A vegan diet has allowed me to live in harmony with my goal of compassion for all beings.  By eating grains directly, instead of feeding them to livestock, I leave more food for others, more room for wildlife, and pollute less.

I am healthy.  My sense of taste has been enhanced.  And I maintain my weight without effort, year after year.

Start on the road to balance with nature.  Eliminate meat from your diet and reduce eggs and dairy foods.  Your body will thank you for it.

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PART ONE  — THE SETUP — COMPARISON TO SMOKING

This blog entry’s not about smoking, but I find it helpful to start with smoking, because it’s an example of a bad habit that’s hard to break. Did you ever smoke?  Okay, why?  Was it because it got you high, kept your hands busy, and helped you stay skinny?  Was it because your friends smoked and it was cool?  Did you have a parent rebellion trip going on?

If you’re like most of the people reading this, if you did start smoking you’ve stopped by now.  What made you stop?   Was it dirty, expensive, and inconvenient?  Were you concerned for your health, or for those around you?  Did you just want to break the addiction?

How did you stop?  Did you go cold-turkey?  Or was it a gradual phase out?  Whatever it was, you stopped.  And you’re feeling better because of it.

PART TWO — THE TRANSITION — MAKING A BIG CHANGE

So, Blog Reader.  Are you up for it?   What would it take for you to make another change in your life that could be just as hard as quitting smoking?  What would be worth that effort?

Here’s the deal:

It’s key to your physical health

It’s key to your spiritual health

It’s key to the health of the planet.

I know you don’t want to feel alone in your decision.  Well, you don’t have to stand alone.  You’ve got Einstein, Ghandi, Shakespeare, Aristotle, Plato & Socrates in your corner.  They all stopped. Stopped what?  Stopped eating meat, that’s what.

PART THREE — THE DECISION — GO VEG!

Okay.  Close your eyes.  Take a deep breath.  Open them again.  Now click here:

15 reasons

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This is the concept of the servant leader that I spoke of earlier in the day.  My speech was called: Satyagraha for the Business Leader:

What is Satyagraha, and what does it mean for business leaders?
Has the business world anything to learn from the philosophy that enabled Ghandi to lead a popular movement that freed India from British rule?  The term Satyagraha was made from two Hindu words:  Satya, or Truth, and Graha, which means Firmness.  Satyagraha, therefore is Firmness in Truth.   It is a way of creating change by embodying the truth.  It’s a way of prevailing over others– not by force, but by force of example.

Now, compare the principle of Satyagraha to the principle of leadership given by this writer:  “You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”  It’s a quote from the #1 bestseller business book, Good to Great.

Good to Great is an analysis of how good companies become great companies.   Jim Collins, the author of the book, said that the leaders of these companies achieved spectacular results by blending extreme personal humility with unwavering resolve to achieve their goals.  Jim Collins originally called this leadership style “servant leadership” but later changed it to Level 5 leadership.   Ghandi originally called his leadership style passive resistance.  But the words “passive resistance” did not work for him just as the words “servant leader”  didn’t work for Collins.  Ghandi’s passive resistance wasn’t passive just as Collins’ leaders weren’t servants.  So Ghandi actually had a contest to name the movement, and this was the way the term Satyagraha was adopted.

If you are just looking at what it takes to make a great leader, it would seem that both Ghandi and Collins are in agreement:  A person who combines clear-sightedness with perfect self-mastery and enormous resolve, can do almost anything.  That is the power of Satyagraha.  But there is a point where the worlds of Ghandi and Collins diverge.  And the crucial point of difference is values. Some of the companies that Collins called “great” were NOT great.  Companies like Philip Morris and Kimberly-Clark generated a lot of money for their shareholders.  But, when it comes to values, they fall short. Let me read you a quote from the interviews Mr. Collins conducted with executives from Philip Morris and Kimberly-Clark.

In wrapping up my interview with George Weissman of Philip Morris, I commented, “When you talk about your time at the company, it’s as if you are describing a love affair.”  He chuckled and said, “Yes.  Other than my marriage, it was the passionate love affair of my life.  I don’t think many people would understand what I’m talking about, but I suspect my colleagues would. “  Similarly, Dick Appert of Kimberly-Clark said in his interview, “I never had anyone in Kimberly-Clark in all my forty-one years say anything unkind to me.  I thank God the day I was hired because I’ve been associated with wonderful people.  Good, good people who respected and admired each other.”

Okay, Kimberly-Clark is the number one driving force behind America’s love affair with soft and squishy bathroom tissue.  They are the creators of the Mr. Whipple ad campaign:  “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin.”  Do you know why Charmin is squishy?  Because its made with virgin paper pulp.  And Kimberly-Clark is–even to this day–proud to advertise on their website that Kleenex contains 100% virgin pulp.  Most of this pulp comes from Canada, where they are  clear-cutting  ancient  Boreal forests to make this stuff.

So this is the problem in the business world.  We have great people with tremendous leadership skills.  But what direction are they leading us in?

How do we know if we are–in fact–leading in the right direction?  Ghandi devoted his life to the pursuit of Satya, or Truth.  He wrote a biography called  My Experiments with Truth.  In this book, he said that all his life was devoted to a search for truth because Truth is God.  So, Ghandi was a “seeker” in the classic sense of the word.  But he was not content with merely seeking the truth.  He was also a doer.  He wanted to LIVE the truth.  And, for him, this meant devoting his life to leading India  back to the simplicity of her ancient civilization.   Maybe under other circumstances, Ghandi would have been content to live his life as a seeker, as many Indian gurus and swamis have.  But circumstances compelled him to become a leader of his people.

Today we are facing our own crisis.  And it is not just the financial crisis. No, the crisis I am talking about is much worse.  Our world is warming.  Our oceans are rising. And we, for the moment, at least, stand powerless to stop it.

Not that we need a reminder of more bad news, but over the last two years, scientists from over 60 countries have participated in a research program called “The International Polar Year.”  This $1.2 billion dollar program funded  more than 160 multi-disciplinary research projects.  The final report was released on February 25th.  It says that ice over both poles is melting much faster than scientists had thought possible.  And the rate of ice loss in Greenland is increasing as well.

Many of us urgently feel the need to stop global warming.  But it’s easy to feel powerless when we think of the task ahead of us.  How do you choose what to do every day when there is no path before you?  How did Ghandi, for example, decide that he would march 240 miles from his ashram to the sea to defy the British salt tax by making his own salt?  He thought the British would kill him for this, which would have ended his campaign.

This is the power of Satyagraha.  It is the power of the will to live the truth, regardless of the consequences.

Now I’m going to tell you a personal story of something that did a lot to deepen my will.  Although it had nothing to do with freeing India or stopping global warming, it taught me that everyday people like me and my Dad can summon the strength to fight these forces that are far greater than we are.  Now notice I didn’t say “fight these forces and win.”  Because we didn’t win.

Eight years ago, my dad was diagnosed with a very rare form of melanoma.  It was growing, not on his skin, but in his sinus.  And Dad and I fought that disease.  Dad fought his disease in order not to leave my Mom and the rest of his family.  And I fought it because he asked for my help.  For the next three years, I went to medical libraries, pored through listings of clinical trials, wrote to doctors all over the country, and fought with insurance companies.  I even created a website where I listed clinical trials and tracked my dad’s medical history.  And I did this knowing that my Dad was not going to beat this disease.

How did I know this?  Because, within three weeks of his diagnosis, I had found a retrospective study on melanoma of the sinus.  A retrospective study is when a researcher goes back through the records of many hospitals to locate every recorded case of the disease.  In the case of my dad’s disease, they hadn’t found even one patient who had survived for more than a few years.

So I knew he was going to die.  And I was almost positive that nothing I could do would prolong his life.  Actually, in some ways I made it worse because I’m sure Dad would have been a lot more comfortable, and he would have been in the hospital a lot less if he hadn’t gone through all those clinical trials.

But, for our family, what we did was right.  They say that “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.”  But they’re wrong.  Because, even though melanoma did kill my father, what he he endured to try to be there for his family was a shining act of bravery that will resonate forever for everyone that knew him.

One of the things that changed after my Dad died, was me.   In 2003, when my Dad died, I  was a successful entrepreneur.  My eight-year old computer business was profitable and growing.  But I wasn’t making a difference for any of the causes I cared about, like protecting the environment.  In fact, I wasn’t clear why I had started the business in the first place.  One day, I had picked up an old hippie book called Earning Money without a Job by Jay Conrad Levinson.  The advice was basically to start several businesses at the same time and see what panned out.  That’s how I started selling used computers to college students. It was such a rough and tumble affair, it seemed more like an adventure than a business to me. One day I was even held at gunpoint when I tried to repossess a computer.

Not really a credible beginning for a values-driven business.  The truth is, I didn’t start Tech Networks with a social purpose.  But after my dad died, I started to realize that I had the strength and courage to try to address real problems in this world.  Even if, like when I fought my Dad’s cancer, I didn’t think we would win.  So, over the last few years, I have changed my business.

My company still helps people use technology.  But we are also trying to reduce the environmental impact of computing. This has proved to be more difficult than I thought.  At first, we thought we would reduce computer energy use by making a more efficient computer. Our Earth PC was one of the first computers with a power supply that was more than 80% efficient.  It was endorsed by the EnergyStar program and by utility companies who gave us a $5 rebate for every PC we sold. The media loved us.  We even landed a front page article in the Boston Globe.

But how much energy did we save?  Actually, very little, even though we were very successful at selling them.  By recommending Earth PCs, we failed to take into account all of the other solutions that were actually more efficient.  Sure, an Earth PC used less energy than one that was exactly the same except for a less efficient power supply.  But what about buying a laptop instead of an EarthPC, or what about a thin-client solution?  Maybe our customers shouldn’t buy anything new at all.  If they just kept their existing computer and installed power management on it, so the computer goes to sleep when they are not using it, that would save more energy than anything else.

In fact, the deeper we dug into the issue, the more confused we became.  Some of the data we have found says that 81 percent of the lifetime energy use of a PC is expended during the manufacturing process.  So the very idea of replacing your computer to save energy becomes ridiculous.  Not only does it take a lot of energy to make a new desktop computer, but it takes a lot of resources.  In 2006 it took 528 lbs of fossil fuels, 38 lbs of chemicals and 400 gallons of water to make the average desktop computer.  That’s the same resources as it take to build a mid-sized car!  And when you dispose of these computers, you release toxic waste materials such as dioxins, mercury, lithium and lead.

So now we are asking people:

•    What problem are you trying to solve by purchasing new equipment?  Is there any way to reconfigure existing equipment to achieve the same result?
•    Are you buying hardware or software from vendors that promote equipment obsolescence in order to sell more stuff?
•    If you don’t need your equipment anymore, who else can get some use out of it?
•    And, finally, what will happen to your equipment when it dies?

Sometimes, these questions are as counter-intuitive for us as they are for our clients.  What is better?  To spend $500 on a new computer or repair your old one?  When you purchase a new computer, most of your money is sent to far-away companies that are polluting our planet . When you pay a technician to fix your computer problem, your money stays right here in the community, which sounds good, unless, of course, your repaired computer breaks again, and you throw it out the window.

So, how do I know if I am leading my company in the right direction?  Obviously, I don’t.  None of us ever do.  As Al Gore said at the climate conference in Fiji last year:  “Path walker:  There is no path.  You must make the path as you walk.”  Ghandi was a great path walker. He made a path that led India out of British control towards self-rule.  He did it not by telling others to change, but by BEING the change he wanted to see in the world.  Making a new path is hard.  But it’s the only way that we are going to get out of the blind alley we are in today.

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But now, it turns out that eating vegan is the new equivalent of driving a Prius.  Animal agriculture is responsible for eighteen percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.  And the decision to unhook from one of our strongest cultural moorings and sail off into uncharted territory by turning to a plant-based diet becomes an act of wild optimism.  We vegans are showing than man can evolve.  By treading lightly, we can lead the way back to the Garden of Eden.

 For an inspiring blog post on this subjects, see:  Common Ground Magazine

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Of course, with our current state of technology, no planet = no people. But that isn’t the point of the question. I would frame the issue as follows: “Is humankind just one life form on a planet teaming with many other living beings, from plankton to elephants? Or is our planet more like a petri dish, containing the ideal ecosystem to support the growth and evolution of mankind?”

What does the Bible say about the relationship of man to animals? While Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden, God instructed them to eat fruit and vegetables, Genesis 1:29-30: “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be food for you. And to the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground–everything that has the breath of life in it–I give every green plant for food.”

Subsequently, however, after Noah landed the ark, God gave Man dominion over the animals he had just saved: “God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. 9:2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. 9:3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.”

The Christian world view is that God has given Man mastery over the Earth, but that Man has obligations to that which God has created. He is charged with stewardship, not reckless use and destruction. For more on this subject, see Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew Scully, former speechwriter to George W. Bush. (If only all Republicans equated conservatism with conservation the way he does!)

The Buddhist world view is very different. A central tenet of Buddhism concerns the Oneness of all things.  It is the very separation of Man from the natural world that causes suffering. Buddhism seeks to reunite the internal with the external, the mind with matter, the spirit with the natural world. Every object, in Buddhism, has a buddha-nature. This is can be a rock, a teacup, or a plant. A false sense of duality causes man to believe that he can destroy these objects without harming himself.

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But politics took a back seat to food last night when six of us gathered at my house for a semi-formal dinner party. I had brought out my grandmother’s china and had spent the day cooking in an effort to impress my guests with my culinary talents. Since I became a vegan a few years ago, each dinner party becomes by necessity an occasion in which I shape the opinions of my guests on the viability of meat and dairy free dining.The meal included one of my favorite dishes, Stuffed Swiss Chard Leaves. This recipe comes to me from the most half-hearted vegetarian cookbook I have ever seen–Classic Armenian Recipes: Cooking without Meat. The section on main dishes begins: It may not seem desirable, or even possible, to prepare main dishes without the addition of meats or poultry… My guests might well sympathize with the cookbook author. Their initial reaction upon hearing that I shun meat and dairy products was as though I had told them that I cultivate pet centipedes for a hobby.

But last night my guests showed how much their feelings towards veganism have evolved since we first became friends. I was intensely gratified when one friend brought Trader Joe’s meatless chicken fingers. They were a huge hit. Everyone was amazed that you could make a chicken finger without meat. (Of course, they did have egg whites in them, which is technically not in my diet, but these are the things I tend to gloss over in trying to win friends and influence people…)

Speaking of influencing people, I was amazed by an article I read in Ode Magazine this morning. It said that one-quarter of the earth’s surface is used for raising animals and one-third of all arable land is given over to cultivating food for animals. 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the livestock industry. And that doesn’t include the 265 gallons of fossil fuel needed annually to produce the meat consumed by the average family of four.

One of the things that puzzles me is the fact that I am the sole vegetarian on the board of the Sustainable Business Network. I wonder if they realize how I feel when bacon and eggs are served at our breakfast meetings? Should I ask them whether they have considered eliminating meat from their diets?

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