I am the aggressive passionate activist in the house and hubbs is the skeptical practical thinker. Between the both of us, our discussions about, any issues I come across or things I would like to change or feel strongly about, usually cover a good number of arguments that I would need to know and answer to when discussing with others.
When I discussed about going vegan, giving up milk and eggs because of ethical reasons, he needed some more reasons. Eventually we discussed ethical, health and environmental reasons for a convincing conclusion.
A similar discussion on the weekend with friends led to a familiar first reaction. As hubbs pointed out to me later that day, that we had had that discussion before, and he had a similar reaction to it. Like any big change, if you extrapolate it , the event and the change become too big for the mind to fathom. This usually leads to skepticism to make the small change.
For eg. Going vegan, if we start thinking of say , if most of the world or the entire world goes vegan, will that actually be beneficial and balanced for everyone?. will that not affect the current man animal, environment balance. Sure it would. According to most research and statistics, that is the best path for this planet to survive, but as with any big long term change, things can go differently, which no one can completely predict. Does that mean that we do not take that step, of going vegan completely or few days a month or whichever small step towards what we currently know as a better path?
We all are dependent on gas. We already know what that dependence is doing to the world, to our health, to the environment. If we decide to take the step to reduce gas consumption, and then extrapolate it to a world in the future when our gas consumption is extremely minimal, can you actually imagine a world like that? I dont think so.. In the slow path to getting there, there could be several other influencing factors that could change things. The shift of power from the gas producing countries, other political, ecological, economical impact depending on what other source of energy gets tapped into. But does that change the fact that the better path to take right now is to reduce our gas consumption?.
And hence eventually we concluded that the skepticsm is because of inaction inertia. Because we do not know both sides of the coin well enough, or all of the future consequences, and because there are already overwhelming number of problems to solve on the world, it is human nature to choose the least or no action path.
If everyone in the world goes vegan( which it self is such a far far away eventuality), the cows are not going to rule the earth.
Veganism is not about food. It is a belief system. That tiny change causes a lot of small and big ripples, which we might not be able to see. Try going completely vegan for just 2 days. Not a commitment, not an exam, no judgement, just an experiment to listen to your body. No milk, cheese, ghee, any dairy, eggs and also organic and as less processed as possible. And leave me comments on what your body told you.
Some reading about how organic, humane are just keywords these days which may or may not be enforced, other statistics and reading
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