My least concern when thinking about veganism is our planet, but nonetheless it is still hugely important. Probably keeping it as a tailing afterthought, as I feel my practical efforts to prevent environmental catastrophe have chance of success at least level of magnitude lower than other parts of the struggle. I might not be able to save anybody from great upcoming crysis. In contrast, I can still save them from thoughtless life in which they inadvertently support oppression, suffering and inconsiderate lifestyle choices.
It’s this truism - Different levels of confidence and passion - drive different agendas and variable effort allocation. So the planet is my last priority. You matter more. But still, everything matters. I believe so.
Lurking nihilism
Even though our planet is probably doomed, it will remain immortal truth that some of us cared for its future. Like love, science and anything important for us in life - even if someone puts all his energy in it and champion your thing
- become a giver of purest, warmest type of love and caring
- develop breakthrough inventions
- create works of art which stun, entertain or inspire people
- lead others to betterment of world and their circles, as small as duets, or as big as nations ⋮ in the long run ⋮ if you stop fooling yourself and take “realistic” view ⋮ Sub specie aeternitatis, as they used to say…nothing matters
- your kids will die
- okay, they are survived by their kids, but these will also die in their turn, at the end your genetic line will not matter anything to anyone
- and if you find solace in your big achievements will remain here anyhow, remembered by people, cherished by civilisation, you’re wrong, societies and planets will die too, not only in our corner of the galaxy, but EVERYWHERE, thermal death will put the end to history and any remembrance of the values present in it.
BUT
I have one solace. I think one thing saves us from the abyss. For me historical appreciation or continuing existence is not necessary for things to hold value. The only important carrier of my metaphysically involved ethics of actions is snapshot of intersubjective assessment of good deed vs bad deed, mostly basing on intentions rather than outcomes.
It ends up generating a narrative - let’s call it humbly ==Eternal Truths==. These are just sentences about the world which are believed truthful by me and people sharing large parts of my model of reality. No matter what, these atomic facts will never change, never die, never be lost by us, because they belong to another world, plane of abstraction, and will remain there, outside of history and out of reach of wind of time.
These small nuggets of solace, saying “In such-and-such times, at this very moment, this one clump of organic matter - loved someone, helped someone, cared about something.”
I guess one could also reduce it further and simply say “your current effort is what matters, not any legacy”. But I like this small personal mythology.
On another note
Let me speculate that one hope for our planet - people would probably start caring about it - would show if individuals reached ability of deferring personal biological deadline indefinitely. Immortality if still not a right word here, but illusion of immortality might effectively be beneficial for the planet as much as illusion of self and illusion of freedom were for the benefit of our tribes.