Vegan to Veganism β€” the Followup

N.B. This post was inspired by a very kind reader’s comment on my previous post. It’s my way of thanking an anonymous reader for the inspiration to create this article πŸ™‚

I often add deprecating words of imagined critics to challenge my writing β€” they appear as italicized green-text segments. This time I turn those naysayers away and add complimentary words to complement the genuine words of a non-naysayer. πŸ™‚

Thanks for this Bill! But my curiosity is not yet fully quenched! How did your family and friends take your change?

Though the green sheep in the family, I was blessed, or kindly ignored, by family and friends. They have allowed me the space and penchant to follow the way of the iconoclast. Tilt damned windmill! I try to reciprocate in kind, but when you stand up for eliminating THE entree from the plate 24/7, you must expect onslaught and outrage:

Vegan protein icons

Whaaat?

You’re kidding.

You’re not serious.

Whaaat?

A reflexive response to homo sapiens’ rejection of all things never questionable.

You dare countenance baser instincts, to sin against the natural law? Beasts naturally sacrifice their corpus by dint of birth. It’s frail folly to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge.

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I also imagine that back then veganism was much harder and much less accepted than it is today.

Graduating from university in the year of Woodstock 1969 and Earth Day occurred the following year. Insanity by political edict in Vietnam would never occur again. Nixon flew away in a disgrace that many of my peers vowed to avenge. Whiplash by pendulum swing was inconceivable β€” but it was only five years away.

A certain nihilism set in with what I call “Mourning in America” 1980.

Whiplash happens.

Did you join an animals rights group?

Peter Singer (Animal Liberation) rocked the planet with his unspeakable recommendations in 1975. E.F. Schumacher suggested that small was beautiful. Β It seemed the conventional wisdom would follow in steady due course β€” but not politically and not personally. My wife died in 1983.Β I became a single parent until Lisa showed up to rescue us. She got the chance to shop for groceries with a vegan in 1993. TVP and canned vegan fare were tucked away in an a nondescript top shelf. Those cans got lonely up there.

And about the detoxifying, I agree. When I first went vegan, I had detox symptoms too, but then I also gave up coffee, sugar and alcohol completely.

I successfully detoxed from alcohol after a single rehab week in Falmouth, KY. Heroin peers began to outnumber the alcohol-devotees. Break time at the picnic tables there led me back to cigarettes for some months. I was the only person to show up at a smoking-cessation series β€” my last puff was taken in the parking lot of the hospital sponsoring the series. I’ve saved the certificate of completion.

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I have mine without the above. What’s it called?

Let’s say that coffee ‘never hurt me none’, so I’m still with that Kodachrome. Sugar that doesn’t come with real and true fruit, sugar in empty-calorie form remains a crutch that I haven’t discarded. It’s bad news without a single redeeming social value, but I stock up on figs, dates and the such to counter the sugar molecules.

Thanks again for this post!

Thanks so much for the prodding. It’s been enormously helpful to answer your thoroughly wonderful questions.

Thanks for reading.

From Vegan to Veganist and Beyond

A fellow blogger recently submitted a question to this desk, actually it’s not a desk but a dining room table without dead animals on it.

el.dolor.es.igual
Animal liberation. human liberation

How long have you been vegan?

So I decided to ramble on about it right here…

…in a bid for garish aggrandizement, Bill?

No, in consideration of all the fellow sentient-beings that I have not killed by proxy several times today and several times tomorrow. Enlightenment brings more than inspiration and a healthier lifestyle β€” it entails (not entrails) a responsibility for passing the word forward for a better world.

It started with a flyer on a nondescript table in a university hallway 30 years ago (now three-sevenths of my life) β€” reasons for adopting a vegan diet. It was as dramatic as it was nonchalant.

During the first ten years I discovered that vegetarianism (keeping eggs, dairy and cheese in your diet) kept my body supplied with animal-derived molecules that fueled a craving for animal byproducts β€” the organs that excrete toxins, including your skin, were self-sabotaged. Detox is not pleasant, but there is no alternative. Not tossing meatables into a shopping cart results in fewer factory-farm orders for meatables.

I also discovered that fermented liquids might be a perfectly vegan alternative lifestyle choice, not all poisons come in animal-laden packages. That detox was also not very pleasant β€” just speaking from experience.

This great little saying is still my favorite for its truth and pithhood:

Every time you eat or drink

 

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W.T.F.!

Search the internet for ‘vegan’ and ‘health’ to find statements from people who tried to become vegan but suffered from fatigue until they went back to meat. It takes as long as a year for toxins and craves to leave the body. “Out damned toxin!” But it literally liberates your mind and your brain.

In your opinion, Billy. Spam brought the Philippines into this modern world. Capiche?Β 

I have discovered personally that your brain seeks alternate paths when not blogged down by crap. Check out the ingredients on fast-crap that people chew and chug all day. Dozens of long-named laboratory labels are strange, but not as loathsome as their crave-inducing effects. But who am I to question trillion-dollar industries?

 

meatables
Veganism is brain friendly

How can 97% of the consuming public be wrong, Bill? Think about it and shut up.

I’m just paranoid I guess. Sorry ’bout that.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

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