Gentle Power

Power doesn’t have to be violent; it can be soft and gentle. It doesn’t have to be about domination; it can be about respect – for yourself and others. Tap into that source of inner power. Stripped of false associations, it is a beautiful thing to behold.

Going Vegan

It’s been a while since I’ve posted non-fractal stuff on this blog, but I feel that I need to make myself publicly accountable for this.

In the month of september, I will eat a 100% vegan diet.

There. I’ve been considering to change my diet for quite a while, but there was always something “more important” I chose to focus my energy on. One of the biggest obstacles of eating a non-standard diet is that the entire social structure is constantly pressing against your decision. A couple of years ago, I tried going vegetarian, but found it hard to keep up mostly because I had a normal job back then, which added even further to that pressure with lots of lunches, meetings, and events.

Early this year, when I finally gave up my job to become a freelancer, I meant to give it another try, but somehow always kept pushing it off. The excuse was that I wanted to get used to my new working environment first, and the inertia generated by that decision carried the habit forward another 6 months unquestioned.

I’m putting an end to that right now. It took a not-so-gentle reminder popping up in my feed reader, even if I already knew all the arguments for making a switch. My reasons for this decisions are three-fold:

1) Nutritional: Some people say that humans are made to eat meat; others say that we are vegans by nature. I’ve eaten meat my entire life, so it’s only fair to see how it’s like to be on the other side of the debate.

2) Environmental: Do you seriously think that deforestation happens because you printed one too many pages of paper? That’s absurd. The paper industry plants trees just as fast as they raze them. Forests recede when cows take their place. Eating fruits and vegetables is orders of magnitude more efficient than eating meat, simply because a very low percentage of the energy animals consume is actually converted to meat, the rest being lost to side effects such as growing bones, keeping their body temperature and emitting greenhouse gases.

3) Ethical: It’s nice to pretend you’re not responsible for the things you are (directly or indirectly) paying other people to do for you, but that just isn’t true, and I’m not willing to ignore it any longer. I’m not against eating meat per se, but rather against the horrible practices of the industries involved (see video in the link above). If my personal ethics prevent me from mercilessly torturing and killing animals, they must also prevent me from allowing others to do it on my behalf.

I don’t know whether this experiment will turn into a permanent change. I’m giving myself permission to return to my old habits after september is over.