All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The protective emphasis is not a law of nature; it comes from the stories we tell about nature.
Just as nothing we do has the direct potential to cause nearly as much animal suffering as eating meat, no daily choice that we make has a greater impact on the environment.
Our minds and hearts are well built to perform certain tasks, and poorly designed for others. We are good at things like calculating the path of a hurricane, and bad at things like deciding to get out of its way.
We dramatically overstate the role of science deniers, because it allows science acceptors to feel righteous without challenging us to act on the knowledge we accept. Only 14 percent of Americans deny climate change, which is a significantly lower percentage than who deny evolution, or that the earth orbits the sun. Sixty-nine percent of American voters – including the majority of Republicans – say that the United States should have remained in the Paris climate accord.
What we don’t wrestle we let go of. Love isn’t the absence of struggle. Love is struggle.
She was unhappy, although unconvinced that her unhappiness wouldn’t be someone else’s happiness. She felt unfulfilled desire – profound amounts of it – but presumably so did every other married and unmarried person. She wanted more, but didn’t know if there was more to be found. Not knowing used to feel inspiring. It felt like faith. Now it felt agnostic. Like not knowing.
Everywhere you looked, there it wasn’t.
So much sublimation: domestic closeness had become intimate distance, intimate distance had become shame, shame had become resignation, resignation had become fear, fear had become resentment, resentment had become self-protection.
The sum of those no ones was the King of the Universe.
Most people behave badly when wounded. If you can remember the wounds, it is far more possible to forgive the behavior.
And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other’s pain, and being present for it.
But I knew that there couldn’t be pockets that enormous. In the end, everyone loses everyone.
His words fell through him, trying to find the floor of his sadness.
I found it, and now I can’t look for it.
She had been married to your father for twelve years. I had known her for fifteen years. It was the first time she told me she loved me.
It’s possible you can’t afford to care, but it’s certain you can’t afford not to care.
That’s what’s at the bottom of all of this, and what each person has to ask himself. How much suffering will you tolerate for your food?
Children bury their dead parents, because the dead need to be buried. Parents do not need to bring their children into the world, but children need to bring their parents out of it.
Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I’ve discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film.
But I didn’t know, just like I didn’t know it was the last time Dad would ever tuck me in, because you never know.