Matador Network's Blog, page 2148

Most lives are lived by default

Photo: Daniele Vico

Jamie lives in a large city in the midwest. He’s a copywriter for an advertising firm, and he’s good at it.

He’s also good at thinking of reasons why he ought to be happy with his life. He has health insurance, and now savings. A lot of his friends have neither. His girlfriend is pretty. They never fight. His boss has a sense of humor, doesn’t micromanage, and lets him go early most Fridays.

On most of those Fridays, including this one, instead of taking the train back to his suburban side-by-side, he walks to a downtown pub to meet his friends. He will have four beers. His friends always stay longer.

Jamie’s girlfriend Linda typically arrives on his third beer. She greets them all with polite hugs, Jamie with a kiss. He orders his final beer when she orders her only one. They take a taxi home, make dinner together, and watch a movie on Netflix. When it’s over they start a second one and don’t finish it. They have sex, then she goes to wash her face and brush her teeth. When she returns, he goes.

There was never a day Jamie sat down and decided to be a copywriter living in the midwest. A pair of lawyers at his ex-girlfriend’s firm took him out one night when he was freshly laid-off from writing for a tech magazine, bought him a hundred dollars worth of drinks and gave him the business card of his current boss. It was a great night. That was nine years ago.

His friends are from his old job. White collar, artsy and smart. If one of the five of them is missing at the pub on Friday, they’ll have lunch during the week.

Jamie isn’t unhappy. He’s bored, but doesn’t quite realize it. As he gets older his boredom is turning to fear. He has no health problems but he thinks about them all the time. Cancer. Arthritis. Alzheimer’s. He’s 38, fit, has no plans for children, and when he really thinks about the course of his life he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself, except on Fridays.

In two months he and Linda are going to Cuba for ten days. He’s looking forward to that right now.

***

A few weeks ago I asked everyone reading to share their biggest problem in life in the comment section. I’ve done this before — ask about what’s going on with you — and every time I do I notice two things.

The first thing is that everyone has considerable problems. Not simply occasional tough spots, but the type of issue that persists for years or decades. The kind that becomes a theme in life, that feels like part of your identity. By the sounds of it, it’s typical among human beings to feel like something huge is missing.

The other thing is that they tend to be one of the same few problems: lack of human connection, lack of personal freedom (due to money or family situations), lack of confidence or self-esteem, or lack of self-control.

So much of our lives consists of conditions we’ve fallen into. We gravitate unwittingly to what works in the short term, in terms of what to do for work and what crowd to run with.

The day-to-day feel and quality of each of our lives sits on a few major structures: where we live, what we do for a living, what we do with ourselves when we’re not at work, and which people we spend most of our time with.

Making a major change in just one of these areas will necessarily make a major change in the feel and quality of your day-to-day life. It simply can’t stay the same.

Stay in the same city, but start hanging out with a completely different crowd, and life will change significantly. You will change. Stay in the same career but move cities, and your life also will change in a major way.

It might get better, or it might get worse. You don’t know until the change is made. This uncertainty is enough to keep most people from bothering.

But they should bother, as a rule. Day-to-day life is more likely to get better than worse, because a deliberate change gives you a chance to see if your new situation resonates with you or not, and gives you a second angle of the old one. If the new situation does resonate, then you’re closer to finding what’s right for you, what’s optimal for your sense of well-being.

If it doesn’t resonate with you, then you have more perspective about what it is that you already do that you like so much. Your values become clearer, and you gravitate toward them more strongly. If you leave the countryside for the city and hate it, then you’ve definitely learned more about what it is about the countryside that really does something for you. That’s progress. That’s getting closer to what you want.

Living with the die roll

For Jamie, and for most of us, those four major structures were not decided consciously. The career you end up working in depends chiefly on what you saw as options when you were just starting to enter the workforce. That was a very narrow period of time, during which you were only aware of a limited number of options. You went with whatever made sense at that time. The result — what you do today — is more or less happenstance.

Friends too, are mostly in our lives as defaults. Most of us have found some incredible and inspiring people just by letting happenstance deliver them, but once we have some stable friendships we become complacent and stop actively looking for friends that really resonate with our values and interests, if we ever did at all.

Where you live is even more random, more difficult to change, and it may have the greatest effect of all the structures, because it determines the rest. You were born somewhere. If you moved, it was probably for work or for a relationship. A minority of people do move to a particular city because they think they’ll be happier there than anywhere else. They are seeking the optimum place to live for their values, or at least close to it. But most of us become too established in one place to seriously consider moving once we hit 30.

Friends, location and career tend to define the other one: what you do with your time. Your habits and your hobbies. Your routines, your typical Saturday-night activities, your wardrobe, your pursuits and personal projects are all suggested by (and constrained by) what your defaults are in the other categories. If you happened to grow up in Nebraska, you probably don’t surf. But surfing might just be the thing that really would turn your crank like nothing else, if you were lucky enough to discover that.

So much of our lives consists of conditions we’ve fallen into. We gravitate unwittingly to what works in the short term, in terms of what to do for work and what crowd to run with. There’s nothing wrong with living from defaults, necessarily, but think about it: what are the odds that the defaults delivered to you by happenstance are anywhere close to what’s really optimal for you?

In other words, we seldom consciously decide how we’re going to live our lives. We just end up living certain ways.

In all likelihood, what you’ve inherited is nowhere near what’s best for you. Chances are very slight that there isn’t a drastically better neighborhood for you out there, a more kindred circle of peers, a much better line of work, and a much more rewarding way to go about your day than the way you do. Your level of fulfillment and sense of peace with the world depend on how well-matched your values are to the life you’re actually living. There’s no reason to believe they’ll match well by accident.

The most natural-feeling course for your life is to do what you’re accustomed to doing, live where you’re accustomed to living, seek what you’re accustomed to seeking. So be careful. I’m convinced that all of my major problems — and many of the problems in the comment section of the What’s your problem post — are due to going with the defaults, either too afraid or too oblivious to make major changes to them.

As a culture, we do a whole lot of maintaining, rationalizing, procrastinating and reinforcing, and not very much thinking about what’s really best for us and the drastic changes we might need to make to get there.

So what does this mean? It means if you’re a normal person you can expect that a lot of categories of your life are set up in highly inefficient ways, by default. Certain areas of life could be all wrong for you and you have no idea how good it could be on other side of the fence. It also means that wherever you recognize a persistent source of grief in your life, there is probably a different way to set up your life that could eliminate it or greatly reduce it. It could be a major change, like ending your marriage, or it could just be moving to a different neighborhood in the same city.

Major changes are intimidating, but think about it — most of the time when you hear somebody talk about making a major change in their life, like changing cities or careers, a year later they’ll say it put them in a far better place. They tell you they don’t know how they lived before.

That’s a feeling worth seeking out. That specific feeling — which comes in the wake of a major change — of wondering how you ever got along before.

The bottom lines, if I haven’t been clear:

It is typical in human lives to feel like something huge is missing or unsettled.
It is typical for the major aspects of a human life (career, friends, habits and home) to be decided by happenstance, and not consciously.
The feeling of something huge being missing is probably often due to a serious mismatch between what you currently have in one of those aspects, and what is best for you in one of those aspects.
Making conscious changes to the aspects of life you’ve accepted by default can result in dramatic and immediate changes to quality of life.

Few people do this. Few people make a deliberate quest out of finding their perfect city or neighborhood, of seeking out their truly like-minded. Most of us live seventy or eighty years defending what we’ve been given, because we think it’s who we are.

At any given time, the prospect of a major change will tend to seem out of the question. This is because you believe you are what you’ve been doing this whole time. From the other side of a major change, the thought of continuing the with way things were will seem absurd.

But identity is fluid. You’ve been becoming a different person this whole time, and after making a dramatic change, you might find you’re more yourself than you’ve ever been.

This article originally appeared on Raptitude and is republished here with permission.

Bridge jumping rite of passage [VID]

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DIVERS LEAP FROM a 24-meter-high bridge over the River Neretva in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Mostar, the tradition of diving from the 16th-century Stari Most bridge did not stop with the monument’s destruction during the Croat–Bosniak War. This short film from DGA Productions captures some sick footage of divers plunging from the reconstructed bridge.

Learning to drink in Edinburgh

Photo: chrisdonia

1. Whisky is in your blood.

Any bar that doesn’t have at least two shelves of single malt is subpar. Even if you don’t like our national drink, you are, of course, a born whisky expert.

2. Glen’s is in your bloodstream.

Contrary to international belief you didn’t grow up drinking whisky you’re more canny than that. While it may smell and taste like nail polish remover at £12.99 per lire you are likely to have had some epic and possibly terrible nights due to Glen’s Vodka. There is a high probability that you now no longer drink vodka as Glen’s put you off it for life!

3. You can’t fill in the blanks.

Buckfast, makes you #%$* fast. While it may be made in England by the world’s most evil monks you regard Buckfast as nectar of the night gods. Nutritionists will tell you that bucky contains: more caffeine than coffee and more sugar than Coca-Cola! Combine this with a high alcohol content and you have a recipe for madness. For those who have never tried Buckfast it’s a strong fortified tonic wine with a thick consistency that tastes like out-of-date coffee syrup. Editorial caution — drinking Buckfast may lead to negative interactions with the popo, don’t consume it unless you want to wake up to the fragmented memories of terrible mistakes.

4. Ring of Fire is your favorite ‘card game.’

Playing cards with friends means Ring of Fire, a guaranteed hangover, and a high probability of getting laid although you might not remember with whom.

5. You are not diabetic.

Few diabetics make it to adulthood in Scotland, mostly due to Lambrini, a drink so budget that even Lidl doesn’t stock it. This “sparkling wine” contains so much sugar that it can kill a diabetic.

6. Nothing quite compares to the Cowgate.

Be it in the Las Vegas strip or a beach bar in the Caribbean, nothing will ever replace the wet, cobbled streets of the Cowgate and the collection of grimy, dirty, and downright excellent boozers that infest it.

7. You like your drinks cold.

Scottish weather is always unpredictable and winter is always coming. At any time of the year temperatures can easily dip below freezing. This makes you a seasoned all-weather drinker, be it a dreich day on a soggy street corner or perhaps a park bench in bone-pinchingly cold wind. Nothing keeps a Scot warm like a wee drink.

8. A night out will involve the chippy.

Maybe it’s a dirty donner or some smelly king rib, at half three in the morning your autopilot will direct you to the nearest low-cost, low-quality takeaway.

9. You will NEVER mix a drink with Irn Bru.

All true Scots understand the need for one sacred fizzy juice that can never be used as a mixer, for most this is Irn Bru the one-and-only true hangover cure.

10. You are a leading Alconomist.

As a mathematically gifted alcoholic you know the cheapest way to get drunk. Super-strength cider or “hobo’s delight.” This questionable beverage usually comes in two-liter blue or silver bottles. Both you and Alex Salmond know that it’s the cheapest option per unit of alcohol that any supermarket shelf has to offer. Who really cares if it’s never seen an apple and is synthesized from turnips, at a pound per liter Frosty Jacks contains enough alcohol to get even Charlie Sheen wasted.

11. Mixing a good drink is easy.

Edinburgh, Athens of the North contains many sophisticated adults. The best thing about cultured individuals is that they have drinks cabinets. I fondly recall weekends at my friend Tom’s house. He lived in Marchmont, Edinburgh. Locals will of course know that meant his parents had a drinks cabinet. Friday evening was a time for adventure. Before Tom’s parents got back from work we would sneak into the drinks cabinet and we created “Magic Broth” this patent-pending concoction was a unique blend of every single spirit in the cabinet. To avoid detection we would take a tiny amount from each bottle, say a half shot, and pour it all into an empty water bottle. Usually the magic broth ended up a delightful brown colour, and if we added some mint liqueur it would always curdle. For us it was standard to consume the Magic Broth while on the number 5 lothian bus heading to Studio 24. Anyone who grew up in the noughties will remember just how wild things got at the Mission…

Signs you learned to drink in the DF

Photo: [ebarrera]

1. You remember the time when mezcal wasn’t trendy at all.

Back in the day, the only interaction between you and mezcal was in the form of that hideous thing called Tonayan or panalito — the weapon of choice of youngsters since a liter is just a bit more expensive than a couple of water bottles. Nobody ever drank it straight! It was used to spice up the parties with aguas locas — the dark side of aguas frescas.

2. You are used to taking beer drinking to hazardous levels.

The first bars you favorited were those where they sold pint jugs or yards of beer. But not a single one stood close to the ones where they sold beers in one-liter bottles or caguamas. Caguamas became omnipresent from the moment you started drinking and continue to be one of the best options for drinking with your mates. So many stories — and saliva — have been shared around a caguama.

3. You took shotgunning to a whole new level, too.

Piercing an aluminum can? Manufacturing a beer bong? That all sounds too mainstream! The only thing you need to chug a big bottle of beer in seconds is a big bottle of beer and a straw. And we call that a turbochela!

4. You learned some stupid song to encourage a similarly stupid drinking game.

Remember that Caricachupas thing or that other song that says “a la glu, a la glu glu glu glu?”

We do have a lot of games whose only purpose is to get you drunk as hell, especially when they involve drinking de Hidalgo style.

5. You think cerveza and chili are a match made in heaven…

Every single chilango cherishes those big-ass pueblo micheladas served in oversized styrofoam cups. Picture this in your head: a lager with lots of lime, salt, and every possible kind of salsa you can find in your kitchen (and we Mexicans do have a lot of salsas in our kitchens). It is the perfect solution for a hangover, and with enough additional elements, it can even be a complete and nutritious breakfast!

6. You’re familiar with one of the strangest shots ever: the nikolaschka.

I think it’s originally from Russia because of the name and the vodka, but it somehow became very popular in Mexico before people started mixing energy drinks with booze. Grab a lime, cut it in half, and cover it with sugar and ground coffee, squeeze it into your mouth and wash it down with vodka. How does that sound? In Mexico we call it astronauta.

7. You remember when tequila became the big thing…with bittersweet memories.

We started drinking tequila before really knowing how to drink it. The result? A generation that hated tequila for quite some time and still feels resentful against some cocktails. Tequila sunrise anyone?

8. You started drinking before you turned 18, in a nightclub.

Tardeadas were these weird afternoon parties done specially for underaged teens in some of the most important clubs of their day. You might think that the whole idea behind these parties would be to provide an alcohol-free environment for the kids to have a good time, but then you’d be totally wrong.

9. You clearly remember the first time you entered a pulquería.

Of course, you acted all cool and seemed unimpressed by the strange odor coming from this saloon that looked like no other bar you had ever visited, with the floor full of sawdust and the not-so-private bathroom. You either became addicted to the experience or you never gave it a second chance and now hate pulque.

10. You visited some interesting places when you were a college student.

Sooner or later you ended up in a clandestine bar near your uni or some friend’s uni. The best ones are those that request a password!

11. You blame your first blackout on adulterated alcohol…

And everybody believed you since ice cubes with ether and homemade Jack Daniel’s made it to the news more than a few times.

12. Or on the movement of a trajinera .

Maybe it’s the rocking of the boat or the festive mood that prevails in Xochimilco, but the first time you went partying on a trajinera probably coincides with your first major intoxication event. Maybe the years have gone by and you are no longer the party animal you used to be, but you know that Xochimilco is not to be taken lightly.

How to party in Brazil

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Few places on Earth party as hard as Rio, and that’s coming from a former New Orleans resident. They drink a lot, they wear very little, and they dance until the sun comes up. Sounds fun, eh? But before you take the plunge, check out this sick video from What I Learned as he gives us the 411 on Rio’s party scene in just four minutes.

How this guy doesn’t have a bazillion subscribers is beyond me, so help him out — watch the vid then go subscribe to his YouTube channel because I have a feeling this is the start of something big. Then you can be the “I-subscribed-to-What-I-Learned-before-it-was-cool” guy/gal.

Traveling NSW looks so fun [VID]

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YOU’D BE FORGIVEN for thinking Sydney is basically the most envy-inducing of Instagram feeds brought to life.

In Joshua Cowan’s latest film, the energy and flow of the sequencing is unreal as the camera dips and dives through secret sea caves and across endless blue skies. Set to a serotonin-inducing Tycho soundtrack, sit back and enjoy the ride as you get up close to Bondi, the Rocks, and the good life.

Ebola ravaging primate populations

Photo: Bradford Duplisea

The human tragedy caused by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has been well documented.

More than 8,600 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have been killed by the highly infectious virus, and many more have been infected.

It’s the worst Ebola outbreak in history and it’s far from over.

But humans are not the only victims of this horrible disease, which is spread through contact with the blood, sweat and other bodily fluids of an infected person.

Since the 1990s, Ebola has devastated the great ape population in Africa. It is estimated that one-third of the world’s gorillas and chimpanzees have been lost to the virus, which was discovered in 1976.

The WWF estimates there are around 100,000 gorillas left in the wild, while there are between 150,000 and 250,000 chimpanzees.

View image | gettyimages.com

Scientists say Ebola has now joined poaching and deforestation as a “major threat to African apes” and it has been confirmed as one of the “important sources of mortality in wild gorillas and chimpanzees.”

And while vaccination against the disease has proven to be safe in the laboratory, it hasn’t been deployed in the wild.

There have been a number of particularly devastating outbreaks in recent decades. In 2002 and 2003, for example, an outbreak of the Zaire strain of Ebola in the Lossi Sanctuary in northwestern Republic of Congo killed around 5,000 gorillas, or 90% of the population.

An Ebola outbreak in the chimpanzee population of the Tai National Park in the Cote d’Ivoire in the early 1990s also resulted in significant loss of life.

In the mid-90s more than 90% of the ape population in Gabon’s Minkebe National Park also perished during an outbreak of the disease.

View image | gettyimages.com

Populations don’t bounce back quickly, taking several generations to recover from a single outbreak.

“While the Ebola virus alone does not threaten apes and chimpanzees with extinction, this epidemic has reduced the population to a point where it can no longer sustain itself in the face of poaching and other pressures,” according to a report on AnimalResearch.Info.

The full impact on the great ape population from the current Ebola outbreak isn’t yet known but, if history is any guide, we should probably fear the worst.

By Allison Jackson, GlobalPost

This article is syndicated from GlobalPost.

Why not skiing is better than skiing

Photo: Mt. Hood Territory

My fiancee Steph has been skiing since she was 3-years old. Her family owns a ski house at Hunter Mountain in New York where she spent virtually all of her winters. The girl can rip up a ski slope. I, on the other hand, grew up in Cincinnati, where the only nearby ski slope is Perfect North, a slope that is neither perfect nor north, and is in Indiana, a state which is possibly best known for being flat. So when we started dating, I decided to impress her with the skiing skills I’d learned at Perfect North.

Jack Kerouac once said, “You can’t fall off a mountain.” Jack Kerouac was a moron. Because while you can’t fall off a mountain — much in the same way that you can’t fall off planet earth — you can certainly fall down a mountain. And skiing is basically a controlled fall down a mountain. The more control you have, the less it hurts. My fall hurt a lot. There are a ton of much less painful ways for me to emasculate myself in front of the girl I love, so since then, I’ve pumped the brakes on skiing. I still go with her and her family up to their lodge every winter, but I’m not hitting the slopes all that much anymore.

And I’ve realized something: Not skiing is the best. There’s a whole subculture of people like me — non-skiers who love skiers — who have a much better time in the lodge while skiers are out on the slopes. Here’s why:

Ski lodges are the pinnacle of human creation, and there is no reason to ever leave them.

When I was a kid and it was snowing, I used to go outside in just my swimsuit and roll through the snow before jumping into my hot tub. It felt great. I’m pretty sure that skiing was invented for the exact same reason: to make going back to the lodge that much better. Ski lodges are humankind’s best idea. They are oasis of warmth in the middle of barren arctic tundras. They are full of hearths and hot chocolate and booze. They have big comfy chairs where you can read your book and occasionally look outside at all the poor schmucks freezing themselves to death out on the mountain. It’s how I imagine rich people feel when they look at poor people: “Boy, what I’ve got going on is way better than that.”

We get to sleep in.

If you’re at the mountain to ski, you need to get up early. First, the afternoon crowds make skiing unbearable, and second, if you’re spending an insane amount of money on a lift ticket and rentals, you’re damn well going to be spending the maximum amount of time possible out on the slopes. Non-skiers have no such worries. We get to sleep in as late as we want, and we’re saving money while we’re doing it.

We get first crack at the booze.

Whenever I go skiing, I come back too exhausted to really get a good party going. The wind, cold, and constant fear for my life has just slurped all of the energy out my body. Non-skiers are a) on vacation, so they can start drinking whenever they want, and b) are well-rested and and non-hypothermic, so they are the ones who start the party and, since the skiers are too tired to stay awake, are also the ones who end it.

We aren’t spitting in Death’s face.

I get why people like to ski. It’s fun. But it is also a pretty dangerous sport. This in itself isn’t all that bad: plenty of fun things are dangerous. But all of those fun little hazards that go with skiing suddenly turns into obstacles between you and the hospital if you get injured. First off, you’re in the mountains. It’s impossible to get anywhere fast in the mountains. Even if the closest hospital is two miles away, it’s going to be a long two miles. Second, you’re probably still going to be halfway up a mountain that was picked as a slope because of how steep and treacherous it is to get from the bottom to the top. And third, it’s covered in ice. Sharp, slippery, too-cold-to-sustain-life ice.

I’ve heard people say, “But the risk and the adrenaline is what makes you feel more alive!”

I can feel alive with a book and a hot chocolate, thank you very much. Enjoy skiing. I’ll have a glass of beer waiting for you when you get back in.

What nationality should you be? QUIZ

Featured photo by Kelsey Hannah

Does being a vegetarian make you a bad traveler?

Photo: Jonathan Lin

There are a ton of reasons to not eat meat. For one thing, most Americans eat 50% more meat than the recommended daily amount, and that much meat can lead to kidney stones, higher blood pressure, and an increased risk of cancer and diabetes. For another, the treatment of animals in assembly-line slaughterhouses is chilling to say the least. And oh, hey, the meat industry’s responsible for just under 15% of manmade greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the top contributors to global warming.

I have the genuine desire to not patronizingly force my culture’s morality on others.

But I’m a weak person. I’m not a vegetarian. I’ve tried plenty of times in my life to cut meat out of my diet, and I’ve never been particularly successful at it. Usually, I’m able to go a few weeks or months without eating any meat — and usually I lose weight and feel better during that period — until something kicks me off the wagon. There have been a number of things that have ruined it for me.

Once, it was Thanksgiving, my all-time favorite. I love turkey and gravy and stuffing, and not eating it was not an option. Another time, it was because of PETA’s ugly tendency to fight humans treating animals like meat by treating women like meat. Another time it was because I was walking home drunk from a party and passed a shawarma shop. But far and away, the biggest obstacle to my continued vegetarianism has been travel.

Ethics vs. manners

Chef and food writer Anthony Bourdain is no friend to the vegetarian movement. He calls vegetarians “the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit,” while vegans are a “Hezbollah-like splinter faction,” who are “completely self-indulgent.” It would probably offend no one (including Bourdain himself) to say the man’s a bit of a dick, but he does manage to raise one good point about vegetarians:

“They make for bad travelers and bad guests. The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, ‘I’m not interested,’ or you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude. You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.”

I’m not sure if Bourdain’s had a specific experience with travelers where they sniffed down their nose at some Thai peasant serving them meat, but that’s never been my experience of vegetarian travelers — the ones I know are generally pretty cool about their dietary preferences and don’t shit on the locals. But when I travel, I can’t bring myself to refuse a meal put in front of me, regardless of whether it has meat, and this inability’s knocked me off the wagon more times than I can count.

Visiting carnivorous places

Some locales, I’ve found, are easy places to be a vegetarian in. I grew up in the Midwestern US, where barbecue is an institution, so visiting places like New York or London was a treat. It was so easy to be an herbivore there because there was a community around it. Being a vegetarian in India has to be a cinch because it’s been part of the culture there for centuries. But other places don’t have that culture, and in those places it isn’t even possible to be a vegetarian.

For example, my sister lived in El Salvador for years, and though she was a vegetarian when she arrived she soon reverted to omnivorism. The reason wasn’t any weakness of will but simply that if she told her hosts she was vegetarian, they’d often serve her meat products anyway, either out of ignorance, misunderstanding, or general bullheadedness. Eventually she just resigned herself to eating meat on a regular basis while she was living there, and then when she returned to the US she cut back her meat intake again.

My solution to the ethics vs. manners problem of vegetarianism (you know, when I’m actually being a successful vegetarian) is to simply let the manners win. The vast majority of the time that I’m eating, I’m eating something I either bought from a restaurant or I made personally. If someone places something in front of me that has meat in it, I’ll eat it because I have the genuine desire to experience their food culture as they present it to me, and I have the genuine desire to not patronizingly force my culture’s morality on them.

Because, ultimately, it’s my country that eats the most meat (well, second per capita, behind tiny Luxembourg) and it’s my country I have the greatest ability to change. Like every ethical fight, it has to start at home, and like every ethical fight, nobody’s particularly well served by my being rude.