the interests of individuals who, like children, have no voice of their own to free themselves from this tyranny. And I am not one bit ashamed of doing what I wish someone would do for me were I in that position.

Happy new year! I wish you all the very same you’ll wish others.

All beings that feel pain deserve human rights

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:12:16 -0800

All beings that feel pain deserve human rights

Caring Obligate Carnivores Dilemma

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 09:15:00 -0800

Biologically speaking we are omnivores. But omnivore likely doesn’t mean what you think it does. Omnivore means “eater of everything (or anything)”. So they will eat whatever is necessary keep them alive. It does NOT mean that they MUST eat other animals to survive or stay healthy - it simply means they CAN eat animals to survive at times they can’t find anything else to eat. They are adaptable.

Since we in the west live in a society where you can choose any kind of food you want, eating meat is a choice, not a biological necessity like omnivores in nature who sometimes have nothing but animals to eat. We can meet 100% of our dietary requirements eating nothing but plants.

But let’s suppose that humans were obligate carnivores - meaning that, like cats, we would either die or become severely malnourished and weak if we did not consume meat. Now vegans and vegetarians cannot exist, or they would die.
The first problem we face is population vs land space. 8 billion humans would need to eat animals every single day, in the same way that developed countries do. Yet statistically if every single human ate the same amount of meat as the US and Europe, we would need 15 earths to sustain that diet as there wouldn’t be enough land space to breed all the animals and grow food for all those animals. As obligate carnivores we would actually never have been able to grow as a population past a few hundred million - which is correct with most large carnivores - there are very few of them in nature.

Despite being obligate carnivores we would still be humans. We have a conscience and we can also empathize with the suffering of other beings similar to us. We’re then faced with a true dilemma. We must raise these sentient beings and we must kill them in order to stay alive. What do we do?

Of course we would want them to be treated well during their lives and die a very quick and painless death. We wouldn’t want anyone to suffer when they are already dying to sustain us! Fortunately, we have machines which can destroy a brain quicker than it can respond with a pain signal so we can at least be certain of a painless death.

When you kill animals by shooting them in the brain, their hearts will stop almost immediately. That means that once you cut their heads off and hang them upside down to bleed, their hearts won’t pump blood out of every extremity of their bodies and blood would remain in the carcasses. But why would that be a problem for a carnivore? It isn’t. But in most countries it is illegal to sell meat with high levels of blood in it because it is considered a “health risk”. So when animals go to slaughter houses, they must have their throats sliced while their brains are functional enough to run their hearts and pump their blood out. Stunning methods are only 80% effective. That means that at least 20% of animals are fully conscious when they have a hook put through their feet and bleed to death.

But dying isn’t the only ethical issue in a conscientious obligate carnivore society. Perhaps even more important and difficult is to ensure they live in good conditions. We would still need raise them in farms in order to get both the convenience and reliability we humans strive for. Hunting wild animals would affect the balance of the natural food chain which we have long removed ourselves from.

So the farms would be very large in order to mimic their natural environment. They would be able to run for several minutes before meeting a fence, and they would have enough square footage to take that run without having to dodge many animals along the way. Just like they have in nature.
They would be able to take care of their young and have plenty of space to nest, shade to hide from the sun and warm places to keep away from the cold.
When they are old enough to be killed, every farm would have a built in slaughterhouse so they wouldn’t have to travel in order to die. And they would never see another animal dying, nor smell blood. They would live happily and then they would die so quickly they wouldn’t know it happened.

Currently, 99% of animals are raised in places that are not even big enough for them to move around or scratch their backs. They sleep on their excrements and eat by it. This means that they get ill very quickly, so they are injected with powerful antibiotics throughout their lives in order to stay alive.

Male mammals have their testicles cut off when they are young without pain killers because society prefers the taste of castrated males.

Female mammals are confined by metal bars while feeding their young and can’t even move to clean them or caress them.

Birds are kept in cages all their lives - or if they are called “free range” they can live in a large compartment so crowded they can’t move anyway.

The conditions are so cramped that they become irritable and start pecking each other. So they cut their beaks off when they are young.

When they are old enough to be killed they are shoved inside a truck, without water, light or air conditioning and travel for hundreds of miles to the nearest slaughterhouse. Up to 15% of them will not survive this trip.
In the slaughterhouse they can hear the cries of the other animals while they are slaughtered, they can smell the blood, their adrenaline levels become high, they are scared because they know they are in danger.

In a caring obligate carnivore society we would only eat farmed fish also raised in optimal conditions and killed by a mass electrical shock in the water. One minute they are alive the next they are dead.
Wild fish would never be fished in mass because we understand that 40% other animals are killed unnecessarily as by-catch, and because we would be destroying the balance of that fragile system we never evolved to be a part of.

Currently, there are 10x less fish in the ocean today than there were 100 years ago. And in 40 years time there will be none. The oceans will be populated by jelly-fish.

All the above is of course not considering that even if we were obligate carnivores, if we cared so much about animals, we could develop highly concentrated plant alternatives which include all the nutrients that a carnivore needs. This is already done with vegan cat foods which contain plant sources of taurine and high levels of plant protein - allowing an obligate carnivore to survive without causing suffering to anyone sentient.

In summary, there’s a clear logic why we should all be vegan. As compassionate beings, we are fortunate that we are not obligate carnivores.

The fact that we both don’t need to eat them and treat them with complete disregard for their feelings is nothing short of sadistic.

It’s so easy to not eat meat or animal products. I do it every day and here I am. I’m healthy, I thoroughly enjoy my food and I have a clear conscience that I am not causing deliberate suffering to anyone! You could be doing the same so why aren’t you?

I really hope we can one day all evolve the ability to be empathetic towards all others - and spare billions from suffering every year simply to satisfy our taste buds.

As always, I highly recommend you watch Earthlings, a documentary that shows what the meat industry doesn’t want you to see: www.watchearthlings.com

Religion

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 17:46:00 -0800

I was brought up by a secular father and a mother who likes the idea of god/saints etc but never really went to church or anything.

At school religion was never a topic either, I had one religious friend and she was the odd one out.

Soon after I moved to London, an extremely secular place (apart from the asian immigrant population who segregates themselves from the rest). On TV and politics it seems that everyone is an atheist and all of my friends are too.

Then I arrived in America, and started following more Americans on Twitter, and watched American TV - and I was shocked to discover a world I had only heard about but never experienced.

I always thought religion was reserved for uneducated people who really needed somewhere where they could find hope of a better life. But in America I found some of my peers and people smarter than me who were religious. Very religious! To the point they believed in Adam and Eve and all that!

You see, if I met an old lady in Mexico, who needs to count her pennies to pay for her food, and she was religious, I wouldn’t be surprised nor would I argue about the existence of God with her. I think she is probably better off believing that there’s someone looking after her and that her suffering will stop once she goes to the after life. But smart affluent people? Programmers who work with logic all day long? How can that be?

Here are some of the main things that I don’t understand.

If everything must have been created, then who created God? Does he have a mom and dad? Where does he come from? Is he a he? Does he have a penis? Where does he live? What is he made of? Were did he learn all that he knows?
Seeing as there are hundreds of religions in the world, what makes you think that yours is the correct one? Why weren’t the greeks right? Or the egyptians? How do you view their religions? Do you think they are stupid for believing in multiple Gods who are often shaped like non-human animals? Are they stupid for believing the world was created differently to what you believe in? And have you stopped to think why you believe in what you believe? I’d argue 99.9% of people follow the religion most common in their region, the one that their parents also believed in. Had you been born in Iraq you would likely be a Muslim, had you been born in ancient Greece you’d likely be a polytheist.
If religious books are to be believed - why does it have no mentions of the Dinosaurs at all? Or the other beings before them. They lived for much much longer than any of us - so I believe the Bible should have been dedicated at least 4 / 5 of it to them. And how about the future life forms that we may one day encounter living in a different planet, why are those not mentioned in the all-knowing bible? Could it perhaps be because the humans who made up the Bible didn’t yet know about the existence of fossils and extraterrestrials and therefore had no reason to come up with an explanation for them?
Which brings me to another question. What if one day you discover, without shadow of a doubt, that the Bible in its entirety was completely made up by a bunch of guys who wanted to control a population under their terms so that they could make more profit from their businesses or even by stealing from the poor? In other words, how can you be so sure that the words you read on that book are those of an almighty being and not just another human?
Why doesn’t God speak and why is he invisible? What’s the big deal with showing himself? What’s with all the mysteriousness? It seems totally counter productive to me.
Why would he answer to your prayers to win a football match or even get a better job when he clearly does not even do anything about the billions who starve and billions more individual non-humans who are tortured at the hands of his creation? Could we agree that if he does exist he really is just watching but not doing anything at all?
If he’s so freaking smart, then why do men have nipples?

Honestly I could go on and on with questions but those are the most obvious ones which basically points any logical person to the conclusion that God was invented by humans in an attempt to explain the mysteries of life before they could actually study them. Just like today we tell fairytales to our children to help them understand life in a more basic way.

Photo

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 23:11:48 -0700

Photo

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 23:10:44 -0700

Understanding my point of view

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:53:31 -0700

I think it’s very important to strive to be a better human being. If you tell me that my toothpaste is made with minerals that are destroying an eco-system and you give me an alternative, I will listen, and I will change toothpaste. If you show me pictures of the sweatshops used by Gap to produce their clothes, and explain to me the impact it has on those families, and you give me an alternative brand that respects their employees, I will listen, learn and change. I just couldn’t live with myself if I were any other way.

So it confuses me that you don’t want me to show you pictures, videos or list facts about your diets, something which has much greater impact than anything else you do. Why would you want to ignore the subject? Why would you not care? Why would you not want to rid the world of suffering, to reduce CO2 emissions, to save the oceans and the rain forests? It confuses me because it’s such a simple change with such a big impact that I don’t understand why you’d be so hesitant to change.

Try to see things from my point of view for a minute and imagine this scenario: you follow a Muslim guy on twitter and he tweets “I just beat my wife up, lol” would you remain quiet or would you say something to him? I imagine you would say something like “you’re a monster”, even though his actions are perfectly acceptable and legal where he lives. So he would probably be confused; why are you calling him a monster when he’s only doing what all his other friends do?

Now imagine you are living in that society where you are one in 1000 who believe women should have rights. And your twitter stream is filled with tweets about men mistreating women, objectifying them, mocking them. And there you are, horrified to live in this world and seeing women being treated that way. You try to come up with ways to show men how they should respect women because you know in your heart that what they are doing is horrible. Some are convinced by your arguments and change, but many just laugh at you or begin to hate you. You lose twitter followers, you lose job opportunities, you lose friends.

I know in your view comparing sexism with speciesism is absurd. But may I ask why? They both focus on the differences and overlook the similarities. At the core of all discrimination there is suffering.

Think about it, would the concentration camps have marked history if instead of Jews all the victims were humans in a vegetative state? I don’t believe so, they couldn’t feel pain or turmoil and that’s why it was so horrific, not because they were humans, because they were sentient. So would it be as horrible if the victims were conscious cows? If pain is pain in both humans and cows then their suffering should not be taken for granted just because they belong to a different species to us. It doesn’t make any sense at all. It makes as little sense as any kind of discrimination.

You see animals as less deserving just because they are different. But you overlook our similarities; our equal ability to feel pain, emotions, discomfort, thirst, hunger, love, etc. Though you only overlook them when you want to, because you recognize those similarities in your pets that you treat like family members, and you would also likely help an animal you found in distress. Some philosophers call this discrepancy in behavior “moral schizophrenia”.

I know it offends some people when I compare them to Nazis. But all I am trying to do is to put things into perspective. Are carnists as bad as Nazis? It all depends. A Nazi doesn’t think he is a bad person but non-Nazis do. If non-humans animals could speak and you asked them whether carnists were bad, they most certainly would feel just as strongly as you do about the Nazis. Sadly, like babies, they can’t express their feelings through words, and their screams and cries are conveniently kept away from you.

What I am trying to do is give a voice to these voiceless beings.

“I am the voice of the voiceless. Through me the dumb may speak, until the deaf world’s ears be made to hear the wrongs against the wordless weak. I am my brothers keeper, I will fight his fights and speak the words for beast and bird, until the world shall set things right.”

You ask me to respect your violent ideology, you ask me to respect your choice to eat sentient beings, and to not tweet about it - some go as far as not wanting me to even mention the word “vegan”. But once again, let me flip the coin, could you respect anyone who follows a violent ideology that you disagree with? ie, rape, murder, racism, sexist, etc? No, because your concern is to respect the victims of those ideologies, not the perpetrators. I respect non-humans, so how can I also respect your choice to hurt them?

When you tweet about the chicken you had, the burger or the yogurt, I am not picturing a slab of flesh detached from a body - I am picturing that individuals entire life in confinement, in a dark warehouse with air so rank and low on oxygen that workers need to wear masks - an individual who has had his testicles cut off without anesthetics simply because humans prefer the taste of castrated males - an individual who after months of suffering was transported for hundreds of miles inside a truck with no water or air conditioning - who saw 15% of his companions not being able to handle those conditions and die in the process before reaching the slaughterhouse - and who finally was sent to be killed by the hands of an unskilled worker who is completely unconcerned about his or her feelings, often torturing them for fun.

How can I see all that and not say anything? Could you remain quiet knowing of such atrocities if you saw them in front of you? I do remain quiet at work, in order to try and keep it “professional”, but it hurts me. I avoid going out to dinner with workmates because it’s too painful to watch them being so happy around body parts of tortured individuals.

Am I crazy for wanting to respect everyone regardless of their species in the same way you respect everyone regardless of their skin color, gender, religion, etc? Am I crazy for trying to spare sentient beings of unnecessary suffering? Is this really the world I live in - where people are more concerned about their palates than the impact of that food choice?

I am suggesting peace, respect, I am suggesting an end to suffering, I am suggesting equal rights not to be tortured and killed. Is that something to be mocked about? Is that a reason not to be hired by a company? Is that a reason to lose twitter followers and friends?

Would the same thing happen if I was fighting for any other cause such as inequality, starvation, aids, malaria etc?

I feel like I being treated as though I am suggesting something completely absurd. It’s not like I’m suggesting we starve to death. I am not suggesting that non-human animals should run freely in the street like cows in india, I am not suggesting they are given any more rights than we have, I am not suggesting anything that will negatively impact your life or the world. Quite the contrary.

A plant-based diet is better for your health and impacts the world a fraction of the amount that your diet does. A plant-based diet is also not without flavors and textures - I thoroughly enjoy my food as much as you enjoy yours. I eat pizza, pasta, risotto, burgers, stir-fries, hotdogs, cereal, chocolate, ice cream, french fries, chips, sandwiches, candy, cakes, muffins, etc, etc. I’m not losing anything essential to my survival and at the same time I know that my diet is not causing suffering nor impacting the world nearly as much. Is that not something to be praised and to aim for?

So please, instead of making fun of me, attacking me, calling me names and spreading untrue rumors, come and talk to me - see if I have something new to teach you, or come and teach me something new yourself.

Respect?

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:48:00 -0700

Often I am asked by carnists to respect their decision to eat meat and other animal products.

You see, I have no problems respecting people’s decisions, such as religion, dress style, sexuality, gender identity, etc. But the minute a person’s decision involves disrespecting others, how can they ask me to respect that?

Would people respect me if I caused pain in other humans? Like if I beat up my wife or children. Would they respect me if I killed another human being, even if I did it quick and painlessly? Then why am I asked to respect their decision to be a part of a violent ideology that disrespects beings equally capable of suffering as us? Beings that I respect as much as you respect your own species.

So no, I can’t ever respect your decision. I can be your friend, because I’d have very few friends otherwise, I can force myself to remain quiet and hold my tears whilst you eat the hacked parts of a previously tortured sentient animal (something you likely would never do if I were eating a dog, cat or human baby). But respect your decision? Sorry, that’s asking way too much.

Excerpts from Eating Animals

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:50:00 -0700

Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else?
If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn’t motivating, what would be?
If being the number one contributor to the most serious thread facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is?
If increased rate of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other ills doesn’t scare you, then what does?
And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say, not now, then when?

And why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses? If you stop and think about it, it’s crazy. How would you judge an artist who mutilated animals in a gallery because it was visually interesting? How beautiful would the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly? Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to animals.

It’s easy to make oneself feel better about it by buying “humane” meat. Unfortunately however there’s no legal definition of humane – it’s simply a label that you have no control over. The margins are low, they can’t afford not to mass produce these animals as through they are objects. In the end they are all killed in the same slaughterhouse as all the others. The stun guns only work 80% of the time. Every day animals get skinned alive in the factory process.

These things happen whether in humane farming or factory farming.

And many people seem to be tempted to continue supporting factory farms while also buying meat outside that system when it is available. That’s nice. But if it is as far as our moral imaginations can stretch, then it’s hard to be optimistic about the future. Any plan that involves funneling money to the factory farm won’t end factory farming. How effective would the Montgomery bus boycott have been if protesters had used the bus when it became inconvenient not to? How effective would a strike be if workers announced they would go back to work as soon as it became difficult to strike?

Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. Society didn’t ban child labor because it’s impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to business over powerless individuals, it’s corrupting. When we talk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it’s corrupting.

If we are at all serious about ending factory farming, then the absolute least we can do is stop sending checks to the absolute worst abusers. For some, the decision to eschew factory-farmed products is easy. For others the decision is hard. To those for whom it sounds like a hard decision, the ultimate question is whether it is worth the inconvenience. We know, at least, that this decision will prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural areas, decrease human rights abuses, improve public health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in world history. What we don’t know, though, may be just as important. How would making such a decision change us?

Setting aside the direct material changes initiated by opting out of the factory farm system, the decision to eat with such deliberateness would itself be a force with enormous potential. What kind of world would we create if three times a day we activated our compassion and reason as we saw down to eat, if we had the moral imagination and the pragmatic will to change our most fundamental act of consumption?

Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use, and the regular exercise of choosing kindness over cruelty would change us.

It might sound naive to suggest that whether you order a chicken patty or a veggie burger is a profoundly important decision. Then again, it certainly would have sounded fantastic if in the 1950s you were told that where you saw in a restaurant or on a bus could begin to uproot racism. It would have sounded equally fantastic if you were told in the early 1970s, before Cesar Chavez’s workers’ rights campaigns, that refusing to eat grapes could begin to free farmworkers from slave-like conditions. It might sound fantastic, but when we bother to look, it’s hard to deny that our day-to-day choices shape the world.

Choice

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 01:25:00 -0700

It’s really great that we live in a society where we have freedom of choices. Religious, jobs, marriage, sexuality, etc. And we deem other societies as inferior when they take away the freedom of those choices from their people.

What we forget however is that we too have certain restrictions. We don’t have the freedom to murder, rape, enslave, throw garbage in a river, cut down a tree down our street, etc. But we don’t consider those to be restrictions to our freedom because we generally agree that those things are wrong.

However, we have certain freedoms that should never be made into choices. Some are the faults of corporations and the government, others of the people for continuing to make choices that go against their own beliefs.

Why should we have the choice to buy an item made by slave workers outside our borders? Society as a whole doesn’t agree with that.

Why should we have the choose between buying a renewable energy car or one that runs on petrol? Society as a whole understands the impact of petrol usage and benefits of renewable energy.

Why have the choice of paper or plastic bags when plastic causes so much damage to the environment? Society as a whole understands at least that “it’s bad”.

Why should we have the choice to poison ourselves with cigarettes and alcohol? Shouldn’t at least be a maximum allowed consumption of these substances? Society as a whole understands that drug abuse impacts families, the economy, our health system, etc.

And why have the choice to eat animals who suffered a horrible life and death, support an industry that has cut down 80% of the world’s forests, emits more CO2 than any other industry including all transports combined, destroys the eco-system of the ocean by stripping it of its natural balance, and increases your risk of having cancer by 70%, not to mention cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, etc - when we have the choice to eat plants that are more nutritious and less harmful to the planet? Once again, society as a whole would agree that all of the above are undesirable things that shouldn’t happen.

So why be given those choices at all? Should society take responsibility for their own actions and make the best choices, or should science, studies, and statistics dictate the choices for them?

Worse than having to make certain choices, is when you have no choice other than support actions that destroy the planet. Through my taxes I am funding a war, I’m subsidizing the meat industry, animal testing, the tobacco industry, the oil industry and others. Am I truly free? I sometimes have the freedom to destroy the planet I live in but not always the freedom to choose not to destroy it.

Our greed, our search for convenience and the difficulty we have to change our habits will eventually destroy us.

We all keep on passing the buck. We may say, I’ll recycle tomorrow, I’ll stop smoking next month, I’ll become vegan in a few years, I’ll cycle to work next year… and we keep doing it forever with no care for our planet and future generations, your own offspring.

We like to think that we are in control of ourselves, that we are individuals, but we make most of our choices based on what those around you deem appropriate or not.

We need to take responsibility, we need to each think before we act, we need to boycott the industries that go against our principles even if it inconveniences our lives.

That’s the only way that things change - when society is ready to admit that what they were doing up to that point was no longer needed nor morally correct (slavery, rape, women rights, racism, etc)

The time to change is now. The time to stop supporting these industries is now. The time to rescue the world is now, there’s no later - there’s no passing the buck - later is too late and you have to start it yourself.

Benefit vs harm

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:43:00 -0700

I wanted to create an alphabetical list of actions that cause pleasure or benefit to one party and suffering to the other. Some of these are looked down and illegal in our society, but some are still perfectly legal. But they all cause unnecessary suffering to somebody so I believe those should be reconsidered.

Animal testing
Bullfighting
Child molestation
Circuses with animals (including aquatic animals)
Dairy and eggs (in most cases)
Eating meat
Hunting / fishing
Kidnapping
Buying leather / fur
Murder / serial killing (depending on the killer and reason)
Pesticides / “pest” control
Racial cleansing
Rape
Slavery / low paid workers
Theft
Torture
Zoos (in some cases)

cleveridiot: At least their heart was in the right place!

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:10:32 -0700

cleveridiot:

At least their heart was in the right place!

Egg Recall Expands To More Than Half A Billion Nationwide

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:39:57 -0700

Egg Recall Expands To More Than Half A Billion Nationwide:

More than a half-billion eggs have been recalled in the nationwide investigation of a salmonella outbreak that Friday expanded to include a second Iowa farm. The outbreak has already sickened more…

The man who lives without money

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 05:18:56 -0700

The man who lives without money:

Mark Boyle gave up using cash over a year ago and loves his new lifestyle. Here’s how he does it.

We Must Save the Planet By Eating Bugs

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:02:15 -0700

We Must Save the Planet By Eating Bugs:

Gross. Forget it. Van Huis proposes a two-phase plan: first just farming insects to feed to more conventional livestock; and then gradually introducing them directly to the menu for humans. “We’re…

Raw Veganism Has Ex-POW Live Till 90 Without a Doctor (Pics)

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:00:48 -0700

Raw Veganism Has Ex-POW Live Till 90 Without a Doctor (Pics):

In Armenia, vegetarians are few and far between in this post-Soviet nation in the South Caucasus, with its traditional, meat-based diet. So what is one to make of a 90-year-old Armenian raw vegan?

Can you Ask a Pig if his Glass is Half Full?

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:34:37 -0700

Can you Ask a Pig if his Glass is Half Full?:

Experts in the UK have shown for the first time that a pig’s mood mirrors how content he is, highlighting that pigs are capable of complex emotions which are directly influenced by their living…

A message to all vegans

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:46:00 -0700

Most non-vegans think of vegans as a group of people who all share the same views. Many think that we are crazy, although that’s beside my point.

What they don’t realise is that within the vegan community there is a huge amount of disagreement and arguments. Although most everyone agrees that animals deserve equal respect, there is a lot more to it.

Some are abolitionists and think animals should be left alone completely and never come under our power. Those would disagree with having pets, horses, etc. We live our lives, they live theirs.

Others are utilitarians and believe that if the good outweighs the bad then it’s ok. They believe that if animals were treated with respect inside of egg and dairy farms then it would be ok to consume their products. Those may even be in favor of animal testing as well depending on the benefits it brings to society as a whole.

And there are many variations within those 2 extremes of people. And there are many other types of people too. It gets very complex!

The problem is that these groups often spend half their time debating each other’s views and forget that ultimately they have something very important in common; they all share respect for animals, and they all would prefer to live in a world with less suffering.

They discuss all these possible future scenarios if we move way way or another, as though we’re playing chess.

Who cares what may happen in a utopian future situation? Who cares about consequences to a reality that’s so far away? The focus right now should simply be to teach people to respect non-humans like they respect each other. After we achieve that amazing feat, then let’s start thinking where we go from there. Whether we’re allowed to keep chickens for eggs or not, whether we’re allowed to intervene with nature, whether we should save the old lady or the puppy from a house fire - none of that matters right now, and it’s a complete waste of time to discuss it!

So please, for the sake of the animals, stop trying to prove each other wrong. Spend more time educating non-vegans and less time debating vegans who are already doing their part!