Humanity is Hopeless

I haven’t had any faith in humanity for a very long time now. Yet somehow I continue to be surprised by just how loathsome and selfish the human race actually is. I really am at a loss as to what to do with myself at this point. Not only do I not believe it’s possible to save our species from the consequences of our actions, but I don’t even believe we deserve to be saved. At the very least, I’d like to believe that there is some form of greater justice in the universe that isn’t going to let us get away with all of the atrocities we have and continue to commit every day.

I am at a loss for words after the interview my coworker and I just completed this morning. After quarantining myself all weekend for what turned out to be nothing, I come into work to find the CPS worker on the case strolling into our office, maskless, sniffling and coughing. She proceeds, without any apology or shame, to talk about how she and her husband have been deathly ill for days on end. She had the nerve to laugh as she tells us about the body aches which she felt all the way down to her toenails. She might as well have wore a shirt that said fuck everyone who isn’t me and spit directly into our mouths. Despite my discomfort and embarrassment at having to do so, I handed her a mask and asked if she would please wear it. She consented thankfully, but what kind of world are we living in where I have to feel embarrassed and guilty to ask someone else to please do the absolute bare minimum to not risk the lives of others?! It’s sickening.

Not only were her actions completely reprehensible and inconsiderate to my coworkers and I, but the guardian for the child we spoke to today was a 62 year old woman. She literally might have killed that poor woman today. I suppose only time will tell. It’s people and situations like these that really make me want to just throw my hands up in the air and revoke my membership as a part of the human race. I’m truly ashamed to be a human being. I want to lie at the feet of all the other creatures of this planet and apologize until my last breath.

I’ve always wanted to make a difference in this world for the better. Even this blog was originally created with the intention of helping people find veganism and maybe contribute to some sliver of progress. I still think about ways I could use my time and energy to do something meaningful, but my hope and motivation disintegrate with the thought that always follows, “What’s the point?” It feels pretty futile to spend your time digging yourself out of a hole in the ground when you KNOW you’ll never make it, when you know your time could be just as well spent playing solitaire at the bottom of the pit instead. Why should I spend time making vegan resources or writing scholarly articles to inform people when the majority of the population can’t even seem to understand we breathe out of both our noses and our mouths? That a mask covering only your mouth is completely pointless?

I just can’t find the strength or the hope to continue on anymore. It is a bleak existence to have no future to look forward to, not only for myself personally, but for the entire globe. Why should I bother doing anything? This hopeless outlook is compounded by the baffling gaslighting I receive at every turn. It’s one thing to be gaslit by a spouse, friend, or family member, it’s quite another to be gaslit by the whole world. Maybe that’s the wrong term though. I think a gaslighter knows what they’re saying is bullshit. I really think people are too stupid or blind or afraid to admit the fate that soon awaits us all. And I get it, it’s too much for anyone to bear. Still, it would be nice to not have to bear it alone anymore.

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Mother Earth’s Last Gasp

Nature is truly remarkable in its ability to adapt to ever changing conditions. Not only do individual species evolve, but the whole earth seems to shift and grow as time marches on to accommodate new creatures and circumstances and keep everything relatively stable. For a long time now it has seemed that human beings are some kind of wild aberration of nature, something that mother earth has no hope of adjusting to fast enough for our existence to be sustainable. Every now and then I’ll see something that gives me some form of dark hope for our planet though, some otherwise strange development in nature that no one seems able to explain. Just when I think mother earth has finally succumb to our brutality and greed, she surprises me with another clever innovation to overcome our destruction.

A few years ago on the news there was a lot of talk about a new species of tick. Apparently people who were bitten by this tick didn’t contract lyme disease or anything serious. No, this tick did something much more innocuous, yet important. It made its victims allergic to meat. I don’t recall how common this tick was or where about in the world it was located, but I remember at the time half-heartedly joking about procuring one of these little buggers to breed and systematically unleash on the world. If people couldn’t make the choice to go vegan to save the animals, themselves, and the planet, I would work hand in hand with mother earth to force them to. And I would have felt completely justified in doing so. Eating meat is one of those tricky “personal choices” that isn’t so personal when you realize the effect on others. It might be your choice to litter or pollute the water supply, but I doubt anyone would try to defend that as a right. (Even though pig farming is one of the biggest polluters of water ways.) But I digress.

I waited to see if anything would come of this miraculous little tick, but soon this news story faded into the background like so many others with little impact. Just yesterday though it occurred to me that mother earth may have a new trick up her sleeve with Covid-19. Ticks may not be capable of spreading around the globe very quickly, but a virus certainly can, especially this one. From the moment this pandemic started, I felt in my heart that it was nature’s immune system trying to rid it of another virus, us. Still, it made me wonder. After all, Covid is deadly, but not nearly as deadly as other illnesses that have sprung up in the past. No, it seemed as though Covid’s goal wasn’t explicitly to kill, but to spread quickly and over great distances.

One of the more peculiar symptoms of this virus has been the loss of taste and smell, particularly in that these senses often do not return after recovering from the virus. I recalled my coworker saying it wouldn’t be all bad to lose his taste. At least then he would be able to eat healthy with no qualms. I absentmindedly thought to myself, well maybe he’d even go vegan. (Not that vegan foods are not exceptionally delish, mind you. Meat eaters just assume they aren’t.) At this, I nearly jumped out of my chair at the poetic justice of it all. NO TASTE! THAT’S IT!

All of a sudden it felt as though I could hear the earth saying: Oh, fucking taste is the reason you continue to kill me? That stupid sensory pleasure is your excuse for slaughtering and consuming billions of animals every year, wasting my resources, and poisoning my environment? haha bacon tho? How about never tasting anything again? Maybe that will suit you better. If that’s what it takes to make you finally stop this madness.

One of the most frustrating parts of being a vegan is presenting all the important, essential reasons we must, as a species, change our diet if we hope to survive, and the unspeakable atrocities we commit every day by eating animals, only to be met with the counter argument, “but I like how meat and dairy taste.” It is absolutely infuriating and exasperating. It’d be like if we actively helped start and spread wildfires because “ooo, pretty.” It’s fucking stupid.

I am far too cynical to believe that the human race collectively losing its sense of taste would actually make people stop eating and abusing sentient beings. I am still curious to see what effect this will have on the human diet. It would be nice to imagine that with every last one of their already idiotic and irrelevant excuses gone, people would make the easy and obvious choice to adopt a vegan diet, but I have little hope of that happening. I’m sure everyone will just come up with some other illogical reason to continue on just as they are. Still it gives me hope to think that all is not lost. Mother earth hasn’t surrendered just yet. She is testing out new strategies all the time. Unfortunately we seem committed to forcing her hand and giving the unspoken ultimatum “kill us all or we will kill ourselves and everything there is.” I sincerely hope it does not come to that, but I’m not holding my breath for humans to change.

Covid-19: No End In Sight

It’s crazy to me that despite Covid being as bad as it’s ever been if not worse, we have not returned to a state of lock down, at least in the U.S. It feels like everyone took it seriously for a few months, but then got tired of feeling inconvenienced so we all just collectively gave up following the CDC guidelines. It saddens me to think all of the work we put in as a country in the beginning of this pandemic was practically worthless. We were hoping for herd immunity. We were supposed to be waiting for the vaccine, then things would be able to go back to normal. Now given that a huge portion of the country won’t agree to take the vaccine, wear masks, quarantine, or even get tested, the end result is an never-ending pandemic with ever increasing severity.

All of the lives we were attempting to protect with the nearly year-long lockdown are going to be lost anyway. Even those that have been vaccinated are no longer safe, due to the carelessness and selfishness of those around them. Now those of us that take the pandemic seriously are forced to choose: stay away from our elderly and/or at risk loved ones, or risk letting them spend their last few years on this earth alone. Before all of this madness, my sister, mother, and I were visiting with my 91-year-old grandmother every week. Now I hardly ever see her besides on holidays even though she lives a short five minutes from my house. I desperately want to go back to our regular visits, but I’m too afraid of putting her health in jeopardy.

Sadly I think we all need to accept that from now until the world completely collapses from the effects of climate change, we are going to be living side by side with this virus. It isn’t going to go away or get better. We are never going to reach herd immunity. New variants are going to continue cropping up, becoming more and more easily spread and more deadly. Covid is a strain of the common cold. We have never been unable to eradicate the other strains, and we are going to be living with Covid for the rest of human existence now as well.

Recently I’ve been considering just how serious anyone’s chance of exposure is on any given day. Unless you are able to stay completely isolated in your home, we are all likely coming into contact with someone that has Covid wherever we go. Red states and districts will of course be worse in this regard than blue ones, but nevertheless we are all at higher risk of contracting the virus than ever before. Just think about it. How many people do you know that still don’t believe that Covid-19 is even real? How many people think it’s exaggerated? How many people refuse to wear a mask? Refuse to get tested or quarantine when they’ve been exposed or are experiencing symptoms? I know quite a few, and those are just the few I’ve encountered and who will freely admit this atrocious stance. Just imagine how many children are being sent to school everyday who have been exposed to Covid. Many schools are not requiring masks and those that do are being fought with for it at every turn.

At this point, there is nothing to do but get vaccinated, go out as little as possible, and just hope you’re lucky. We must prepare to live with the fear of death hanging over our shoulders from now on. We must prepare to suddenly lose loved ones at any given moment. Hospitals will be perpetually overwhelmed and unable to adequately treat patients both with and without Covid. If you’re still waiting and wondering when this will all finally be over, the answer is it will never be over.

Community & Isolation

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it should be that solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment. It feels like a huge portion of the human race has been suffering from a less intense version of this type of isolation for over a year now. Even introverts like me have started to feel the effects of spending days upon days alone and cut off from social settings. People’s mental health started to deteriorate after only a few months of lockdown. And that is in our own homes, with access to the internet, television, books, often our pets, roommates, and/or family. Imagine being locked away in just one small room with nothing and no one. With no idea when or if you will ever be allowed to leave or even how much time has passed.

The strange consequences of prolonged separation from others is a humbling testament to how much we really need one another. For me this is quite frustrating and difficult to wrap my head around. How can I simultaneously have social anxiety and need to interact with others regularly to be mentally healthy? Before the lockdowns a year ago, I would have thought I would be my happiest alone in a hut in the woods. But now I see that what we want and what is good for us are often two very different things. I guess we never really stop being children in some ways. Needing someone else to look out for our best interests. I suppose that’s just another benefit of the communal life humans once had that we’ve now strayed from.

Most children would prefer not to go to school, even me, someone who’s always loved learning. I can remember dreading every moment of it. Even signing myself out early a lot of days once I was 18. But looking back, I would love to go to school again. I didn’t realize what a blessing it was to be put in a fishbowl everyday with dozens of other people my age. I didn’t know how difficult life would be once that was no longer a normal part of it. Now I am so grateful for all of those years where I got to spend everyday with my friends, growing and learning and playing together.

Some people are really good at managing themselves. People that create and run their own small businesses or are otherwise self-employed for example. I realized a few years ago that even though I’ve always wanted to break away from normal 9-5 work, there is really no way I would be able to make it on my own without having structure of some kind forced upon me. Given the opportunity, I will always procrastinate and get lazy. It’s quite bizarre given that I’m so rigid about other things in my life.

I’ve always hated the pressure of having someone else to answer to whether it was my parents, my teachers, my peers, or my boss. I thought without this constant stress I would find freedom. However, I’m starting to learn to be grateful for that stress. It seems that without it I fall to ruin. I become utterly lost. Yet even though I’ve realized this strange paradox, it doesn’t make it any easier to help myself.

I often mull over the idea of joining a book club or even starting my own group of some kind. Perhaps a hiking group or a vegan support group. But the eventuality of being held to account by these people, being expected to follow through with plans, etc. is overwhelming. It feels easier and less stressful to just forget about it all together. How frustrating it is to know choosing the path of least resistance is likely not the path to happiness. Even though I don’t necessarily like it, we humans need one another. We need each other for support and love, but also to hold one another accountable so that we may all continue to grow and blossom into the very best versions of ourselves.

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