At one point in the documentary, the narrator, Joaquin Phoenix, recites a quote from the nineteenth-century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson: ‘You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.’ I felt angry and frustrated with myself as I acknowledged that even though I was vegetarian, I was still guilty of perpetuating these systems of violence that so utterly disgusted me. The animal products on my plate existed because I paid people, albeit indirectly, to cause suffering to animals. Just because the knife
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