Our Green Year.
About a year ago Your Humble Narrator made the conscious decision to cross over to that dark side of dietary lifestyles, veganism. For the most part, it's been a success; sustainable, easier than it's made out to be, and kind of fun.
Like omnivores, vegetarians, tattoo enthusiasts, Hummel figurine collectors, extreme cake decorators, and serial killers, every vegan commits to their muse for different reasons, but it's presumptively safe to say that most of these decisions could conveniently be pigeonholed into one of two buckets: want or need, desire or necessity, "wanna" and "hafta." And even then it isn't that simple, there are myriad shades of gray that fracture each faction; some so parallel as to be separated at birth, others so disparate that they militantly snipe their own littermates. Capitol Hill partisanship ain't got nothing on some of the shit that goes down on the vegan message boards.
Honey or no. Bone char or no. Leather or no. These are ethical decisions made by vegans who see their lifestyle as more than just a series of dietary compromises. And like any cliché, any given person is more than the sum of their decisions, a vegan is more than the sum of the yeses and nos they make, and the world, in varying degrees of separation, is the ultimate benefactor.
So, at one extreme, we have the selfless one, who makes the move for the better good, the "wanna." At another end (not "the other end") we have the one by necessity, the intolerant, the "hafta." And all along the axes and yaws and pitches of this scale we have everyone else, from the casual "flexitarian" to the ovo-lacto-vegetarian to the unapologetic carnivore. We may not always eat what we should, and eating may not always be a thinking process for us, but all of us can come together at least one on a single common point: we all eventually eat what we want at some point in our lives, whether it's our first banana or our last meal.
When this experiment started, I called myself "The Bad Vegan" because at the time the decision was made for all the wrong reasons, at least according to the strictest definition of veganism. I wasn't, and still am not, an animal rights activist. I wasn't, and still am not, allergic or intolerant of anything. I wasn't, and still am not, in dire need of weight loss. I wasn't, and never have been, a proseltyzer of one lifestyle, belief, or practice above another. If anything kept me from becoming a "good" vegan, it was my underlying libertarian principles, which places individual liberty above all other concerns. At the same time, this made me into a fairly selfish vegan, of the "wanna" variety, as if it couldn't get any worse. I was doing it to show off.
Showing off, albeit with my mouth shut, except when it was masticating the day's ration of rabbit chow. And while I still like to maintain this silent badge of selfishness as a touchstone of solidarity, there have been, admittedly, more than one revelation since Day One:
"You're a vegan? So what do you eat?"
"Anything I want."
⎋
Like omnivores, vegetarians, tattoo enthusiasts, Hummel figurine collectors, extreme cake decorators, and serial killers, every vegan commits to their muse for different reasons, but it's presumptively safe to say that most of these decisions could conveniently be pigeonholed into one of two buckets: want or need, desire or necessity, "wanna" and "hafta." And even then it isn't that simple, there are myriad shades of gray that fracture each faction; some so parallel as to be separated at birth, others so disparate that they militantly snipe their own littermates. Capitol Hill partisanship ain't got nothing on some of the shit that goes down on the vegan message boards.
Honey or no. Bone char or no. Leather or no. These are ethical decisions made by vegans who see their lifestyle as more than just a series of dietary compromises. And like any cliché, any given person is more than the sum of their decisions, a vegan is more than the sum of the yeses and nos they make, and the world, in varying degrees of separation, is the ultimate benefactor.
So, at one extreme, we have the selfless one, who makes the move for the better good, the "wanna." At another end (not "the other end") we have the one by necessity, the intolerant, the "hafta." And all along the axes and yaws and pitches of this scale we have everyone else, from the casual "flexitarian" to the ovo-lacto-vegetarian to the unapologetic carnivore. We may not always eat what we should, and eating may not always be a thinking process for us, but all of us can come together at least one on a single common point: we all eventually eat what we want at some point in our lives, whether it's our first banana or our last meal.
When this experiment started, I called myself "The Bad Vegan" because at the time the decision was made for all the wrong reasons, at least according to the strictest definition of veganism. I wasn't, and still am not, an animal rights activist. I wasn't, and still am not, allergic or intolerant of anything. I wasn't, and still am not, in dire need of weight loss. I wasn't, and never have been, a proseltyzer of one lifestyle, belief, or practice above another. If anything kept me from becoming a "good" vegan, it was my underlying libertarian principles, which places individual liberty above all other concerns. At the same time, this made me into a fairly selfish vegan, of the "wanna" variety, as if it couldn't get any worse. I was doing it to show off.
Showing off, albeit with my mouth shut, except when it was masticating the day's ration of rabbit chow. And while I still like to maintain this silent badge of selfishness as a touchstone of solidarity, there have been, admittedly, more than one revelation since Day One:
- A hyperawareness of other acts of consumption within the immediate area. People eat all the time.
- Recognizing the sheer volume of food that is exchanged around the industrialized world, not all of which makes its way into people's mouths.
- Cooking for yourself or a friend is the best kind of customer service you can get.
- A passion for deconstructed versions of habitual favorites and a desire for more whole foods; what the hippies call "eating low on the food chain."
- Meat still smells good when cooked properly, hundreds of kinds of dishes were vegan before "vegan" was even a word, and I still miss tuna fish. (Cheese, not so much, surprisingly.)
- A borderline obsession with cupcakes.
- When you do veganism right, people won't know you're a vegan at all.
"You're a vegan? So what do you eat?"
"Anything I want."
⎋