Harm Reduction

As you may have gathered, my stance on buying things is pretty much assume-something-objectional-was-involved-in-making-this-item-available. I try to strike a healthy balance between making sure my money doesn't support practices I don't approve of and not getting obsessed with the latter or beating myself up over small purchases. Right now, I do this by making an effort to buy local/organic when it's not too inconvenient, not eating meat (although I've had things with rennet and gelatin in them since last November, which I'm now trying to be more vigilant about), and buying most non-food objects secondhand (exceptions for underwear and books or CDs where I want to go out of my way to support the creators).

Until recently I've been getting a lot of my protein from dairy products (even though I do think it's immoral to keep animals in captivity in order to harvest product from them), but I'm starting to get uncomfortable with that. When I first cut out meat, I was still of the attitude that it would be way too inconvenient to cut out all animal products and I shouldn't make myself worry about that, too. But now I'm starting to feel like that's more doable than I thought it would be. I don't know if I'll ever totally cut out animal products (I like macarons, damnit--and it's not like I get to eat them often anyway), but even just contemplating it and making an effort to cut back has made it easier to leave things like cheese and milk alone (even though I used to love both).

The difficult things for me will be getting enough protein in the first place (I get sick of nuts and beans), but the worst will probably be the baked goods I can probably no longer have (I'd really been wanting to experiment with making madeleines) and the green tea lattes I suspect won't work so well with almond milk. I could be wrong about those, though. I don't eat that many sweets, and I tried substituting all the animal products out of the scone recipe I've been using. They turned out alright--not as fluffy, but not bad. Maybe good enough--we'll see how I feel after I've made them this way a few times. Vegan muffins work pretty well, at least. And I doubt I'm the only person who's ever wanted delicious baked sweets without animal products--some more Googling around will probably lead me to more vegan sweets than I thought could possibly exist. They might just be enough.

After all, vegetarianism isn't difficult because of a lack of variety. The inconvenience is social in nature (unless you're anemic or you have some other health condition that makes it more difficult than usual for you to cut meat from your diet)--other people like to eat meat, so that's what's widely available when you go out to eat and what most people put in meals at their homes. I suspect the same applies to veganism--although it's probably as easy as it is today due to industrial technology. I don't think it would be nearly as easy to grow everything you needed to get a sufficiently nutritious diet by yourself, in one climate zone. Maybe within my life we will shift back to an economic situation where a healthy vegan diet is near impossible due to economic restrictions. But for now, I can eat vegan, so it seems like the right thing to do.

That said, I haven't decided how much I'm going to push myself yet (specifically, I'm feeling resistant to giving up macarons -__-;). I don't think "vegan" will ever be a good word to describe me since I'm also not willing to give up the leather and wool things I've got even if wearing them does help support the idea that the practices involved making those things are okay (they were mostly bought secondhand, though not all). In fact, looking into the secondhand leather thing made me realize that although I do want to cut animal products out of my diet, what motivates me to do that isn't quite the same thing as what seems to motivate most vegans--I don't actually mind using dead animal parts as clothes, or making use of dead things in general. What bothers me is excessive or frivolous murder of animals (i.e. where pretty much all of the meat in developed countries come from, since most people could avoid animal products and still eat a healthy diet fairly easily if they were so inclined) and the inefficient resource use that goes into such practices. Not wasting a perfectly useful item that an animal has already been killed to make is more important to me than not promoting the use of leather (as long as I can avoid directly encouraging the production of leather by not buying things new.)

Another thing that seemed too troublesome before but now feels reasonable is boycotting Monsanto. I've printed out a list of companies that lobbied against GMO labeling in California (and companies that supported such measures) and plan to take it grocery shopping. My mom seems open to at least trying to avoid companies that are against GMO labeling and/or (most likely "and" XD) knowingly use GMOs in their products. 

One thing I still refuse to worry about is fabric sources when I'm getting things for cosplay or any other sewing I do (or American Apparel's cotton >__>.) That still feels way too overwhelming (excuses, excuses.)

Anyway. Hooray for damage control, even if all it does is make me feel slightly more in control of the impact of my lifestyle. Minimal as the difference the effort makes is.