tl;dr: on fish and the unexamined life.

My original foray into veganism was due to health concerns, but as I got into it, I watched more than my fair share of agenda-driven Netflix documentaries like Forks over Knives, Game Changers, and the like.

Plus, it was difficult to deny the cruelty associated with factory farming, not to mention the environmental impact.

For me, it became not just a health maneuver, but also a way to live an intentional life that was in line with my ethical outlook.

I’d like to think that I never got too evangelical about it. My wife and kids still eat meat, fish, and the like and we can still have family dinner (which gets raucous for another reason).

However, the other night I watched Seaspiracy on Netflix and it has riled me up ever since.

To be fair, as this article points out, the filmmaker definitely has his own agenda, but the evidence presented in the film is quite damning.

I am not naive enough to think that abstaining from eating fish, which is the <spoiler alert> the conclusion that the documentarian reaches, is going to save the oceans.

However, as Socrates famously said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Today, the ethical choice to abstain from eating fish makes sense and while it will not solve the problem, at least it won’t be adding to the problem.

It’s the starfish story:

A man was walking on a beach and saw a young boy throwing objects into the ocean. He approached the child and noticed that the young lad was picking up a starfish and gently tossing it back into the ocean.

The man said, “Young man, what are you doing?”

The child replied, “These starfish have drifted up on the shore and they need water to live, so I’m saving their lives by putting them back in the ocean.”

The man said, “You must be kidding me! Look at all these starfish. There must be hundreds of them. How in the world can you save them all, and what difference could it possibly make?”

The young boy reached down, picked up a starfish and tossed it into the ocean. He then turned to the man and said, “It made a difference to that one.”