Vegan visions from the Surge team
Continuing the theme of our recent video - How my vision changed on a vegan diet - in which Surge co-founder and co-director Ed Winters shared how his perception of the world changed, here are a few more personal accounts from other members of the team.
Ryuji // Video team
I used to love other animals so selfishly. I’d pet dogs because it was fun for me and I’d go to the zoo because it was fascinating to me. Today, I still love animals, but all I want is what’s genuinely best for them. I see them as fellow earthlings with whom I share the planet, and I don’t feel like my life is any more important than any of theirs. Some people tell me that’s extreme, but I personally find it to be such a fulfilling way to see the world and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
@peacebyvegan
Tati // Project Manager
When I was about 18/19 I was dying of anorexia pretty much. I was not in hospital, but I probably should have been. I really thought that protein had to come from animals and that I had to eat it to be skinny and sporty and look athletic. I really believed that I couldn't get that from plants, and my mom and I would literally make fun of vegans especially being in a Mexican culture where you just have to eat animals. And then I realised, not only could I get the protein I needed from plants, also it’s not about eating something that will make me look a certain way but it's just eating something that does not contain cruelty. My perception changed completely. I do think going vegan saved me because it gave me a purpose in life, and that made me want to live again instead of just dying in that cruelty obsessed, meat obsessed world.
My second realisation was that everything on this planet is so interconnected through our food systems: the social rights of the immigrant Mexican workers in the US that suffer from the food system; the farmers in Africa making different ingredients that go into animal products; or how we're destroying the Amazon to produce soy for cows in the US. We're all suffering from the consequences of a devastated, wrongly constructed food system. Changing the food system can help so many people on the planet because in the end we're all a network, and all depend on each other.
@tativrp
Joe // Video team
I would call it a gradual epiphany for me, over the period of time that I have been vegan I have felt gradually more and more free, free to look at the world with my eyes open, free to love animals without so much guilt, free to live with the values I’ve always had but without the hypocrisy, free to represent these values in our work.
@cruelvegan
Andrew // Media & Education Coordinator
I look back on my life before veganism as a simpler, more blissfully unaware time. I was free to indulge in everything the world had to offer. Scrambled eggs in the morning. Wearing my favourite leather shoes. My mum’s Indonesian cooking (an important link back to my cultural heritage). But at what cost? It wasn’t that I no longer enjoyed any of those things, but rather I understood that they came with consequences that I’d simply ignored… all because that’s what was normal.
My veganism is nothing more than the result of living in line with values I’d always had. I couldn’t take the life of an animal myself, nor would I have had the right to do so needlessly. I do not eat the flesh and secretions of animals because it would be unjust when I am lucky enough to be able to thrive on a plant-based diet. I do not wear their skin, fur nor feathers, because it is a violation of their rights to not be used and exploited.
With eyes now unblinkered, my world after veganism can be a very bleak one. What was once normal is now horrific, and the anger and frustration is real. But rather than let it poison me, I’ve learnt to use that to fuel my actions. The pursuit of a just world for non-human and human animals has given me a purpose that I never had before. So for all my pre-vegan blissful ignorance, I was also completely lost.
Now that I’m a father, it’s even more important to me to live my life in line with values I’ve held my entire life. How can I look my daughter in the eye and teach her to be a morally just person if I’m not doing that myself. The world is in a bad state, largely because of the way we humans live our lives and consume - for the sake of every living being on this planet, this has to change.
