Computers as Liberators

1676: 

We pick up information from all over the place, but these days mainly from the Net. Let’s say you’re worried about there being something missing in the food you’re eating these days. What if you generally felt ill or heavy or queasy all the time? Let’s say you have ‘conventional eating habits’ and then, suddenly, you stumble over a web site or some information that suggests a radical change. It occurs to you to try something a bit different.

         

Let’s say you’re used to those mild but annoying stomach aches and that it might be ‘guilt-gut’, and you know you get it from eating rubbish food and animal-based foods. So, you’re determined to try something different, keeping your meals safely plant-based. Of course, you mightn’t know at the time that a vegan diet will solve this problem for you, but once you try it, once you’re into ‘clean plant food’, you find your ‘machinery’ running smoother. What then? You aren’t stupid, you know the old conventional animal-based foods and fast foods are there waiting in the wings, ready to take over again. Their taste still attracts. You know they could seduce you back. You also know the new regime of foods will lead onto other things. You’re torn between immediate satisfaction and re-educating taste buds for the sake of your own long term benefit.

If you’re moving towards veganism you might have been reading up on it, getting familiar with food ideas, filling your head with positive sounding information. And yet, still, you’re quaking in your shoes. But you decide to take the plunge - eat a whole week of vegan food. You find you’ve got a stomach full of powerful food. “At last!” Now you feel optimistic. You say to yourself, “If only I can keep this up”.

Avoiding tempting animal foods, eating only plant-based - the very simplicity of the idea is intriguing. As you move into veganism, you see how pessimistic the old food regime makes you feel, as if you’ve given up, as if the food you’ve been eating not only clogs up your system but blocks your escape. The old meat and dairy diet is like a prison, like a great constipater. And you wonder why it has taken so long for the penny to drop. Perhaps you regret all the damage that second-rate food has done to you, and also how complicit you’ve been in your conventional eating habit and involvement in the animal abuse thing. You see, at last, what those weird vegans have been on about for so long. You begin to feel thankful that your ‘information machine’ has introduced you to a whole new world, a whole better way of viewing your life.

         

Computers, ah yes, they make us feel lucky to be alive today. They provide a conduit between ourselves and what is going on beyond, what has happened in the past and what is about to happen in the future.