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The very first learning that I got in my career is that I need to learn to embrace change and adapt to the changes if I want to survive and grow in my career. The only thing that is constant is change, and we have seen enough examples of software giants disappearing overnight simply because they could not keep up with pace of the emerging markets. Because they could not adapt to the change. But this is not just true in terms of career. It is also true in every sphere or life. Humans have evolved and survived by embracing the changes around us for millions of years. But right now we are facing the biggest existential crisis of all times in the history of the mankind and if we want to survive this threat we need to adapt and change our old ways of doing things and get over the habit of giving the same excuse “I have always done it this way”.
The crisis I am talking about is the culture
of carnism, eating flesh for no
reason at all against all odds and against our natural disposition and all we
need to do in order to stop this is to go back to being normal. Whether we deny
it or accept it, the truth is that our old eating habit is not the best thing
and we know for sure it is not only destroying the planet, it is unhealthy and
it is extremely cruel to the living sentient beings we share our planet with.
And when I try to think what could possible reasons that motivate people to
continue this behavior. I realized that the major culprit was the lack of
awareness among the masses, but a very close second reason was our rigidity to
examine our own destructive actions and their potentially harmful consequences.
We try to easily defend our actions in the name of culture, tradition etc. But
what is it doing to us as a society. We have strong defense mechanism if we
find something conflicts with our belief system. For instance, if you confront
somebody who does not refrain from eating animal products despite knowing how
cruel it really is, they can give some pretty unreasonable arguments to prove
their point. One such absurd excuse I came across was “Why do you care so much
for animals; Plants have feelings too. Will you stop eating the plants now?” or
“It’s our culture to celebrate occasions with eating non vegetarian food”. How can this meaningless killing be condoned
and above all celebrated as culture in our societies? If we have been doing
something in a certain way it does not necessarily mean that it is the best
thing. We need to be open to new ideas and possibilities that might be hiding
under the name of tradition or culture.
We need to understand the
consequences of the lifestyle we have chosen for ourselves. The change in the
perspective is extremely important and it does not stop at what you eat. What
cosmetics you use and what you wear might also we equally cruel. Several
prestigious cosmetic brands practice extremely torturous animal experimentation
and mutilate these innocent creatures. Toothpaste has bones, the shampoo is marked safe after it is tested on
the eyes of rabbit. Besides we steal
their skin, furs and feather, cocoon or tusk to make products like leather,
ivory jewelry, fur coats, silk or belts etc. and still choose to stay
blissfully apathetic and oblivious to these choices are wrecking unimaginable
havoc on the lives of these animals.
However, we can change this and
stop this madness at an individual level. The first step to embrace this change
in lifestyle is to acknowledge that we are not perfect, that some of the things
that we do are not necessarily the right things. Instead of resisting the
change by coming up with illogical arguments we need to open our minds to new
possibilities and entertain the idea that there can be a better way. We have to
wake up from our deep slumber of living
an ignorant lifestyle to being mindful and making informed decision. Our reason
to make the change in our current lifestyle might be varied from ethics, compassion,
health, environment but the benefits are immense and far reaching and it is a
win-win situation for all. And there is no reason to underestimate the
contribution of an individual. The award winning documentary “Cowspiracy: The
sustainability secret” states that by being a vegan or vegetarian a single
person can save 1100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grains, 30sq ft of
rainforest, 20lbs of CO2 and 1 animal’s life every single day. The statistics
are mind boggling and so the contributions of every single one of us. I feel so
empowered if I think I alone have saved the lives of 60 animals in last 2
months by going vegan. We can also stop causing unnecessary pain to these
voiceless beings by changing our shopping patterns and rather than covering ourselves with
animal skin etc, we can start opting for
some cruelty free products https://www.beautywithoutcruelty.com/ and moving away from products like http://www.peta.org/living/beauty/companies-that-still-test-on-animals/
.
Gradually a lot of people are
waking up to this fact and taking action. The most amazing example is China,
which has decided to take an initiative and pledged to cut its consumption of
meat by 50%. We are seeing famous celebrities like
Arnold Schwarzeneggar and James Cameron urging people to eat less meat. According
to another organization “Mercy For Animals”,
we are murdering 400 million less animals annually. That is because people are
gradually waking up to the change is so imminent. We have seen famous celebrity Leonardo
D’Caprio making several award winning documentaries to raise the awareness of
the people so that people like us can come to know, how harmful our current
habits are and how we can make a transition to a better way of life. The one in
which we can all grow together and live in the state of harmony. Be sure to
check out the amazing documentary like “Forks over knives”, “Cowspiracy” ,
“Vegucated” and “The earthlings” to understand why the change is not only
necessary it is imminent. All I am asking you to do is to catch up with pace or
you will find yourself on the wrong side of history.
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