smooth vegans

Yes, a controversial topic. But I feel it deserves some attention because it illustrates many of the patterns I described in other Thoughts.

I will place a hedge for the sake of nuance, but it should be noted that the majority of vegan narratives forego nuance. Even if it was not due: naturally, I believe anyone should choose to eat whatever they wish. On an individual scale it is not possible to change the Western bioindustry.

And let me make the target precise. I am not attacking veganism as a diet. I am not attacking peaceful vegans who quietly eat what they wish. When I speak of vegans here, I speak of those who believe in their own moral superiority and use that belief to diagnose the rest of us as less loving, less empathic, less developed, or psychologically defective.

If you are a peaceful vegan without missionary zeal, please ignore this diatribe.

Safety officer back in the box — let’s go.

Today, once again, my empathic capacity was attacked.

“You cannot love animals and eat them. You are suffering from cognitive dissonance. Your empathy needs to be developed.”

My short response is:

“No, I can actually love and kill. I believe you are the one suffering from psychological dissonance (since we’re trading those kinds of remarks), and I think your empathy needs to be developed.”

Let’s go for the longer answer now.

Mushy Blue

Let’s look at this problem through a Codex lens. Yes, we could remind the vegan that humans are biologically strict omnivores, but these vegans seem to sidestep that fact with brainwashy distortions. So, let’s not fall for that trap. Besides, the Codex is much more interesting as a lens.

And before someone starts playing nutritional word games: the fact that a technologically organised vegan diet can replace missing nutrients through supplements, fortified foods and carefully selected substitutes does not somehow make the human animal herbivorous. Without animal products and without deliberate replacement strategies, predictable nutrient gaps appear across several nutrients, with B12 being the most obvious case. Technology can compensate for biology. It does not rewrite biology.

The capacity for empathy in the Codex is clearly mapped to Water /// E4. Thus, many Smooth vegans essentially pride themselves on having a superior E4. Their form of empathy becomes the definition of empathy itself. Only they can truly love animals; only they have that right.

But watch the trick.

The argument goes: if you love animals, you do not kill them. I kill animals. Therefore, I do not love animals.

Cute little syllogism. Except the first premise is exactly what needs to be proven.

You have defined Love as non-killing, inserted your moral conclusion into the definition, and then called disagreement a psychological defect. That is not evidence that I lack empathy.

See how slippery this is? We’re close to what the Codex finds Evil: monochromatic dedication to E4 without much capacity to self-reflect. One Elemental is being mistaken for the whole Circle, and everyone who refuses the reduction is declared deficient. But reality will not bend for your 'superior' empathy, vegan. Your empathy is not the centre of the world.

But let’s give them that: yes, vegan, you have much more E4.

But what do you lack?

Missing Black

E4 does not sit alone on the Circle. Next is E5 — the capacity to hunt and express aggression. These vegans lack this one, but this is not necessarily most concerning. I think most of their E5 is simply channelled into attacking meat eaters.

Lovely hunt, vegan, but I clocked it.

No, I think the question here lies in E8 /// Ice. This Elemental is about the ability to kill. A Timeseer should be fully aware of the darkness of the human condition. We are apex predators at the top of the food chain. We do kill. We must kill to survive.

You can move the killing around the system. You cannot remove killing from human existence.

Even if you never personally eat an animal, your existence still rests on competition with other Life, agriculture, pest control, habitat use, medicine, immune defence and countless systems that kill so you may continue living. You can argue about which killing is necessary, excessive, cruel or avoidable. Good. That is an actual moral discussion. But the fantasy of a biologically innocent human who survives without death anywhere underneath them is exactly that: a fantasy.

Ice does not mean cruelty. It means the capacity to look at killing without pretending that capacity exists somewhere outside you. Ice does not equate to cruelty or Evil; it might even oppose those things if you dive in deeply enough, but that is another discussion.

I am acutely aware of my Ice, vegan. But are you? Or do you really believe humans can evolve into mushy Blue creatures running through prairies eating grasses among the herbivores?

Delusional.

So, back to my supposed lack of empathy and cognitive dissonance. I do have empathy. But I also have Ice.

There is no dissonance there. Love and Ice are different Elementals. I can love and kill, because I am human.

You accuse me of dissonance because I hold E4 and E8 at once. I think the greater dissonance is needing to imagine that E8 has disappeared from you entirely.

If anyone has any deficiency whatsoever, I think you have one: you lack E8. Or rather, you’re probably unaware of your E8, which is arguably much more dangerous. Ice has a tendency to seep into corners you cannot predict…

Acting all Smooth, resting on your moral superiority because of your Watery tunnel vision, is a behavioural imbalance you need to address in my opinion.

Empathy is not the same thing as abstention from killing.

You can argue that killing animals for food is morally wrong. Fine. Make that argument. But you do not get to turn disagreement with your moral conclusion into a psychiatric diagnosis of my empathy.

Do not dare attack my Love from that imbalance.

Stay the fuck away.

Where Does Blue Start?

Now, there is another grand incoherence in the vegan narrative. What if I have empathy for plants? Because I can assure you, I actually do.

Should I just stop eating altogether? Live on air alone? Or do we cherry-pick the things we love?

See, we are now stumbling into the question of consciousness.

What exactly qualifies a form of Life for this absolute protection? A nervous system? Consciousness? The capacity for pain? Intelligence? Somewhere, you have to draw a line.

Are nervous systems the qualifier? Then how can you kill mosquitoes or parasitic worms and pretend to love animals?

I am not claiming a plant, a mosquito, a worm and a cow are morally identical. I am pointing out that the supposedly clean moral binary immediately becomes a hierarchy the moment you look closely. You are also drawing lines. You are also deciding which Life may be killed, under which conditions, and for what purpose.

So do not present your line as if it were the absence of a line.

No, I am not buying this argument, vegan. Let’s extract ourselves pronto from this path.

Maybe you should develop your E4 /// empathy a bit more to include plants.

What Is the Shape of the Future, Timeseer?

Another thing that vegans haven’t really calculated is the path to their goal. Let’s go with it and say that the future is indeed 100% plant-based, which I don’t buy.

Fine. Let us grant your destination for five minutes.

Now tell me how you plan to get there.

Parading your moral superiority is going to have the opposite effect. Blaming people for following their biologically natural human diet is delusional. Telling the non-vegan majority that their ordinary diet proves defective empathy does not magically make them receptive to you. It turns a question about food, industry and ethics into an identity war.

You will not achieve your aims. You will not change minds this way.

You cannot change biology.

Forcing people who do not have problems with their E5 or E8 to change is a dangerous venture.

If your goal genuinely is to reduce animal suffering, then making yourself morally unbearable to the people whose behaviour you want to change is not virtue. It is strategic incompetence.

Conclusion

I could go on about the irony of claiming “perfect health” while looking pallid and being dependent on bacterial farms for supplements (why don’t you really love those bacteria?).

But let’s conclude here.

I think I made my point.

Do what you wish. Starve yourself if it pleases you, but leave my empathy out of it.

There are giant problems with the bioindustry. Those problems deserve to be attacked. But turning the existence of an industrial system into a moral indictment of every individual who eats meat is intellectually lazy. Systemic criticism and personal moral diagnosis are not the same thing.

I can love animals.

I can kill animals.

I am human, and I resolved this paradox long ago.