“All forces between two objects exist in equal magnitude and opposite direction”
Sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi; in partes contrarias dirigi.

-Isaac Newton.

Since I was a child, I have had many perceptions of justice. We all know different stories where figures receive what they presumably deserve They did something with a certain degree of damage; consequently, the same degree of damage should be applied to them. That is the basic idea of justice. In many cultures, Karma is believed; a word that means “action” and “fate” in Sanskrit. It is a spiritual relationship between an incident and its respective effect: If I, however, make something occur, another equal incident would occur to me. I do good, then I will receive good. I do wrong, I will receive wrong. Karma is not a scientific fact. It is neither a part of reality as far as we know. Both concepts - Karma and justice - are simply fiction. I see them as an allegory to Newton´s third law of movement, applied to the past deeds of a person in concern of his current situation. If I, however, carried out an action, the same action, with the same force, will act upon me. Today, sapiens are facing huge natural and social catastrophes which are consequences of practices that we collectively refuse to stop because of selfishness, greed, fear, or ignorance. In order to avoid our species’ final environmental consequence, or at least delay it another eons, we should stop doing what is causing it. And it all begins with opening your mind to the problem.

I want to recall something before starting; it is that I genuinely believe that a person can be judged by how they deal with facts. What you do after reading this book, tells a lot about you.

Index

I. Morality and Ethics are not important

II. Imaginary Entitlements

III. Civil Power

IV. Compassion is a Powerful Tool

V. Do Animals deserve Rights?

VI. It´s Pro-Sentience, not Pro-Life

VII. First Facts: Avoidable Environments

VIII. Second Facts: Waste

IX. Third Facts: History´s Most Intellectuals

X. Fourth Facts: Animal Abuse

XI. Fifth Facts: The Oceans

XII. Sixth Facts: Incoherence

XIII. Seventh Facts: Veganism relates to Intelligence

XIV. Excuse Number 1: Complex of Superiority

XV. Excuse Number 2: Cavemen

XVI. Excuse Number 3: Lions though

XVII. Excuse Number 4: Straflust

XVIII. Excuse Number 5: God

XIX. Excuse Number 6: Cleverness

XX. Excuse Number 7: Survival

XXI. Excuse Number 8: Symbiosis

XXII. Excuse Number 9: Expensiveness

XXIII. Excuse Number 10: The Food Chain

XXIV. Excuse Number 11: It is tradition

XXV. Excuse Number 12: Personal Choice

XXVI. Excuse Number 13: Vegaphobia

XXVII. Excuse Number 14: Animals are Property

XXVIII. Excuse Number 15: Farmers

XXIX. Excuse Number 16: Pessimism

XXX. Excuse Number 17: Ignorance

XXXI. Excuse Number 18: Taste

XXXII. The Solution: Supply and Demand

XXXIII. Another Solution: Rights and Duties.

XXXIV. Other Solutions: Science and Meat

XXXV. Conclusions

XXXVI. The Future: Peace and War

I. MORALITY AND ETHICS ARE NOT IMPORTANT

I want to state that morality and ethics play no role in my text. From you, I am only asking for comprehension, coherence, logic, and compassion, being the last one optional. People don´t have to think as I do. For me, freedom is the most important feature for a healthy coexistence. Nonetheless, thinking different doesn´t change facts, and more importantly, it doesn´t mean that you cannot connect with some piece of information and understand how your unnecessary choices contribute to the cause. Changing behavior has always been a signal of intelligence. Today, it is Monday the 18th of January 2021. Six years ago, I didn´t want to think as I do today. I refused to connect with the solution of the environmental crisis and simply ignored the facts. I wanted to think that I was fighting for the environment, but I never judged my actions. I used to brag about how I used less straws, how I showered less, how I preferred riding on bike, or how I utilized less paper. But the truth was that my environmental footprint kept being higher and what I was doing did not help properly. Those four ecological practices are not resilient enough. The biggest cause of most of the problems in the world is an industry that I kept supporting, but I just pretended it wasn’t, and made excuses up to desperately justify what I wanted to continue doing.

But real learning comes with facing reality as it is, not as how I wanted it to be for my convenience. I know many of you want peace and avoidance of suffering. I know many of you want to help and improve this society. And I know that many of you are falling into the same fallacies. I invite you to read something worth learning that I have been learning during the years of my young experience in life. I will give you the apparent facts, assess them, and try to convince you of something that you do not have to do, but that I know you are able to do. Something that will probably make you confront yourself. You can believe in whatever imaginary or fictive world you want. You can believe in Capitalism, Liberalism, Christianism, Socialism, Money, Buddhism, Human Rights, Nations, or whatever. I ask you to be critical about matters and I am sorry if I get something wrong.

Some people don´t have easy access to education or information. They will likely not develop a high level of analysis. They cannot inform themselves well about the mentioned situations. They have other issues to deal with that stops them from thinking about global matters. If they are starving, they will look forward to surviving, nothing else. These people are commonly isolated natives and extremely impoverished communities. They are minorities of which many are indirectly contributing to the solution in a way, which is good. I will explain that later on the text. Some of them have traditions that do practice the causes to the next problems on a less destructive scale that does not affect the rest of us. Most of them don´t even have a chance to participate in the following industry by the context they were born or the beliefs they carry. But that such people exist and that they have problems to solve, does not mean that a person who has the possibility to act does nothing. We can do something that takes no effort depending on the level of addiction we have towards food or how fixed traditions are inside our consciousness.

Imagine if we could make the health system more effective and, at the same time, make every citizen healthier. Imagine if we could supply food to all humans and put an end to starvation. Imagine if we could reduce our environmental footprint by more than half. Imagine if we could target half of the plastic in the oceans. Imagine if we could reduce the risk of pandemics once and for all. Imagine if we could get rid of an experience full of misery and injury. Imagine if we could do all of that without risking our health nor our lives. What if I told you that these scenarios are possible just by changing our diet postures?

10.000 thousand years ago, we had a revolution that changed the course of history on this planet. We became an agricultural and sedentary society. We went from hunting and gathering, to harvesting and breeding. This practices evolved into slavery and torture for some creatures; including the practices that claim to treat animals “humanly” (They will have a special place in this essay). Today, the animal industry is the leading cause for almost all environmental catastrophes and is a huge obstacle in the way of achieving a peaceful, healthy society. All I asked you to imagine is possible with a second agricultural revolution, one in which animals are no more killed and tortured. And how do we make one? We do not need civil wars, nor beheadings as it happened in past times. I believe that today, we are more civilized to change our behavior just by reasoning and communication. If most human change their diet, it becomes a revolution. Our next step as humanity is to address the problems with intelligence. No more wars, no more genocides nor tyrannies.

II. IMAGINARY ENTITLEMENTS

I want to talk about rights because they are going to play a crucial part in the text. Rights are moral or legal entitlements to have or do something. It shows what we are allowed to do based on an imaginary code we, sapiens, invented. Those are what we own based on social conventions, legal systems, or ethical theories. I consider rights to be fundamental in life, even though they don´t exist.

In past years, humans have spoken about other superhuman entities in which they based these entitlements. It was either God or nature itself that legitimized them. They said that God gave us the right of life, freedom, and pursuit of happiness. It was actually humans themselves who gave them, and they be given at birth. Today, we know that we have given them to every human being on earth with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, only theoretically because each constitution (made by each country) decides which rights their citizens have. Rights are flexible and their subjectivity makes them subject to change.

Wrongness is another imaginary perception, and this perception is also a genetic need. We urge to define what is right and wrong; that evolutive mental feature helped in our survival. The basic idea of Rights tells us that we do wrong when we override the rights of others. Some relate it to illegality, others to immorality. Some have religious reasons to construct their perception of wrongness. When we take the rights of others away, we be doing wrong. I have another idea: to do wrong, there must be people who are negatively affected. My favorite writer, Yuval Noah Harari, explain morality as merely the avoidance of collective, unreasonable suffering. And what does “affected” mean? When we leak into a house of someone? Steal their property? Steal their children? Forcibly impregnating them? When we hurt someone? When we hang up someone by the foot and slice their throat? Those could be examples of actions that are considered wrong in many cultures.

Why is it in principle wrong to negatively affect others? We have evolved physical sensations, and biological, neurological desires that when they are not met, we suffer. We feel pain, stress, frustration, and fear. We do not want to die. We do not want our properties taken, which could trigger emotional distress we cannot control. We want to have food on our tables. We want our kids to have opportunities in life. Each individual has wishes like these. Most of us share many of them. A better-organized way of enabling these wishes to happen are Rights. Every desire mentioned in this paragraph would be our right.

We, human beings, have managed the ability to think in things that are not real. That is what make us different from the rest of the earthlings. We created imaginary protocols and rules that prevent our rights not being fulfilled from happening, by giving ourselves also limitations and responsibilities. We created limitations to our freedom. It becomes an accord. Our rights are safe as long as we don´t put the rights of others in danger and if we put them in danger, we pay consequences (only if the system finds out). We created rules because we mutated long ago to acquire more consciousness and more awareness of our actions than any other animal and it made us comprehend the possibilities we can have in the future. Those accords became laws, and I am talking about this because the law is the contemporary gospel that has already spread worldwide. Through the law, we can achieve this dietary revolution faster and make the planet healthy again. It is the biggest political strategy to achieve that goal.

Today, nations do not act as before. We have cognitively evolved so fast, for what I consider the more peaceful. Today, nations are willing to make the economies grow, fight poverty, join globalization, and pretend they fight climate change. Mostly, we do not conquer anymore or follow stupid separatist ideas that lead to devastating consequences. We still have some issues to solve, but today we can say that many of us think in diversity and peace. We need to keep moving to a better world. We are going in the right way.

Laws are many times incoherent. That is why we usually improve them, replace them, or remove them. Sometimes, we realize that some decisions were to be taken or were incorrect in principle. Perfection comes with failure. Humanity isn´t sure about the future. Many terrible consequences weren´t even our fault. How could we know that we would have this environmental problem 10.000? It´s just impossible to have known. So, we got to predict the stuff we can, with the information we have, act accordingly, and react immediately to every sudden event, as we have always tried to do. Well, now, we know a lot, and we should act politically and personally too.

Something is legal because we made it legal in a process full of reasoning and political research. In theory. It is also legal because we are normatively in accordance with it. So, if we broke the law there would be real enforced consequences. In most practical cases, the law is legislated by political institutions, ensured by a government, and applied by judges. These political organisms will look forward to its compliance. That gives them power over us. That means they have the power to make this revolution faster just by making strategies that aim to eradicate the cause of environmental catastrophes and social issues. These can be gradual implementations and education reforms. If they do not make an accurate job, what kind of power do we have over them? We all know Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and their sovereign-inferiours contract theories. In principle, we accept to obey a person’s law who will guaranty our rights. Not doing this, the “citizens” would have a right to opposition. This idea is the foundation of a representative democracy. If we are having environmental catastrophes, but the people does not know about what’s causing it, or refuses to acknowledge it, the government will never do anything or will simply keep quiet, letting the cause continue. Many representatives and their donors profit from the cause, and a lot of tax money comes from it as well.

Human fictive realities will not be 100% coherent. But if we notice inconsistencies, we are apparently allowed to ask for change. We legitimize the government, so the government has to do what we need. But first, we need to know what we need to ask from them. We need to understand the problem itself to ask for change.

III. CIVIL POWER

Yet, if trouble appears and we can individually react to solve it, should we wait until it becomes a legal matter to do so? Or should we instantly react? In order to solve an environmental catastrophe, we should start beginning doing actions that, legally speaking, no one is submitted to do. It means to act voluntarily.

But being realistic, many people won´t do actions if there is no perceived benefit. Maybe, you are that kind of people. Money and pleasure is what moves everything. Capitalism is a Religion that has shown to be more effective than any other and it’s destroying nature. But if we swifted to other unreliable civilized systems, or socialist implementations, we could end up destroying societies. Where do we operate then? Can we improve Capitalism and make it less destructive? Reality shows it is very plausible but the lack of proper education makes it difficult.

Still, money beats education. When the money of the people is at risk, things become faster and more effective. We have seen it with the Covid-19-vaccine. The economy was struggling and that caused bureaucratic process to speed up. Science and progress would have never been good investments without profits. Discoveries and welfare are not enough for people to do research and act, or at least it has always been so. We need to organize an economic proposal for the indolent people to make them keep their pennies. What to do when we practice something that’s destructive and painful while that same practice keeps the economy growing? United States, 19th Century, Conflict: slavery, a practice many people did not want to stop because it created jobs, improved production, increased exports, and fostered the economy. Colombia, 21st Century, Conflict: Continuous murder of social and environmental activists because they are no good for ilegal and also legal businesses of others. If your income comes from the protagonist of this text, I also want to invite you to consciously change what you do because you are legally hurting others.

An environmental catastrophe will affect the economy way worse than COVID-19.

IV. COMPASSION IS A POWERFUL TOOL

Rights are ways of protecting individual wishes in life, but it works when duties are enforced. They make us cooperate to get the same benefits as others. Leaving economic interests, survival principles, and selfishness aside, I want to talk about “Compassion.”

We can feel and act out of compassion. It is a feeling of empathy that makes us help someone who is hurting physically, neurologically, and emotionally. It is something shared among many creatures, not only humans. That is something that actually maintains the power of human rights. It makes us bend that imaginary order of laws to include other people’s rights as it happened with slaves, women, homosexuals, Jews, and some animals. They understood the unnecessary and easily avoidable suffering that was happening to certain groups of society. One of the causes of this environmental catastrophe is a problem we create towards other living entities who, not only share this planet with us, but also share some of the same sensations. I believe many of us can act, not just by thinking in ourselves, but also by thinking in them. They are being tortured and many of you are supporting it, and even justifying it with very poor, selfish arguments.

We can put an end to this suffering either out of compassion or survival. There is a choice that causes pain and another that one does not. Regardless of the choice you make, you can live a healthy normal life. This text tells you everything there is to know about this. Which decision do you prefer taking? That’s your answer.

V. DO ANIMALS DESERVE RIGHTS?

Many Non-Human Animals are not that different from us when it comes to senses and some subjective perceptions. Indeed, we are more aware of the world than them as far as we can sense. We can organize ourselves more effectively than them, adapt to change and cooperate with masses of individuals while non-human animals only possess only one of these two characteristics.

But just because they are different in many ways, do they not deserve rights in the same way we do? It would not be coherent to grant them rights to property or education because they are not aware of what property means and they don’t give a fuck about education. But what about rights that protect them from being subject to torture or parenting rights? They are aware of what suffering is and they do care about being with their offspring not being taken away from them. They have the same perceptions and awarenesses that make us want those especific rights.

We are al the same when we fear someone, hurt, suffer, or get stressed; the same hormones are produced, and the same neurological receptors are triggered. We can perceive suffering, and we can realize when others suffer. We know exactly when an animal is hurting, there is no need for research to see with our own eyes that a creature is hurting. If you need science to tell you that, it had already done so a couple of centuries ago. Science confirms psychopathologies and pains in shrimps, fish, cows, and dogs. A human mother feels deep affection for his child as a cow feels the same way to her calve. You can see it, and there is research that proves it. If someone took you away from those whom you love, how would you feel? Cows get deeply affected by it and we can realize that suffering by observing their behavior and looking at their blood samples.

We both have desires for companionship. We want to live long, and we want to be free with no isolation. Why would we do something to them, that to us, humans, is technically illegal due to the same perceptions they have? Just because we are from a different species? Just because we are “smarter”? Just because “God created animals for us to eat them”? Because it is the food chain? Because it is natural? Those are excuses, and this text will work those arguments out and man more.

Slavery was unnecessary, just like the following industry. And some people around that time started asking themselves the same questions. Why do we have to do this? There was actually an answer to that. And that answer was money and pleasure. Slavery gave jobs and made jobs easier. This answer is no different from why we eat animals. Money and pleasure are the only reasons for it, the other arguments are not deductive neither inductive, because they are based in premises that are not necessarily true and others that are completely false or were true, then the consequences of the scientific revolution turned them to be false.

The same following industry does to them what to us is legally not acceptable. The same industry has a direct connection with the problems listed above; it is the main trigger for many of those and a big obstacle for many solutions to social problems. The force applied to animals through us is as devastating as the force that nature has lately exerted upon us. We torture, so we get tortured. We eat them, so we get coronavirus. We hunt them down, so we get massive floods in Europe. We forcibly breed them, and we get more occurrence of hurricanes in the Caribbean. We waste food in them, while we still have a small percentage of individuals, which is still a massive number of people, starving. If we stopped the action, the reactions would stop.

And not only that, but we would be able to address other social problems better such as terrorism in Latin-america, Zoonotic diseases in Africa, or modern slavery in the fishing industry.

The word “animal” comes from the Latin word “Anima” which means “soul” and “breath.” If you are a spiritual person, this should mean something to you.

VI. IT’S PRO-SENTIENCE, NOT PRO-LIFE

I want to clarify what sentient beings are because I am not defending all animals nor the living creatures. Life is just a bunch of complex algorithms that transform one form of energy into another form of energy. In a way, it is just a different kind of technology. Living creatures are things that complete tasks and move.

Sentient beings, on the other hand, are creatures who have a nerve system with the capacity for physical sensations as well as psychological experiences. Plants are not sentient. Feti, who cannot process pain as a different sensation than touch, are not sentient. Parasites, bacteria, and cells aren´t either. Trees and people in vegetative state also not. These organism are alive indeed, but they cannot be tortured nor be depressed.

When we can talk about plants being able to feel pain, the answer is unknown. But is as close to the answer for the question: “Do unicorns exist?” The accurate answer is that there are no reasons to believe that plants have that sensations and any thought of that has no experiental or scientific basis. It would be a fictional story.

Plants respond to the same stimuli that would cause pain to us, but that is a mechanism of defense and communication. If that makes them feel pain in a different way than we perceive it, it would be just philosophy; there is no certainty nor deep reasoning. There is no reason for them to feel pain, for they cannot move. They don´t have the receptors we have that trigger pain.

Pain negatively affects the health and welfare of some animals (including sapiens). It is a horrible sensory and emotional perception associated with possible tissue- and cognitive damage.

Animals can also suffer from psychological disorders.

“Granted, these animals do not have all the desires we humans have; granted, they do not comprehend

everything we humans comprehend; nevertheless, we and they do have some of the same desires and

do comprehend some of the same things. The desires for food and water, shelter and companionship,

freedom of movement and avoidance of pain”

-Joaquin Phoenix in Earthlings.

VII. FIRST FACTS: AVOIDABLE ENVIRONMENTS

I will begin with global warming and let the topics flow as I write.

Animal Agriculture be responsible for more than 50% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. This industry contributes to the 20% of carbon dioxide(CO2), 40% of methane(CH4), and 60% of nitrous oxide(N2O) on the Troposphere. We could count all the gases produced by buses, vehicles, trains, and planes, and it would still be less than the gases produced by animal agriculture.

Buying in local farms or organic farms does nothing to solve this issue. This more “ecological” options reduce the emissions in irrelevant amounts. It is still ineffective. It lowers only the emissions caused by the transportation, while the relevant emissions come in biological production. They come from the farts of the animals.

The population of these animals is large because of the massive breeding we have successfully accomplished to supply the demand of meat and dairy. Animals are also forced to eat more than what they normally eat to increase production. These gases are the cause of Global Warming.

How does Global Warming affect us? As a professional photographer, I'm aware of what comes from the sun: lights, visible and invisible (with high radiation). Incoming solar radiation gets reflected by Earth´s atmosphere back to space, but the atmosphere does let some energy in. This energy is absorbed by the surface. The surface throws this energy back to the atmosphere, and the atmosphere reflects it up to space while bouncing some of it back down to the surface. That is the cycle with solar energy when the conditions are ideal. The atmosphere is made mostly of nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O 2). Because nitrogen and oxygen don´t absorb infra-red rays (some of the invisible light), they don’t contribute to warm the atmosphere and is mostly reflected back to space. Energy does not stay in environments with these two components. Green House Gases, like water vapor and carbon dioxides, do exist in a normal atmosphere and do absorb this energy. Their job is to regulate the warmness of the planet. Without them, the Earth would freeze. Carbon dioxide makes less than 1% of the atmosphere. So, where do we see the problem then?

Larger concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, caused by human interventions, increase the temperature on earth. These gases absorb all energy, reflect it to the surface, then up to the atmosphere again, but do not let it escape to space. The environment in our atmosphere warms up in consequence.

The ongoing rise of the world´s temperature produces more droughts and heatwaves in various places than usual. It means no more water for many communities and wild animals. In consequence, dehydration, starvation, and habitat destruction increase. Children are the more affected by it and die horrible deaths regularly. Plants disappear from those places because there is no more water for them.

Higher temperatures melts ice. Glaciers are melting faster than they accumulate snow. This is not the normal process of the exogen dynamic of the Earth. Therefore, the sea level increases each year. The oceans are also responsible for the states of the Troposphere, where the Climate Processes happen. These high sea levels cause flooding, destructive erosion, more aquifers, and agricultural soil contamination with salt.

More water and heat in the world means more vapor water to the atmosphere, it absorbs more energy and gets us more warming.

These gases produce holes in the Ozone Layer, which protects us from more radiation that might cause skin cancer and even higher temperatures.

Winds get affected too. If oceans and winds are affected, the whole atmosphere changes. Hurricanes and typhoons, that get their speed energy from water vapor, happen more often and more destructively.

Animals on the poles get affected as their environment changes drastically.

Zoonotic diseases from mosquitoes spread easier because of warmer climates in the Tropic Zone.

Humans are killed more by mosquitoes than by any other animal. Mosquitoes are the number 1. human killer in the world, more than humans themselves. Communities in these areas might suffer from starvation, dehydration, and strokes.

Another problem is pollution of water. Animals poop massive amounts of shit. Animal agriculture produces a lot of waste because the cattle are overfed and forcibly bred. The waste itself is toxic for the animal kingdom, including us. It ends up in the rivers and the oceans.

Animal agriculture is the leading cause of ocean dead zones. Those are Zones with no possible life in the ocean.

Many communities depend on rivers and get sick from their interaction with this waste.

Many extensively agricultural methods convert the waste into fertilizer. Either way, that is the only thing that extensive agriculture does well and I will assess all the issues with extensive agriculture further down.

Fish be known as a healthy meat. However, with the water polluted, the toxicity in fish has increased. There’s been many cases of mercury present in fish. These observations were obtained by hospital data from already sick patients. In Colombia, my country, this has become a regular health issue in the Pacific.

I believe that health is a personal issue. A personal decision is a decision which includes your own risk and not the risk of others. If your decision affect other beings, it is not personal anymore. But I tell you, personal health does become everybody else’s problem. If many individuals of a population are constantly sick, the health system tends to be more ineffective and unaccesible which affects all individuals. What does this have to do with animal agriculture?

Meat causes cholesterol and high blood pressure. Both cause heart problems. Cholesterol blocks the blood vessels that might cause strokes and obesity. Flesh is one of the well-established dietary risk factors for diabetes. Animal protein causes Alzheimer’s disease. Cancer is also among the proven consequences. Many studies claim that milk has unhealthy effects on people.

Do not get me wrong, people can also get sick by eating only plants. If one is not responsible with nutrition, of course, one will get sick. Regardless, a vegan lifestyle has scientifically shown to be related to a healthier life. Actually, many treatments for these sicknesses follow plant-based protein diets.

Humans need vitamins, and minerals. What we don’t need is meat. Meat contains some nutrients on a larger scale, like protein or Vitamin b-12, yet people can manage to get enough protein and vitamins from plants and mushrooms. I recognize that many people get sick even when they are vegan. I haven´t met any case yet, but I know they exist. They should have problems with deficiency of some substances. They might have lacks of b12, protein, iron, omega-3 and other substances the body needs that are found more in animals than in plants. But one needs to be so lazy to not take care of nutrition. People get sick because they are not eating healthy. I know many people that get sick by eating unhealthily, none of them vegetarian nor vegan, of course. Sickness will come if you don’t eat healthily, and it will happen either eating meat or not. But it will likely happen less if you stop eating meat. Science tells you that.

Note: This is me in 2026. I finished this book when I was living in Germany, 2021. I moved to the US, and got sick in months. I had been vegan for almost seven years. While living in Colombia and Germany, I never had an issue, but moving to the US, more specifically South Florida, did impact my health. There’s not much Vegan or Vegetarian options, the lifestyle pushes you towards and unhealthy eating habit, and I did have to readjust my diet to compensate.

Animal milk is something we started drinking 10.000 years ago with the beginning of the Agricultural society. It might not be harmful to the majority of the population, and many communities depend on it. But as a matter of fact, milk is completely unnecessary for us. Soy milk and rice milk are far more effective and nutritious than nonhuman animal milk. For me, animal milk is tastier. I recognize that.

But my pleasure does not justify causing pain. You could say: What pain are you talking about Nicolás Bruce? I will get to the animal abuse explanation later.

The American Dietetic Society and the British Dietetic Society have stated that a Vegan lifestyle is “nutritionally adequate, safe, and healthy for all stages in life, including pregnancy and infancy.”

One must deduce from this statement that animal agriculture is completely unnecessary for our life.

In the United States, where most people suffer from obesity, high cholesterol, and diabetes(sicknesses that come from meat proteins), many health insurance companies in the US have gone bankrupt because they could not sustain paying people’s treatments.

Another consequence of intensive animal agriculture is that prices for Antibiotics and other medications rises as more people buy them.

Rise of antibiotic intake damages the internal ecosystem of our gut. An average American kid will go under 18 rounds of antibiotics before turning 18 years. This could increase the resistance of unhealthy bacteria and make the immunology system less prepared.

Families buy expensive drugs to catch up with health. It makes them poorer than before and creates future health psychological issues.

A collapse health system can also lead to an economic problem. This economic scenario might be a little bit exaggerated, yet it happened last year in 2020. And why did it happen? For many reasons.

The most realistic explanation was that someone, who didn’t need to eat an animal, wanted to eat an animal, apparently a bat. This text not only addresses the animal agriculture as merely cows but as any practice dealing with any type of animal.

A more effective health system might happen with a healthier population. If people went Vegan, if society created the proper system to make Vegan diets safe and simple, we would not have this problem.

Zoonotic diseases are diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans. In this case, there needs to be a context where humans are having contact with animals closed enough to be infected.

This context are environments with little sanitation, with waste and fluids scattered everywhere inside almost locked places, and with blood loose around. In these environments, a human being has close contact with hundreds of animals with open wounds per day. That is an established risk-scenario for a Zoonotic desease to emerge. This environment could be the Wet-Market in Wuhan, or the 99% of Slaughterhouses around the world.

Coronavirus came from an animal in China, while H1N1 came from a pig in North America, and the Mad Cow Desease respectively from the UK.

Science tells us that a well-established risk factor for a pandemic is slaughterhouses. Why do slaughterhouses still exist today? Because we find meat tasty. 

There are tons of other ways we could get infected by Zoonotic deseases: Dengue, Zika, Malaria, and Chikungunya, as examples. Mosquitoes are a problem. It is true that half of the population on Earth is likely to get Dengue. And as explained before, these increase with global warming.

MERS, SARS (Camel), Ebola (Bat), the Flu, the 1920's Plague cases, and many more diseases emerged in environments that we could have avoided. Someone decided to sexually abuse a monkey, and HIV came as a consequence. It only takes one transmission. A slaughterer is in constant contact with hundreds of animals per day. Animals weren´t supposed to be there, following a vegan lifestyle. Why did people have to rape, sacrifice, and eat these animals? Because they want taste.

Thanks to Covid-19, the world stopped. To protect people from getting infected, we had to maintain social distance, lock up, and take drastic measures. It is not just the repellent or the complex B to keep Mosquitos away from you. People lost their right to free movement. Trillions of dollars and millions of jobs got lost worldwide. Poverty rates will rise-

2026: they rose

Almost one hundred million people got infected. And more than two million died. Hospitals are still collapsing and it becomes a problem for those, who didn’t have coronavirus, but other illnesses and injuries that needed intensive care. Many people with other diseases died as a result of a collapsed health system. Places like Italy and France have no idea what to do with the corpses, they have been making hard choices deciding who was going to die to let another patient have a chance at life. All of it because people keep pre-historic practices.

Why do these risk-places exist?

1. Money.

2. Pleasure.

Eating something tasty gives pleasure. So, pleasure is the only reason for people to continue supporting global warming, starvation, economic recessions, suffering and death.

It is easy to point the finger at China. That is “common” sense to many Westerners because “Chinese eat what we don´t commonly eat.” Yet, the risk exists in our traditional food too. China has more population, immesively and massively more population, and therefore, the chances of a disease appearing among its citizens is high. But it doesn’t mean that in our side of the world the chances are zero.

In Germany, the health care system is charging me more than usual due to this problem. And I do not want to imagine the rates good Americans will receive versus the poor service they will get. Are these two reasons enough for all of what has happened? Just because meat tastes good and because it gives a profit? Isn’t it time to get rid of the bubonic plague by cutting marmots out of plates? Or to avoid future pandemics by cutting “common” meat out of our diets? It doesn’t matter where it happened. The action is what matters.

“It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one”

― George Washington

Economic problems also create catastrophes:

The economy cracks one way or another when we face the consequences of climate change and health dilemmas. These situations are not cheap. I measure the riskiness in deaths, but many people will measure it in money lost.

People without jobs and money won’t buy anything. Countries will follow that action because they have no money. Governments are expending on pensions, drastic measures, and medicine; on everything that can control the situation. They need to spare too. The decisions become more difficult to take. They are investing in solutions while not receiving capital of their unemployed citizens. The stop of the economy makes both the demand, and the prices of practically everything go low, which is terrible for countries and companies, for they won’t have any income. Companies go bankrupt or lose money. They beging to take loans, and people who became jobless also take loans. But will they get approved with all going on?

In Heidelberg, there was a Latin bar, the only of its kind in the area. The owner was a gentle person. He had the dream of bringing the Latin essence to this city. I enjoyed parting there, eating my food, and talking with him. His business was the only place where Aguardiente shots were available. He was born in the same city as me. The government of Germany gave a lot of aids that were helping a lot of people. But not even a strong government can save everybody. Even though he got the help, it was not enough. The only Latin place in the metropolitan area sadly closed.

If people don´t have money, they won´t buy products whose prices will sink consequently, and to do that, they have to fire more people, who also won´t have money and won´t be able to buy stuff. Governments have always responded with printing money which has always caused more money circulating than usual. They have done it without measuring exactly how much money should be moving outside, making people buy more, making prices go high because the demand grows in places where resources are running out. Consequently, the country´s currency falls to the point that prices are too high that no one can afford them. Companies will start losing with lots of products and no demand. Then, shares are sold in the market, and people won´t buy them because they don´t have money. People who bought stocks will begin to lose money at this point. And the people who got loans to buy shares are going to stop paying those loans back.

Banks, investors in securities, and their insurance companies will have economic troubles.

Obviously, we know that we need to measure how much new money can be running around, so this situation is just a historical mistake that for some reason, places like Venezuela repeated. What will be the alternative? And more importantly, what will be the consequence? I have no answer for it.

2026: Governments did inject an extraordinary amount of money and fiscal support into economies because millions couldn’t work and businesses were closed. Initially it worked well.

Instead of allowing COVID to turn into a second Great Depression, governments gave people checks, subsidies, unemployment benefits, business loans; banks slashed interest rates and bought enormous quantities of financial assets.

What’s more weird. People actually had money as they saved during lock down. In Germany, we were never in a full lockdown. But everywhere else, people did spend weeks in. People accumulated savings and were desperate to spend once the life went back to normal.

Creating new money electronically didn’t desvastate the economy. But it was not consequence-free either. They did have to “print” money to avoid an even bigger disaster. Putting money into people’s hands prevented bankrupcies, unemployment and falling spending. But it still created inflation. EVERYTHING BECAME MORE EXPENSIVE. Living nowadays is extremely hard. Being married, having several jobs and hustling hard is not enough to sustain a basic life. Right now, life has become unlivable because of several factors, one of the biggest ones being a motherfucker eating a bat.

Another option has always been taxes, of course. More taxes or higher taxes lead to higher prices of products which trigger the same path to Inflation. More taxes might also create protests and political instability. Higher taxes means people with fewer resources to live too.

Any path to inflation, without proper reaction, will hit hard. People will be left with no home because they will stop paying the loans back, and banks will acquire many properties and goods that they will not be able to sell. People with no home are also left without a good education. They end up in poverty. They end up living under conditions that will make them sick and it comes around to the health problem again. They cannot afford good medical attention and hospitals are going to have no room. Supermarkets are going to be full of people buying almost nothing because there won´t be anything to offer. People will lose time in bureaucracy, hunger, and anxieties instead of investing in being productive. Time is something we cannot get back. Poverty makes criminality and terrorism increase. People who are in these situations will develop worries leading them to psychological complications. They will lose time figuring out what to do.

The industry of tourism suffers drastically in consequence. Places with high rates of criminality, wars or health risks are less likely to receive investments or visitors.

That is the course of a badly managed economic crisis. There are many reasons for it, and it can have different unexpected outcomes. It doesn´t matter that you don´t suffer them, but this distopian scenario is the reality of Venezuela, Central Africa, and Syria.

We cannot afford another catastrophe like Covid-19 and the best weapon we have to fight for a pandemic-free future is changing our diet. We are risking another situation like this just by having the animal industry operating.

Imagine how it would be if large catastrophes and new pandemics took over. Science is telling us we’re risking it. Our personal choices are not that personal. I care about your choice because it affects me and everyone around me. I want your freedom to be protected but I also want all freedoms to be protected, not only the one our species is allowed to have. I am caught between working, having no kitchen, and applying to a university. At least, I have a job and parents who support me. I have lately been in hospitals due to unexpected fears to sleep. I went to check myself because my stomach and head began hurting. I felt dizzy. Why? Because every time I spoke on the phone, watched the news, or entered Facebook, someone lost their aunt or their teachers to COVID-19. Many political agents have died. My country lost its defense minister to COVID-19. That is ironic because we spend more on defense than on health. Everything is death here, death there now. I am at the hospital, and I see elders fighting for their lives.

And it becomes harder when people are asked to stay home and they choose not to. My family in Colombia decided to make an asado, thinking the restrictions were no big of a deal. That was their personal choice. And a friend of my grand-father died the following week because he got infected in the asado.

You might be tired of Chinese people eating that “stuff”;, and tired of not being able to live a normal life due to the saturation of hospitals but if you eat what causes the same thing, you are helping the big industries risk another situation like this. It doesn´t matter where the action happened. Many Chinese people eat the same stuff as many Western people: Animals.

It is hard to fight ideas people have inside their heads. But their incompliance and ignorance is not a justification to be the same.

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much

as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”

-Albert Einstein
Obviously, after inventing something that killed hundreds of thousands of people, you start to question your own choices.

VIII. SECOND FACTS: WASTE

The term “Nachhaltigkeit” (German for Sustainability) remounts to the 18th Century. Deforestation and water pollution were already an issue during this time. “Nach” means After, and “Haltig” means Persistent. “Keit” is just fot the nominalization of the adjective “nachhaltig.” The idea of sustainability was being aware that if they cut every single tree for wood, there would be a time with no wood left. They needed to make a system persistent for future generations. So, they made protocols to acquire a limited amount of wood from trees and plant resilient enough to make sure trees are available in the future.

Today sustainability has been used to indicate contemporary practices that realistically are not sustainable.

We see that the more we learn, the more resources appear. I honestly believe that more resources will be available in the future, and new sorts will arrive. That is an idea I got from Yuval Noah Harari. We learned that animal agriculture is an obstacle to that availability. If we keep contributing to the industries that are exploiting the earth, future generations will continue paying the price for thing they won’t have done. But why is animal agriculture a problem to that availability of resources?

People are always concern about deforestation. Trees are the largest species in the Plantae kingdom and are essential for life. They help the environment by storing carbon dioxide. They help with a small amount of the oxygen that we breathe. The biggest amount comes from oceans, that are affected by the fish industry, but that is a story for another chapter.

Let me put you in a situation: A mayor wants to cut six trees in a park to build an urban place for social gatherings. People go to the park, protest, and tie themselves to it. If a person uses the argument: “This tree means a lot to the community, it has been here for many years, and it brings joy to us. It is part of who we are.” Then, this person uses an argument in favor of emotional support or cultural importance. But if this person comes saying: “This hurts the environment.” Then, this person must be a Vegan who fights against animal agriculture to be coherent. If not, he becomes a hypocrite.

If we cut these trees, the impact will be less on the environment than buying one steak by far. During the mayoralty of Enrique Peñalosa in my city, many trees got cut down, but the city government planted 9 times more trees. People still protested. Not all trees will survive, of course. But with 11% of trees surviving, the hugely small impact gets compensated. This story shows you how inaccurate people understand the idea of contamination and environment. Six trees is nothing compared to other practices that the people protesting still do. Animal Agriculture causes deforestation at massive scales, and many environmentalists do not see it or do not want to see it.

The land needed to feed a meat-eater is huge. During his life, a Vegan citizen can feed himself on 1/6 of an acre. It can be a small yard. A vegetarian needs 3 times more than that; a vegetarian allows himself to eat dairy products and eggs.

A meat-eater needs 18 times more space. 18 times more equals 3 acres. That is a lot of land.

The land used for agriculture (For animals and plants) will last a couple of years before the ground becomes unable to maintain the animals or infertile to sustain the plants. So, the industry needs to move to another location once this situation appears. To make room for the animals and plants, enterprises need to destroy entire forests. Doing this creates erosion of the land and the disappearance of water reserves.

Why am I inserting plants too? Because crops also make an immense impact on the environment. So, are plants also bad for the environment? Yes, but that premise connects to the conclusion that meat is bad for the environment. How? Because of the following premise: 2/3 of the world´s crops, most of them soja, are used to feed
farm animals. They only exist because animal agriculture exists.

Plantations produce extremely more food than animal agriculture. We could feed more people with an acre of crops than an acre of cows. But we are using most of it to feed cattle.

Intensively agricultural plantations use pesticides that are bad for the environment and our health. Farms use them to protect the plants from fungus and insects. But pesticides become the reason of why kids have to go to the medical center more regularly. Pesticides worsen the health of people living near plantations, not because they eat those plants, but because they breathe the air near it.

If you take a map of Europe, you will realize that plantations are everywhere. You zoom out, and the landscape is just plantations with a few cities.

And they are not there to feed you. Most plantations are there to feed your food. Only 1/3 is for human consumption. Hence, animal agriculture makes use of its own land as well as the soils for crops. So, the argument that “plants also contaminate” is a truth. And that is why we need to stop eating meat. If we stopped eating it, we could reduce contamination made by plantations. And as a consequence, we could also feed millions of people.

Animal Agriculture is responsible for more than 90% of deforestation in the Amazon, partially fault of big enterprises. A lot of this deforestation occurs thanks to what we call “grupos al margen de la ley” (groups on the margin of the law), a casual way of calling terrorists or guerrillas. Their income is essentially narco-traffic, extorsion, kidnappings, and animal agriculture.

This topic will come later on because there’s an interesting way in which labels that promise us that a product is ethical, painfree, dolphin safe or moral is misguiding what the reality is and it also connects to terrorist’s agricultural activities.

Why do cows eat too much plants? A cow is overfed with tons of food because people need her fatter. People want more mass to sell and eat. It increases production which is good for business.

The cow is isolated in closed spaces where she is unable to move or develop strong muscles. Why is she isolated? Animals, not only cows, need to be isolated for two reasons. First, the industry needs to save space to save money. And second, they have to control hundreds of anxious animals at once.

Once born and isolated, Farmers inject them with antibiotics to maintain the meat out of diseases, which costs money and is painful for an animal that doesn’t need it. Antibiotics will increase the immunity to bacteria, which can make the bacteria end in that entrecôte you ordered in the restaurant.

Also, they are injected with hormones to grow the not-worked muscles they have. These animals weigh too much, and they don’t have strong muscles, so they cannot physically support themselves standing. In consequence, their legs often break.

And an important fact: What comes from the industry is less food than the food that entered.

The cow eats more food, than what her body can offer to us later.

We can overfeed more than 20 billion animals worldwide, and we are almost 8 billion humans on Earth of which many of us are starving.-

Many of us does not mean most of us. More people die from satiation than from inanition. Most of us aren’t starving, but many do.

-We are a globally smaller population than cows. Imagine how much food we are wasting.

A big piece of land requires a lot of water. The industry needs to water the crops and feed the animals with gallons of water. That is also a waste of consumable water.

At the beginning of this millennia, humans consumed per day 5.2 billion gallons of water and 21 billion pounds of food. Cows in the same period consumed 45 billion gallons of water and 135 billion pounds of food. Should you choose between not showering for one month or not eating a happy meal at McDonald’s. Both choices waste the same amount of water.

Lately, it takes 1000 liters of water to make 1 liter of milk and 18,000 liters of water to make 1 kilogram of beef. This industry is consuming the caloric need of almost 9 billion humans while 790 million are starving and 844 million lack water.

These animals consume 80% of the Antibiotics in the US. With a good logistical work, we could destinate this water, food, and medicine to the humans who actually need it. Investment in food programs are the most essential because, as I said at the beginning of this text, we are technology and our life, just as machines, run with fuel, and the fuel for us becomes food.

Feeding should be aim number one.

People are waste lots of food in restaurants. If you have worked in restaurants, you will know what I am talking about. Many places don´t allow us, workers, to keep the food for other purposes like giving it to the needy. We must throw all of it away. We order a dish, then, we enjoy a little piece of it for 10 to 20 minutes and then, throw the rest away. We forget the meal a couple of minutes later without realizing what cost it took to make that meal. It is a matter of minutes to us but it is the entire lifetime of an animal and a destructive force in our planet.

And the facts keep going: Do you remember seeing wild fires on the news? In Australia or South America? One of the most common practices of deforestation in the Amazon and Australia is to burn the habitat. I have personally seen native communities doing it at incredibly low levels in the Amazon. Big industries are the ones who make that so massively that sometimes it gets out of control. These fires wipe out everything.

Fires have been happening more often by the increase in global temperature. This destructive power does not only affects nonhuman animals, but also human animals.

Animal agriculture is also the leading cause of habitat destruction.

Once a farm is in place, the industry needs to hunt down the fox, the wolf, the hyena, the tiger, and all the predators who are likely to eat the farmed animals. We need to kill a lot of fauna and flora to obtain good business. No wonder why many human rights and environmental activists get killed worldwide. My country has the leading position in that ranking of most activist murdered. We even have a term for them: “social leaders.”

This is not sustainable. And Extensive Agriculture is also not as how it is marketed. It is in one way cleaner because it does not use chemicals nor make use of pesticides to protect the plants. The animals are not injected with antibiotics which could result in outbreaks of bacterial diseases. Here, the waste is in a way smaller; what comes from the cattle is used to fertilize the plants that are going to feed the cattle. Animals also have more room for themselves.

These facts have become the ideals of clean meat and allow people to think that they have a smaller impact by continuing satisfying their pleasure.

Extensive agriculture also saves money, yet its income is lower. The production capacity will not be enough for the business to become a great enterprise or have massive scale buyers. On the other hand, if the demand works harmonically with the production, and the government keeps giving farmers subsidies, because many governments give them subsidies so that meat stays cheap in supermarkets, everything will be economically fine for the farmer. Farmers also eat from their produce as well. They are self-sustained.

These are not able to supply the world´s demand. But more importantly, this type of agriculture does not avoid water pollution nor air pollution. Deforestation will still be an issue here. And torture is still present because more space does not mean meeting with the animal´s biological necessities.  

One report in my country informed that, between January and April 2020, the Colombian amazon had suffered more deforestation than in the whole year of 2019. One of the biggest causes was extensive agriculture. If your friend tells you that he only buys “sustainable,” then he is not contributing enough. Then, why is your friend so sure that he is helping? Marketing.

In some European countries, these “sustainable” products are likely to be found in supermarkets by stamps like “Bio.” These farms are more a type of self-sufficiency than having a market orientation, in theory. This stamp or label tells your friend that this is more ethic, and causes less destruction, and wastes less resources, and your friend will buy it. What is the end: Money. But what has reality shown?

Many companies use both types of agriculture at the same time to harvest more money. What does this mean? They know that some people buy products with a stamp that says “free-range,” “local,” “BIO”; or “humane.” How do they get the stamps in their products? By building extensive-focused agricultural farms next to their intensive-focused agricultural farms. So they cover both segments of the market. It is legal and it still creates problems. Your friend has been told that he is a better person by buying this products, but the negative consequences are still present.

Some prefer to buy these products because they think they are morally better. I told you that morality does not exist. Only actions do. They think that it is a more “humane” way of killing. It is an oxymoron to say that. The labels about sustainability are an advertisement strategy. The industry wants nothing but money from us. There is nothing wrong with only wanting profit. I am an expert at marketing, and I work selling products and services with visual literature and strategies. I love money, and I love making my friends and clients make money. But I do not like making false claims or creating harm, even through a legal way. I love Capitalism, I understand the dynamics of business, and I love understanding them, and playing with them, but that won’t make me incline towards having health or housing full independent from government control. And it also won’t make me incline towards allowing practices like animal agriculture, even if it creates profit.

Companies have gotten used to using any way to deprive you of seeing what actually happens inside a slaughterhouse because if all people saw it, many would be shocked, which is no good for business. So, they put these labels on the products.

And these labels ease the consciousness of people and manipulate their behavior. The animal still suffers, and honestly THERE IS NO HUMANE WAY OF KILLING SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T NEED TO DIE AND WHO HAS THE COGNITIVE ABILITY OF NOT WANTING SOMETHING AND CLEARLY DOESN’T WANT TO DIE.

It is not humane when we have the choice of not doing it. These contexts exist only because there is a market for them. So go tell your friend, that you love him, but he is not contributing enough to end global warming or animal abuse.

I give you the same scenario that I gave you at the beginning of this text. You have two choices, one won´t kill an animal, and the other will kill an animal. You will have a healthy life regardless of which choice you make. Why don´t you choose the one in which no animal dies?

A humane way to spear a dog from its own pain of being close to death is putting him to sleep. Would someone euthanize a pet in a slaughterhouse? One would seek a less painful method than cutting his throat while hanging, stunning them with electric shots, or shooting him in their head which are the most common practices used to put a piece of meat on someone´s table. The purpose of euthanasia is to set him free of his natural pain, not the stoppable pain caused by humans. If we could stop dogs from dying, we would definitely do it.

If you want to avoid the suffering of pets, don´t buy them. They are enduring massive breeding. They are trapped in cages too. They are living under unhealthy conditions, just for people to purchase their offspring. They want profit and you want the pleasure of having an specific type of dog. They will never reveal where they get those puppies from. And you can argue you could be rescuing them. But who rescues the caged mother, being raped and forced to breed?

Intelligence is questioning what it is that we have in front of us and where it came from. If I adopt this dog, where did it come from? What had to happened for it to be here? You just make questions. You sit ina restaurant and order a plate and you make the same questions. What had to happen for me to have this filet?

No label can tell you what happens inside places you are not supposed to see. At least, no label can do that nowadays.

Where is meat sustainable? One time, finishing school, I went on a trip to La Guajira, Colombia. It was July 2017. The place lies in the desert by the Caribbean coast, the northernmost part of South America. It is known to be a place full of poverty. There we visited an isolated native community that goes by the name Wayuú. The Wayuú people share the citizenships of Venezuela and Colombia.

They welcomed us as their visitors. We were doing volunteering, and my co-volunteers found out I was vegetarian. One of them told me: that he had a friend who was also vegetarian and had visited the Wayuú before. On his trip, he had seen the reality of the community. He had found out that Wayú people were vegetarian, not because they wanted to, but because they had to. They don´t have a choice. He had stopped being vegetarian because of that analysis. For me, that didn´t make any sense. Just because they cannot eat meat doesn´t mean it is a huge argument to start eating it.

The community actually eats meat. It is just that the goats they had, were not enough to be eaten weekly. They only eat meat on two occasions. The first one is during a fest or a celebration, and the second is when they have visitors. Our visit was a reason to eat one goat. I actually saw how they killed the animal. I was the only one who wanted to see that while my co-volunteers, who ate meat, did not want to see it. It is ironic how someone is ok with eating your food, but not ok with seeing how their food is obtain. They rather look away and pretend it isn’t happening. They took the goat by the horns and insert a thin metal stick through his throat. The goat began choking and bleeding.

The point is that it wouldn´t be sustainable for many impoverished communities to eat meat because it wouldn´t last. They would need to breed more animals, and it takes time when there is not much production capacity or available breeding resources. Believe it or not, many people cannot afford even a one-dollar burger.

One hundred years ago and before, people were used to eating meat on rare occasions. It was considered a luxury. Plants on the other hand supply more effectively the nutrients and can feed more population.

“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know

health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows

the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”

-Pythagoras

IX. Third Facts: History´s Most Intellectuals

In the past, in most parts of the world, normality took place in homophobia, racism, classism, and machismo. Violence towards women and children was perceived as normal; it was expected. I recognize there are historical and meaningful differences between discrimination inbetween Sapiens and speciecism (discrimination towards other species). But their similarities rely on suffering and distress that is produced for unnecessary reasons and discriminatory mindsets. Many people see veganism odd, as a wrong way of life, and yet, this particular lifestyle has been evolving throughout millenia.

We look down on past generations that allowed the Caste system and slavery. When such systems occur today, most of us condemn them. We ask ourselves how they could be so brutal. How could they also have been so brutal in the past? Yet not everyone has always been an asshole in history. There were always those who were too early to be born; those who had their mind more advance than their time and could assess what it took to produce the thing they put in their stomachs.

Some people opposed slavery from the very beginning, defended women from the start of civilization, or fought any type of abuse for ages. They are people who saw what others couldn’t see. They didn’t belong to the groups that the epoch was exploiting and yet saw what was fair and logic. And today, we cheer on those guys, we admired what they did, and we are content for their opposition. We are even thankful for it. People who defended animals have always existed, and people opposed against animal agriculture too.

Before the term “vegetarianism” came around the 1840s, one of the termini for such diet was the “Pythagorean diet” because ancient writers would strongly document how Pythagoras would strongly abstain from eating animal flesh. The Pythagorian belief crafts the idea that living creatures, different from what we consider living creatures today, share a kinship. His doctrine, metempsychosis, made killing and eating animals morally problematic. It is true that there’s no exact proof of what the man are and Aristotle does describe that he had kept certain animals off his plate but continued eating others.

There are letters from Leonardo Da Vinci that document his refusal to eat animals, and in many of his writings, he expresses the disgust of animal abuse for its flesh consumption.

Mahatma Gandhi, a historical vegetarian, was a man who believed that the welfare of animals was the path to peace.

Franz Kafka had a confirmed vegetarian diet too.

Mary Shelley had a meat-less diet, and her book “Frankenstein” can be read as a vegetarian manifesto.

Siddhārtha Gautama ate in the same way.

On my visit to Assisi, I learned that St. Francis of Assisi, who preached about taking care of all God´s creatures, refused to eat animals.

Voltaire positioned Vegetarianism as a virtue of the Enlightenment.

Benjamin Franklin, who was a proud vegetarian since the age of 16, called animal agriculture the “unprovoked murder.”

Susan B. Anthony became not only the first woman but also the first vegetarian to be on a US currency.

Albert Einstein became a vegetarian during his last year of life.

Albert Schweitzer said: “Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace”.

Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison didn´t share many moral qualities, but both were vegetarian. Of course, Edison got to murder many animals to prove his points and invented the electric chair.

Abraham Lincoln stated his commitment to animal rights by being also vegetarian.

Chadwick Boseman, Sir Isaac Newton, Steve Jobs, John Wesley, William Blake, Leo Tolstoy, the Dalai Lama, Robin Williams, Michael Jackson, Socrates, and George Bernard Shaw were vegetarian.

Some rumors say that even Jesus was one, and I will reveal them in another chapter.

People often think that Hitler was vegetarian, but it was not true. Hitler claimed to be vegetarian, as he claimed several things so that people believed he was pure, but the people who knew him well always talked about how his favorite meals were Brat sausages and other food containing meat. Almost everything that Hitler said about himself was a lie. Dictators tend to control the truth to appear more ethical.

Either way, being vegan doesn´t make you a better person. But I wanted to show examples of people who achieved high intellectual and compassionate deeds, ended up leaving animals off their plate, and changed the world.

I believe that the consumption of animals will be something future generations will look down upon us.

“I have always eaten animal flesh with a somewhat guilty conscience.”

-Albert Einstein.

Fourth Facts: Animal Abuse

What are the practices that cause all the previews problems?

Animals are put into closed spaces, so they cannot move freely. We have already talked about how that inflicts pain on them. It breaks their bones.

They are raped (Forcibly insemination) to have more and more cattle. For example, farmers have to insert one of their arms inside cow´s anuses, being the cows restricted to move. They have to do it to assist in reproduction. If you have had something inside your anus, you would realize how uncomfortable and painful it is when you don’t want it there.

Most of the time, to control that number of animals, they apply violence through electric shocks and rods. It makes animals cooperate with the instructions.

Animals are afraid. They want to escape and tend to move. If people hit them, animals will exert less resistance. But the resistance is always present.

Cows are placed together during transportation, and some of them die before they get to the slaughterhouse by infections and other injuries.

Many have open wounds because of the lack of sanitation and the stress they get from those places.

Each creature comes afraid into the room for its slaughter. There is usually a line of animals. Animals try to escape. They are obligated to see their mates die in the way they will. Research shows that animals are aware of and pain from what their fellow individuals are experiencing and this research shows this awareness up to fish seeing other fish being cut. They hear the noises of agony. They try to avoid that place.

How does the killing works? Well, regardless of how the animal will die, there is always the first attempt. Enterprises tell you that the first attempt be the successful, definitive one, but it is not. What follows becomes an experience full of suffering.

One method of killing cows and pigs is hanging them up by one foot and cutting the animals´ throats. They hang there bleeding out, agonizing.

Another one is electrifying them until they are dead.

Another is shooting them with a bolt pistol on the head. Many times one shot is not enough.

With birds, like chickens or turkeys, it is different. They are hung down and washed with electrified water, which should make them unconscious. A saw cuts their necks.

Most animals don´t die immediately because no method can enable that. Most chickens, who lift their heads, don´t get electrified. We find cows with half of their heads connected to their bodies trying to escape while workers use more force to control them. Imagine being half-decapitated with a person pulling you by the throat. The electrification takes longer which makes the experience worse. During the third method, the butcher has to shoot with the pistol many times. The Butchers are working with hundreds of animals a day. They need to be quick. Animals exert resistance. They don´t have time to address each animal more peacefully. The most effective way is to let them hanging, bleeding, and suffering until they die.

The next stage is where the skin of the animal gets removed. The corps is submerged in boiling water. This process comes right after theslaughter. If the animal doesn´t die from slaughter, he will die drowning in boiling water. I do not understand, how a person can say that he loves animals, and support that. The point is not if the animals are alive or not. The point is that they are aware of what is happening, and they experience all that suffering, just for you to satisfy your taste for 10 minutes.

In Australia, the common method is to put them in Gas chambers, with videos of pigs desperately scratching rods and trying to escape without being able to breathe.

Videos worldwide show not only indifference from the butchers but also violent behavior on their behalf. They hit them, kick them, electrify them, and abuse them in ways I couldn´t believe. I see it, and I can recognize the behavior of satisfaction in hurting another creature. It doesn´t happen with all butchers, but it is not a coincidence that it has been recorded in many establishments across the planet. I got curious, why are they exerting unnecessary abuse? When I see it, I observe violence that is not necessary for production. The fact that a sentient being is hanging with his throat open bleeding is freaking disturbing, and it must be a horrible sensation. Why is the behavior of some butchers making it worse by bullying the animal? I understand that there is no standard result of sacrificing because those things are alive and scared, and they move and make it difficult. They will not die immediately and will fight the butchers to protect themselves from harm. These actions only cause the butchers to use violence to control them. The butchers normalize it, and in many cases, it looks like they enjoy it, as if they unburden everything out doing it.

Many video footages reveal the behavior of butcher and farmers screaming and speaking to the animals things like: “You motherfucker piece of shit!,” or “You fucking bastard.”

I am going to confess that as a kid, I experienced the feeling of violence once. As a kid, I would take an electric mosquito racquet and torture as many insects as I could kill. I enjoyed it at the age of ten. We have a sense of pleasure seeing others suffer. But as we grow old, we can change that. That sensation is natural to us, but we can reprogram our brain thanks to civilization. When I presented the sacrifice of the goat, these people were laughing at it. Many workers of the slaughterhouse have thrown the animals yards away real hard. They take one piglet and smash it to the floor just because it is not cooperating. Many people get satisfaction when others get punished. This feeling has a term in German: Straflust. I will define this terminus in the religion chapter.

One comparative study published in Kakfas University found that there was a significant relationship between the profession of being a butcher and cases of somatization, anxiety, anger-hostility, and psychoticism. It concluded that butchers have a higher possibility of developing psychological disorders than other jobs. I am talking about the person who is involved in the slaughter.

There have also been links with domestic violence, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, criminality rates, and abuse of drugs and alcohol.

This information reminded me of when I was visiting the Topography of Terror Museum in Berlin. The guide explained to us the goal of the gas chamber. Nazi soldiers developed traumas by shooting people in concentration camps. With a gas chamber, they don´t have to see it. Do you know what happens in a gas chamber? People desperately try to escape while suffering terribly. They use their nails to scratch the walls until their fingers are bleeding. That is agony. Animals act the same way in that Australian chambers. Many dog shelters have to sacrifice dogs in the same way. When animals are not required in science anymore, their fate gets the same method.

And awfully enough, some Nazis built small windows for some of them to peak and watch the suffering that emerged from within the room.

Farmers cut the beaks of chicks when they are born. They cut baby pig’s balls, tails, and ears. Both procedures without anesthetics. Why so? Farmers remove these parts to prevent these animals from performing cannibalist acts. Chicks and pigs, as they grow up, begin attacking each other out of psychological disorders. Why do these disorders develop? Because these younglings are raised in environments with isolation, stress, and pain, far from what naturally constitutes their upbringing environment. They develop depression, mental ilnesses, physical sickness, and weakness. Many die from from that, way before reaching the slaughterhouse. Why is anesthesia not use? Its cost is enormous; we are referring about thousands of animals per farm to whom individual care and welfare has a very unsustainable cost.

We have psychological needs, and when they are not met, we suffer. Calves have the need to play with other calves, chickens have the need to organize hierarchical structures, and cows have the need to protect their calves. Without the environment fit for these needs to be met, the animals get psychological problems. We took their natural habitat, and they cannot develop their needs. They suffer more consequently.

Pigs are among the most intelligent creatures on Earth. More intelligent than dogs or 3-year-old children. They can show deep affection, even more than dogs. Cows and humans sense the motherhood inside of them, for they both are mammals. We know the bond they have with their offspring. We separate a calve from his mother to steal her milk. Isn´t it painful to breast an animal with a machine every day? The cows develop painful injuries from that breeding machine. It would feel horrible having one machine sucking secretion out of you when you already have a breast pathology developed by the machine sucking you out. And again, they are put hormones to produce more milk.

Why do they take the calve away? Because the milk is intended for her calve, and we drink it instead of her.

Why would I be part of such a thing when I have another option? Why does this creature have to suffer just because I want something tasty? And it is not only animal agriculture.

We have tortured animals to get entertainment through circuses, bull riders, animal fights, and hunting seasons. So, many humans get entertained about them, and many are excited about the suffering. It might be tradition, but you don´t need that tradition to survive or live. Those animals suffer in vain.

Hunting indeed helps to conserve wildlife in Africa. It invests money in protection and conservation programs. This topic is a little difficult to analyze, but I do understand that people who hunts have a deeper connection to the wildlife even more deeper than those who eat meat. Why? Because they do the job instead of paying others to do it, among other factors. Yet, I would prefer people to abstain of hunting, because, it is an unnecessary practice.  

I currently live by the Zoo in Neuenheimer Feld, inside the campus of the University of Heidelberg. I always hear the sorrows of one lion. Those animals are isolated, and far from their environment. The owners tend to say that it is on behalf of education. But we can learn a lot on the internet about them. They do not have to live there their whole lives. If I want to see those animals, I should go to their places, where I will properly learn about them, and not capture nor breed them in captivity. They suffer. At least, we should enable a way in which they have a place where they would want to stay. Many of them don´t want to be in cages nor in a zoo.

We have tortured animals for clothing. In the fashion industry, the process is different than the meat industry. Animals are starved instead of being overfed, so that their body produce fine skin. In many areas of the world, specially in places that lack animal welfare, there’s video records of animals still alive after being skinned. And their produce end up around the world in the hands of fashion designers and cheap retailers.

In the videos, you are able to see the skinless body of raccoons, foxes or even dogs, bleeding, shocked, with their eyes wide open, making slow moves. Reality concludes that people can be healthy and comfortable without consuming these products but because there’s a market for it, because people want these products when they do not need them, these animals suffer. Clothing made with animal products are a symbol of status and in other parts are part of their traditions. Are these desires to showcase wealth and keep traditions enough to continue torturing and killing?

There is going to be a chapter dedicated to the crafts and arts created using animals. I recognize, as an artist myself, that in principle, food is an art, bullfighting is an art, and fashion using animal products is also an art form. This cultural conceptualization becomes an argument to keep performing these disciplines. But will we choose to justify continue doing so based on that argument? Because it is an art? Or will we make it exist in our past as we have always done with violent traditions?

We have tortured animals for science. And this is smart in one way but also dumb in another. Animals have different biological systems; some may be similar, but they don’t work in the same way. A lot of the science we do to them is unnecessary and painful. Science has managed ways like organs in a chip, tissue cultures, and computer models to mimic the human biological system. Although doing tests on humans is risky, doing them on animals is in most cases pointless.

Cosmetical products tested on animals is irrelevant. Do these animals have to suffer for you to use a shampoo?

We have tortured animals to sell them as pets, inseminating one female. We have taken animals that

need their habitats to live quietly, and we smuggle them. That is harmful and mortal to them.

We are pulling out of the water massive numbers of fish. The quantities are so massive that people

measure them in tons and not in the number of individuals.

We are crushing sharks, drowning dolphins, hunting whales. But not in a specific way. Fishermen

corner these animals to slaughter them. Many people cook lobsters while alive. To the eyes of them,

we are the monster, exploiting them for pleasure and basic things.

"If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn't done anything? They should

use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume

irritates a bunny rabbit's eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson's eyes and ask him if it hurts."

-Ellen DeGeneres.

Science is important. We need to keep investigating animals. We just have to make them

comfortable. For example, a survival situation requires research in poison, venom, and dangers that

animals can do to us. We can also learn a lot from them. There are different ways to study these

animals. We can go to their natural habitats, or in labs where we can treat them well.

Animals have been treated in the same way as we treated slaves. You can maybe say that there is no

comparison. But the truth is that Africans suffered due to their contemporary economic principles.

Today, animals suffer because of the same thing. Both victims feel pain and want to live. One might

be human, and the other not. We can differentiate between a human and an animal. We can

differentiate between a man and a woman too. We can do the same between a person with black

skin and a person with white skin, or between a person with red hair and a person with black hair.

Nevertheless, we cannot differentiate between the suffering of an animal and the suffering of a

human. Slaves were considered property and punished by the selfish interests of a few. Europeans

were thinking only about money and conformity when they decided to use these people as slaves.

They could not use native Americans as slaves. American aboriginals were dying fast. Their

population sank drastically, and they knew the territory well, which means they could have escaped

easier. Slavery was an already established industry, and Europeans entered that market to solve their

colonial labor problems. Most slavists argued that bringing Africans to America was a better fate than

letting them stay in Africa. The same ethical labels to ease people´s consciousness. They had

economic reasons and arguments to enslave them. It became an industry that gave jobs and earned

millions. Nature allowed it to happen. But white people understood something beyond. They saw

that those slaves were people and learned that they were going through something no regular white

being would like going through. Indeed, animals are different from humans in many ways.

Nature may allow us to eat them. Nature also allows murder and rape. These are some choices we

can have. But not making those choices doesn´t put our lives at risk. People don´t always tend to

choose wisely, and therefore, the law comes. But sometimes it comes late. Do we have to wait?

When it comes to the same attributes from which we protect ourselves from being hurt, we are the

same as animals. They go through something I personally wouldn´t like to go through. And it makes

sense to care about other species because some of us do. We wouldn´t allow our pets to go through

the same experience because we are actually capable of loving them, as they are capable of loving

us.

Servitude was neither a better way. Feudalism made a person dependent on his lord, who made all

decisions regarding his life. Lords thought they were in a certain way superior, and they used that as

an excuse to oppress. They had reasons. They gave shelter to their vassals. They let them stay on

their lands and eat the food that grew there. A lot of people suffered from that still. This is no

contract that states that they provide for us while we provide for them. That has nothing to do with

symbiosis. It is merely exploitation.

Why did some have a complex of superiority? How was the hierarchy of our Colonies? Europeans

were profiting from high tax reforms without any representation, even from their children in

America, just because they did think they were superior. These actions had arguments in favor and

were horrible for some people at the same time. Today, we understand that these three examples

were unnecessary, and that reality allows us to choose from many options. Let’s just take the more

compassionate, ecological and les problematic one.

"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than

black people were made for white, or women created for men."

-Alice Walker

Starting modern times, you were free only when you had possessions and paid taxes. A fact that was

just imagination. Day-laborers, landless workers, and slaves did not have freedom when they could.

We are doing the same to the animals because of self-interests or religious ideals.

The idea is that when we are born, we all are born free. Rights tell us that we should not be enslaved

nor used or oppressed or repressed, nor exploited. Why do we breed animals by force and put them

into cages? Their wish to move freely and to be well is the same as ours. They should be born in

habitats where they can be at peace with no lord and no owner. We treat them in the same way as

Nazis treated those who were not Hitler´s arian race. Slaughterhouses are not that different from

Concentration Camps. In both places, the same happens. In both places, psychological disorders

appear, and pain receptors are activated. In both spots, terror and fear preside. Creatures suffer in

both scenarios. In both places, sentient beings are brutally killed for unnecessary reasons and weak

arguments.

One million humans are killed by mosquitos each year. Mosquitoes are the animal that kills the most

humans. Almost 500.000 humans die by other humans. 50.000 by snakes, 25.000 by dogs.; 800.000

by suicide, and 1.5 million by car accidents.

Only in the United States, approximately 36 million cows are slaughter yearly. 8 billion chicken. 123

million pigs. In a trimester, more than 20 billion animals are killed in the U.S. 

More than 70 billion animals are slaughtered each year globally. In Fish, we are talking about

tons. 167´200.000 tons of fish are killed yearly. Which animal does that? And we call ourselves

intelligent, and we pretend we seek peace.

Fifth Facts: The Oceans

How many times hasn´t the media been saying that plastic usage hurts the oceans?

How many times don´t we hear that sea mammals are essential for fertilization, which increases the

presence of vegetation that produces the most relevant amount of oxygen we breathe and catches

93% of all Carbon dioxide worldwide helping the decrease of global temperature?

Hasn’t it happened to you that your friends tell you to stop using straws because they kill turtles? It

could seem that the best thing to do is to avoid using plastic, but actually, the best thing to save the

oceans is to stop fishing and stop eating fish.

Fishing Nets make up 46% of the plastic present in the Pacific Ocean. If we add the net´s floats,

headlines, wires, and weights, we are talking about more than 50%. This plastic is detrimental to sea

life. Whales, sharks, and fishes end up with this material harming them from the outside or entering

inside their digestive system, killing them. Straws make up less than 0.05% of it. Without these sea

mammals, we, terrestrial mammals, will get less oxygen and massive amounts of Carbon dioxide.

While half of the whales and dolphins are driven by people to some territories where they brutally

murder them, the other half is killed due to bycatch. When vessels intend to catch mass amounts of

fish, they accidentally catch dolphins, sharks, turtles, and many other animals too. These bycatch are

thrown back to the ocean hurt or dead.

Without sharks, the marine ecosystems perish – because sharks are the predators that maintain the

ecosystem healthy - leading to a disappearance of oxygen in the planet too.

The fish industry is proven to be linked with human slavery around several countries, murder of

activists, and labels-controllers.

Many people have the idea that fish do not feel pain. But science is resilient to tell you that they do.

They show symptoms of stress, fear, and suffering. They are capable of choking. They can also mourn

their relatives even.

Sixth Facts: Incoherence

When I was in La Guajira, the community asked if we wanted to see the murder of the goat that we

were supposed to eat. You already know that only I saw it, and it didn´t produce anything inside of

me. I saw something I knew was supposed to happen. As soon as they brought the animal, he tried to

escape. They took the goat by the horns; the goat made noises, and a person stabbed its neck with a

knife. Blood came out of its mouth. After that, they hung the body.

Why didn´t my mates want to see it? If one will weep about it, then one would do it daily because it

is happening every second. It is strange how many meat eaters are instructed to kill a cow in moral

exercises and social experiments, and most don´t do it. What would happen if we brought a cow into

a class and asked students to sacrifice it? That was the question that the Youtuber Earthling Ed asked

to some students. He said that if one student accepts the challenge, others will try to stop him or

simply turn their sight anywhere else and pretend like it is not happening. He lives in the United

Kingdom, and I live in Colombia. I encountered the same result.

Only a coherent meat-eater would do the process to the end, and he would have killed an animal for

unnecessary reasons. People tend to ignore what is disturbing them, and in this case, that is what

they are causing.

Siddhartha Gautama was born as a prince, and his parents prevented him from seeing the world

because the world's reality isn't as happy as the inside of the walls where he was living. He managed

to escape and see the truth. As soon as he escaped from the castle, his life changed because he saw

unhappiness and suffering. So, he began a lifestyle based on human dignity and respect for all life.

We need to be those who look for the view blocked by the industries' advertisements and by our

own guilt, even by our disinterest, because disinterest is also being part of the problem when it leads

to no action.

Seventh Facts: Veganism relates to Intelligence

Mockery is the first stage of truth. Arguing with a person who ridicules every argument is arduous.

Just because a premise seems funny to believe doesn´t mean it is not a fact. People appeal to ridicule

when they don´t like an argument that goes against their proposals. This appeal could demonstrate a

good argument, but people do not usually do it well.

How does appeal to ridicule work? A person makes statements in which he accuses the contrary

opinion of being ridiculous. Most of it, those are arguments follow the criteria called "ab absurdo."

But, as all arguments used to consume animals, they are full of bullshit. They are fallacies, and many

times complete falseness. As soon as this chapter ends, I will work with all arguments that meat

eaters usually use.

Based on these fallacies, a person tries to make the opposite idea unworthy of being considered

serious. Why do they do it? People appeal to ridicule to influence audiences and bend their emotions

towards their points. To my experience, the majority of the people do not know how to make

resilient arguing with them.

"You don't win friends with salad," iconic phrase of The Simpsons. The Spanish version of this scene

says: "No vives de ensalada", which translates "You don't live on salat." Many friends of mine have

said it to me. They argue strongly and then make fun when they want to avoid the conversation

because they cannot win. People tend to respect the illogic actions of someone making fun of

animal-activism than the person fighting for animal rights. Some guys love it when an idiot mocks a

protest, shows meat to vegan protesters and does more because he appeals to their beliefs. But it is

pure dumbness. Should it not be more useful to debate with arguments? We have seen videos of

how ordinary people respond to vegan videos or protests. They eat meat to make fun of vegans and

try to provoke them. Vegans throw valid arguments, and the clowns just stand there eating

something we already know they eat. You can see this act of provocation in Gordon Ramsey´s web-

videos. These personalities get credits like "Gordon Ramsey destroyed veganism" or "This dude puts

vegans on their place." I don´t know which place because the facts vegans talk about are correct, and

these jokers' actions are not contradicting anything. Gordon Ramsey thinks that it is funny to secretly

give meat to vegans. I do not know if it is funny or not. Fun is subjective. But that action is

pragmatically the same as selling you cotton by telling you that I did not use slaves to harvest it,

when I know that I did use slaves. It is dumb and it does not feel good. He literally told people that

their food did not make anyone suffered when it did. How would it be like if in the middle of a

protest against racial matters, a person comes with a slave showing it to everyone. I do not want to

say that Gordon Ramsey is a bad person, or that I hate him. He is an excellent chef, and does dumb

things, just as everyone else, even when he said to Sofia Vergara that Colombian arequipe “tasted

like shit.”

Going back to “You don´t make friends with salad.” Who are the members of the Simpsons singing

that premise? An obese, unhealthy dumb, and mentally disabled person. A conservative, uneducated

woman who is the second person with common sense in the family, after Lisa; Marge even admitted

not to agree with the premise. The last one is a prick, an asshole, a person with an absolute absence

of intelligence and civism. Homer Simpson sang this song with the Crayon in his brain that

maintained his IQ in 55, which corresponds to mild cognitive disability. Without the Crayon, the score

would be 105, as we saw in the chapter “HOMR” which came six years later. Bart scores in Professor

Flink´s Personal Value Quotient – a scale to determine a person´s value to society - 265 over 500.

Homer had one over 500.

The one, whom they are saying that to, is Lisa Simpson. She is the person who always seeks ethical

actions. She personifies the most intelligent and smartest character in the family. She has an IQ of

159 that corresponds to superior intelligence (1 out of 1000 people reach this). She scores in Flink's

PVQ 485 over 500. The quotient might be incomplete, but it is still the most accurate way to

determine a person´s value for society in this fictive world.

Ridicule is funny, it makes you laugh, but jokes aren't as resilient as deductive arguments. I laugh at

those premises too. I laughed with the vegan academy in the film "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World." It

was funny when Arnold Schwarzenegger said in "Escape Plan": "You punch like a vegetarian." But I

know that it is fiction and I know what is reality. In reality, Brie Larson and Arnold Schwarzenegger

became vegan.

Laughing at one thing doesn't make it wrong. I laughed at this Simpson joke, but I have a sense of

logic that allows me to understand the context in which it was spoken.

A study by scientists at Southampton University showed that individuals, who were vegetarian by the

age of 30, recorded an average of five IQ points higher than meat-eaters.

They measured people´s IQs and asked them ten years later if they had become vegetarian. It

concluded that people with higher IQ points, higher academic degrees, vocational aspirations, and

higher occupational social class were likely to become vegetarians. Income, on the other hand, didn´t

show any relation. I would say that ignorance exist in all social classes.

I measured my IQ at the age of 15, long before being vegetarian. I did the test at the Roosevelt

Institute of Child Orthopedic in Bogotá. My school asked my parents for a psychological evaluation

because I was a person who always disagreed with teachers. The test was a part of the assessment. I

always disagreed with my parent on many things, so they agreed. I scored 109, which is actually a

standard score. It corresponds to “above average.” 3 out of 10 people reach this score, which is not

that important. The final result of the entire evaluation never appeared because I got tired of the

psychologist disagreeing with me in almost everything to the point he started shouting in front of my

parents. I remember that he told me that he got a degree and, therefore, he was correct.

Having no one to contradict the ideas of professional people will help the pride of arrogant people

like him. I had problems with psychologists and nutritionists to the point I started a mistrust with

those professions. I lacked logic there; I recognize that. How did I create that mistrusts? I got it when

I realized that people told myths, like “Food doesn´t have an effect on acne,” or that a psychologist

always took my parents' position, even when they were wrong in facts. A degree won´t say how

professional you are in your area nor how much you know. It shows you can take time to write stuff

in an organized way for people to correct it. People with a degree are often wiser than people

without one. But it is the same when we say that women are more intelligent than men. Both studies

exist, and they might be correct when we talk about ordinary people. But there are also many

exceptions. I won´t lie saying I was fair. I judged many teachers for common mistakes they made

about class facts. Still, the best teachers I had in school didn´t even study Lehramt. If does not matter

how many degrees you possess, it does not say shit.

When I asked many people about whom they thought to be the three most intelligent people in

history. Some particular answers included Maria Curie, Carl Grauß, William James Sidis, John Nash,

and even Julius Caesar. The most common responses were always Albert Einstein, followed either by

Stephen Hawking, Sir Isaac Newton, Steve Jobs, or Tesla. 4 out of 5 of the most common responses

went plant-based in one stage of their life until they died. I can´t make my answer of just three

people. My answers are Newton, Goethe, Einstein, and DaVinci. Casually, that is 3 vegetarians out of

4 of the smartest people in history. Intelligence is subjective, and no study claims that vegans are

more intelligent. They claim that a smart person is likely to become vegetarian.

People usually want to discredit veganism. They have an urge for it as it were other imaginary

realities like capitalism, socialism, or feminism. They see it as a sort of fanatism because some of its

supporters act similarly as fanatics. I do accept that some vegans lack logic when discussing.

Sometimes, I get bothered by many vegans trying to support my ideas when I am debating with non-

vegans. I am not too fond of false statements, even when they support my arguments.

Thinking requires energy from the brain and it makes us lazy because the brain wants to save energy.

Quick judgment is what results from it. This short analysis, combined with self-interests, traditions,

and people of the same social circle who think in the same way avoid discussion and profound

observation. We have to add that people don´t like to be pointed at, making it easy for them to

ignore faster when told they are causing things that they perceive as immoral. People with a good

sense of understanding, logic, and criticism will understand what is happening. Intelligent people are

always questioning what they do, including what they eat. This understanding does not require a

degree, it requires information in science, history and logic.

Excuse Number 1: Complex of superiority

Aren´t we as humans done with violence? Violence mostly results in more violence and harmful long-

term consequences. It has been enough of us to violent others, especially when we think we are

superior to others.

Whether we are or not superior to animals is not to be discussed. A person can think humans are

superior to animals. If you think you are, you can think it, you just don´t have to kill them.

We can think that human life is worthier than animal life, even though the concept of worth is also

imagination. I think that it is most likely that between a human and an animal, I would choose to save

the human. People just can acknowledge that an animal´s life is worthier than 40 minutes of taste. I

believe that 7 minutes of pleasure is not worthier than the integrity of a being. That is why I do not

rape people nor eat animals.

“Un hombre solo tiene derecho a mirar a otro hacia abajo cuando ha de ayudarle a levantarse”

(A man only has the right to look down on another when he is about to help him up)

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Excuse Number 2: Cave Men

Throughout history, we have developed a capacity to understand that we could avoid others'

suffering as simple as not doing it, as I stated before. We are not those who lived in caverns during

the last ice age anymore. I hear a lot about cavemen when discussing about animal abuse. Cavemen

were used to rape women, committed what we call atrocities, and used to fight one another. Just

because cavemen did something, does not mean that you have to keep doing it. You can rationalize

far more than they ever could. We evolved our thinking. We are not surviving anymore. We got rid of

all predators. We can afford to choose not to eat meat, and we can afford not to torture them.

During those ages, it was kind of necessary due to the circumstances and the lack of knowledge.

During those ages, we were still part of all nature´s circumstances. Now, we have the knowledge, the

choice and a completely different reality.

„Wir streben mehr danach, Schmerz zu vermeiden als Freude zu gewinnen“

(We tend more to avoid pain than to gain joy)

-Sigmund Freud

Excuse Number 3: Lions

We have a more advanced brain than lions nowadays, and lions kill even less than we do. We kill with

no justification other than taste and money; we kill even to leave the food ripe inside restaurants and

supermarkets.

Lions are aware of the pain they cause, but there is no other choice in their minds. In ours, there is

one. We can choose not to support it, and nothing unhealthy will happen to our bodies. Lions cannot

take those decisions because their brain cannot make choices out of their genetic code, while ours

can.

A vegan person can grow muscular mass, run a marathon, and do the same things as a meat-eater.

Wouldn’t it be more humane to spear other species who coexist with us inside the same atmosphere

and do not want to suffer? My sister used to say that ignorance is not worse than knowing the

problem and not doing anything about it. You know the problems, a lion does not.

Also, lions kill other lions´ offspring. Should you do the same, just because lions do it?

Excuse Number 4: Straflust

Sexism, racism, slavery, homophobia, assassinations of human rights defenders, assassinations of

those who believed differently, and those with different physical conditions end always with wars.

Those in power oppress those who don’t have it. Many do it for economic reasons that are

unnecessary, like in times of slavery and servitude. Others by mental problems like psychopaths who

enjoy oppressing. Some by false ideologies based on hatred and misinformation, like Hitler’s

distorted Darwin’s theory of evolution. He explained his theory based on an idea of an “arian” race

with blue eyes, blond and white skin as the strongest.

Many people oppress to maintain secrets secret from the public. They have managed to murder

journalists and activists of human rights because they are vulnerable, killable, and easy to disappear

because of the indifference people have towards them. But there is a particular reason of why

people like to oppress, and its criteria relies on morality.

In German, there is a word for having a kind of pleasure by seeing others punished: Straflust. Straf

states for punishment and Lust for joy. People with Straflust feel pleasure when they see other

people, whom they considered wrong, have a punishment for their wrongness. (Also, for those who

are "justly" punished, like "witches" in the Middle Ages). If a person considered the Jews responsible

for the Pest, this person would have produced dopamine seeing them executed because of that.

Because they thought that the Jews deserved it, even though they had no scientific proof it was

them. Just because their ancestors killed Jesus in earlier times does not mean it was their fault. That

is an emotion, I think, all humans have when it comes to others' pain. It eases us to see how

someone we do not like gets in trouble. All that violence and suffering from those who "deserve" to

be punished feels good. Do animals deserve to die? Do we feel this Straflust when they are the

slaughterhouse being innocent creatures? Many butchers do feel it. Do we not feel bad when we see

videos of people having pleasure torturing animals on the streets? Where is the coherence, people?

Do you know who feels mainly Straflust? Let me tell you about many people who use an argument

that states that some superhuman entity created animals for us to eat. This argument eases their

consciousness because their imaginary reality full of laws tells them that they are not doing

something wrong. Most of them show a clear example of having Straflust. I will explain in the

following chapter the theological arguments against that premise. I will talk about my perception of

Jesus and my argument to believe in God, which is actually not that resilient.

Excuse Number 6: God

Some people claimed to me that “God created animals to be eaten.”

Religion has done terrible things throughout history, such as the Spanish Inquisition, the French Wars

of Religion, the Crusades, the 30 years' war, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the invasion of Palestine

through the Israeli, and many more. Jews have always been persecuted since the crucifixion of Jesus

of Nazareth. They were massacred during the Black Death - even when the Catholic crown was

protecting them - and during the Holocaust. The bible sometimes tells us to do things that have

become illegal, and many Christians agree with that legalization. That is because, regardless of the

existence of God, humans made fictive stories about him. They are telling people what to do in order

to be good. We have gotten many unreal beliefs that come from Christianity such as heterosexuality,

homogamy or naturality. Among many of them: "Animals are here to be eaten." Those ideas make

people create their morality and base it in pure nonsense.

In the past, people would have wanted to be seen as good Christians, and today, they still do like to

pretend. They brag about going to church, having false spiritual experiences, or knowing some

versicles of the bible. That makes them think that they are morally better. Nevertheless, action is

what matters in Christianity. These people do not know what Jesus wanted nor what their God

wants. Many of their ancestors (also mine) had Straflust when they presented, for example,

executions of presumed “sinners.” If she fucked other men or if he slept with men, she or he would

have been seen as sinners, and the people who judged them as “sinners” would have enjoyed seeing

them be punished. They were sinners just because that nonsense. These ancestors – most of them

belonged to the church - made interpretations of the bible, customed to their own privileges and

purposes, taking advantage that the non-clergy could not read the holy book and priests preached

only in Latin, a language no ordinary citizen spoke. Priests could have said things like the bible

commanded the people of low stands to fight in Jerusalem for forgiveness. They could have also said

that citizens needed to pay higher taxations to build the St. Peter’s Church under the same reward.

That sounds like a sort of advertisement. They have judged out of false interpretations and stories.

Lots of people have suffered and died from it. They fought in the crusades and starved to pay the

duties the church was charging. All because people spread a message that God never said.

The eleventh commandment tells us to love our neighbors as they were ourselves? What is love? I

will be explained in the third chapter of this book. In summary, it is to care about other ones. Many

Christian pharisees do not show this commandment, even when Jesus said, “that no commandment

was more significant than this one.” They should have followed it in the past, but it was not useful to

control the masses and bet in self-interests. The people found out the Church's lies when Luther

translated the bible into Old German, and Gutenberg invented the press to spread the lord's word.

People began realizing that many of the Church´s fundamentals and principles were completely fake.

In my opinion, institutions should not be judge by the actions of the past. What still troubles me are

other facts, like the fact that child abuse has happened in churches worldwide. Many times, priests

confessed the abuse they did on children during session time, which means that what they confess

should stay between other priests and them. When the Church finds out what their members do,

they take the priests to another location or pay the victim´s family to keep quiet. That has been the

general protocol. They try to hide the event and not address it. Many of them get exposed, and still,

they make people silent somehow. As soon as a priest confesses, or its crime gets to the knowledge

of other sacred workers, it should be the Church's holy duty to respond on behalf of the victim. It

applies to all types of institutions too. The problem is not that the abuse happened. The problem is

that it keeps happening, and the Church has not done anything to prevent it from happening in the

future. Where are the good deeds God asks from us? Here, we can talk about the institution in

general because journalists have found cases of child abuse through priests in almost every city in

the world. So, where the fuck is this love for the neighbor, this compassion, this solidarity, or

"Caritas"? We need this solidarity with humans and with animals. And it is in the bible. We need to

care about what happen to others and follow the words of God with logic.

Another things is that the holy book had been translated in too early contexts, that the message

could have been misrepresented. The same book is written by many authors and have lots of

versions of the same stories. So, the argument that animals are to be eaten is not even a theological

theory to be considered valid.

I want to ask you a question. What would Jesus prefer between you being healthy by not hurting

animals or being healthy by hurting animals? He is going to love you the same if you killed or if you

hugged. The decision is personal, so take the decision that he taught us to take.

Do you remember the story of the cleansing of the temple?

Jesus said to the people that the practice of sacrificing animals to offer them to God was no longer

necessary. It was a practice that the people considered normal because they thought that God

wanted it. When people wanted to throw stones at a prostitute to death and expected the master to

give the order to kill her, he responded the other way. Where are the Christians that show his

example? Many don´t show his example?

Jesus avoided the sacrifices of those animals because they had irrelevant ends. There was no longer

needed to sacrifice an animal to make God happy. The poor used to buy a pigeon and the wealthy a

lamb. People thought that they needed to offer God something and gave their money away for it.

The salesmen were profiting from nonsense. He was taking the money of people without any

justification. If I profit from a person who lacks food but gives me money only because he believes in

lies, I would be a person who does actions that Jesus rejected. Therefore, Jesus liberated all animals.

He did not like sellers to take advantage of buyers. I believe that if God existed, he would prefer me

to avoid hurting unnecessarily. He would prefer me to take care of his or her creatures.

We can go to the very first story of the bible. During the time of Eden, when Adan and Eva were living

in paradise, they lived in harmony with animals. There wasn´t any need for violence, nor

consumption of meat. All that was there to be eaten was plants.

If God made us rulers of nature, have we made a good job? If we ruled it, shouldn´t we make it a

peaceful place for every being, instead of a violent one?

Read this:

"Whoever slaughters an ox is like one who slays a man; whoever sacrifices a lamb is like one who

breaks a dog's neck; whoever presents a grain offering is like one who offers pig's blood; whoever

offers incense is like one who praises an idol. Indeed, they have chosen their own ways and delighted

in their abominations."

-Isaias 66,3

It was Saint Jerome who in 382 made the first complete Latin translation of the Bible and who, under

pressure from the ecclesiastical and political power, left out topics such as the Reincarnation, the

Law of Sowing and Harvesting, and the teachings of a Jesus who protected the animals establishing a

peaceful and loving relationship with them. The text that works with that Jesus is called the "Gospel

of the Holy 12,” an apocryphal text that was not included in the Bible and where reference is made to

the experiences of Jesus Christ with animals.

If the Christian stuff is real, we need to have a notion of those stories that were not included in the

bible. These stories were either lost, prohibited, politically censured, or controversial. When I was a

tennis competitor, I had a conversation with a Christian partner, and she told me about that concern.

She told me that many holy stories have not been found yet or are lost. She made an example with

dinosaurs. She said that their existence was not to be denied. And that there must have been holy

information regarding them. That seems more logical than the theory that the bones of dinosaurs

were them to prove our loyalty to God which many people still blindly believes.

There were more gospels than the four that are present in the bible. There are different versions of

Jesus, and it is not easy to know which one exactly the most accurate was or is. When I think of Jesus,

I precisely see a man of peace, a man of love, a human-made of kindness, a man with principles, and

a man who was good to everyone. I see the biggest attribute of enlightenment within him. The most

coherent person who could ever have lived and a human sapiens who was born too early, even for

our age. That is what the gospels have to explain about him, and he shows in each one compassion to

all the creatures. And I believe that God exists because I cannot imagine that eleven people died in a

horrible, painful way just because they believed in a lie. They would have known. But it is my way of

seeing it and I recognize that it is an inductive argument, one that can be false.

"Just because it's in print doesn't mean it's the gospel."

-Michael Jackson.

Notwithstanding, there was actually a kind of person that Jesus judged the most. Moreover, it was

not a prostitute, an assassin, nor someone who sinned. Jesus judged Pharisees the most. Who are

the most Pharisees nowadays? The Believers of many religions; I consider Ideologies to be Religions

too. Jesus would prefer the homosexual person rather than the regular Christian believer. I do not

know the man; I just know his biography.

Religion is not a bad thing. A painful thing is using religion for unnecessary damaging purposes like

terrorism or fighting each other for centuries for lands that belong to everyone in the middle east.

Religion does not justify the removal of genitals, the enslavement of people, nor animals'

consumption.

Excuse Number 7: Cleverness

Following some scientists, meat was crucial to obtain our mutation in our brain that helped us be

more aware of the world. Vitamin B12 is powerful enough to make us the conscious, intelligent being

we currently are. B12 was easier to find in meat for a person who did not understand what vitamins

were, or what vegetarianism meant, or did not even know how to develop complex tools. The

significant amount of B12 consumed by our common ancestors gave them too much energy to

develop cognitive processes and more complex neuronal connections. They started eating meat and

evolved. We have a bigger brains and smaller bowels. We think now as homo sapiens in the 21st

century. Now, we still need the B12 which can be found elsewhere, not only in meat. We have

studied tons of plants, tons of foods and know, now, that there are other sources of B12, healthier

ones, and more sustainable.

Excuse Number 8: Survival

There are contexts of survival. In the past, the ones to die were either we or the other creature. If I

ever find myself in a situation where we have no other food than animals or where an animal is

attacking us, I will choose to survive. In those situations, where one´s life depends on it, one should

choose the only option left if one wants to keep living. In every other circumstance is greed, and I

would say egoism. Humankind got rid of the problem of predation long ago.

Actually, what we are doing to them is precisely the opposite of survival because it sends us towards

extinction. Eating animals is ensuring our disappearance. So, if we want to survive, we need to stop

eating meat.

Also, if I found myself in a desert island and there is only a pig to eat, I would rather try not to eat the

pig because I would have companionship at least. My mental health is more important in those

situations and solitude could drive me to take worse decisions.

Excuse Number 9: Symbiosis

"They have never existed if we did not eat them" - some say. That does not take their pain away.

Would a person be bred only for donating organs his whole life to another person without

anesthetics? Or be born only to satisfy the needs of a sociopath just because this sociopath gives him

food and shelter?

I watched a film about that. Its name is "Never let me go" by Andrew Mcdonald and Allon Reich. It is

based on a book with the same name written by Kazuo Ishiguro. The story follows the path of a girl

who attends a school. The students are not allowed to have contact with the outside world. A

teacher tells the girl and her friends that they are actually clones of other people, and their purpose

in life is to donate organs. They struggle because they have to accept that fate. The girl seeks ways of

avoiding it. But the industry´s rules are well established, and she cannot do anything against them.

Many clones pass away after the third donation. All die at a young age. At the end of the film, it is

proven that the clones have a soul. I know that this is just dystopian fiction. But it brings us with a

question of morality where we find genuine people with souls being bred and raised healthy for

others to kill them. Symbiosis is the cooperation between species. If animal agriculture is a type of

symbiosis, slavery refers to the same.

Excuse Number 10: Expensiveness

"Veganism costs money.” That was said to me by tons of people who have bought an expensive

iPhone with money they didn´t have. Veganism is not expensive; that is relative. As I reported, the

people in La Guajira are likely the ones who cannot afford to buy meat or to produce it on a larger

scale to eat it often. The cheap meat that people often buy is unhealthy. Being vegan is not

expensive. It is the same as cutting out a few couple of things and replacing them. If you think

veganism is expensive, you likely have money to be vegan. People with no money have no other

choice than to be vegan.

Excuse Number 11: The Food Chain and Nature

The food chain maintains ecosystems. It regulates the population, and it is necessary for the survival

of species. Plants get their energy from the sun, herbivores from plants, and carnivores from

herbivores. In the end, we all are consumed by fungus. With each passage of energy, energy gets

lost. The food with the most energy for us are plants.

A carnivore kills because it needs to survive. It is natural; it is in its genes. He cannot know otherwise.

People say about it: “It is the way of nature.” Nature allows much stuff, like slavery, violence,

cannibalism, and pedophilia. Those are natural. That it is natural is no argument to justify what

people eat.

Most serial killers are proven to have hurt animals when they were children. That´s why

psychologists pay attention to that kind of behavior, and parents typically try to avoid that their kids

got to hurt something. All kids hurt animals, but we teach them otherwise. A lion teaches his son to

kill; that is why it grows killing. We don´t do that. Should we? We instead teach them compassion.

We apparently teach them to care about other beings and respect them. Don´t we? I would get

concerned if my child began to hurt rabbits just because it eases him, like food eases us.

But also, where do you see the word “natural” in forcibly inseminating animals, selectively breeding

them, exploiting them, hanging them upside down by the foot, and cutting their throat with a knife?

That has nothing to do with the food chain. Carnivores use their teeth to kill. How would a human kill

a giraffe using biological parts? Or even a cow? We would need tools to do so. It is easier to kill a dog

with our biological parts, but it is immoral for most people in westerns cultures to eat dogs. We have

canine teeth, and that doesn´t justify what we do. They are not that strong. Hippos got the most

prominent canines, and they eat plants; pandas have a system adequate to be carnivores, yet they

are herbivores. We do not need meat to grow strong and healthy. Just look at giant animals such as

elephants and rhinos and ask yourself about what they eat.

That humans have evolved means for me the next thing: To calculate the speed of a car in relation

to its movement and approximately decide if I can cross the street or not. Instead, we listen to a

device that slows our walking based on the change from one color to another. And we keep

ourselves there standing like idiots. If traffic lights were intelligent enough to calculate that

moment of crossing, then this technology is worth following and is not backing off our cognitive

processes as people say stopping eating meat would do. If the lights are not intelligent, we get

controlled by an inferior gadget that wastes our time, makes us more incapable, and thus affects

our lives; it is like governments.

 If our brains were evolved enough, we wouldn't need transit codes. It is natural to us. Instead, we

know that we need to obey the lights. We humans aren't following instincts anymore. We are

following imaginary orders and we have done so for tens of thousands of years. We need them. We

just need to make them more logical.

Several events from 1,6 million years ago split us from the rest of living beings. We began to have

artificial items to survive. We started controlling fire, a rare thing that was difficult to find but useful

for civilization's start. We needed to hold the fire firm because it could disappear took us to the top

of the food chain. With it, we could eat almost everything and burn almost everything. Thereafter,

we learn to produce our own fire, and the learning process of humans continued. Then we started to

be more and more aware of the world, cognitively evolving each time faster than evolution and

nature. We stopped associating sensations and instincts and started to ask ourselves questions. Then

we began to learn, and then to ask more questions, and then to analyze, and then more questions.

That showed us how little we knew when we were still doing instinctive actions. Then, the language

came; an essential tool that we have to understand, communicate, and survive. We started doing

agriculture thanks to the knowledge acquired. Still, we knew too little about what it could bring in

the future. This process took most of our time on earth.

The rest couple of decades, we came to some consolidations, some political organizations, codes,

rules, laws, and polis. And then kingdoms, empires, and nations. We were learning each time more

than before, perceiving, inventing, and discovering, using numbers and stories to solve questions

about chemicals, body parts, volume, brains, food, waves, medicine, art, sports, until we reached the

stars. And today, we still know nothing. At least, we know enough to act. That is civilization and that

is why we are not part of the food chain as we used to be.

Have you heard that quote that follows: "Man eats meat to be strong as an ox"

What does an ox eat Godforsaken?

Excuse Number 12: Tradition

In some cultures, it is morally right to treat women less than a man. In some others, female

mutilation is considered the right thing to do. In China, the Yulin Dog Meat Festival was a common

thing. In my culture, eating cows and pigs is correct, but dogs and cats wrong. It is true because

normality is a perception, and we acquire this perception through the years. Just because it is

expected, does it mean it is passable? I am glad China just forbade this festival.

For many of the national socialists, the speech of Hitler made sense. Talking about slavery, people

would often say: “Hey, if you don´t want to have slaves, then it is your choice, but let me organize my

economy the way I want. It is our economy, not yours.” It was customary for Nazis to have that

choice.

For many Americans, Trump´s words are absolute truths. Even when there is proof that during 1226

days in office, he has said 19127 false and misleading statements. He has told approximately 15 lies

per day during this time.

Six million people in my country likely believed that the peace accords of 2016 with terrorist groups

were going to "homosexualize" their children. The accords did talk about gender issues, yet, it had

nothing to do with promoting homosexuality. Some traditions drive people to think stupidly, and

they vote accordingly.

We need to think about what we believe because we might be inconsistent about some things, even

when it seems normal.

How many people don't protest against dog and cat consumption? Do those protesters protest for

more space for the dogs or better conditions before killing them as many say to make animal

agriculture passable? No. They protest for their lives.

In my country, the government one day decided to start hunting sharks down for their fins, and

many people protested, including friends of mine who are entirely in favor of meat consumption. I

support their unconformity with that decision, but I become the only one keeping animal

agriculture's unconformity. Where do the criteria rely upon to take one species' lives and spear the

ones from others? Why is it morally wrong for those people to kill whales, sharks, dogs, cats, and not

pigs? Dogs get to live because culture told us they are pets, even though they are also eatable. Our

biological weapons could kill a dog easier than a cow. The dog and the cow are the same when it

comes to senses. Both fear, both pain and both get stressed.

Some people are opposed to animal extinction, but not animal abuse. All existing wild animals make

up less than 100 million tons together, while farmyard animals are around 700 million tons. Farmyard

animals are not facing extinction. In evolutive terms, they are successful. Yet, they suffer extremely

more than animals facing extinction.

Moreover, animal agriculture is also the leading cause of species extinction, so what the fuck with

coherence.

You have to see within yourself and stop blaming tradition.

For example, Sudan just forbade the genital mutilation of women, which is fantastic for humanity's

progress. Even when something is normal, it needs to change when it is causing unnecessary trouble.

"You must unlearn what you have learnt"

-Master Yoda.

Excuse Number 13: Personal Choice

There are two ways of defining what a personal choice is:

A personal choice might be a choice that you do with your life. A personal choice could be to kill a

baby, or to steal. You can choose to punch someone or cheat. Those are personal choices.

The other definition can be that a personal choice is a choice that only affects the person taking it. In

the case of eating meat, it is not personal. You are hurting animals, causing climate catastrophes and

many people get affected by it.

Also, just because we have the option or just because we can, doesn't mean we should. We wouldn't

burn someone's house or decapitate a girl just because we can. One thing is the ability and the

option there is on the table, and another is the action we carry out. We have many options, and each

one has consequences. Rape is a choice. Slavery is a choice. Crime is a choice.

When you watch a movie, you will find many characters. And you can tell who they are, not because

of what they say in the film, but by the choices they make. They are facing constant problems. Their

choices reveal the figure's true character. I don't see a difference in reality. The choice of animal

products not only destroys the planet but also takes lives with no other concluded justification than

pleasure.

“It is not our abilities that show what we truly are… it is our choices”

-Albus Dumbledore portraited by Michael Gambon.

Excuse Numer 14: Vegaphobia

People often tend to disregard veganism just because the way some vegans act. Some say: “I wish

vegetarians cared about fetuses as they care about animals.” I care about avoiding suffering. That is all.

Abortion is controversial. And following the main idea of sentient creatures, when it is done right

before developing the ability to pain, aborting a fetus doesn´t bring suffering. The fetus doesn´t feel

any pain or emotion, until it reaches one stage of gestation. Therefore, it is to be compared with

parasites because parasites don´t feel pain nor psychopathologies. So, the removal of a fetus is

merely aesthetic and irrelevant.

Sometimes I asked myself: What about the future human being? Then I say: If we wanted to maintain

all possibilities of born children, then we better start having sex every single second and having all

the children that could possibly exist in reality. Not having sex will have the same impact as proper

abortion. A kid is not born, and no creature suffers. The abortion of the fetus is the same thing as the

decision of not having sex. Not having sex prevents many humans from their lives.

Many scientists are researching when exactly the brain of the fetus process the sense of pain. Some

have said that babies can feel painful sensations different from general touch from around 35-37

weeks gestation. Nevertheless, it still is unsure, and there must be some research in that area

because the act's relevance might depend on that fact.

I have to talk about the persistent vegetative state because I already fell on the topic. People in this

state are not sentient. Does that mean we can create laws to take their lives? We actually can, but

should we do it? First, we need to make a difference.

A child that is not born yet is a possibility and hasn´t lived. This being has never experienced animal

life and has never wanted to live. It has never been aware that it exists.

The person who got into a vegetative state had already had a life and had experienced it. This person

might have an aim to continue that experience. I don't know if you have as a human an intention to

continue your life in that circumstance, but I know that you didn't have that aim as a fetus. It has its

native survival mechanism but is not the same as perceiving life the way we do. Biological differences

between a fetus, a tree, and a person in a vegetative state when it comes to suffering are absent.

A fetus will implicate future difficulties in the sight of a mother and a father regarding their lives. It

will contribute to the massive population that is tearing apart the Earth. (Also, if everyone went

vegan, this massive population could not be problematic). Contrary, the person in that vegetative

state can be taking money from the person who is paying the machine that keeps him alive. But

being honest, he is not the responsibility of anyone. He is the responsibility of the doctors committed

to saving lives because that is their job. No one will have to take forced responsibility for this human

in a vegetative state. Human babies are not like giraffe babies. Human babies are useless and

helpless on their own. They are dependent, and that is why the law enforces parents to raise them. If

it is unpainful for the fetus and avoids future problems for the parents and the society, the law

should make abortion legal to be coherent. Killing the fetus has a direct positive effect on the life of

someone who finds it troubling. Killing the person in a vegetative state might have indirect positive

effects on the lives of the people who want this person dead. But if it remains to live, it exerts no

complication in their lives. The Baby will wield complications. This is now a social debate, rather than

a biological one. Each case becomes unique, and I do not have a proper answer. As far as we know, is

the same to do both acts.

Both are similar cases, not the same. We need to seek more solutions beyond that. Because in

theory, killing the person in a vegetative state have the same impact as taking the fetuses´ life.

Nonetheless, I would say that the human in a normal state could express willingness to be kept alive

if this event came. Here, is a legal debate. The fetus cannot tell that willingness, and that willingness

has never been in its head. That willingness could be expressed only by a conscious being, like born

animals.

Pregnancy is a process full of psychological charge for a female. Abortion will also be a solution in

these cases.

Everyone has a right of thought; no one should make someone do something against his believes. We

should not force a woman or a man to have a child if they don´t want to and when the action doesn´t

bring any harmful consequence.

Science needs to keep researching when exactly does the fetus feel pain. We can also address the

problem from another perspective. After legalizing abortion, we could fight to lower the cases of

abortion by making contraceptive methods more effective and implementing more sexual education.

So, if you want to fight against abortion, do it with sexual education and scientific research.

Now, that we support abortion does not discredit that veganism is commonly good for everyone.

Excuse Number 15: Property

Animals should not be property. A dog should not be property because one should not do whatever

one wants with a dog. We are rational beings.

Excuse Number 16: Farmers

Animal agriculture not only gives problems, but it also gives jobs, some in which butchers get

psychological issues, but the rest is merely softer.

In countries like mine, farmers are getting a living from these animals. Yet, if we see the example of

enslavement, its traders were also considered workers. For them, it was expected, and it was their

business. For many, it wasn´t even personal. Humans are different from animals, we understand that.

But as I said before, we feel in the same way by being sentient. The effects of human trafficking and

animal agriculture to each “active” when it comes to only senses, psychological disorders, and tissue

damage are precisely the same. If they weren´t, we would not already have rights recognizing animal

sentience in most of the countries.

I do believe that wee need to think about farmers because they must not end up jobless.

Farmers of extensive agriculture tend to get loans from investors and subsidies from developed

governments. Banks aren't likely to give loans to extensive agriculture. These farmers earn more

money from investors' loans than they actually sell, so they become dependent on the investors'

money. Farmer get money, even when it is not too much. At the same time, it shows how less they

actually get from what they produce. Those farms are also for self-supply, which means they eat

from their actives, becoming those passives in the end.

This creates a false economy because farmers have managed to organize the system to get those

subsidies in order to make their small businesses affordable. That is not the case in every country. It

happens so in Colombia, the United Kingdom, and many places through the European Peninsula.

We would need to work with governments to make the changing of diet safe for farmers. They are

doing something problematic and painful, but I think that doesn't make them bad people. We can

work together for farmers' economic activities, who would keep farming just without sacrificing.

Could they just not be able to change from selling meat to construct plantations? They would not be

losing money. There are a lot of plantations out there. They could become the basis of the change

that we want to see in the world.

Excuse Number 17: Pessimism

"The world ain't gonna change." - Some say in order to do nothing. Those are excuses to take no

action. We need to take action for our future if we want to do something. It won't change if we do

not act.

I always think about the current situation of my country. I get questions like: “What did our parents

do after the Narco-State war to make Colombia a greater place?” Nothing. This 20 years after that

event were crucial to build a first world country, and we still are stagnant in poverty, criminality, and

misery. My parents have always told me that I should be thankful because things were more awful 20

years ago, and also because we are not like Venezuela. Just because we had a more disastrous

situation and that our neighbor is worse than us, does not mean that our current situation is good.

The whole bunch of Latin-America is in the same process and people are still blaming the United

States and other things, when the fault was really of churches, conservative thoughts, selfishness,

and egocentric social tyrants. To change one country, it takes a whole generation. The United States

made a denazification process in Germany after the Hitler died, and Germany is today a great

country, thanks to the choices taken more than 30 years in the past. If we do not take choices today,

tomorrow we will not have good places to live. We cannot stay blaming the absent of deeds from

others, and start doing ours.

And to perform actions, we need to accept the problem. And to acknowledge the dilemma, we need

to understand. And to understand, we need education. Either we make things happen, or other

things will happen. If we as individuals don't change our customs, no one will. We cannot expect

others to save us. We need not only to stand and demand stuff from the governments but also, we

have to demand action from ourselves. If not, these things will keep happening. And more humans

will starve, and more animals will suffer. Because of that, we will face extinction. And it is not

problematic, actually. Extinction is just a fact. We could be the last generation of humans to live, and

nothing would happen. The thing is the people who are currently suffering. And the future

generations that will have these effects.

"Si ustedes los jovenes no asumen la dirección de su propio pais. Nadie va a venir a salvarselo"

(If you, the young, don´t assume the direction of your own country, no one will come to save it for

you)

-Jaime Garzon

We have a part to play. And we can choose to take part.

Excuse Number 18: Ignorance

There are those who know about this problem and ignore it. They don´t want to hear anything

related to it. They will keep consuming this food, ignoring the facts, and affecting the others in the

process.

Others deny science. Many of them are actually in power. We have witnessed how their nations

ended up due to the Covid-19. Aren´t we tired of people denying facts? Aren´t we tired of anti-

vaccine families who endanger their kids by lies? Or the Flat Earth Society that does nothing harmful

but keeps contributing to misinformation? Of those who go out and protest based on their interest

against the lockdown? These people get filled with imaginary lies. These lies are not the same as

imaginary ideas like Catholicism or Socialism. No facts confirm or deny the existence of God. No fact

deeply confirms nor denies the success of socialism. Many facts confirm the earth to be round and

deny that vaccines are dangerous. Vaccines save exaggeratedly more life than those they affect.

Earth has curvatures in our dimension, and we can see it with the cycles of the moon, ships going to

the horizon, or measuring shadows of objects in different parts of the world. Christmas trees are

more dangerous than vaccines. Still, people do not believe in the daily five hundred corona-deaths

per global city. The United States is tired of people criticizing the citizens who protest against police

brutality. Many Trump-supporters accused protesters of using unnecessary violence because of

police brutality. However, they will enter the capital using violence because they did not like

democratic results. They seem to hate facts. Misinformation only leads to ignorance, and ignorance,

not being harmful most of the time, might get dangerous when it reaches power, numbers, and

voice. So, please, you are allowed to debate about things and facts. Nevertheless, you cannot hide

the evident truth.

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

-Martin Luther King

Some people who stand against animal abuse know that Animal Agriculture is tearing apart the

planet and is a process full of macabre torture. They try to do something against it, but they love

meat so much that they won´t stop eating it. Some of these people invest millions of dollars to

produce meat without all its problems, including taking the animal´s life. It is possible with cell

reproduction, for example. Today, we have cell farms where scientists cultivate meat. Not all of us

are Bill Gates, who acknowledge that the future must be vegan. He is not vegan, having the same

possibility of being one. However, his help might enable future generations to consume meat

without having to sacrifice pointlessly. Another example is Peter Jackson and James Cameron that

are building cell-bred meat factories too.

Do we want to be on the side of history that got it right to avoid oppression, suffering, and

extinction? Do we want to be part of the problem or part of the solution? There is still a mid-point.

But eating meat in any form is the problem, not the mid-point.

At the age of 15, I started investigating a lot on the issue and realized that my Vegan sister was right.

Humans have a sense of logic, and when we connect that with our perception, we accept the truth. I

was a hypocrite, and my sister was not forcing anything on me. She was educating me and informing

me. We feel rage when others judge us. We do not like being told that we are doing things the wrong

way. It eases us when people tell us that we are doing everything okay. What I was doing to reduce

my footprint in the environment was nothing compared to what I ate. I know that meat is delicious,

and flesh is tasty, but I think that animals, the environment and my fellow humans are more

important than my pleasures.

I have met people who want to stop doing it, but it is hard for them. Acceptance is one step forward

every time. Now, the most challenging thing a human can have is discipline. Having the will to do

something or to stop doing something for the good is not easy. Like leaving cocaine, sugar, fats,

smoking, or alcohol, leaving meat can be demanding. For me, the best way to cut it off was

immediate. I used to love it. I was the kind of person who ate two happy meals a day. My favorite

dishes were chicken breast, legs, and wings. I loved sushi with fish. Beef, I used to have ¾ cooked. I

loved Octopuses. But it all changed in January 2016 when I was on a trip in Medellín.

On this trip, I suddenly decided to eat less meat each time. I saw all the stuff regarding this economic

activity, and I did not want to take part in this industry anymore. I didn´t want people suffering just

because I refused to leave something behind. On the table, I would have said that I could eat meat

the next day and not today. On the next day, I told myself that maybe on the weekend. On the

weekend, I did not eat either. I continue re-scheduling that desire until I realized I did not eat that

anymore. With time I cut off fish, then gummy bears, then eggs, then milk, and it continued. In 2015,

I was diagnosed with anemia and in 2017, one year being vegetarian, I did not have it more. I am thin

indeed, but I have been so for at least more than 15 years. I would have been a kid who always

weighted under the line. Now, I weigh well. I am healthy.

It is hard to stop doing something with which one grew. In contrast, it can also be a challenge to see

how strong we are when doing the right thing.

"It's not hard to make decisions once you know what your values are."

-Roy E. Disney

Excuse Number 19: Taste

I have an urge to talk about pleasure. Taste is pleasuring the same as lust.

Sexual feelings are natural processes that should have control when they get over the wishes of

others. What do I mean by this? When a person feels sexually attracted to another person is the

basic definition of lust. If a girl found another girl attractive and decides to have intercourse with her,

and it doesn´t affect anyone, what can be wrong with that? But what happens when our sexual

tastes conduce us to do things like rape or sexual harassment. There comes a personal choice in

which a person must decide if he carries out this action or not. Regardless of the choice he makes, he

will have an everyday healthy life. Why doesn´t this person choose the one in which no one gets

affected?

I find that the most complicated topic to discuss is not even animal agriculture but sexual matters.

Discussing sexuality is often a shame or uncomfortable. People tend not to do it. It sometimes feels

weird. Imagine even discussing things like rape, pederasty, or harassment; people often avoid those

conversations. They get instantly angry just by hearing it. This anger must go to the causes of it, not

to the people starting this conversation. I get infuriated by these same things; it is just that I seek

reason and comprehension when discussing. I ask you the same of you. Also, consider that victims

tend to never say something due to the same avoidance of conversations.

I do believe that the people of the MAP community (Minor Attractive People) or the NAMBLA (North

American Man/Boy Love Association) have attractions to minor people. They indeed have those

sensations. They have that taste. Pederasty might be a sexual inclination and a natural behavior

because nature allows it. Today, we know the consequences of this particular taste.

Kids cannot consent about many matters, including sexual, because sexual activities in kids produce

physical damage and psychological problems. They don´t understand sexual concerns until they grow

up. It harms them. Many of these affected kids will need professional help as they grow. Infancy is

where we develop our necessary skills and behaviors, and sexual abuse might affect this

development.

After an encounter with an abuser, kids might change their social behaviors, especially those with

confidence and trust, because people in the position of power, and many times close related to

them, inflicted carnal access. These consequences are devastating. People who endure such cases

will eventually develop low self-esteem, fear, shame, guilt, hyper-sexualization or sex-phobia,

anorexia, depression, psychosis, relationship difficulties, dependence, drug addiction, self-harm, or

attempted suicide—higher abuse of alcohol and drugs. Many kids easily forget the abuse, but they

will keep the trauma in their head for the rest of their lives. All of these, just because someone chose

his sexual taste over the well-fare of others. This sounds like a sociopath to many people. To me, it

sounds like nature. Such things happen, but we can choose to avoid it.

And there are more consequences. Other professionals include nightmares, sleep problems, changes

in eating habits, loss of toilet training, general chronic pain, hypochondria, or psychosomatic

disorders, sexual dysfunction, and gastrointestinal issues.

And other consequences explain genital and anal injuries, infections, and sexually transmitted

diseases.

All the consequences apply to grown-ups too, victims of sexual abuse.

Some people, somewhere, decided to abuse an ape sexually. Today, millions have acquired HIV.

because of that, 1.8 million children under the age of 15 had it in 2019 just because some individuals

of the human species had to satisfy his taste with an animal's suffering.

Consent is practically a right for grown-ups. People should not have access to anyone´s body without

any permission. This right aims to protect the welfare of a person. With kids, it works differently. The

government and parents have the consent of their children. Before we didn´t have this type of rights,

women and children were property in many communities. People could have said stuff like, “It is my

daughter, and I do whatever I want with her. If you don´t want to do that to your child, it is your

choice, but let me have my choices. Stop enforcing your ideas on me. Respect my choice.” Today, I

hear this argument a lot from parents, not in contexts of sexual abuse but violent punishment

contexts. I believe that you have a choice to eat an animal. The choice exists. But that choice affects

the environment, the farmyard animals, the wild animals, and the humans in many social, economic,

and political aspects.

Now that we are talking about consent, what about medical intervention? Medics have to save a life

and avoid as much harm as possible; in this case, the end can justify the means when a person

cannot decide. Out of compassion, we feel that this person might not want to die.

Also, we need to think that sometimes the consent of parents isn't the best decision. Many parents

deprive their kids of vaccines. Or they limit his liberties because of absurd punishments. Or they let

him eat whatever unhealthy food they think they have to eat. They let them eat meat. Kids don't

understand how these issues are destructive for them, yet they trust their parents. Parents are

actually the reason we – modern people - learned to eat meat. Parents' lousy consent also has

consequences for the kid because he might become sick, develop psychological problems, or die.

Why does this happen? Because of misinformation and family traditions in which obedience rules.

We need to get rid of problematic habits.

These people who have these dangerous sexual sensations should find professional help. There are

several ways to control one´s behavior. Re-habilitation exists, and in some countries, therapy is

useful. Before causing any harm, these people should treat themselves. If not, the law must be there

to enforce legal actions and to make sure it doesn´t happen again. In cases where a person is not

retrievable, life imprisonment with full isolation is useful. But it is not as accurate as denouncements.

Penalties for extreme crimes must be high to reduce that activity and people need to denounce. The

biggest problems comes when people do not denounce.

We know that nature allows it, but we can do something about it.

Pleasure is enjoyable, and it should be a right when it doesn´t destroy lives. Sex is a pleasure as

well as taste. If someone feels bliss through mutual sex or eating something that didn´t horribly die,

pleasure becomes something worth experiencing.

Animals haven´t shown us any sign to allow us violent access to their bodies. Their behavior indicates

the opposite. They show fear and opposition when entering the slaughterhouses. They manifest

nonconformity when their children are taken away. They don´t say that we aren´t allowed to access

their bodies because we do not have the same scientific language structure to communicate.

Nonetheless, we clearly understand the signs of an uncomfortable being. It is something one sees

and hears. Animals scream, though, a lot in those places.

You may have used many of these excuses. But you got to be reasonable and understand how weak

they are compare to what they do.

“Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn't mean they're lost forever."

-Charles Xavier portraited by Patrick Stewart.

The Solution: Supply and Demand

Why do I hate drugs? The expression "Drugs don't have anything wrong" is tricky. Some drugs are

unhealthy. But it should be the choice of each person what to do with their bodies only if it harms

nobody else, but themselves. I actually do drugs; I consume alcohol and sugar. Sometimes I drink

coffee. The problem comes within the illegal industry of narcotics, which is responsible for

criminality, rape, corruption, extortion, kidnapping, robbery, slums, murder, and other crimes. To all

of this, drug trafficking is transversal. When we buy these drugs, we support this underworld created

by prohibition.

Decades ago, my country was the most dangerous place globally, with Medellín as the global capital

of assassinations. Drug consumers in the US and Europe were supporting these terrible things by

buying. The issue is not horrible today. Many traffickers have become peaceful people, actually.

Many became a part of the society in many countries, doing illegal stuff, without harming. We all

know almost one person connected to this profession. I even got to appreciate some. That does not

mean that the problem disappeared. It shows you how irrelevant it is to have drugs in illegality.

I am glad that my country got rid of the significant issue. Still, the profits from cocaine are shooting

up.

If governments regulated drugs, legally, then it would be a positive thing. Getting high is not terrible.

It is a choice, and it doesn't harm anybody. It is so sad to see how many imprisonments occur

because of people interacting with a nonlethal object. We could end the unnecessary war. But it

currently isn't in many parts, and we cannot pretend to keep investing in things that are having

catastrophic consequences upon people. We cannot wait for the government to do something while

we have the power to stop it by not consuming. Drug consumers can demand the legalization of

drugs to their government while not improperly buying them. And governments could make the path

easier by doing something effective about it.

The same happens in animal agriculture, if we keep paying for the meat, they will keep producing it,

and it is going to keep affecting society, the economy, and the environment. People have to stop

producing meat, but we can make it stop by buying less until then. Also, it will be the best solution

because if governments prohibit meat and the consumption goes anyway, we would get meat

cartels and other stuff. Today, we already have guerrillas owning animal farms. So the most effective

power is to stop consuming.

Of course, more industries contaminate the environment, and we should work with their solutions

without waiting for our government to control them through us. Buying fewer clothes, using less fuel

by transportation, avoiding plastic, recycling, not doing fracking, and using clean energies that don´t

come from burning coal or natural gases. Most of these practices are contaminating and wasting our

resources, even the ones that are vital to our life. Animal agriculture´s impact is the biggest, and we

could stop it just by letting something out of our plate.

"With a great power, comes a great responsibility"

-Ben Parker in Spiderman. Written by Stan Lee.

There was a French documentary named "Demain" directed by the so-talented actress Mélanie

Laurent and film director Cyril Dion. It talks about a ladder to sustainability, and it goes as followed.

Stop meat consumption at first. Crops can be harvest in cities avoiding the deforestation they cause.

To do it, we need energy that we must obtain from renewable ways that will last and will have no

negative impact on the environment. We need money for that energy, so we need to make

the countries' economy grow with sustainable options. Each country has different paths to do it, and

together it could create a good market. A good economy needs reasonable regulations without self-

interest and corruption, and those politics and those politicians are only going to be found in places

that are well educated—educated enough for people to choose to make reasonable decisions. In the

end, the most significant investment a country could ever make is education. 

"In Colombia, education is sometimes considered a luxury, not a human right. And it's not a priority in

the agendas of many leaders."

-Shakira

I have a concern about the fact that my country has a lot to do with animal agriculture. I am concern

by how many fruits Colombians have that are quite delicious, and no other country holds. Those are

actives that many people would consume that are proper for the environment. Crops are economic

activities in which no being excessively suffers. Instead of basing ourselves on oil and animal

agriculture, I guess that Colombia should look for other options. In Germany and the United States, I

find funny the size and taste of avocados; while in Colombia and other Latin American parts, an

average avocado size is almost the head’s size, and it tastes way better. We have a lot of fruits and

foods from plants that are unique and delicious. Most of our typical dishes are based on plants, with

some animal parts added. We add rice and potatoes to almost everything. We use a lot of corn flour,

oat, corn dough, beans, plantains, guascas, greens, quinoas, chia seeds and coconuts. I have tried

vegan versions of our food, and they are surprising.

Right now, 18.02.2021, a pound of Avocado costs more than a barrel of oil. Colombia just became

the number one exporter of avocados in Europe. This event happened months after I wrote the

previous paragraph which means that it was not an awful idea after all.

In Colombian restaurants, the best options for beverages are always natural fruit juices. We are used

to having bananas, tree tomatoes (which I hate), maracuyá, papaya, lulo, peach, guayaba, lychees,

granadillas, watermelons, melons, pineapples, apples, curubas, oranges, mandarines, uchuvas,

nisperos, pitahayas, guanabanas, borojoes, feijoas, and tamarindos. Each one has a different flavor

and some unique effects on the body. Other parts of the world have less than half of these fruits. We

have a reputation for our coffee—the second softest coffee globally and the third world´s exporter,

after Vietnam and Brazil. When I was on the Amazon, I saw fruits I didn´t know existed. I saw the

copoazú, asaí, umarí, aguaje, camucamu, and the guaraná. Corn is the main ingredient for almost

everything we like to eat. Aguardiente is mostly loved by outsiders. Colombia is the second exporter

of roses, after the Netherlands. Just imagine how much money we could earn by legalizing cocaine,

an industry whose prohibition is indirectly the leading cause of criminality worldwide. We owe too

much money and have to pay pensions, and we could finance them with the transformation of an

industry. We could make the narco industry more peaceful and commercial at the same time.

Colombia is the world´s second most biodiverse country, after Brazil. 95% of all emeralds of the

world are produced here. I read all this information and I ask myself, why do we have to depend on

oil and animals? We cut that industry and feed the entire population. We could be ahead in the Paris

Agreement. We could be a leading example for other countries.

Another Solution: Rights and Duties

Black skin is different from white skin, yet the cognitive processes of people with white skin are the

same as those of people with black skin. That is why a black human, and a white person could be

lawyers, do economic activities, study or have loans from banks. Laws regulate those activities due to

the comprehension both have in these activities. Cognitive processes between humans and animals

are not the same (speaking from a human older than two years. Before that time, the mental

processes are likely similar). We could own a house or sign a contract; we comprehend that, and we

are about that. We have a right to access information and a right to education. Animals don´t care

about those. They don´t understand facts; they don´t understand information nor contracts. They

don´t understand education. They only perceive reality. My point is to contrast the differences

between them and us. Homosexuals and heterosexuals both feel pain and suffer; both feel love. That

is why laws protect both from being submitted to torture or servitude. The reason is not because

they are humans but because they feel pain. Animals and humans have that same sense, they do

care about suffering, and I don´t see them with the same protection.

Animals have urges. For example, chickens have hierarchical social structures, just like apes. These

structures function with a few individuals. That helps them cooperate, and this organization is in

their genes. They don´t develop those structures when they are piled up with hundreds and

hundreds of their fellow mates. That creates a lack of communication between them, absence of

trust, and their behavior will become socially violent. We are depriving them of the needs they have.

These needs don´t cause harm to anybody. But not having them cause damage to them.

We have current rights that protect animals. And they are, I believe, the most incoherent rights we

have ever created since Americans added the 13th amendment to the United States Constitution.

Animals' rights are not for all animals, being all animals able to feel pain. Many countries do

recognize sentience, like Colombia, United Kingdom, or Germany. If we recognize that they feel, why

do we keep inflicting unnecessary pain?

Is it logical to give an animal a right? Those might not be rights for animals, more than duties for

humans concerning animals. Animals don´t possess rights. If humans weren´t here, they would keep

their natural lives. But many people with rights don´t know they have rights, just as animals don´t

know they have rights. Babies don´t and many native communities do not even know they are part of

another territory. That is what happens with imagine realities. They are flexible. Animals can have

rights. They won´t care about having them. But they will care about the effects of not having them.

We have separated ourselves from them in many ways. And we keep evolving, separating us more.

But that separation is not an excuse for speciesism.

Some animals' current "rights" can include every sentient being.

"The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no

moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal

compassion is the only guarantee of morality."

-Arthur Schopenhauer.

Other Solutions: Meat and Science

There have been exciting solutions for those who cannot get rid of meat because it tastes so good

that they cannot care less about problems. Memphis Meat, for example. They bring delicious and

healthy beef harvested from cells instead of animals. It is expensive, in any case. Nevertheless, the

research continues to get it to everyone's table and to make it affordable for everyone's pocket. One

meatball costs around five hundred to 2 thousand dollars. Richard Branson and Bill Gates were

investing in these solutions that might avoid all the problematic meat brings on.

Companies like Beyond Meat or Impossible Burger are making huge efforts to make plant-based

meat taste like actual meat. I have tasted the results and they are very promising.

Anyway, is our taste more important than all of those problems? Haven´t we had enough

desertification, all the water consumption, and all the fires on the amazon? A meal is a matter of

minutes. For it, it takes a long process of wicked deeds, massive amounts of resources, and the

whole life and suffering of an animal. 

"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on

the murder of men"

-Dmitry Merezhkovsk.

Conclusions

I write these words during a pandemic. A person somewhere in the world decided to eat meat, and

we all paid the consequences. A government in the world chose to shut someone up, and almost all

nations paid the consequences. Some people voted for incapable liars, and their nationals paid the

consequences. Many citizens didn´t want to obey measures and skip rules, and others paid the

consequences. Many bosses were putting their incomes before lives; the same shit happened. Is this

particular population guilty of something that is done in every site of the world? Something that we

are taught as children or that we grow with. Environments and deeds that we see as common

produced this global problem. Coronavirus was the reaction of our diets, our ignorance, our votes,

and our interests.

We need to look forward to thinking about sustainability, believing in the future, in the best assets

the world has always had: Its people. Genuine better deeds are to be done to get good karma or to

get better consequences. If we change our every day, we could reverse our extinction and ensure our

survival.

Imaginary orders are essential for civilization. No species with that many individuals can function

without them. Maybe, intelligent societies will live without them in the distant future but now is not

the time. Our survival depends on the belief of each one in reality and compassion. But there are still

those who are not consistent or who doesn´t believe in our imaginary way. Rights and social states

are examples of effective fictive orders. Agriculture and capitalism are essential for our society, but

they need to evolve. We have to continue developing this reality that only exists in the dimension of

consciousness.

My sister did have no scientific evidence to exclaim the following knowledge, all the same, for me, it

makes sense: We are getting bad karma because of the horrible things we have been doing to other

sentient beings, even when it had been no longer necessary. Spiritually speaking, wrong actions have

harmful effects—the Metaphor for this Text.

Scientifically speaking, what we are doing to them, is causing reactions that harm us and lead us

towards extinction.

The earth has had five mass extinctions, and the sixth, which began with the agricultural revolution

in the Neolithic (with the Agricultural Revolution), will have been caused by us, the "wise man." And

we could stop it; we have the power. Don't let pleasure and money take that possibility away.

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

― Mahatma Gandhi

Sustainability needs three factors to work: Society, economy, and ecology.

Ecologically speaking, animal agriculture is the worst that could be happening.

Economically, it gives the money in a false economy and still produces future economic problems. A

pandemic or natural disasters such as fires, flood and more presence of hurricanes worsen the

economy.

Socially, it brings a lot of mafia into the world. Terrorists groups inside my country and slave traders

in others are profiting from animal agriculture as their main resource or as they excuse to illegally

occupy lands. We could end starvations with the cut of animal products.

Something most powerful than rights, and nations, is education. With the right civic education, each

human being can act with intelligence and knowledge. I believe that we can learn intelligence. We

need attention to teachers and the students, so they trust science and experience.

"Run to the rescue with love and peace will follow"

-River Phoenix

If you want to eat meat, I cannot judge you. I don´t consider you to be right nor wrong. Those

conceptions don´t exist. I just feel you a person who acts in reality. And this action has a

consequence. In this case, if you eat meat, you are not the wrong person, but you would be

supporting animal abuse, future pandemics, and contamination. That is all that is happening. That´s

all you do. When history books talk about how indifferent the people were in a time of climate

catastrophes and animal suffering, they will be referring to us.

Me included because I still eat ice-cream. And I plan to stop doing it. I am selfish and a hypocrite. I

am human, but during Millenia we have tried to change our behaviors towards peace. The next step

is the second agricultural revolution.

There is no good person nor bad person, just people who do things that cause things. We are just

entities doing stuff. But I want to ask you about who you think you are. And this answer can only be

answered by deeds you do and not by words you say. Do you want to be the reason someone

innocent suffers? Or do you want to be part of the solution?

In my country, the law applies differently to three groups: Indigenous Jurisdiction, Special jurisdiction

of Peace (People from the FARC groups), and military jurisdiction. They are gathered in the special

jurisdictions, apart from our jurisdiction: ordinary jurisdiction. We can put the sentiency in a special

jurisdiction and create an organism that regulates our behaviors. An Organism that protects animals

from tissue damage and psychological disorders. Briefly, we could put some articles on the

constitution. An voila: We have achieved something worthy of superiority, compassion, ethic, and

progress. In reality, we would achieve peace.

An animal is someone who breaths, not something to decapitate.

How you deal with these facts says who you are.

The world can be responding to us, or judging us, or punishing us. We are sowing, what we have

been harvesting. We need to change our actions, and the reaction will change by itself.

We all live under the same 10km layer, a few in the thermosphere falling around the world, and soon

maybe some will live comfortably on Mars. The same. It is our universe. We need to take care of

ourselves as sisters and brothers. And we shall harm no others.

"Everyone has to find what is right for them, and it is different for everyone. Eating for me is how you

proclaim your beliefs three times a day. That is why all religions have rules about eating. Three times

a day, I remind myself that I value life and do not want to cause pain to or kill other living beings.

That is why I eat the way I do."

-Natalie Portman

The Future: Peace and War

Rights and imaginary realities are not enough because they are unreal. You can go against them, and

many times without any legal consequence. They are not laws of the universe. If meat becomes

illegal, the traffic of beef will emerge from the depths of corruption. We have lived that with slavery.

We still see humans being trafficked. But meat and slavery are not like abortion or weed. Consuming

meat and owning slaves exerts pain, physical and psychological damage to creatures. Beef causes

contamination. Abortion and weed do not possess such consequences. Mafias appear because there

is a market for them. And many mafias do legal stuff.

I think that someday we might help all the species and spear them from natural suffering as we do

with ourselves every day. We had tried to avoid natural death for thousands of years. Humans have

reached ages that people from more than a hundred years would have never imagined. All thanks to

money and compassion. We can apply the same to other species. In the future, we might be able to

control predators. We have a tool called science, and another called knowledge. The duty of

maintaining ecosystems would be performed by us and not by the food chain. We would be smart

enough for that. We would then be able to make sure that our imaginary order inflicts no suffering,

not even the suffering caused by nature. Because we have proven that we can transform nature, let

us just be a peaceful transformer instead of a destructive one. Humans haven´t acquired the

possibility even to want that yet. Because compassion won´t bring profit and because compassion

doesn´t taste good. And it sounds absurd, but I see it as the best enlightenment of the homo sapiens.

“Lo más bonito que pueda tener una persona, es lo que esta puede hacer por los demás”

(The most beautiful thing a person could have, is what this person can do for others)

-Clara Inez Bruce Cantor.

Sententia

Books:

Newton, Isaac (1687) “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.”

Harari, Yuval Noah (2011) “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.” Harper.

Harari, Yuval Noah (2016) “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.” Harper.

Lashley, Denisse (2018) “Clean Food for Clean People: The Formula for Maximizing Our Health, Energy, Longevity, and

Beauty, While Minimizing Our Environmental Impact.” Lulu Press, Inc. Google Books.

Bogueva, Diana. Marinova, Dora. Raphaely, Talia. Schmidinger, Kurt. (2019). “Environmental Health and Business

Opportunities in the New Meat Alternatives Market.” IGI Global. Google Books.

Ouseley, S. G. (1901) “The Gospel of the Holy 12.”

Haden, S. C., & Scarpa, A. (2005). “Childhood Animal Cruelty: A Review of Research, Assessment, and Therapeutic Issues.”

The Forensic Examiner 14(2), 23–32.

The Bible.

Asamblea nacional Constituyente. Constitución Politica de Colombia de 1991.

Congress of the Confederation. (1787) Constitution of the United States.

Webster, Noah (1888). “Webster´s Dictionary.”

Oppenheimer, Andrés (2013). “¡Basta de Historias! La Obsesión Latinoamericana con el Pasado y las 12 Claves del Futuro.”

Debolsillo.

Gates, Bill (2021). “HOW TO AVOID A CLIMATE DISASTER I THE SOLUTIONS WE HAVE AND THE BREAKTHROUGHS WE

NEED.” Alfred A. Knopf.

Expositions:

Mateos, Anna. Rodriguez, Jesus. (2010). “La dieta que nos hizo humanos.” Museo de la Evolución Humana, Cátedra Tómas

Pascual Sanz-CENIEH.

Documentaries:

“Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret” (Netflix Version). Produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, Kip Andersen Keegan Kuhn. First

Spark Media, Apian Way, A.U.M. Films. June 26, 2014.

“Earthlings.” Directed by Shaun Monson and narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. Nation Earth. Sep 24, 2005.

“Forks over Knives.” Directed by Lee Fulkerson. Virginia Films and Entertainment. May 06, 2011.

“Unity.” Directed by Shaun Monson. Narrated by one hundred famous actors, athletes, authors, businessmen, entertainers,

filmmakers, military personal and musicians. Fanthom Events, SpectiCast, The Ochard. Aug 12, 2015.

“Demain.” Directed by Ciryl Dion and Mélanie Laurent. Move Movies, Mars Films, Mely Productions, France 2 Cinéma. 11

nov, 2015.

“Before the Flood.” Produced by Fisher Stevens, Leonardo DiCaprio. Appian Way, RatPac Documentary Films, Insurgent

Docs, Mandarin Film Productions. National Geographic Documentary Films. Oct 21, 2016.

“What the Health.” Produced by Joaquin Phoenix, Kip Andersen, and Keegan Kuhn. A.U.M Films & Media. Mar 07, 2017.

“Food, Inc.” Directed by Robert Kenner. Magnolia Pictures. Sep 7, 2008.

“Domain.” Directed by Christ Delforce. Voiceless. Mar 19, 2018.

“My Octopus Teacher.” Directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed. Netflix. Sep 4, 2020.

“Seasperacy.” Directed by Ali Tabrizi. Netflix. March 24, 2021.

“Dominion.” Directed by Chris Delforce and narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, Sia, Kat von D, Rooney Mara and Sadie Sink.

March 29, 2018.

Speeches:

Thunberg, Greta. Speech at UN Climate Change Conference. Madrid, Spain. 11 dec, 2019.

Phoenix, Joaquin. Speech in the Academy Awards Ceremony. Feb 09, 2020.

Series:

“Die Deutschen.” Gruppe 5 Filmproduktion. 26 Oct, 2008.

“Inside Bill´s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates.” Davis Guggenheim, Beth Osisek, Steven Leckart. 20 Sep, 2019.

„The Simpsons, Season 7: Lisa the Vegetarian.” Directed by Mark Kirkland. Oct 15, 1995.

“How to Become a Tyrant.” Produced by David Ginsberg, Jake Laufer, Jonas Bell Pasht, Peter Dinklage and Jonah Bekhor.

Estatuary Films. 9 July 2021.

“Human: The World Within.” Produced by Mariah Wilson and Rebecca Cameron. 7 May 2021.

Web-Videos:

Geographie – simpleclub. „Subsistenzwirtschaft und Marktorientierung-Landwirtschaft in Entwicklungsländern 1.“ Youtube.

03 May, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpCQwT-zDzk

Geographie-simpleclub. „Intensive und Extensive Landwirtschaft - Landwirtschaft in Industrie- & Entwicklungsländern 2.“

Youtube. 20 Nov, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac-yPfzVL-c&t=1s

Geographie-simpleclub. „Cash Crops und Food Crops - Landwirtschaft in Entwicklungsländern 3.“ Youtube. 06 Aug, 2017.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV2VW3ZwjBI

NasDaily IG. “NAS DAILY: WHO I BLAME FOR COVID-19.” Youtube. 16 may, 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGki7hc1CZI

Schneider, Dean. “Part of The Lion Pride-Dean Schneider living with Lions.” Youtube. 1 Mar, 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jenVMnOi2uA

Earthling Ed. “Coronavirus is just the start. Something far worst is coming.” Youtube. 27 Feb, 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnQL-brI-9I&t=5s

Earthling Ed. “Meat Eater Decides To Challenge Vegan Activist.” Youtube. 27 Jan, 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag0c930-FNQ&t=589s

Earthlings Ed. “You Will Never Look at Your Life in The Same Ways Again| Eye-Opening Speech.” 14 Abr, 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3u7hXpOm58

Kurzgesagt- in a Nutshell. “Why Meat is the Best Worst Thing in the World.” 30 Sep, 2018. Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxvQPzrg2Wg&t=1s

Kurzgesagt- in a Nutshell. “Milk. White Poison or Healthy Drink?” 26 Jan, 2020. Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oakWgLqCwUc

Kurzgesagt- in a Nutshell. “Is Meat Bad for You? Is Meat Unhealthy?” 09 Jan, 2019. Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouAccsTzlGU&t=534s

TEDxTALK. „The Power of Plant-Based Eating I Dr. Joanne Kong I TEDxUniversityofRichmond.” 21 Nov, 2016.

TED. “The next outbreak? We´re not ready I Bill Gates.” 3 Apr, 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

Vox. “The Collapse of Venezuela, explained.” 25 Ago, 2017.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1gUR8wM5vA

TED-ED. “What causes an economic recession? – Richard Coffin.” 15 Oct, 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwaCg7Gwtzw

TEDxTALK. “Every Argument Against Veganism I Ed Winters I TEDxBathUniversity.” 26 Apr, 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byTxzzztRBU

Web-Pages and Research:

Gates, Bill (2013) Gates Notes The blog of Bill Gates. “Future of Food.”

https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Future-of-Food

Memphis Meat. https://www.memphismeats.com/

(2018). United Nations Environmental Program. “What´s is in your burger? More than you think.”

https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/whats-your-burger-more-you-think

Linda Heber, Hannah. (2018) Real. „Das Nachhaltigkeitsdreieck-Leitbild für ein besseres Leben.“

https://www.real.de/nachhaltig-leben/nachhaltigkeitsdreieck/

Chengeer Lee, (2018). Medium. “The Universal Law of Cause and Effect.”

https://medium.com/@chengeerlee/karma-the-universal-law-of-cause-and-effect-32e21621d4c4

(2005). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Rights.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/

Johnson, John (2019). Medical News Today. “Weed: Can it kill you?” https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327126

Alyssa Rege (2018). Becker’s Hospital Review. “Top 10 conditions affecting Americans”

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/care-coordination/top-10-health-conditions-affecting-americans.html

Teresa Carr (2017). Consumer Reports. “Too Many Meds? America´s Love Affair with prescription Medication.”

https://www.consumerreports.org/prescription-drugs/too-many-meds-americas-love-affair-with-prescription-medication/

(2009) Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “Position of the American Dietetic Association: Vegetarian Diets.”

https://jandonline.org/article/S0002-8223(09)00700-7/fulltext

Sanders, Bas (2028) Faunalytics. “Global Animal Slaughter Statistics and Charts.” https://faunalytics.org/global-animal-

slaughter-statistics-and-charts/

Animalclock. https://animalclock.org/

Roser, Max. Ritchie, Hannah (2020) Our World in Data. “Homicides.” https://ourworldindata.org/homicides

Learish, Jessica (2016) Cnet. “The 24 deathliest animals on earth, ranked.”

https://www.cnet.com/pictures/the-24-deadliest-animals-on-earth-ranked/

Ramsey, Lidia (2016). Business Insider. “These are the world´s deadliest animals.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-deadliest-animals-2016-9?r=DE&IR=T

(2013). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “Global Study on Homicide” http://www.unodc.org/gsh/en/data.html

(2011) Science Daily. “Babies distinguish pain from touch at 35-37 weeks, research finds.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110908124136.htm

Elwood, Robert. Barr, Stuart. Patterson Lynsey. (2009). ScienceDirect. “Pain and stress in crustaceans?”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159109000409?via%3Dihub

Mathews, Karol. Kronen, Peter. Lascelles, Duncan. Nolan, Andrea. Robertson, Sheila. Steagall, Paulo. Wright, Bonnie.

Yamashita, Kasuto. (2014). Wiley Online Library. “Guidelines for Recognition, Assessment and treatments of Pain”

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jsap.12200

Campbell, Ian. (2018). 660 News. “New study says the human brain is ´lazy´´”

https://www.660citynews.com/2018/09/19/new-study-says-human-brain-lazy/

American Psychological Association. (2009). Science Daily. “Dogs' Intelligence On Par With Two-year-old Human, Canine

Researcher Says.” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090810025241.htm

Ettinger, Jill (2019). Livekindly. “JAMES CAMERON AND PETER JACKSON TO BUILD VEGAN MEAT FACTORIES IN NEW

ZEALAND” https://www.livekindly.co/james-cameron-peter-jackson-vegan-meat-new-zealand/

(2014). World Health Organization. “World Report on Violence and Health”

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241564793

Ortiz, Maria Isabel. Rios, Julian. (2020). EL TIEMPO. “Más de 250 líderes han sido asesinados este año, según

Indepaz.” https://www.eltiempo.com/justicia/investigacion/lideres-sociales-cifras-de-asesinatos-subieron-en-el-

2020-pese-a-la-pandemia-547693.

Nagesh, Ashitha ((2017) “The harrowing psychological toll of slaughterhouse work.” https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/31/how-

killing-animals-everyday-leaves-slaughterhouse-workers-traumatised-7175087/

(2020) HIV.gov. „The global HIV/AIDS epidemic” https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/global-

statistics#:~:text=Number%20of%20People%20with%20HIV,(%3C15%20years%20old).

Articles and Reports:

Holzer, Boris. (2016) „Gefangen in der Filterblase?“ Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Yildiz, Ahmet & Emhan, Abdurrahim & Bez, Yasin & Kıngır, Said. (2012). “Psychological Symptom Profile of Butchers Working

in Slaughterhouse and Retail Meat Packing Business: A Comparative Study. Kafkas Universitesi Veteriner Fakultesi Dergisi.”

18. 10.9775/kvfd.2011.5494

Pereda Beltrán N. (2010) Actualización de las consecuencias físicas del abuso sexual infantil. Rev Pediatr Aten Primaria.

2010;12:273-285.

Gale Catharine R, Deary Ian J, Schoon Ingrid, Batty G David. IQ in childhood and vegetarianism in adulthood: 1970 British

cohort study BMJ 2007; 334 :245

Castedo, Antia. (2019) “Incendios en el Amazonas: quién se beneficia de la explotación económica de la Amazonía

brasileña.” BBC News Mundo.

(2020) “Más de una tonelada de pescado contaminado con mercurio fue decomisado en Putumayo.” Redacción Nacional.

(Colombia)

(2020) “Con 250 Asesinatos, termina un año para los lideres sociales.” EL TIEMPO.

(2020) “Sudan criminalises female genital mutilation (FGM)” [*]. BBC News.

Harrabin, Roger (2019) “Plant-based diet can fight climate change-UN.” BBC News.

Abrams, Abigail (2019) “How Eating Less Meat Could Help Protect The Planet From Climate Change.” Time.

BBC Ciencia (2010) “El feto no siente dolor a las 24 semanas.” BBC News Mundo.

BBC Salud (2011) “Cuando el feto comienza a sentir dolor.” BBC News Mundo.

Hassan, Jennifer. (2020). “Tributes pour in for British rail worker who died after being spat at by man who said he had the

coronavirus.” The Washington Post.

Kessler, Glenn. Rizzo, Salvador. Kelly, Meg. (2020). “Fact Checker: President Trump made 19,127 false or misleading claims

in 1,226 days.” The Washington Post.

(2020). “Reporte FCDS Deforestación amazonia colombiana 2020.” Fundacion para la Conservacion y el Dessarrollo

Sostenible