Prompt: Take Action – On becoming vegan
Music: Andrew Bird – Sovay
And etc: What is going on?

I guess I have a unique perspective on this post because I actually am a vegetarian. I decided to become one when I was eight (though I didn’t completely cut out chicken until sometime in middle school) after receiving a copy of The Love of Life, a book distributed by the Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation, at my Chinese school. My decision was thus largely galvanized by a Taiwanese propaganda pamphlet.

Looking over the book again, it’s actually shocking to read (and see; there were plenty of pictures) the scenes laid out in these dark tales. Meateaters always met brutal ends, whether by vomiting to death or getting attacked by dogs that managed to escape from the cooking pot. Most of the meateaters were not excessively cruel; they were just unenlightened as to the correct way of life, and their deaths were seen as a matter of karma. The other main theme was that of setting animals free. The greatest praise was reserved for a person who used his life savings to rescue an animal from the kitchen rather than spending the money selfishly (my cynical, economics-trained self now wonders whether paying the animal seller simply reinforced the cycle of animals raised for food, but this didn’t strike me at the time). I am not a Buddhist, and the specifics of the book may no longer hold water for me, but I knew at that young age that I loved animals, so the overall message made a lot of sense.

To address the prompt: I can definitely see why people would go vegan. There are plenty of reasons to do it, whether for morals, the environmental, or health, and sometimes I wonder whether I shouldn’t. I try to avoid leather products, and I like soy milk and tofu, but I don’t think I could give up milk, ice cream, or cheese (I’m an ovo-lacto vegetarian, which means I don’t eat meat or seafood, but I do eat dairy). Ultimately my reasons for being a vegetarian are not that strong. I haven’t eaten meat for so many years that the thought of chewing a juicy beefsteak is actually sickening, and the idea of munching on something that was recently walking the earth like you or I still seems fundamentally wrong.

There has been a notable drive in the media lately toward more meatless diets, using meat almost as a condiment (like chicken sprinkled on salad) rather than a main course. This reflects a larger trend: the reasons for vegetarianism/veganism are becoming more and more practical. Anecdotally, at least, fewer people are switching over because of vague moral reasons like mine, and more due to hard environmental or economic facts (e.g. more than 1/3 of all fossil fuels produced in the United States go toward animal agriculture; being a vegan is more effective in cutting down on these fuels than owning a hybrid car). It’s an interesting transition, and one that gives credence to the idea that people do things more out of necessity than will.

Prompt: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Music: Bob Dylan – Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright
And etc: A rakish young chap

I’m currently reading Tolstoy’s What Is Art?, which seems to relate perfectly to this prompt. In Chapter III, Tolstoy briefly outlines the history of aesthetics, including a number of theories of beauty. Some of the more interesting ones:

• Hemsterhuis: Beauty is that which gives us the most pleasure, and what gives us the most pleasure is that which gives us the greatest number of thoughts in the shortest time. Because beauty gives us the greatest number of perceptions in the shortest time, it is the highest notion to which man can attain.

• Kant: Beauty is an object perceived without any notion of its utility.

• Fichte: Beauty is the perception of the infinite in the finite.

• Hegel: God manifests himself in nature and art in the form of beauty.

• Taine: Beauty is the manifestation of the essential characteristic of any important idea more completely than it is expressed in reality.

Tolstoy himself was impatient with these metaphysical theories and thought that art (and therefore beauty) should act as an expression of social conscience – in other words, he was against “art for art’s sake.” Theories of beauty can indeed get extremely theoretical and vague. While I’m myself partial to the Kantian conception – even those who admire “utile” things like smoothly running factories or computers admire them for something more than their efficiency alone – I’ll try to ground this discussion with a list of some things I find beautiful.

These include: The sky-blue spire of the Lowell House bell tower, as seen from Broadway Street on a clear day; torrents of water rushing down a street in the midst of a sudden summer storm; brainbow photos of the hippocampus, which color neurons in more than 90 bright colors; Chopin’s nocturnes and valses; red geraniums in quiet windowsills; passages of lyrical brilliance, as in Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise”; and exceptionally polished ideas that suggest a radically new way of seeing some aspect of life always taken for granted.

My point is that beauty doesn’t have to explain itself. It can be natural or man-made. It stands apart from manipulation by government or citizen, and refuses to be leashed to ideology. It does not ask to be admired. It resists explanation or categorization (though attempts to describe it can in themselves be beautiful). Yet we continue to seek out beauty, to need it in some fundamental way, and it is this continued love for the impractical in a utilitarian age that is, in the end, perhaps the most remarkable thing of all.

Prompt: A Plight of Insanity? Surely Not!
Music: Pixies – Where Is My Mind?

Wow, guys – I’m really feeling the pressure to say something new, brilliant, incisive, or original. (Although according to Thomas Carlyle, the “merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.” I wonder how many times he was busted for plagiarism.) To compensate for my lack of greatness, here is a picture of Napoleon:

Anyway, I am very excited to begin contributing, because if there’s one thing the Internet needs more of, it’s blog posts by angsty college kids ;)