I am rather in love with Stuttgart. Moni’s apartment looks like it came out of an IKEA catalogue, and her friends’ apartments are much the same: clean and bright, simple and uncrowded. The city is full of nice-looking buildings, beer-gardens spilling into the streets with cheery car-workers taking their lunch out amongst the sun and the passersby. You can’t go two blocks without finding an organic food store, and the bakeries have the most wonderful loaves imaginable, full of pepitas and flax and oats and rye, so that the bits on the crust tumble to plate in delicious crumbs — they even have multigrain croissants beaded with seeds.

The city is home to several car companies, but several years ago they did an unbelievable thing: they redeveloped the center of town to be less car friendly. So that even though you see a few more shiny Porsches than usual, there are little pedestrian streets and stairs all over. Stuttgart is also in a valley, surrounded by miles of forest and well-kept trails. The woods have flame-red squirrels and blackbirds in them, and chartreuse chestnut trees that dapple the sunlight and frame the blue sky. You just have to get up the formidable steps, which are even more numerous than Altea’s. The first full day I did a short tromp through the closest parts, and discovered a zip-line to my endless childish delight. And a few days ago I did a four-hour “tour” to the nearby Castle Solitude and back, joining hundreds of Germans at some points, all walking and picnicking and enjoying a day of perfect clarity and humidity. On my second full day, I borrowed Moni’s brother’s bicycle, and together we toured the city from top to bottom (literally), through parks and Epcot neighborhoods.

Moni herself is quite remarkable. I worried I wouldn’t recognize her, but I knew her at once, short-sighted though I am. Her hair is short and dyed red, her skin is freckled and thin like mine, and she dresses and moves and lives in what seems a totally relaxed fashion. She works with a few colleagues to produce short science videos for TV — she does the 3D animations. It’s been nice, the little routine we have going: I wake up to the sun in my eyes and go out for a run… or just climb the stairs, since even that takes half an hour… and I’m back in time to shower and break my fast with Moni. She works while I go exploring (Bauhaus architecture, check; Chinese Garden, check) or stay in her living room cum office to read; or else we go out to do errands, stopping every once in a while to look for good stuff in the inorganics (already some shellac records for a friend).

That’s another thing I like about Moni, she resourceful, and prefers old things — like her crafty manual drill, or the old cash register her dad fixed for her birthday, and her mom’s sewing machine which helped me make a new bag. But it’s not just her, I think, as the recycling bins on every block hint at a general consciousness about being friendly to the environment. Between that and the praise Moni’s friends give to the city, I’m practically ready to move!

Now, there is one more essentially important thing about staying in Germany right now, and staying with Moni in particular, and it is football. Not rugby, not tell-me-when-the-Superbowl-ads-are-back-on-ball, but soccer. Back in Japan, when my dad and I first met Melanie and Monika, we bonded over the World Cup final. Germany versus Brazil. So fittingly enough, it’s currently the European Championship, with a game on every night. And the most exciting match by far has been the one that pitted Germany against Portugal, two teams with exquisite ball control and team coordination. It twisted and turned until the end, when the whole bar leaped out of their seats with cries and hugs and flags — Germany won! Germany’s going to the semi-finals! And tomorrow night, they’re probably going to kick Turkey’s butt, because they’ve got a way better team, and because I’ll be there with Moni in a beer garden cheering them on.

Ole Ole Deustchland!

What do I do about my leather jacket? It’s so sensible and fashionable, and I love it so, but nowadays I feel uncomfortable wearing it. Maybe no one else will notice I’m clothing myself in a dead animal, but I notice! I’m aware with every squeaky bend of my sleeve that this skin was meant for some other creature. The weather is too haphazard to dump it; not until I replace it; not until I find it a good home.

My sandals are wearing out quickly enough, and the fact that they are on my feet makes it less likely that others will notice; other vegans, vegetarians, whom I somehow care to impress. True, these things were got before I became fully aware of their meaning. True, my mass-produced cotton clothing is probably not cruelty-free — people are animals, too.

But somehow that doesn’t make it easier to bear.

In Paris, everyone looks beautiful. The smoke lines on their faces aren’t full of wisdom, they’re full of character. There are the fashions, of course: the trench coats, the scarves, the fabulous boots and cocky hats. But even the girl with striped stockings held up to her butt with garters, even the woman who wore nothing that matched plus garish gold platforms, even the street artist with ruffled shirt sleeves who stood bent scowling at passersby with scissors idle in his hands. They are all somehow beautiful.

I was walking through the subway station when I heard classical music wafting down the halls. I turned the corner hungry like a dog straining on its leash. It was like a dream, a holodeck malfunction: before me was virtually an orchestra, violins and cellos at least, their bows dancing in time and the musicians wearing suits and satin in their minds if not on their bodies. They were students from all over Paris, bringing classical music to the masses. And the masses clogged the tunnel, held there by vibrating strings, and I leaned against the staircase railing hoping to lose my parents — and myself — and stay in thrall forever.

Once upon a time, even tires were pretty. At the Musée des Arts et Métiers, everything is steampunk. Everything is brass and ivory and glass and wood and designed in minute detail. The astrolabes, leather gas bags, microscopes, bicycles, and printing presses — however utilitarian, they were crafted and decorated as if they were objects of art. Which now, of course, they are.

Will anyone want to put our modern junk, our television remotes with a hundred squishy buttons, in a museum someday? Will anyone want to visit?

French no longer seems scary to me. I can almost pronounce half the words half correctly, and I can imagine learning how to spell them someday, too.

The food, on the other hand, is impossible. The French have perfected the art of cream, butter, and eggs (which can also be used by bridge brigands to hurl at Seine river tour boats), using exactly those features of their ingredients that are irreplaceable, unreplicatable. And then they serve only those things. I stand amongst the macarons, an ethical vegan, a little sad.

Not that the food I did eat in Paris wasn’t fabulous. We ate at Bob’s Juice Bar every day it was open, where I filled myself with wraps and smoothies. Maoz taught me how much I need falafel in my life. The bright La Victoire Suprême du Coeur was the first restaurant I have ever been to where the menu items are specially marked “not vegan.” And with Naturalias around, I could almost live in Paris!

Almost… but not quite. There was not a wild plant to be seen within the city limits. Unless you count the milligrams of moss between stones along the Seine.

Next time I go to Paris, I will walk without purpose, bring trail mix along, and carry a map of public toilets. And next time, I’ll make it inside the Louvre!

Hans Gregory had enlisted to fight the Enemy. He had not enlisted to die. Every day he spent cowering from mortar shells flying overhead, and every day he hurled a few grenades over no-man’s land. He never saw the Enemy, not the faces of its soldiers at least. For Hans, the faces of the Enemy were the mauled faces of his comrades. He would have liked to turn his comrades into proper friends, but every time he tried to sit down and have a cup of tea with someone and chat about sports, the Enemy inevitably joined in.

He and his fellow rank-and-file soldiers wondered why they were fighting the Enemy in the first place, but no one really wanted to question their hate. Besides, it was always renewed with some new volley of bullets. If their own compassionate leaders couldn’t arrange peace — and their leaders certainly assured the public that they were compassionate — then it must be the Enemy who was at fault. So it was that he spent his first tour of duty — muddy, bloody, and jaded.

When Hans Gregory went home, he found a letter in his mailbox. It told him he was promoted, due to the importance of some obscure scrap of the Front he had suffered over, and also due to the fact that everyone who had played a bigger role was dead. Also, he was needed immediately. Without even making it to his front door, he turned right round and reported for duty. The Enemy was the enemy after all, and the Enemy never slept.

Through a series of unfortunate events — for other people at least — Hans became an army general. He got to have tea with all the other generals, in a little wooden room far away from the Front, and they sat in fine leather chairs and chatted about sports. Every once in a while a man of lower rank would ask politely for some battle plans, and the tea would get cold while they furrowed their brows over maps and enemy communiques. Then the man of lower rank would scurry off with some orders, and the generals would order themselves more tea.

During one such occasion, while they waited in nervous silence for the kettle, Hans decided to ask his comrades why they were fighting the Enemy. He got a series of dark looks, and someone started spouting propaganda quite excitedly. Another someone said, “You don’t… sympathize with them, do you?”

“No, of course not! I hate them as much as you. I can’t count how many soldiers I saw blown to bits by the Enemy. And I can’t count how many of them that I’ve ordered blown up. There’s not much we can do stop this exchange, anyway, I suppose. It’s up to the higher-ups. I just want to know how we started this whole bloody mess.”

“You mean how they started it, don’t you?”

Hans nodded at their hardened faces. He stopped going to the little wooden room after that. Instead he spent more time looking over maps and enemy communiques, and as a consequence he won many battles he never properly fought. And when he finally got leave to go back home, he was a national hero. In fact, he hardly got to his doorstep when a half dozen men in black suits and equally black sunglasses drove up in long cars of a similar hue.

As it turned out, Hans was such a national hero that he had won the election for Prime Minister without even running a campaign. He couldn’t help wondering why he was so popular considering that they were no nearer peace now than they ever had been in the past. When the Front advanced under his command, it just retreated somewhere else.

The black suited men took him to a serious-looking room in an impressive building, where there was a high-backed chair and a heavy oak desk and a polished red telephone. When Hans asked what the telephone was for, they told him it would put him in touch with the Enemy Prime Minister. It took him several days of signing papers and giving interviews before he worked up the courage to pick up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Good day, Prime Minister. How are you?”

“Er… Well. Thank you. Were you this friendly with my predecessor?”

“Yes, actually. We got along splendidly!”

“You mean you didn’t threaten one another, or boast about new military technology, or call each other pig-dogs?”

“Heavens no! Nothing of the sort. Mainly we complained about the weather and exchanged cookie recipes.”

“Cookie recipes?”

“Yes, I have a rather good one for gingersnaps.”

“But if you didn’t hate each other, why didn’t you call for peace?”

“None of our generals would believe us! We tried being subtle about it and made some foolhardy orders, but that just ended up getting more soldiers killed. The people of both our nations hate each other, Prime Minister, and there’s nothing we can do but let them play war.”

“And if we ordered them to stop?”

“My own predecessor tried that. It resulted in a military coup.”

“There’s no point being Prime Minister, is there. There’s no power in the job at all.”

“You’re catching on! We’re enemies, after all, and there’s no use losing sleep over it. Now, how about those gingersnaps?”

Hans hung up the phone. He was a little annoyed. Was there really no end to the bloodshed? He was far away from the shelling at the Front, but he had not forgotten it. He spent the days watching military plans come and go from his desk, and it dawned on him that no one was really planning the war at all. He let those in the field figure out the strategy for their little patch of ground, and they in turn rarely collaborated with one another.

So Hans began tracking the Front. It was not long before he detected a pattern.

Instead of a random series of advances and retreats, there seemed to be deliberate sequences. Some of these repeated at regular intervals, but when he questioned the generals in charge he got a different rational every time. And when he picked up the red phone, he found the Enemy to be just as clueless. This was a strange thing — there seemed to be an intelligence behind the shifting Front, yet the brain behind it was nowhere to be found.

Hans transcribed the patterns into analogue charts, and handed them to the head of his Cryptography Department. He told her they were radio signals picked up from enemy territory, and he wanted to confirm they were just noise.

Two days later, she returned. Her face was full of disappointment. “Well, it certainly wasn’t noise. It took some trouble to decode, but I believe you will find the message just as disappointing as if it really were noise.”

Hans was stunned. A message? There was a language there, even communication? But who was speaking, he had no idea. Someone was using the army as a voice. Yet it was no one he could identify. No human was sending the message, and no human was receiving it. He realized, turning quite pale, that the only ones that could be talking to each other were the nations themselves. Somehow two collections of people had become two sentient beings, and the citizens were just the cells.

Hans realized that the head of his Cryptography Department was still moving her mouth. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I was just saying,” she repeated, rolling her eyes this time around, “that the message said: WHAT NICE WEATHER WE’RE HAVING.”

Hans instinctively looked out the window. He wondered what kind of weather nations considered to be nice.

Perhaps you are all wondering what I am up to, what new adventures I’m having in Spain. Since coming to Altea, my parents and I have settled into a regular routine. We all wake up about the same time as one another, between 8 and 9 o’clock, do some quick stretches, and head down the many stairs to run along the shore. We do a mixture of jogging and walking, actually, but my mom is such a fast walker that my dad and I have to jog to keep up. Our neighbor, David, calls us crazy, and yesterday I would have to agree with him — we must have been mad to go running in the pouring rain, and this time I do mean “running,” as it was the only way to keep warm.

Then we walk up all those stairs again, take showers, and eat some breakfast of fresh squeezed orange juice, fruit muesli and oatly (a brand of oat milk), or bananas sliced up with cinnamon on top. The rest of the day is a mixture of reading, working on the computer (or sewing tiny bears if you are my mom), chatting with neighbors that wander past, and walking up and down all those stairs several times to explore the town. The old town is by far the best, situated on top of the hill surrounding the blue-domed church, a mix of terrace restaurants and art galleries set in white buildings and narrow streets. The rest of town is more modern, with cars and clothing shops and “Consum” and “Masymas” supermercados. The beach is lovely, with a long sidewalk or boardwalk extending almost uninterrupted from Altea to Albir, and English-speaking cafes arranged along the entire stretch.

Dinner is a casual affair, something simple and light like chickpea salad and plum tomatoes on pan multicereal, or a broccoli stir-fry with brown rice. And it is always accompanied by Star Trek. Somehow dinner and a show manages to remain special no matter how many times we do it. In fact, this whole routine may sound boring to some, but it is truly not. The daily rituals frame continuing conversations with my parents and the gradual soaking in of the Altean atmosphere. Instead of violently inflicting culture upon myself (and perhaps myself upon a culture), I think I prefer this sponge method of travel. I can sit still, watching and listening, and for a time at least, figure out how to live here.

Lest life get altogether too formulaic, however, we have done several day trips. In addition to the fabulous local Tuesday market, there is a flea-market on Saturdays quite a drive out of town. Last week David took us with him, and we spent at least a hour taking in the booth after table after carpet displaying everything from nudibranch-like polyester dresses to antique bronze braziers. Yesterday it cancelled due to the downpour, but next week I hope Anna, our other eccentric British neighbor, will join us.

We hiked out to the lighthouse in the Serra Gelada one day, and another we spent getting our train tickets refunded and exploring the hilltop castle at Alicante, and just last Friday we walked the painted town and floral bayou of La Vila Joiosa, ending the expedition with a mancerina of dark drinking chocolate at the Xocolateria.

And really, every adventure should end in chocolate.

The world is both incredibly limited — how many times must we repeat mistakes, replay history, watch reruns? — but also incredibly unlimited. Every time I get dragged down by the muck of ignorance (e.g. abstinence-only education), pettiness (e.g. bodysnarking, via Feministing), or hostility (e.g. the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act), I then find something really cool to life my spirits again.

I can never have enough Malcolm Gladwell, and in his New York Times article In the Air, he describes the phenomenon known to every math and science student: people are constantly re-discovering and re-inventing the same things… at approximately the same time. Ideas, he exclaims happily, are hardly rare at all. Well of course not! But as the author of The Tipping Point, Gladwell knows quite well that it takes more than an idea to get something off the ground. One needs the resources and connections, and sometimes a new perspective. He talks about the Intellectual Ventures’ 32 inventions over a single casual dinner, and their hundreds of patents, which are all perfectly stimulating; but the really exciting part is hearing about those that are actually happening!

For example, in Technology Review I read about a garbage-fueled power plant with no harmful byproducts. Very cool — let’s build one! Maybe the reason genius seems so rare is that the big ideas are so rarely put into action. Thankfully, the simple and the small ones are often just as thrilling. Like the turbid tale of vegan marshmallows (don’t forget part 2).

You can’t trust good ideas will get follow-up, and you can bet bad ones will. Obviously that’s not actually the case — plenty of bad ideas are forgot during the hang-over. But you never remember the rain when you have an umbrella, now, do you?

Arguing about fantastical politics is more satisfying than arguing about real ones. The situation is timeless, an object to played with as long or as little as you like, and the philosophical gains are applicable as far as you care to extend analogy. Take the Prime Directive, for instance. Though I’ve never attended a sci-fi convention, I was a raised a Trekkie, and will always carry with me that interminable optimism instilled in me by Gene Roddenberry.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the Prime Directive formulated as the commandment it’s treated as, but the literal wording is hardly important. Picard has to wrestle with it practically every other episode, and when he does, he drags a whole lot of other philosophy into the ring. In “Who Watches the Watchers?”, some primitive proto-Vulcans appear to be on a development path similar to humans. They once lived in caves, now in huts, and someday they will build spaceships, too. Because that’s what humanoid life-forms do (obviously).

But what about super-advanced aliens that built spaceships and then decided to settle down into a nice “primitive” lifestyle like the Mintakans? The Prime Directive prevents the Federation from making contact with pre-warp civilizations, lest they interfere with their “natural progression.” They treat planet-bound cultures like impressionable children. Yet the Mintakan culture hardly seems permanently damaged when the “more advanced” crew of the Enterprise finally comes clean. In fact, it’s only then that they fix the problems they created by trying out little white lies (for their own good) and reach mutual understanding.

What about the people of Rubicun III from “Justice”? You know, those blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white-toga’ed folk who run around and kill you if you step on the grass. Why were they deemed ready for contact, but not the Mintakans? And at what point is a civilization ready for first contact? Even without a warp drive, if they reach out first it might be a sign that they’re “advanced enough” or “mature enough” or whatever.

So in “Pen Pals”, Data receives a distress call from a little girl named Sarjenka. Her planet is dying, and her people with it, so she uses her radio to attempt communication with the stars. It’s Sarjenka who makes first contact; Data is not contaminating her mind with far-advanced technology, simply engaging in a cross-cultural exchange. But when this communication is revealed, Picard claims it violates the Prime Directive and proceeds to wonder about the ethics of saving the planet at all. Valuing other cultures is one thing, but here the Prime Directive seems to imply a belief in fate: if it is the planet’s destiny to blow to kingdom come, so it is the destiny of that culture to die out. Thankfully the value their culture places on life leads them to save the day.

Except that they wipe Sarjenka’s mind so that no one’s the wiser. WTF.

No doubt the Prime Directive is generally a good idea, in that the alternative to a non-interference policy is rampant colonialism and evangelicalism. But at what point are they calling on notions fate and a fixed line of progress to make difficult ethical decisions? How should they act when other cultures have conflicting values: should the Federation tolerate slavery, genocide, and oppression in the name of the Prime Directive? Is contacting the nanomites that were consuming the Enterprise in “Evolution” a violation of the Prime Directive? Beyond different values, what about species with different intelligences? Should intelligence be quantified right along with technological advancement — with a threshold for Federation membership?

Thankfully Star Trek never assumes there are simple, or even right, answers to these questions. Which is why they struggle with them so often. Nor was it frivolous to have a long discussion with Papa about the laws and values of a fictional universe: we can turn our minds to the our own universe and see foreign policy from a new perspective. Theory guides pragmatic action, but the messy details of the real world force us into compromises before we even get a chance to look at the big picture.

Play in fiction, and never abandon your toys.

I am in Altea, Spain. In fact, this is my second full day in Altea. And guess what? No stress, thanks to the mere presence of my friend Becki and my wonderful parents! Even though the transportation systems seemed hell-bent on keeping us from getting here, we persevered.

Becki and I flew to Barcelona through Rome, where we spent five hours for our connecting flight, since our original flight was delayed three hours and it caused a huge ripple effect. My parents had no way of contacting me, and in their efforts to figure out why I had not arrived, they were thwarted by evil airport minions.

We then lugged our stuff on the bus to our little hostel, a pleasant enough place with painted walls and a shared bathroom. Except miscommunication landed us with two beds the first night, and we slept family-style (Becki had her own hostel, thank goodness). I felt a bit out of place, the place being geared toward gay travelers, but I got a giggle out of the hulking men in their brochure collection.

Barcelona is a clean city, with beautiful architecture and wide sidewalks, narrow pedestrian alley-ways that wend past unexpected cathedrals. On La Rambla you can find hordes of tourists, cages of birds and reptiles and small furry mammals, the scents of a hundred different flowers, and every sort of living statue imaginable. Including a devilish gargoyle who grabbed you if you got too close, flashing the whites of his eyes and the red of his tongue.

The city was ultimately just a city, however. I missed the green pouring out of the Athenian balconies, and coexistence with dogs and cats, that diversity of dominant species. I missed the ability to find vegan food in any taverna. But Athens is also just a city, and I am not a city person.

We left Becki to do further sight-seeing beyond the tour buses, and fled by train to Alicante. Well, almost. We were delayed for five hours — on the train — a mere half an hour from our destination. Too much rain! The electricity was out, and we were as stuck as the train. I am astounded at our patience: my feathers, at least, were hardly ruffled, and when we finally made it to Altea, I conked out in my own room.

Altea is touristy, it’s true. But there are little stair-studded streets everywhere, and our town-house is big and bright, and our neighbor is a gregarious older British man with a cat named Cassandra. We went jogging on the beach this morning, and in the early afternoon we were overwhelmed by the smells and colors and potential tastes of the outdoor market. There is fast and reliable internet, delicious tap water, chirping birds, passing clouds, and no traffic. I use the church bells to keep track of time.

Breathing is nice.

I have struggling with veganism, but not in the way you might think. It has been so simple to give up meat, then eggs and milk, and even being at the mercy of the CYA cafeteria I have found it more difficult to eat conveniently than to stick to my guns.

Much more problematic is how I am to deal with the omnivores around me. They are my family and friends, and as much as I want to believe that veganism is simply “my personal choice,” that is statement is not consistent with my values. At first I went about seeking ways to defend those values in the most reductionist terms, something akin to Peter Singer’s utilitarianism: it’s good for the environment (you know, the planet we must live upon), it’s good for one’s health (taken with a grain of salt), and it’s good for ensuring a full range of empathy and compassion (arguably keeping up more a harmonious society).

But it comes down to this. As a society, we should decide what we want to value rather than defending or pushing the values we already have. We can not hope to reduce ourselves to purely-rational robots, since we require points of view and frames of reference to think within. We need deuterotruths, and however flexible our brains may be, we can only trade one set for another. Because we occupy an intellectual and social space as well as a physical one, we need a common ground for negotiating that space. And genetically or culturally, we are all given a starting point: we all value life and abhor suffering.

I like those values. Unadulterated, compassion leads to the urge to preserve ourselves, our companions, and the environment that sustains us. The compassionate person is open-minded and tolerant, hoping to understand and connect with the world around them. The compassionate person seeks out the beautiful things in life, because those things reinforce their values. And as much as I hesitate to define the value of living things by their capacity to suffer, it is surely a great measure of how much compassion we feel. Where we share suffering, we should extend our empathy.

But we quickly start watering down our values in an attempt to paint to world in bold strokes of black and white. We want situations to be Right or Wrong, completely justified or not at all, so we start qualifying where and when to apply our compassion. Why not accept the inconsistencies of the world, and struggle instead with juggling the full weight of our values? When people share values, they can communicate effectively and productively debate over what to do with them.

For example, does veganism naturally lead to an anti-abortion stance? I have wrestled with this issue on my own, but other vegans have done the same in concert: on one Australian forum I found, vegans with differing opinions managed to have a sane and thought-provoking discussion (at least on the first page). Unlike the Christian fundamentalists and heart-bleeding Liberals, who become so entrenched in defending their own values that they fail to communicate with each other at all, the people in that forum share a simple unadulterated compassion. They are seeking how best to be compassionate when the world offers so many factors to consider. No matter what anyone says, abortion is a difficult moral issue that deserves this kind of moral questioning.

I once thought women would only abort their pregnancies in extenuating circumstances, but I have heard that in Greece and some social circles in the US, affluent young women use abortions as a form of birth control. I find that upsetting, like crushing bugs on a window ledge, and rather excessive when they made the decision ahead of time to forgo preventative measures like condoms, pills, and IUD’s. But I am certainly capable of being saddened by an abortion at the same time that I object to forcing a reluctant mother and an unwanted child upon the world. That is surely the greater source of suffering.

From Jackqueline on the Human Abortion and Veganism forum:

Rights inevitably clash.  Hate speech is a clash of the freedom of speech can clash with the right to equality.  [What] they do each claim has to be weighed against the other.

But back to my problem of living and loving omnivores.

There seem to be two types of meat-eater: the one who eats meat because of its cultural pervasiveness and for its convenience, who would rather turn a blind eye to the hundreds of animals who suffer and die for their sake than suffer social awkwardness or diet change; and the other one who eats meat and accepts, even rejoices, in cold hard reality of animal butchery. I cannot respect the hypocrisy of the first, and I cannot respect the values of the second.

Some object the use of disturbing images of animal cruelty to turn people into vegetarians. Yet if you find them so disturbing, should you really be supporting those practices by reaping the results? How can you be a whole person if you reject your own compassionate impulses? Do you really believe that those animals aren’t suffering, that they are so inferior as to deserve it? Do you really value the simple pleasures of intelligent beings over the entire lives of less intelligent beings? Is that really what you want to believe?

I can challenge omnivores all I want in the safety of my head or the company of vegetarians or the lofty words of this article (which are not meant to be passive aggressive, but a hard-edged formulation of my thoughts, without the careful hedging I might do in the presence of a loved one). But I don’t want to come off as judgmental — I do that all too easily — and I don’t want to antagonize those around me and isolate myself in a fortress of moral superiority. I am hardly perfect, but I try to do better. I may not be able to prove that veganism is undeniably Right, or construct the perfect definition or defense of compassion, but I can certainly ask people to reflect on their choices based on their own feelings. Feelings at least, unlike morals, ethics, or values, are real.

If you consume animal products of any kind, you have the responsibility to know where they come from. There are gentler ways to inform yourself, but soft words do not always do justice. Watch Meet Your Meat or Earthlings if you can, though it feels like getting shot in the gut. I could only get through a few minutes of each before wanting to vomit and cry, and I would be concerned if they don’t make you want to do the same. Yet how could it be a dirty tactic to show you these videos, however shocking, when they show you a reality that you are otherwise unwilling to accept? We find it necessary to be saddened by war movies and holocaust exhibits because it reminds us of the human capacity for cruelty, that we might better avoid great harm and indifference ourselves.

Somehow, no matter what comes along to crush my faith in humanity, there is some part within me refuses to become jaded. My deepest belief — or perhaps my greatest hope — is that every human on this planet has a seed of compassion buried deep within their minds. It is as powerful as apathy and as world-shaking as hate, if only we would let it grow unhindered.

But perhaps it is too painful. My own is often left untended. For there are too many horrors in this world for one little girl to handle.

I keep running into this “aquatic ape” theory. First from one of my dad’s ham-radio friends, then in Real Food, and now from Seth Roberts. I just finished Freakonomics (which, by the way, was rather lackluster compared to Malcolm Gladwell’s works of similar style) and decided to investigate this guy up in a fit of procrastination. The book mentions his self-experimentation and his discovery of the Shangri-La “diet” (it’s not technically a way of eating), a little fishy, but his blog is dedicated to the pursuit of amateur science. The discussion in the comments of the aquatic ape post is intelligent and surprisingly civil, considering the debate is about whether or not humans evolved from water-dwelling primates. It’s less wacky than it sounds, but the theory doesn’t exactly — excuse me — hold water.

On the other hand, one of his commenters suggests that boys do better than girls in interactive classrooms: “Boys do best in classes where they can move around and don’t have to be quiet. Girls do better in the traditional format– sit at your desk and listen quietly to the teacher.” I feel like I need to find a phone booth and a Feminist Superhero costume… all I need is research to back up my visceral objections. There’s just no way boys are genetically predisposed to have more fun!

I’ll console myself with wishful thinking.

Fact of the day: Dumbledore is an Old English word for bumblebee.