of course, i'm the radical one (or worse: the killjoy) when i actually say the above to real people in actual meatspace.

'no thank you' is the appropriate response to an invitation to murder, and silence is the appropriate response to witnessing a murder. 'i'm not a murderer' is a bit of a faux pas.

#vegan

In more seriousness, I struggle with the above a lot. Most (well, all) of my non-vegan friends are all right. I like them. They're cool, funny, witty, happy, lovely, and many things I aspire to be.

But it's so hard to not feel conflicted. When you've correctly reached the moral stance that maybe murder is bad, it's hard to put on a smile and say 'oh no, you go on ahead at the barbecue, I don't care, I'll just have the sad salad'.

But I do care. That's the thing. It's fine for me to make my own moral choices when it comes to, I don't know, how much I want to reap the benefits of American cultural imperialism by watching the newest hot film or not. But murder? Abstaining from murder is a _moral imperative_ that's rather a bit more serious.

But if I were to treat my beliefs seriously—actually seriously—I'd be a stark raving mad lunatic shouting at people to stop stuffing murder victims down their throats like holy shit what are you sadistic fucks doing?

But I like having friends, so I treat my rather sane and reasonable belief of 'murder is bad' less than a hundredth as seriously as maybe I should.

#vegan

How do other #vegan people deal with the intense conflict of genuinely believing that animal abuse is bad, but also being a somewhat sociable person who gets along in modern society?

Because I kind of don't. If I think about it too hard, I become like Chidi from #TheGoodPlace.