Annoying Vegans

Vegans can really be annoying and preachy. Self righteous jerks who think they're morally superior because they've chosen not to eat animals. It's hard to enjoy a good steak when some vegan next to you tells you it's a dead cow that's been abused before it was slaughtered to become this juicy tender meat you now savor. You may feel it's okay for others to make odd personal choices such as shunning dairy products and eggs but they should definitely let you enjoy your ice-cream in peace without talking about dairy factory farming. "Live and let live", right?
Well, not exactly. If you consume animal products (meat, fish, dairy, eggs and so many more...), please read on to understand why it's hard for many vegans not to share their perspective and try to change your "personal choice".
Everything we choose can easily be labeled and protected as a "personal choice". However, not all personal choices are accepted and allowed nowadays. Clearly, acts of harming other humans (robbery/slavery/rape/murder) are illegal today in most places in the world. A drug-addict's personal choice to steal property to get money for the drugs he really needs, isn't an acceptable personal choice. A slave-owner's "personal choice" to own a slave as it makes the owner more wealthy and happy isn't acceptable anymore. Killing another person is, in most cases, strictly forbidden and shunned upon. However, non-human animals are not truly protected by our social or written laws. Vegans don't think that knowingly harming, torturing and abusing non-human animals or supporting such acts should be an acceptable personal choice or social norm. The fact that it is still the norm in most of the world doesn't mean it should continue this way. I think each person should be able to make any "personal choice" that doesn't harm others directly. I personally include non-human animals in my definition of "others".
So why be pushy about it? Well, you'll be surprised how many vegans are not pushy about it. They often wouldn't even mention they're vegan so as not to start a useless debate with people who are not open to accept change. When offered foods made of animals, they'll simply refuse without mentioning it. Some vegans I know would even eat meat to avoid a conflict with people they love.
But not all vegans are like that. Many times the process of understanding the horrors committed by humans to other animals is not an easy process. The realization is accompanied by strong emotions. Empathy to the suffering means that the person feels that pain. Have you ever seen a dog kicked and heard it whimper? If you did and empathize with dogs, you had probably felt a physical pain caused by your feeling of the situation. In such a case, how would you feel towards another person laughing at the situation or kicking the dog again? Would you feel that person should be taught differently? Might you feel enraged? Or perhaps you could label it as the other person's "personal choice" and go on about your day ignoring it? These are questions vegans are faced with each and every day as most people support the leather, meat, dairy and egg industries without thinking twice about it. These industries are INHERENTLY full of animal abuse and torture that makes the dog-kicking situation I've described seem like the dog got a loving hug.
So all non vegans are disgusting people with appalling moral values? Of course not. There are many good reasons why most people are not willing to change their habits, especially when these habits are the acceptable social norm. Changing habits is hard and justifying our current ones is easy. Talk to a person who has been smoking for more than 10 years if you're not sure what I mean. Many people are exposed to partial facts and wrong information which makes them think that animal products are healthy and a necessity for them and that animal torture isn't related to what they have on their plate or the leather jacket they're wearing. There's often a cognitive dissociation between the what you consume and the way it was produced. When eating KFC, you often don't think of chickens that are born into small cages and killed when they are a few weeks old, you think about it being tasty. When eating a cake with eggs, you don't think about how all the day old male chicks are all thrown into a garbage bag and choke to death or being tossed into a machine that grinds them to become pet food.
Choosing not to support non-human animal killing and torture will not really harm you, it'll likely even be healthier for you. However, in a meat-eating society, it's not an easy choice to make so most people refrain from even considering it. Personally, I've been denying my direct contribution to the suffering of animals and ignoring this suffering even when I was aware of it. It seemed like a fine thing to do as most people do it. However, when I tried to look at the choice from the outside, I couldn't really justify myself anymore. I couldn't again understand how my joy of animal-based foods justifies all the horrible things that are done to provide it. If having a plant based diet would have rendered my life miserable and my health and taste buds would have suffered, I would have found the justification. But it isn't so. There is so much to eat and enjoy eating that does not involve killing or torturing innocent sentient beings. Later I've found this choice would also help my health and reduce the harm to environment and this just helped supporting it.
I'll conclude on a personal note. On one hand, I feel I'm not doing enough to prevent the currently ongoing animal holocaust. On the other hand, most of the people in the world support it and most of my efforts would simply hurt me. So for now I'm left with expressing my opinions at times and trying not to feel too badly at the dissonance of people telling me how they love animals while eating milk chocolate and buying new leather shoes. My wish is that some day animal abuse would be illegal everywhere and that violations of such laws would be prosecuted. It might take many more generations, but I hope it'll eventually happen.

Vegan is NOT a dietary choice

This post is trying to clarify a very common misunderstanding I've encountered over and over. Your comments are most welcome here. I present here my personal perspective and opinions.

Being vegan is NOT a dietary choice but a way of relating to sentient beings who are not humans. Vegans often simply think that unnecessarily harming another being, be that a cat, cow, sheep, dog, fish, elephant or any other, is morally unjust. That's it, nothing so big and nothing that most people cannot easily relate to. Being vegan is, in a nutshell, enlarging your circle of empathy to include others who are not human. While I believe such empathy is in the nature of most of us (how would you feel when you see someone beating up a dog and hear the dog whimpering?), it is forcibly repressed during our childhood by misinformation and indoctrination. Re-opening to that natural empathy and compassion makes individuals around the world change their views about many things that the majority of society still accepts.

While people relate most often to the dietary aspects of not eating flesh of another animal or drinking milk of a cow, being vegan isn't on par with "I believe white sugar is bad for your health and you shouldn't eat it" or "don't smoke, it's bad for you and everyone around you". Choosing to be vegan is a moral choice. Most vegans would not wear clothes made of skins or hair of an animal. Most vegans wouldn't ride a captive elephant, camel or horse for their pleasure, feeling that the animal might not be enjoying the ride or its captivity as much as the rider. Most vegans would not enjoy a circus show of lions jumping through hoops or dolphins dancing in a pool. The reason is that, as empathy works, they'll look at these situations the way they think the animal would look at them.

Maybe vegans are wrong. Perhaps dairy cows who have semen pushed into them by a human enjoy the process and the vegan use of the word "rape" is out of context. Perhaps these cows don't feel bad when their babies are taken away from them because they enjoy their daily milking routine so much. Perhaps their newborn babies are happy to grow up confined to a small cage for the few months of lives they are given before becoming "veal". Perhaps there's nothing wrong with cutting the throat of or electrocuting a captive animal as its physical death helps its soul reach nirvana more quickly. Perhaps. I don't know for sure. My empathy to them makes me feel horrible when I see such acts of torture but maybe my feeling are misleading me.

What is important to me when talking about being vegan to people who don't understand it is sharing real facts that most people are unaware of (as in the amazing movie Earthlings) and explaining that there is a moral choice to be made. Most people don't think that eating meat, dairy or eggs is a moral choice as it's the default in today's society. Most people wouldn't think twice about buying leather products as they're offered right next to everything else. This perception is wrong. It is a moral choice and we're all making our choices. Personally, I thought again about my choices and made the change 19 months ago and have written a blog post you're welcome to read about it.

A vegan diet, one of the aspects of being vegan, has very important ramifications both health-wise and to the environment. One can have a very bad vegan diet that would be unhealthy but constructing a good diet that does not include animal products has proven health benefits. Hell, I used to think that vegetarians are weak and sickly and those who adopt a crappy diet actually are. Factory farming is an ecological disaster and you can look it up yourself. If there's one thing I'd really be happy to learn that you did after reading this post, it would be to search for information yourself. Learn and make your own choice.

Exciting Colnect news - API and Plans

This blog post might be somewhat different as I seldom write much about Colnect on this more personal blog. However, since we settled down for a bit in Pai, I was able to focus more efforts into planning Colnect's future. The future's looking bright and I'm adding a blog post here so that if any of you actually sees an opportunity here, you won't be scared to contact me about it.

Beautiful flower coming out of a twig that could otherwise have seemed lifeless

Today I've announced publicly Colnect's API which I think is a fantastic idea. I really don't know why I haven't done it before and an API is the best way any application can develop quickly and to many directions previously not considered. My programming abilities are limited as I'm just one person but with an API other people can take over and develop more things using Colnect's infrastructure. IMO having open APIs is one of the things that made FaceBook so successful as its core functionality was extended by third parties. Google often offers APIs to their products to improve them and increase third parties dependency on Google services. So if you have an idea to rock the collectors world, now's a good time to read about Colnect's API and get it touch :)

In addition to this development, I've finally resolved some load balancing issues that addressed the growing traffic to Colnect. The catalogs are growing and, with more requests from the community, they're becoming more professional and organized over time. Amazing to see how a dedicated community is built over a great hobby that connects people the world over.

Transportation for pigs - I feel pain and disgust seeing how humans treat animals almost anywhere in the world. But hey, someone has to feed all those meat-eaters so some abuse is fine, right? Well, not to me. We don't have to do it, we choose to do it although human survival would be better without abusing and consuming the results of abuse.

On a personal note, life in Pai is going on great. Many great restaurants with delicious vegan dishes at a short walking distance. Not that it doesn't take an effort to explain that an egg or shrimp is something I don't want to eat, but altogether we get great yummy things. Nature is so beautiful and inspiring here and at least a few daily minutes to appreciate it help recharge some more happiness in. Our apartment treats us well, now that we've finally managed to resolve the Internet-connection related issues and can surf quickly and smoothly.

13 Months Vegan!

While this post is longer than most posts I've written, I would appreciate you reading it the whole way though.

It's been 13 months that I'm vegan and I'm very delighted about it. I'm very happy, greatly enjoying my food and feel very healthy. In this post I'll describe both my reasons to change my diet and also the way I believe it can easily be done by others. Keys are: reduce animal suffering and don't be fanatic. I would welcome your comments to this post.

My Non-Vegan Past

Before the month of May 2011, I haven't even considered becoming a vegetarian. More than 30 years of my life I was enjoying animal products and had no intention of changing that. Two times in my life I've eaten a whole kilo of steak in a single meal. I used to eat meat everyday. Animal suffering? Oh well, it's part of nature! Health issues? Meat is healthy and milk is good for calcium! Environmental damage of the meat farming industries? Barely knew it existed.

So what happened that I suddenly became vegan? To some people it may seem extreme as vegans refrain from any animal products, not only their flesh. The truth is that it's not extreme at all once you understand some things and it's not even such a big effort.

Tipping Point

My tipping point was a famous lecture by Gary Yurofsky, known on YouTube as "The Best Lecture You Will Ever Hear" that I highly recommend you seeing. Dana introduced me to this lecture and, as I've received a lot of vegan materials before, I wasn't too interested in seeing it. Ausrine used to often send me vegan "propaganda" and, while I found it interesting, never thought it should have anything to do with me. In retrospect, however, it probably was building up. Although not too interested, I didn't have anything else I wanted to watch that day so I went on with the lecture.



The lecture didn't introduce anything new to me. Gary didn't tell me anything I didn't know before. What did happen was that, perhaps like a last straw effect, the abundance of materials I was aware of made me re-think my own behavior. There's so much animal suffering caused by the industry that we're all enjoying. Is it really a must? Do I wish to continue to be a person contributing to this suffering? The easy choice is yes since most people are a part of it and don't really care. That's the way I've been brought up and have lived most of my life. I never felt guilty as I wasn't committing any of the torture myself. We all know that treating a chicken like a product from birth to slaughter is horrible yet we intentionally block the fact that this tasty chicken breast used to be the flesh of that animal that has been horribly treated since birth just so I can enjoy the dish. You can see more about the psychology of meat eating on this video. My empathy started working, feeling horrible about the enormous amounts of terrible things we humans keep doing to animals.

Personal Change?

Okay, so what's the personal price for me if I decide not to be a part of it? Initially, even the thought of it scared me. I don't want to commit to being a vegetarian or vegan, that's crazy! I did, however, start thinking about my current diet and what I would have to change and my surprise realized that it won't be as enormous a change as I imagined before.
When I visited India during 2006-2007, I didn't eat meat for a few months. It wasn't an ethical decision but rather the result of seeing how disgusting the meat in the markets is. India isn't easy on a foreigner's stomach and meat is a big risk in many places so I simply gave up on it for most of my time there. When I got back to Israel, I ate meat again, but not everyday as I used to. I actually stopped buying meat for my house but did eat meat outside, probably 2-4 times a week.
Unlike earlier years, I was very happy to make my own food. Making your own food always tastes better :) I was already making myself very tasty and healthy Hummus and Tahini and pastas with fantastic sauces that were all vegan, more by chance than by planning. In the mornings I ate granola with yogurt so I can change that to soy or rice milk. Many evenings I used to eat Malawach with eggs and cottage cheese but I could eat it with fresh tomatoes and spices.
My thought process led me to understand that my personal sacrifice wouldn't be all that great. I wouldn't have to feel bad about not eating meat, dairy and egg products as I already had abundant choices. At the time I wasn't aware that becoming vegan actually ADDS MANY new options to one's menu. When you start asking around, you find yourself eating a lot of delicious foods you've never tried before.

First Steps

Even so, I didn't want to declare myself vegan to the world. What if I would change my mind later? What if I'd really want a juicy steak? I mean, screw that cow, it's already dead and I didn't kill it. Right? My decision was to try and see. I will try eating vegan and if I feel like non-vegan, I'd go for it. I won't deprive myself of life's joys. To others I said I was considering becoming vegan and I'll see how that works out.
After a few days, I gave away all the non-vegan food I had it my house. After about two weeks, I realized it's not really that hard and I started saying I'm vegan.  
 A key to my decision was not to be fanatic. It's very bad when one feels he or she is holding back on life's pleasures for moral reasons. If there would be a dish I'd really want to try, I will. If there will be any food I crave, I'd have it. It's much about quantities. Each piece of meat you get is directly translated to a specific animal's suffering. If I convince others to eat less meat, it would have a much bigger effect than if I "sin" with a few bites here and there. I still feel that way.
Please understand that not becoming fanatic is not all that simple as the emotional process that a person passes in becoming vegan isn't an easy one. Once you remove the previous psychological block and allow yourself to feel the animal suffering, it's really hard not to feel bad whenever you see how lightly and gladly most other people participate in these disgusting practices. People make jokes about the flesh on their plate and completely block all their knowledge of how it got there. If people would have to individually grow and kill their animals, I'm certain there would be a lot less meat consumed anywhere.

How Has It Been?

To date, I've eaten meat only once since becoming vegan. Sitting with friends in a good Thai restaurant in Berlin, one of the friends ordered chicken and didn't finish. Nobody else wanted it so it would go to the trash. Being a few months vegan, I considered it a good opportunity to see if I miss the taste. Although my own vegan dish at that restaurant tasted great, that chicken dish wasn't really good to me. Seemingly our sense of taste changes as we change our diet. If this seems weird to any of you, do consider how many children think coffee is horrible and how many adults drink it. So called "acquired taste" is a known phenomenon. Eating vegan changes your taste preferences. I much more enjoy fresh and raw vegetables and fruits nowadays.

Traveling around the world, I often dine at restaurants and it's almost always quite easy to find good vegan dishes. It has happened quite a few times that I've been served dishes with dairy products although I tried my best to verify no dairy products would be included. In those cases, I just ate what I got. Bits of milk I consume will not make the difference in the world. Changing people's minds to understand that vegan is the right moral decision is.

If you've read so far I thank you. I'll probably do another post later on about common questions and annoyances I get from people who try to proudly defend their immoral decision to eat meat. Truth is that it's usually not a real decision as the person never opened up to the possibility of being vegan. I know I never did before I actually did. You don't want to consider it and you do whatever it takes to ignore and ridicule it. That is, unfortunately, natural. At the end of the day, it's whether you allow yourself to open your heart and feel empathy towards other living creatures. Being vegan is about a simple paradigm shift: animals are sentient being on their own accord and we do not own them. Simple shift that would make the world a better place if only people would follow it. A better place to humans as once you let empathy in, you try to do better to other humans and once you block empathy for certain creatures, you'll more easily block it in other cases.

Fried Noodles

A lovely smile makes a world of a difference. This guy has his street stall on Palolem where he sells simple foods for local (read: cheap) prices. Most of the menu is non-vegan unfortunately and I was left only with fried noodles and fried rice. One day, to my dismay, I realized the noodles he's using are egg noodles. There goes the neighborhood... :(



By now we know each other well. I don't know his name and he doesn't know mine. He speaks only a few words of English (prices and names of dishes) and my Hindi isn't better. Often when I don't come for a few days he asks me where I went and why. How to explain that 15 minutes walk is A LONG walk here? How to explain the only option left in his menu for me is fried rice dripping with oil?

Once I played guitar there for half an hour or so. It was when I realized about 20 minutes after leaving the stall that the guitar isn't with me. Hoping that my karma is still proper, I went back and found it leaning on the stall, as I've left it. I was very happy and did a short concert that all my four listeners have greatly enjoyed :)

Thali Cronicles

For your joy here are some (not all at all :) ) of the Thali pictures I've taken. Most of them were at the same corner local semi-restaurant consisting of some stand with a stove and 3 plastic tables with chairs. The fun in Thali is that it's always different and although some of the pictures may look similar, the tastes are often quite different. It does happen that one of the side dishes is the same as yesterday's, but in general it's all fresh and yummy and VEGAN! :)

Go VEGAN - it won't kill, just make you better.