lifestyle

Why You Should Be a Vegetarian – I’ll Let Someone Else Do the Talking

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Photo: Zoha N.

I have been a vegetarian now for long enough now to consider it a permanent life decision. People ask me why all the time and I brush it off to avoid having a lengthy, serious conversation. I don’t enjoy conversations where I feel I am defending my choices or trying to convince someone else how to live their life.

I won’t do a lengthy post trying to convince my readers to give up meat either. Instead, here is a 4 minute TED talk that gives a great introduction and proposes a 70% solution for those who fear committing all the way – “Weekday Veg”. Hopefully this short video will pique your interest and lead you to further research the benefits of becoming a vegetarian.

Today Will Be Remembered as the Era When Technology Ruled Our Lives

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Photo: Chris Metcalf

Technology was originally created with the intention of saving us time. The cotton gin was created to save time processing cotton, the steam engine to save time over using horses for power, and computers to save time on calculations. But where is all this free time? It seems that people are busier and more stressed than ever before.

Despite the incredible pace of technological innovations in the last several decades, it has been ineffective in actually saving us time. An incredible number of tools are available today that have never been available before, but we don’t know how to effectively use them to reduce stress and provide more leisure time. It is not a limitation of the technology, rather our training on these technologies lags far behind – we just don’t take the time to learn how to use them effectively!

The technologies that dominate our everyday lives
In the grand scheme of things cell phones and email are new technologies. The majority of people got their first cell phone less than 10 years ago and email maybe a couple years before that. Now we are combining the technologies – chances are if you bought a new cell phone in the last year or two it now has email on it. The downside to these rapid technological advances is that we haven’t had time to properly learn the best way to use them.

Have you ever been talking to someone in person when their cell phone rings? How is this person supposed to respond? It is wonderful that you can be reached at any time of day by your friend 10,000 miles away, but at what cost? The call disrupts your face-to-face conversation for a digital one. Text messages are less obtrusive but the same principle applies – they dictate our lives and take us out of the moment.

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