The human body, among other bodies, is made up of many colonies of cells working together in a super-colony. It is astounding that all these cells bother to work together at all, and it takes a lot of effort for them to do so. Our bodies are not particularly elegant devices, and are stocked with inefficiencies and extraneous parts, no matter what you consider our function to be. If that function is to replicate our genes, well, there are many more ‘efficient’ ways of going about it.

Our cells could simply disband and replicate their genes on their own, each for itself. Indeed, they sometimes do so — we call it cancer. Sometimes the complex systems in place to make our cells cooperate (but not with antagonistic cells carrying foreign genes) fail, like our immune system — and then we get autoimmune diseases.

Generally, heterogeneous groups cooperate only as long as things aren’t stressful. A recent study using mixed-species bee colonies managed to keep the bees mellow by giving them plenty of food, removing troublemakers and other sources of stress. I’m sure this works for our bodies’ cells as well. If things get tough or confusing, they might just decide to go it alone.

That’s why it’s important to keep our bodies’ systems working harmoniously. Drugs and medical intervention never quite cut it — it’s like trying to patch holes in a leaky boat while you’re at sea. They cause problems as well as fix them (you’ve heard the side-effect disclaimers on prescription drug ads), and they don’t address the root causes. If a person’s lifestyle is causing their cells to rebel — and usually there are plenty of warning signs beforehand as the systems start to tip off-balance — then lifestyle needs to be addressed. Otherwise those delicate systems will ultimately collapse.

I highly recommend The China Study for its excellent review of the current medical research — as well as relevant but buried historical research — about diet and its effect on major diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and more. The common thread that emerges is that eating animals, especially animal protein in meat and dairy, is more highly correlated with Western diseases than anything else. Yet even while people are willing to cut out whole macronutrients from their diets (like fats or carbohydrates), they are not willing to face the idea of giving up animals.

The author of The China Study was convinced by his own studies and the studies of others to switch to a whole-foods, plant-based diet. I would be too if I hadn’t already done so! And after listening to over 100 episodes of Fitness Rocks, the bulk of medical research supports the idea that this is the healthiest way of eating. It can reverse heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, and negate the effects of even the most potent carcinogens. Calories from unrefined plant-based foods are used or burned off as heat instead of being stored as fat. Meanwhile diets high in animal foods cause or promote things like prostate cancer, breast cancer, diabetes (even Type 1), osteoporosis, and obesity. I’m just surprised this information is suppressed in the media in favor of expensive pharmaceuticals and invasive medical practices that aren’t half as effective at treating the symptoms, and do nothing to fix the underlying problems!

A human is not one entity. She is a swarm of swarms, a vast metropolis of living cells and immigrant bacteria. What a crazy idea! It makes my head spin to think how complex it all is, and it makes me wonder at how it all stays together. Thankfully, they — I mean I — want to stay together. And I’ll definitely listen to myself closely, and make sure I have what I need to remain one colony and not several rebel states fighting turf wars over the body I want to use to live my life.

No offense to the colonists, but I think the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. Take note, fellow colonies! Keep your metropoles free of crime and vandalism — eat more plants.

It turns out that science isn’t the infallible, objective thing it’s made out to be. This does not always come as a surprise, but until recently I rarely realized how deep science’s subjectivity goes. After all, humans are the ones designing the experiments, and they are the ones interpreting the results. Scientists frame their empiricism in historical and cultural terms. Thus estrogen, testosterone, etc. are termed ‘sex hormones’ despite being highly active throughout the body and have many non-reproductive functions, and when new functions are discovered, they are colored by gender as well (see Sexing the Body). Bee dancing has been shown to communicate to other bees and also to have no effect, with apparently rigorous methods and “obvious” results on both sides (see Anatomy of a Controversy). Scientists studying anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change come to the table with existing notions of nature and culture, a nebulous if not false dichotomy, which will determine what questions they ask and how they’ll understand the answers (see Sociology, Environmentalism, Globalization).

This doesn’t mean that science isn’t real — it’s the least arbitrary system we have for learning about the world. But science is a process, not the undeniable truth. We should intelligently question all scientific pronouncements — and keep in mind that things once positively known to be true by the most esteemed members of the establishment have been overturned several times over. How unbelievable were germs, plate tectonics, and quantum theory? How credible were alchemy or aether?

The real problem, though, is when science is used to stop discourse. When something is presented as Scientific Fact, within a scientific field and especially to the public, people aren’t allowed to challenge it. Such Facts are often wielded by people who are trying to prove something, like the ‘inferiority’ of women or minorities, or to sell something, like pharmaceuticals. Sometimes the data are misinterpreted or distorted, but ‘legitimate’ results can also be used in inappropriate ways.

Currently, with scary global warming data in hand, we are asking industrializing countries to reduce birth rates and embrace sustainable development — “You there, stop cutting down your rainforests to grow food!” — even while our Northern/Western lifestyle makes it clear that we aren’t subjecting ourselves to the same restraint. In fact, it’s very difficult to intervene in another culture without doing more harm than good because we’re barging in with our own values — we assume that their way of thinking is worse because they haven’t come to the same conclusions. Given the variability of science and the influence of culture on its conclusions, we cannot rely on science as an objective measure of truth and judge others on its scales.

Sustainable development is touted as the way to go nowadays, but I question the notion of ‘development’. It assumes that every nation should grow in population and advance its technology towards industrialization. But at the same time, industrialized nations have no right to tell other nations not to follow suit. Prosperity is associated with development, so the only way to change things is for already developed nations to seek new sustainable lifestyles — which may require a reworking of our current high-energy materialistic lifestyles into something that everyone can realistically participate in. A sustainable lifestyle is a way of life that can be maintained indefinitely within a stable population (and hopefully one in which no one is impoverished and no group is singled out for suffering).

Scientists may agree that our environment is undergoing some undesirable changes, but no one can seem to agree on precisely what they’re caused by or how to reverse them. Get your grains of salt ready, because everyone in the conversation has their own vested interests, and has values that may not be reconcilable with your own. And the biggest problem is that not everyone is invited to the table — most conspicuously those who are most affected by ‘global’ environmental policy. It seems to me that we need to be more inclusive in thinking about and acting on this Trouble that we’re in as a planet. The trouble is that we can’t exclusively use science to mediate the discussion anymore.

Play ball.

Alan Watts is determined to be in my Thesis. I have the great fortune to live across the hall from a freshman named Taylor, who spends his time reading and listening to Nietzsche, Lovecraft, and Alan Watts (in addition to watercolor painting and drinking tea), and he introduced me to this counter-culture East-meets-West philosopher who tells you that you are not really you. You are, in fact, a figment of the universe’s imagination.

Now, this appeals to my admittedly woo-woo sensibilities — which my rationalist father and partner do well to keep in check — but I first heard it articulated, in almost as many words, a week earlier while reading peer-reviewed academic articles for my Thesis. I hinted that my Thesis involves bees — indeed it does. Specifically, I am looking at how bee dances function within hives and how rituals function within human societies and how the two things could possibly be related. My hypothesis is that they create meaning in similar ways — that their semiotic structures are after all the same.

Semiotics is the study of how meaning is created — how things mean. It is normal to study the semiotics of human things, like language and culture, but recently people have been keen to try looking at the semiotics of biological systems as well. For example, DNA is “interpreted” by the cell, and the chemical messages of the immune system “mean” certain things insofar as our tissues take specific actions in response to them. You could argue that these things don’t really mean anything, because there is no one — no mind — to mean anything to. But our brains do not possess a special method for interpreting signs, and if you do not want to look at human intelligence, you can reduce minds to neural firings. And if you don’t want to look at the larger-scale patterns of cells and organisms, you can just look at DNA molecules.

In fact, you can reduce the entire universe to subatomic particles, but it won’t get you any closer to understanding how cells function or how humans think or how cultures develop. These are higher level patterns that develop through interactions between lower level patterns, and so on until each thing we call an entity is actually just a certain nexus of interactions. But it is indeed interesting, because what we see as entities react to one another as if these entities are real. It’s not just us observers imposing order on chaos, it’s systems organized in a complex dance.

The immune system is seen as a sophisticated communication system, but it is also communicating with the nervous system. Your brain is not independent from the rest of your body, nor your body from the food you eat or the brains of people you meet. “Bio-semiotics” is all about these communications and interactions, and the scientists and scholars writing about biosemiotics stress both the interdependence of living systems and the loss of meaning when these systems are reduced to mere molecular interactions. So we really exist, but not as the separate self-contained entities that we think we are: “The belief that we exist is a property of the mind-body system as a whole. From the biological point of view this belief in individual existence is not as obvious as might be thought” (Hoffmeyer).

This view of the world is strikingly similar to the one promoted by Alan Watts. I am in fact not an Ego, but a mind-body. But I’m not a mind-body either, but a point in the universe where a bunch of interacting systems intersect. Like an eddy in a river, which seems to exist constantly even though it’s really just a pattern of moving water. That this perspective is useful both to theoretical biology and to human beings makes it seem all the more appropriate as a way to conceive of the universe. It is vast, yet meaningful; playful in its myriad manifestations that ask to be explored, yet comforting in its continuity.

But Alan Watts says it best:

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?

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.