Tag: meat

I’m sorry…well, actually I’m not

Posted on by philipdodson

Often, in the past I have said things that I didn’t necessarily agree with so as not to cause offence or to fit in, to avoid awkwardness.

Now, I don’t. I’m always civil, which is something I’ve learnt is far better than be an aggressive, opinionated arse like I used to be many years ago, but I will speak up.

However, here’s a thing I’ve noticed, I’ve been mainly vegetarian for the last 2-3 years and being vegetarian has its challenges, and at times I felt almost a little apologetic for being a veggie. Then, during the summer, partly due to watching What The Health on Netflix and feeling, after 51 years of ignoring it, that I was like most humans, intolerant to diary, I turned to being vegan.

When you say to some that you’re vegan, they look at you like you’ve got some deadly contagious disease and you’ve just licked them. They say things like ‘wow!! What do you eat?’ in a tone of complete incredulity or ‘what about cheese, butter, eggs? Do you still eat fish?’.

So, I’ve noticed that I’m almost slightly apologetic again, like I want to hide that I’m vegan or not put others into an awkward moment and I’ve said things like ‘I’m just trying it’ or ‘I’m not a strict vegan’. It’s a bit like being a ‘skinny low-fat Christian’ or a ‘Muslim lite’, just kind of religious.

Well, actually I have nothing to apologise about. People who meat, and it’s all a personal choice and I have no judgement, don’t say ‘ I’m not really into this meat thing’ or ‘sorry to be pain, I’ll just eat some veg’

So, I’m sorry but I’m not sorry anymore. Equally, though as I don’t like being judge, I am not judging others choices and I will not be trying to convert others.

If change is what I seek, then better to do my thing and then hope that it might inspire others who might want to eat differently too.

But for those who do judge, I don’t care. I’m happily a human being with my own choices that I like.

Meat, the elephant in the room

Posted on by philipdodson

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The elephant, or actually more like the herd of elephants, in the room for humanity, is clear for all to see. As the phrase implies, huge for all to see, yet no one wants to discuss it.

Partly this is due to the daily distractions fed to us by a media aligned with the very people who are or have created the elephants in the room. Part due to the conditioning we all experience to ensure compliance with those same people’s system and finally due to the apathy created by large masses, namely 7.5 billion people who inhabit this planet.

Changing a mass that large, with their ingrained acceptance of the myths created by those who control, is now becoming almost unachievable without some catastrophic event.

So few talk about the sustainability of our system and us as a species. In a little over 70,000 years Homo Sapiens, the only remaining human species, has wiped out all other human variants, and from the start of the agricultural revolution 14,000 years ago, us and our domesticated pets and animals have gone from being a few percent of the planet’s biomass to now 98%.

Our 77 billion animals kept alive for our collective meat over-consumption needs 50% of the world’s agricultural space just to grow the genetically modified soybeans that most of them are fed. Shock horror cow’s aren’t fed grass!!! This over consumption has lead to mega-industrial scale farming, cruelty to animals and destruction of the environment on an unsustainable scale. Overfishing/overfarming and chemicals have created dead zones on land and at sea.

The contribution to global warming caused by this over-consumption of meat dwarfs the effects caused by the heavily talked about CO2 from industry, cars, planes etc.

These environmental disasters in the waiting, there for many to see, are swept under the carpet by most and especially by the ones who creating them, they spin more myths about the issue such as ‘it isn’t a real threat’ and ‘no need to worry’.

We are told to worry about terrorism (mainly a creation of the myth makers), migrants (AKA humans displaced by myth makers’s wars of greed), and all kinds of other largely unimportant things compared to the potentially catastrophic outcome of our continued over-reliance on meat.

If as a human race we can not convince our fellows of the need to consume less meat and to find alternatives, then we are likely to very soon be living on a planet with conditions too hostile for us to survive. This likely to be in most of our lifetimes and certainly that of our children’s. Many know that it is there and chose to ignore it or do not try to educate others to create change.

How much longer will we ignore the elephant in the room that is meat?