Ve

8 min read

This text is a small meditation about life, personal values and a mark we leave on this world. Yes, it will revolve around very specific mindset I would like you to share with me someday, but can also just inspire you to voice your own opinion and share it in turn with me and/or others.

You might have received link to this entry from someone who cares about you. Therefore, even if the thoughts I drafted here might feel like they are undermining your long-led lifestyle, consider indulging yourself with input coming from outside your personal bubble. I promise, it won’t be long.

Speaking of:

how to read this page?

Calmly. I am not here to attack you. That’s why I prefer presenting this short deliberation (which is basically a reveal of simple beliefs mixed with series of syllogisms) done in writing instead of talking about it in live discussion.

Read the links and footnotes afterwards. They are important, but are merely a crossroads of my chaotic mind, not contributing that much to main narrative. Somehow, the hypertext resembles conversation. 1

If you’re here just for m

Let’s get on to it.

Manifest in ten ‘v’s

including one of the main components - thinking coherently and taking all consequences which logically infer from declared values… resulting, among other things, in being vegan

thanks to

V as in Views

Hidden or exposed2, having views and opinions is intrinsic to human way of life - we generalize and construct abstractions to deepen understanding of our world and/or manipulate it more effectively.

Nowadays it is fashionable to openly wave our views whenever it’s not undermining basic survival.3 I suppose I’m no better than this! At first glance, voicing our opinions might Iook like oversharing, but there are two important functions of it:

  • anchors us in a world with better understanding of our own perspectives and exercising full potential of life in Iiberal societies

it hanging around with

Cynically, someone can say, opinions are like arses, everybody’s got their own. I believe such nihilist relativism of postmodern world is never a fully serious, .

And on one hand, we enjoy our uniqueness and freedom of choosing/independently deciding on our outlool4,

There’s a wonderful

V as in Values

So, let’s dig deeper - if our practical world and reactions are founded in some

I see at least five reasons (in order of importance for me), each supported by separate value:

  • ⁠compassion / ethics - we struggle to define what is “good” in world, but I think most of us ‘know’(feel) what is ‘objectively’ “bad” - generating unnecessary suffering. Our civilisation is ready to eliminate it, if only demand is balanced in some new way - with mechanized farming we are able to eliminate additional step of energy/nutrition transformations. We climbed a ladder, quite shameful one, but now we are able to throw it away. I believe some day we’ll remember today’s practices as a dark age of humanity.
  • ⁠⁠fundaments of just/fair society - how can we imagine liberal society to thrive if we don’t eliminate brutal practices at its roots? American liberation project (independence supported with a fantasy of equality, when rest of Europe was exhausted by old-fashion conflicts) was initially a hypocrisy - kept slavery going, kept women dependent… Now we are mainly past this, but still keep billions of animals killed or enslaved, just to get our favourite flavours in meals. The fact they are unable to communicate objection (well, they do, but we wall ourselves away from it) is delaying real fulfilment of liberal idea of non-brutal co-existence of Beings - we are benefiting from the status quo, but the inequality is based on genetic roulette, so I believe the situation is mirroring slavery - violence propelling the well-being of smarter monkeys. But would you accept the world where Elon or Trump lands his jet in Kidlington, pays every witness a million to close eyes, and eats your wife and children, just because he’s more powerful than us?
  • ⁠⁠personal health - after 7 months I can observe subjective progressive ageing reversal. Ref. “How not to die” by M.Greger, or some of his newer books. Objective evidence of lower cancer risk in many regions of your body. Cardiovascular system benefitting from low cholesterol. Healthy guts. Just remember to supplement vitamin B12.
  • ⁠⁠lowering risk for world health emergencies - covid, tuberculosis, measles, SARS, MERS, AIDS, smallpox, hepatitis, eeetc - most of major epidemics are caused by a virus which jumped from other animal host to humans. If we stop concentration camps, there’s a chance to minimise/delay next big thing.
  • ⁠⁠lower environmental impact - I think it’s common knowledge / agreed fact that farming is better use of resources (each additional transformation is unnecessary / lossy in terms of energy efficiency, eat crops inof feeding crops to chicken and eating chicken..)

V as in Virtue

We can accept the reasoning shown above. We might like the idea, and we might call it beautiful or right. But we can hold some stronger belief trumping it:

  • our singular actions will not change the world
  • the price of inconvenience is too high, keeping my current lifestyle is more valuable than some abstract ideals
  • while the idea is great, jumping right into it and embracing new lifestyle might be dangerous to me and to the society, what would all butchers do without client’s propelling their business, do we want to bankrupt them?

The first one has roots in perception of the world through lens of (but Influence on the world)

But ideas travel fast and cheap, There is a handful of examples how our species managed to change the world through coordinated efforts driven by strong idea. Some of them terrible (failed socialist project ended in communist totalitarism)

Great article on how motivations and actions entangle in our human lives.

I believe in ultimate test of what we believe in - acting as if these beliefs are in fact truths.

Utilitarian calculation as found in JS Mill and his utilitarism might not

V as in We

What

Let’s get back to the topic of values and views for a second, this time from collective point of view. Someone might say that the moral compass is relative, as much as our societies program us, imprinting certain vocabularies and meanings behind them. But I don’t think that realm of moral reasoning is fully relative. Some part of it feel absolute, even if the rules are not directly giving an algorithm to process everyday’s dilemmas5.

It is incredible how many religions came to a very same conclusion and rule of thumb on how to lead your life.

v for vocabulary antagonising vocabulary I want an opposite of Antagonisms.

corny cheesy quotes supporting my worldviews what is ocean

someone really important

Exclusion, loneliness, in the societies where freedoms and equality were pillars on which the founders wanted their society to

I want compassion and golden rule limiting my freedom, even when the law does not.

Less fortunate growing resentments → raising urge to Negate in a diabolical way - remove or destroy whatever is a building block of current (unfavourable) situation. Destroying both good and bad - because these two might be inseparable, or too hard to distinguish.

V as in Virus

Surely such new perspective might be shocking or

Surely, a natural first reflex is trying to find a way of undermining the logic, finding

And once you

Hope that by now you got some new perspectives planted in your mind. If you feel that any of above was worth reading, maybe you’d like to share it with others. Easy to share link is https://debi.lu/v

Given how many good documentaries, talks and texts are available to support the main message (veganism good), I avoided citing them in here. But if you’d like to see my recommendations for diving deeper, you can start with my short list here.

Addendums

V as in Wittgenstein :)
v as in Venom (avoidance) V as in Awakening

Footnotes

  1. Doesn’t it? ↩

  2. unfortunate thing is that most of the times the opinion bearers’ confidence level is inversely proportionate to the value of the opinion. Even if logical reasoning is fully against some insane ideas, they will find a way to justify their views ↩

  3. We won’t expose our depths or unusual thoughts e.g. in workplaces, as it would potentially antagonize people we are forced to see every day. But in any other context, sharing/synchronizing of our views is a powerful reflex, if we dare to switch off the autopilot which keeps us pleasant and approachable members of society. Naturally, the youth and the elderly are able to get out of zone of pleasantness / political correctness the easiest, because they don’t have much to lose - either the social capital is not established yet, or it’s so stable that they don’t need to worry. That is, only when (a) wits of youngsters are (1) developed enough and (2) not restrained by harsh guardians - to come up with rebellion, and (b) as long as (1) older brains don’t get senile and (2) them being vocal is not the last cry for attention in this world. ↩

  4. Which is obviously just a nice fuzzy feeling about ourselves we keep and share as individuals, determinism and free will are topics too deep to dive into them here, but suffice to say, simplifying nice modern american philosopher , we are carrying incompatible definitions ↩

  5. An important contemporary philosopher recently codified some rules for metaethics ↩

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