One of the first things you told me is that you are a vegan. Within two minutes of meeting you, I could tell it is something you feel very passionately about, share your thoughts, please?
Well everyone knows that being a vegan is healthy that is not a secret. Everyone knows that eating vegan food is good for you. It is lower in fat and higher in fibre. But what I think is most important about not consuming meat and animal products is that consuming meat conditions people towards violence. Ask yourself, if it is necessary to consume something and in the process of that to kill something. If so, it becomes easier for you to justify something like war and structural violence.
If you can allow something else to die so that you can benefit, it very much the same as saying that I need to take money for myself and let other people be poor because I need that. I need it for me and the fact that it harms others doesn’t matter, it is not important that it damages other beings. You can get protein from better sources.
Along the same lines if we can embrace this idea we realize it is never necessary for people to live in shacks while other people live in mansions. We can all come up with a much better solution, where people do not need to rely on decadence so that they can feel good, we can all live on an equal ground. We can all be happy together with a fair way of distributing resources. Food being the simplest of them but going above that, all resources and money. If we can distribute resources in a way that doesn’t involve structural violence, the world will be so much better. Most people turn to crime because of poverty and most people who commit the worst crimes were once poor themselves or they were a victim of poverty or structural violence so they perpetuate that system. If we can escape from that system entirely then we can move forward.