I recently read an essay by one of my professors about BS.
In this essay, my professor talked about how 90% of the time, we are BSing
ourselves and others, by using our minds to “defend the opinions we do hold”
rather than to “discover the opinions we ought to hold.”
This is so despicable to me, but it is the truth. I often use
my mind to find a rationale for ideas that I have already latched onto – in my case especially certain religious
ideas and veganism (among other topics I am sure). That doesn’t mean that the
ideas I hold are wrong, but rather that they are “wrongly held,” which is way more dangerous. And the first
step to approaching truth and using my brain is to recognize that I do BS
myself. Ok.
I have decided to really test my rationale for veganism.
Here. Basically this is going to be my blog about being raw vegan in college
and deciding for myself to which extent I believe in it.
I have been vegan or raw vegan on and off many times. In
high school I looked and probably felt my best when I was eating a strict vegan
diet and last year in college I ate raw vegan for a few months and lost over 20
lbs. I seem to keep “falling off the wagon” though. Christmas or cookies in the
cafeteria or feeling lonely.
Anyway, the point is I do have a lot of reasons to believe
that a vegan diet is optimal. In addition to having lost weight and feeling
pretty good on a raw/vegan diet in the past, I have also experienced:
Clearer skin
Lack of that gross after-binge feeling (even if I eat a lot)
ALSO (tmi I am SO sorry) I have noticed that when consistently
eating a raw vegan diet, I use the bathroom (#2) so much more cleanly! And that
makes sense, because Adam and Eve didn't have toilet paper, now did they? Speaking of those
fellow humans, here are two more reasons a raw/vegan diet makes sense if you
believe in what the Bible has to say.
If you believe in God and the traditional story of Adam and
Eve in the Bible, then you probably believe that Adam and Eve basically ate
fruit and vegetables… mostly fruit I imagine. And if that was a “perfect”
environment before sin, then that would imply they were eating the “perfect”
pre-fall diet as well.
Also, in the book of Daniel in the Bible, Daniel and his
friends who were undergoing training in Babylon asked to only be served
vegetables and water (maybe veggies includes other types of “vegetation” than
we typically think today, but I don’t know). After 10 days they looked
healthier and better nourished than any of the other young men who were eating
the royal food provided for them.
Lastly, even if eating meat and eggs or whatever isn’t that
bad for you if the animals are raised in a healthy (not to mention humane!) way
and not fed hormones or genetically-modified foods, or genetically modified
themselves, most of the animal products you can buy in stores today are. And
that is obviously bad.
Have you seen any of those Netflix documentaries about
eating? I like documentaries and I have watched several of those… I don’t think
there’s any denying it. These and several other pieces of evidence combine to a
massive overwhelming amount that I cannot ignore. I have to eat vegan again.
The point of this post and its BS title is that it would be
dishonest for me to press an agenda or idea that I did not actually discover
and believe for myself, but rather that other people did. Am I just BSing
myself with this ideal saying, “That’s a good idea. I think I’ll believe that
too, because I want to believe that I can eat as much as I want and still be
skinny and healthy”? Well this is the test. Here I go. This is my blog. This is
my life. God help me.
