Food is the perfect example. This article isn’t meant to say whether it’s a good idea to eat meat or not (it’s covered elsewhere). In this day and age you do have a choice. But just because you are legally entitled to choose doesn’t automatically make it a personal choice.

You already know what meat is, the various parts of once living animals, in the context of food. But what’s a personal choice?

For starters, it isn’t just a choice made by a person. It means a choice that relates to the person choosing. What colour you dye your hair? Personal. Poisoning the town’s water supply? Not personal because it has repercussions that affect more than just the chooser.

So is meat a personal choice? Is choosing any food personal for that matter?

The choice about what to eat matters to more than just the chooser, unless they’re choosing to eat themselves or maybe nothing at all. Meat means rearing and killing animals and there are also effects reaching beyond that into the the life-supporting biosphere itself. We make a mistake by thinking our choice of food doesn’t affect anyone else by saying ‘it’s a personal choice.’

So why do many people claim that food is a personal choice? What do they really mean and why are the wrong in every case?

When some people say ‘it’s a personal choice,’ what they really mean is ‘it’s not against the law.’

Legally we can choose to eat animals. Whether you think animals deserve consideration as ‘others’ or not, the law cares not. If your personal reality is defined by the governing law, you’d think eating meat or not is a personal matter only.

The law deserves respect. Think about this though: if we live by the letter of the law alone then at some points in history it would have been a purely personal choice to enslave or interfere with children. Does that make sense? Not any more, if it ever did.

Others mean to say ‘it’s okay, because animals are just things.’

It’s convenient belief if you like to eat meat: animals are in some way not conscious, or not having a soul they’re simply a small part of the whole natural world, which is man’s dominion, ripe for plunder. Some might call this ‘rational,’ but actually it’s a throwback to the very outdated ideology of ‘rationalism,’ under which live cats were dissected with the obstinate notion they felt no pain.

The belief that humans alone have conscious awareness is flawed. We have roughly the same physical existence as the animals we eat. Nothing other than complexity sets the human apart from the rest of the natural world.

Some people might say ‘okay, animals exist, but you can’t compare them with people.’ Those believing animals are sentient but not worth consideration make up the majority of people.

Looking down on ‘food’ animals is easy when what all you know about them comes from the TV, or from observing them their stressful and artificial lives in farms and factories. If we all knew more about the animals we eat, we’d likely think differently. Animals are intelligent, social, emotional and feel pain like we do. Even fish have been found to feel pain similarly to mammals (puppies, for example). Cows cry for their young on separation, sometimes escaping confines to search for them, or even intelligently hiding them to save them from becoming veal.

A few people mean to say ‘okay, animals are similar to humans, but why should that matter to us?’ This is quite frankly a scarily selfish and dangerous way to think and I’d like to think it’s just a show or farce, instead of a deep seeded disrespect for life.

Whatever is meant, food is not a personal choice. But the reasons that go much further than the animals themselves.

People near and far are also affected through agriculture’s effects on the physical environment. Grazing livestock for example not only causes local drought, but also the climate of the entire planet.

In this respect, even veganism is not a personal choice: there is still agricultural land involved, animals displaced or killed and greenhouse gas emitted. But, dish for dish it’s a much better option all around.

Even in this context of ‘a choice being made by a person’, food is rarely a personal choice. Most of us were raised believing that meat is non-optional, ignorant of the fact it is undoubtedly non-essential for health and vibrance.

We should each take responsibility for our own lifestyle and looking with open eyes at the effects of our choices. The law and social custom are not infallible. We know animals are not dumb or mechanical cogs in the wheel of nature – we know they are similar to us. It’s time to include them in consideration.

Meet hypothetical Sarah.

She comes from a middle class rural background. Her family is quite conservative. Having gone to university in the city and been exposed to more progressive ideas, she has experimented with vegetarianism and liked it. But there’s a problem. She’s devoutly christian and where she comes from, hetrosexism is tightly intertwined with religion. As a new vegetarian, she meets many people who are also gay marriage activists or gay themselves. Although she tries to accept them, she dislikes having to question her familie’s culture and her own faith.

One day she declines an invitation to a gay rights march. When her friend asks her why, she says she isn’t totally comfortable with the idea of gay marriage. She isn’t able to give a decent reason, it’s just “who she is.”

This embarassment causes Sarah to interact less with her vegetarian friends and find people with similar backgrounds. Although she continues to be vegetarian for a while, eventually she just feels to different from those around her, and reverts to an omnivorous diet.

It happens like this

In our connected world we talk. When the seed of compassion pushes you to change one aspect of your life, you automatically start to connet with others who live with the same change, for support and strength.

Those people will be other compassionate empathetic people on their own journey from the old to the new. Many will have changed other aspects of their life, and thus their changes will influence you as you interact.

You’ll question your own ways and eventually choose compassion, because really, it’s a one way street. You like the feeling of change, you like the new people and lifestyle. It feels good.

But for others, if they ever manage a single change away from their upbringing, it might play out differently. Once they’ve made their original change and started interacting with new people, they may instead feel threatened and seek to defend their encultured ideas.

They’ll lessen their interaction with compassionate progressive people because it will feel challenging. Compassion is a one way street, and they’re not ready to go with the flow.

With their support base dwindling, the change they have made will likely be undone as the acceptance hungry ego seeks other homes. Their compassion will remain dormant, overpowered by the momentum of social tradition.

Compassion is a one-way street

These are black and white examples. I think the many small ways each of us change our lifestyle will eventually lead into the one way street of compassion, or the rejection of compassion. People will settle where they best belong, like particles in murky water. It will continue generation from generation, as values are encluturated, and the process starts again from where it left off.

I see evidence for this more and more, espeically on the stage. The conservative, or ‘right,’ which so often plays to selfishness and tribalism, is becoming more extreme. The progressive, or ‘left’ is opening up, replacing old ideologies with practicalities founded in empathy and a positive anthropology.

I get a sense that the bifurcation is speeding up, perhaps approaching splitting point. As more and more fringe issues enter public consciousness in my own very conservative country, I feel hopeful.

Truly I beleive that while some will get there sooner, most people are destined for the road of compassion.

Let’s assume that you’re not lying to yourself about ‘pocket money’ and are actually motivated enough by your cause (I doubt manhy digital crusaders really detach their cause from their ‘lifestyle’ goals… a result of the influecen of the pure material crew of internet children). In fact one peice of advice from me, separate any ideas of income form your cause unless it leaves you no time for other work. It’ll remove a burdensome and hard-to-satisfy critera for success and leave you feeling lighter.

Assuming these things, you may be like some of my friends, and have come across a certain road block. It’s difficult to compete with the matierally motivated on the internet. You’ll also find many of the tactics others use to further their cause in the digital sphere set off alarm bells in your head. Double standards, stretching truths, misrepresenting yourself, treating people as investments and numbers, conditional giving, back scratching and last but not least blatant sucking up, parasitism and worship of the blogosphere elites. Such transgressions aren’t obvious and are rarely spelled out as what they are, but are detectable in most of the marketing-blogosphere, even the ones that promise to respect your sensitive heart and provide nice ways to rake it in, er… promote your self and cause.

Most people seem to think these small compromises are normal, and unfortunately they probably are. Nevertheless, when you get a whiff of them or see hints of their trail, you want to double over, fall off your chair and puke on the floor, disconnect the internet, melt your computers and phones, retreat into the hills and die quietly.

So if this is you, what else can you do except disconnect and look for other avenues to change the world?

People and role models

First of all you might be in contact with too many materialistic people, or people who have been brainwashed by materialistic people eager to collect worshipful drones.

In this case you could be more picky with who you connect with and listen to. Maybe stop talking to anyone online who is not directly involved with your cause and sees things they way you do. Some people are good at making you feel they have all the answers.

Especially beware anyone who talks about using the Internet to create a ’freedom’ lifestyle or to avoid any work. Firstly, it means they’re really coming from the wrong place, an extreme focus on the self and lack of self sarisfaction. Secondly, it means they’re really focused on income, and everything they say and do for you and their ‘audience’ is passed through a that filter. It’s a massive trap and one that’s hard to see, because location freedom is so often confused with other more important forms of personal freedoms. None of them have shit to do with your cause, which you could work on from the prison library, if it has net.

Just ignore the lifestyle thing, or anything that seems geared for personal benefit.

If you want to look up to anyone look at people who have achieved what you want to achieve, in terms of your ultimate goal, you’re reason for doing what you do. Don’t worry about anything in-between.

Strategies and methods

The strategies pushed as ’essential’ by the ’pros’ may have worked for them and others but that doesn’t mean you can’t do your own thing differently, after all, your thing is different. Their answers were for their questions, which were mostly about money.

Certain tactics seem to be repeated endlessly and have been compiled into a bible that is quoted every day every where on every blog that deals with online marketing and blogging, you don’t really need to know them.

But the Internet is very young. Yes some folks have done remarkable things for themselves, invented their own strategies. Instead of buying into their packages, do what they did and solve your own problems with your own strategies. You’ll have better knowledge of what you’re doing and

Truth be told, the psychologically intrusive and exploitive methods in the blogger-marketer’s bible are designed by desperation and may not be a sustainable methods for you.

The abundance perspective is present in the blogosphere and online world but mostly as lip service. It’s rare you find someone who really makes a mark for more than a month or two coming from a place of actual abundance. no, the Internet and its how-tos are dominated by neediness.

You don’t need to buy into this at all. Remove yourself from the equation and there’s no need for even abundance. Focus on your goal and keep your personal affairs separate.

Concepts

Use new words if It helps to rid yourself of mismatched concepts. You’re not marketing. You’re reaching out. You’re not collecting subscribers, something sly marketers do with the ulterior motive of selling them stuff in the future (which always stinks, no matter how accepted it is). You’re helping others make their own change, and subscribing to you is just how they want to participate. Again, avoid even reading stuff written from the self-serving perspective.

At the end of the day I am just another person ramming their perspective into your head. The essence of what I want to say is be original, independent and take responsibility for your reaching your goals using your own creative initiative. All the above is just how i perceive it playing out for some. My word is definitely not gospel as is nobodies.

But this cant hurt: Instead of feeling low, frustrated inadequate, annoyed, confused and failing, strip away the nonsense, focus on whats important and stand on your own two feet.

If a thought bubble was the ideal incubator for your soul you would have been incarnated as black comic text.

You’re in the world for a reason. To live and learn.

When have you learned enough? When you can laugh at your efforts to understand yourself and the world – two essentially unknowable things, which are both much more fun in their unknowable statw, by the way.

So come on, get real. Stop pulling yourself. If you care, show it.

Geoff Butler? Hmmm.

Today I saw another video that answered one question I had asked myself a few time during the first movie: why the FUCK is this Kony madman getting away with this?

Skipping over the part where I acknowledge my ignorance and complacence, I’ll get straight to the answer I received via Facebook.

“Because we don’t know about it and beause no one has taken the time and effort to empower us to do something.”

Except that someone is, and that person is defining the phrase “digital empowerment.” (Yes it is phrase. I made it up, or I’d like to think so. OK, I know, no one cares.)

Well here’s a guy who actually uses the opportunities presented by the recently dawned age of digital connectivity to make the world extremely better. He’s not doing it because he’s in love with himself and by extension his macbook (like me), but because the kind of change he wants to make requires it.

Enough regretful rambling, here’s something about the Kony 2012 campaign. The idea is to make possibly the world’s worst person (think a Hitler for children, but perhaps two stops meaner) as famous as modern celbrities, and to use public pressure to pull the varios strings connected by the policy-makers who can stop this guy from implementing his sheer utter madness on thousands of now-dead or now-whish-they-were-dead Africans.

If you havne’t seen it, you’re about to be impacted upon. Watch the now famous, but not famous enough, video.

Precedent

A Nice One

What strikes me most is the convergence factor here. We have something that has to change, a plan to change it, someone to lead it, the tools to implement it.

Everything here revolves around the internet. The possibility of something going viral is more real every second as more people join Facbeook and Twitter than leave them (in disgust with themselves for wasting their time and getting angry at strangers).

But the center of what has really made this possible is the guy. They guy who made the video. Don’t make me leave this text editor to look up his name. I think I made it clear in the openin gparagraphs that I wasn’t into that.

Yes we have all this cool amazing stuff. But it’s next to useless most of the time. Look at your Facebook or Twitter feed. Tell me 99% of it is not, in the scheme of things, somewhere between useless and damaging.

This guy gives a fuck like all should and does something we all could. We don’t need to lead. We just need to accept the program and get involved. Even if we don’t like it 100%. Even if it doesn’t single us out and rub our genitals gently.

What I like here and really makes me smile is the precendent. This kind of cause, action, effect and revolution will become a model for future changemakers. The standard of plannign and execution, confidence and self-belief. I am in awe. If the level of digital empowerment I dreamed of just a couple of years ago becomes a common-knowledge reality, we’re in for a nice decade.

Well done guy. OK, I’ll check our your name. You’re leading us into a new world in many, many ways.

We’re on our own, the lucky ones with the begrudged support of family or government, from the tender age of 18. Or 20. Or 25.

We’re free to fly. We’re free to fall. But what is expected, and what seems sane, is to take the tried and tested road. The road of the security, surety.

Which also happens to be the road of slavery, where our time and energy is exchanged for money, often for the betterment of fuck all. You’re supported by your willingness to matter not.

Because guess what? If you risk it all for the chance of flight, you’re a “fucking idot”. You’re a “fool who deserves to fall”.

What’s hard for risk takers to understand is why the ones who gave them life want them to become a slave.

A little context please?

I feel on the verge of failure. After a good run and happy customers, just when things looked set to go sky high… two inexplicably bad batches of Notzarella and I’m back to square one, scratching my head.

I can sell the cheese knowing it’s shit, hoping it satisfies the desperately cheeseless vegans out there. I can recall the cheese and suffer the short term financial shortfall. Except it won’t be suffering, it’ll be death. It’ll be the last straw. I can’t afford for things not to take off right now. All bets are in.

If you don’t want to be a slave, the risk is always worth it. But when you’re falling, the branch you catch is held out by the slave master.

I can’t help wonder whether if we weren’t such an individualistic society, we would all be more free.

Growing up, we could be free in terms of developing our creativity in more personally suited ways.

Entering adulthood, we could be free to offer the world the fruits our creativity.

I’m talking about a cycle, where the younger generation is given much more support for a longer period of time. If they’re 30, and they find something amazing that they love, and that other people like, they’re still going to need help.

There has to be some meaning to life other than financial security for yourself and your dependents. There has to be some celebration of the individual by allowing him or her the room to develop and the means to express themselves, not in high school art or 20 minutes of listening to music before passing out after work, but in a lifetime of creative output, constantly challenging, always exciting, personal, and self-directed work, imbued with the essence of a person’s true nature.

The hand of destiny that seemed so sure just a few days ago seems to have turned into a middle finger. The culmination of all my dreams, wanderings and learnings is like a tune that trails off. I want to push forward but without support the ways look hard.

But then again, if I can’t do it myself I should just go be a slave, right?

Or is family just a waste of a word?

I’ve never seen a UFO. But the most unexplainable thing I have seen is far less explainable than a UFO. I looked up at the clouds, as dreamers time wasting procrastinators awesome people of impressive stature often do, and saw a wiggled line separating the clouds. This in itself is nothing, I just thought it was pretty, and observed the clouds for a while. Soon after I looked up and what was a crooked, random natural line had been blown as straight as a ruler. Ignoring the strangeness of a straight line in the sky, it seemed kind of backwards that something natural would start off random and end up… not. Unless of course there are little aliens up there playing with the clouds just to confuss the people of impressive stature, it seems nature is intelligent and can work backwards if it wants to.

I get the impression that the world we live in is more fabulous and surprising under the hood than it seems. But I also don’t know what that is, though I’ve heard my fair share of ideas about it, and like a couple of them.

So I want to relate the stunningly interesting methods by which the universe appears to be forcing me to produce vegan cheese. Just because it’s interesting, and reminds me of that straight line in the sky.

It started in 2010 when I just wanted to make a vegan cheese. I knew there were a few out there, but to me they were expensive. Let’s ignore the irony of me selling one of those expensive vegan cheeses for now.

Over the next one and a half years I went through phases of experimenting with various ingredients, getting closer then further away, feeling elated and frustrated. Above all though it always seemed promising and possible. Angela telling me I was going to be a millionaire didn’t stop me much.

It came to a point were I had something fairly impressive. I started organising a business. Licensing… trading name… tax…

Then my cosy little life fell apart. I was actually living under a friend’s house for a while, for “a couple of weeks” even though I had no idea of where I was going after and although some logical part of my mind was telling me I needed a job, there was no way I was going out looking for one. Most people’s idea of security to me is less preferable than being wandering vagrant.

So instead I looked for ways to sell cheese. I had what I needed to make small quantities… a stick blender, a pot… and sources for all the ingredients.

Then I scored the cheap rent – a friend with a house that was not really rentable as she was using part of it. The short of it is that I basically got a whole house for the price of a cheap room.

From here I launched the Notzarella trials. I would lug a backpack full of cheese to the post office about a kilometer away every afternoon, and make cheese in the evening in 5kg batches.

Notzarella was born. People liked it. I had some the encouragement and reason to go forward with it. I think I did this for a month or two, and sold about 2,000 worth of cheese, probably making around $1000. Time files when you’re busy.

But there were problems. Business certification was expensive. I’d need to find a nearby certified kitchen, which were all $30-$40 an hour. The cheese-making process was long because it needs to set. I couldn’t very well take it home to set it – I didn’t even have a car. I felt positive, but knew it would be difficult. Some part of me felt like it would be okay, but I didn’t see how.

Then I scored the house.

Other friends of mine lived just over the bordering NSW, about an hour’s drive from Brisbane. They were taking their kids to Darwin for his work and were leaving behind a couple of cats and a few pot plants. And someone had to mow the grass. I think they saw it clearly: they had a massive recently refurbished kitchen with semi-professional grade equipment. They’d designed it with pizza parties in mind!

They had a two door drinks fridge that can actually handle quantities of setting cheese and storing almost a thousand blocks. Just sitting there, in their garage. It could almost have had my name on it.

They have a heavy duty stovetop with a large center gas burner. The range-hood gives ample height for me to plonk a 50 liter pot to do 90 block batches of cheese.

But the best, most amazing clincher is, and which I had no idea about until after moving, is that in NSW I can legally operate this type of business from home, as I am not dealing with any unsafe food types. No one needed to come and check me out. I didn’t need to pay a cent. Once I notified the government, I could order my ingredients, make my cheese and sell it to businesses far and wide.

Since the beginning I’ve been using a litte domestic stick blender to help with cooking process. It’s always barely coped. I’ve always wanted a $800 robot coupe blender.

The other day the little on broke. I needed something fast.

I checked ebay. Someone, somewhere was auctioning a big, powerful, robot coupe stick blender. I messaged them with an offer of $100. They accepted. They lived in the Gold Coast and were visiting my area the next day. I bought it with a bank transfer.

The cool thing is not quite that if I had bought one earlier I would have been out $600 – in the scheme of things that wouldn’t stop me. It’s not even that it was available when and where I needed it. The cool thing is that the modern versions of this thing don’t have a function where you can leave them on and walk away – a feature that saves me one hour every time I make cheese.

Considering I now have a system almost as effective as the $37,000 mixer-kettle I would have bought if I had the money, I’m pretty happy.

What makes me more happy, and it’s more of a warm inner glow than a conscious ecstaticness, is that I have a hands on, honest job that helps save people’s lives and the suffering of animals. My mind wants me to develop some awesome intellectual property and make passive income off it while I meditate under a palm tree with my feet dangling in the crystal blue waters of Costa Rica, but I can see more every day that this is not meant to be, yet.

I don’t know what the fuck is going on or how. I don’t know what I’d be doing right now or how if I had to find a commercial kitchen in Brisbane. There’d definitely be a lot more debt involved, I could convince anyone to lend a financially non-existent person money for a completely new business in an untested market. I doubt I have what that would take.

So if I am not just seeing what I want to see like every other human being on the planet (I’d like to believe I’m not, just like every other human being on the planet), it seems that natural little random me has some kind of purpose, which the universe is blowing me towards.

What if it didn’t matter how smart we were? What if an utopian world of peace and plenty was possible without any actual problem solving.

Yes. I’ve been warming most of you up to this post for months.

There is a magic bullet that can knock the wind out of all our worst problems.

Getting rid of animal products.

Yes. A MAGIC BULLET. I’m shouting it. Refusing meat and dairy is a MAGIC BULLET that kicks the shit out of everything keeping us MISERABLE. Sound emotional? It should. Needless misery and suffering, especially human, plucks at my heart strings.

In fact the more I supress these emotions by turning my attention to ‘intelligent’ and ‘sustainable’ ‘solutions’ for ‘problems,’ the more stressed and useless I feel. Why am I not able to explain to the world that there is a magic bullet? It’s my ego. I don’t want to sound ridiculous. I want to be smart. I want you to listen to me, not think I am a stupid extremist whos view of reality is altered by my extremeism.

Because a magic bullet is ridiculous. We are so smart and clever – how could it be that even the poor and uneducated can prevent problems that the geniuses of the planet have no idea where to start on?

Hunger

Everything to do with hunger is exacerbated by livestock. Half of the grain and 90% of the soy in the world is fed to animals. Basically all of that nutrition is wasted. It’s 85-95% depending on the animal, but why not just say all?

That wastage requires 70% of all agricultural land and 30% of the ice-free land on earth. Do you get that? We are using 30% of all ice-free land on earth to create ‘food’ we are throwing away.

The most mind-numbingly stupid thing you will ever hear is that we should produce more meat because people need more food.

Much of the cleared land was forest, sometimes pristine ancient rainforest and just plain old beautiful forest. Livestock production is destroying the ecosystems that balance the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. It is a major cause of emission through deforestation – and by far the biggest cause of the destruction of the lungs of the earth.

Climate change

Would you like to have the shit scared out of you? Here are the facts no climate-change skeptic can dismiss. Temperature and methane and CO2 concentrations going back 800,000 years have been read from tiny bubbles of air trapped in the ice core. The relationship between atmospheric methane, carbon and temperature is 1:1. The amount of methane and carbon currently in the atmosphere are the highest during that time. In fact they’re off the charts high and have been put there in the last 100 years – but mostly in the last 10, and fastest in the last 5.

The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today – and were sustained at those levels – global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland. (Tripati)

Global Warming is making agriculture hard because weather systems are becoming increasingly extreme. Seasons are coming and going at the wrong times. Rains are hitting harder and faster causing damage and flooding. Droughts are more common. This is climate change.

Livestock themselves have created most of the warming we have seen so far through methane emission. Methane is far more devastating in the short term than policy-makers are aware of. They measure it’s effect over 100 years (20x the warming potential of carbon), whereas it is closer to a hundred times as warming in the near term, five years.

It is this three-five year period we should be worried about, because it is right now that the damage is being done. It is right now that we are passing tipping points that will create a negative-cycle climate change feedback situation that could all but end our civilisations. Seriously. Most people have no idea what six degrees of warming can do.

We need to stop breeding animals now. Thus, we need to stop eating animals now.

The extent of livestock’s contribution hasn’t been propperly accounted for. This is something I know intuitively from putting together a big picture from many scientific reports, almost like a collage. Not very ‘scientific.’ Nonetheless, the highest scientific account of livestock’s contribution to human-caused GHG emission so far is“more than” 51% from WorldWatch researchers.

Water shortage

Let’s think about beef, the most wasteful, polluting and unhealthy of all animal products – not least when it comes to water.

1kg of beef produced in Australia requires between 50,000 and 100,000 liters of water. That’s 20-60 times more than the same weight (and healthier nutrition) in soybeans. That’s between 2,000 and 4,000 five-minute showers, with a 2gpm per minute head.

So one steak will cost the water of at least six months to a year’s worth of showers. Can I hear a “holy crap?”

Quick facts:

• It takes 1000 liters of water to produce 1 liter of cows milk. (New Scientist)
• 90% of most people’s water is consumed in the food they eat, with most of that being in animal-based products (Charles Stuart University, Institute for Land, Water and Society)
• Soy produces 1800% the quality protein (all essential amino acids) per unit of land than beef (Compassion in World Farming).

This PDF summarises the environmental impacts of livestock pretty well. The UN also produced a report about it, although sidestepping the obvious prevention at every possible moment.

Health

Ever loved someome who’s died of cancer, heart disease or lost limbs to diabetes? I’m going to state this very clearly. Vegetarians have around 40% less cancer. Heart disease can be reversed in almost all cases, without medicine – and without meat and dairy. Diabetes is likewise highly associated with meat eating.

These are the ‘three killers’ in all developed societies where meat is a daily habit.

I know that you can actually prevent much more chronic disease by being vegan – but this hasn’t been studied propperly yet as vegans are still such a small (but growing!) percentage of the population.

Have you ever been to a hospital and seen the suffering involved in one person’s sickness? Not to speak of their death. Do you know how a chronic disease stops someone’s life in it’s tracks? If you or a loved one has been through it, you do. Otherwise, take it from me.

Please visit the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine‘s website for the best and well-researched/referenced health info.

Social issues

Now I know we have other social problems that are seemingly disconnected from the above.

But what if half the money going into health could go into education? If there was no animal agriculture, 70% of all agricultural land and ample fresh water would suddenly be freed up. Even with ten billion people, there’d be a surplus of nutritions food. Wars would be far less common and money could be diverted from defense to social programs there too. The whole face of our society would be changed.

With a natural abundance economices will change. Essentials  will be cheaper, because they’ll be less scarce. Work will be less necessary. There are many factors in economics, but a natural abundance, through a simple, healthy diet, is the first and most important. With more time and energy, we can help others and be helped.

The end.

That wasn’t so hard. I’ve been putting this post off for ages because it seemed like a momentus task to draw so many things together to paint the picture that everyone needs to see. I’m sure I could do it better, but if I don’t publish this now, I never will, because it’ll never be good or complete enough.

I hope I’ve given you a feeling for how important being VEGAN is (milk and cheese do nothing for you. Accept that fact).

We don’t need to get ‘smarter.’ We need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot. You see we already have the information. It’s not being used in the right way because not enough people are asking the right questions – but it’s not long until the majority catch on.

Now, please, everyone go register at Veg Coach, so I can personally do everything I can to help make vegan eating easy for you.

The truth is absurdly simple. It’s so accessible, yet so impossible because all that has to change is our minds. All the measures to reduce carbon emission from household, transport and industry will mean nothing without the fast elimination of all animal products.

Ali

PS. If this post has opened your eyes a little, do the world a favour and pass it on. Oh, and the dude in the photo is my friend Eric. And he’s vegan

That amazonian who wears g-strings around the house… the latest iMac pumped with the fastest gear… that treehouse over a lake just the right distance from a major city. That lifestyle where you are truly free, globehopping on the back of passive income.

The trouble with desire is we’re not very able to sort out which are useful and which are detrimental. Which are needs that will further empower us to make a better life and world, and which are desires that will corrode our reality? If they were really that black and white it would be even easier.

The key to cutting through the confusion is gratitude. Appreciation for what we’ve got, most of which is actually simply us. Gratitude for what youth and health you’ve got (everyone who’s not dead has some), the blessings of nature and what friendship and love reality has afforded you.

That, and the willingness to work with what you’ve got to build something worthwhile – to take what we’ve been ‘given’ (if that’s your preclusion) and turn use it fully.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.(Socrates)

Likewise, the secret of contentedness is to focus not on unfulfilled desires but on fulfilled needs.

This is my little truth for today, you’re welcome to it.