It's not your fault

Several years ago, I went vegan for six months, because I wanted to be conscientious. I was fortunate enough to exit that unfortunately ascetic lifestyle after realizing:

It’s not your fault you like meat.

Humans have been eating meat long before I was ever born. Long before any of us were ever born. We’ve been eating meat for millions of years.

If I crave it, it’s not my fault. Sure, I can try to fight it. I can resist my hardware. But if I give in, it’s not my fault.

It's not your fault the entire premise of biological existence is feeding on other biological beings.

It’s not your fault you’re confused living in a strange and artificial world.

It’s not your fault you like sweet and salty foods, even if to an excessive degree.

It's not your fault you've been conditioned to seek external sources of pleasure under the rule of consumerism. We are impressionable beings, and you were born into a world where small-minded humans before you have already strictly defined all the things, and how too you should see it.

It’s not your fault, during the endless dregs of your day, you flick ceaselessly through Twitter/Instagram/Facebook searching for something new.

It’s not your fault you're tired, sad, helpless, misshaped, sick, lost, fatigued, confused.

Because there is no you. There is no human individual. What we know as human is topological; is emergent. It’s the interconnected network of many of us. That's what makes you. One human individual is an alien concept altogether—one which is thoroughly unexplored, and ultimately undefined.

It’s not your fault you’re the result of history before you; that your thoughts, ideas, principles, fantasies, and desires are sometimes, maybe even often, culturally out of line.

It’s not your fault you’re trapped in a world you didn’t design.