North of Polaris

shared: 2/12/2026
under: just chatting

grappling with goodness

Hello again readers, this is the first time a blog will be posted as the website is live! Much excitement in that, and I hope you enjoy the general layout of things. I could spend this blogpost talking more about updates (like the unfinished hobbies tab), but I think that I will save that topic for a larger update post.

As for this, I really just wanted to write down a few thoughts that have been on my mind as of late. I, like many people I assume, would like to live my life being the best person I can be. My latest moral quandry has been on the topic of diet. I care deeply about the environment and protecting it, so the most logical thing for me to do, in my understanding, is to graduate to a plant-based diet. Yes, I have all of the usual arguments against it. I like the taste of meat! A lot of my cultural dishes revolve around a meat base! There are other, larger contributers to climate change, so why should the onus fall on me?! And some of these arguments are more important to people than others, but I had to sit down and deliberate what truly was more important to me.

I sat bargaining with myself for a while. I've had plenty of satisfactory meat replacements before, and in my head I can imagine them satisfying the chewiness, the saltiness I crave. Could a bowl of haleem be as good without goat meat? Could dahi vada taste as good with plant-based yogurt? Could I go the rest of my life without a perfect gulab jamun? Well I think I could use soy curls to replace the tender meat in haleem, and I think that an oat yogurt could be disguised by the many chutneys used to top a dahi vada. The gulab jamun...the rasmalai...I think that any other version would be insulting, to be honest. I am very particular about those sweets, but I don't have them all too often, so should they really be driving my overall decision?

I don't think that this diet demands perfectionism. I feel a sort of guilt about it - I'm not really choosing it specifically for animal welfare, though I believe that the current farming system is inherently abusive to animals. Maybe if I was a better person, I'd be vegan. But I'm not, or at least I'm not there yet, and I have a few selfishnesses I'd like to satisfy. So I grappled with these thoughts as follow. Well, milk is bad for me in general, given I'm lactose-intolerant and all, so this category of food should be eliminated anyways. Red meat is carcinogenic due to its high content of heme iron, so I can reason that this is okay to cut out. And I had recently learned some pretty sad facts about how chickens are kept, for both meat and egg-laying purposes, so I suppose chicken and eggs can go as well. I guess I've arrived at a plant-based diet anyways. I would still like to go fishing every once in a while, and I would still like to have a gulab jamun or kulfi should it be offered to me. I think that this is satisfactory in regards to harm-reduction.

Speaking more about the argument that individual harm-reduction is futile in comparison to corporate harm-reduction, I have actually felt pretty frustrated by this talking point for a good time now. I think that it's nihilistic to just...give up. Yes, the vast majority of pollution is caused by a few fossil fuel and cement companies at the top of the chain. Yes, the average individual could never be the primary driver of climate change as we are seeing it occur. But I don't think that these, albeit logical, arguments absolve us of the responsibility we have to simply try. I think the individual should worry about consumption reduction, ethical consumerism, and animal welfare. Apathy is not an appropriate response to despair! This being said, these topics should also never be approached from an angle of puritanism. I believe first and foremost in harm reduction, and nobody ought to be shamed for circumstances outside of their control.

My conclusion to this stream of thoughts: I hope that I am able to keep to my semi-pescatarianism and that apathy goes out of vogue.

gootbye for meow,

v ⋆｡°✩