2 out of 5 stars
“We deny the need to look at death honestly, and we even deny that we are denying death.”
Turning 30? Read a book designed to make you more comfortable with dying!
The first half of this book contains very valid points that really do make you take another look at dying. For example, let’s pretend you gain immortality, then the planet dies. Let’s pretend science becomes advanced enough that you can just move planets, but now the sun is dying. Move to another galaxy (if feasible), but eventually the Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda are going to collide. You can try to keep running but eventually death will claim you one way or another.
Then, about half way through the book, the author decides to attempt to explain away ethical vegetarianism. I was immediately skeptical of why this was even brought up, and it turns out I was right to be. In a nutshell, in his reasoning, animals don’t experience existential dread and what is more cruel, a bullet in the head (quick death) or nature’s way of starvation, injury or old age? Here’s a short list of why these points are fucking stupid:
1. Science has not proven, in any shape or form, that animals do NOT experience existential dread.
2. He clearly doesn’t understand factory farming because the animals are not simply put out of their misery with a quick bullet to the skull.
3. He doesn’t know anything about hunting either because you don’t shoot animals in the skull.
The point of ethical vegetarianism is to not cause unwarranted suffering to animals for the purpose of one’s food. Even this isn’t 100% ethical because anything to do with the dairy industry produces suffering and death. Nay, the only people who can truly claim to be innocent of causing any animal suffering and death are vegans.
But I digress, because I still don’t understand why the author bothered to bring this up except maybe perhaps to try to make himself feel better about not understanding vegetarianism/veganism whatsoever, despite his attempt at being both.
The last half of the book is redundant. He essentially goes, YOLO, YOLO, YOLO, YOLO, YOLO, YOLO. (You may only live once but you can repeat the same shit until the end of the book.)
cupcakesandmachetes 
It’s really bad when people try to further political agendas poorly. I have no issue with writing things that support a political agenda, because EVERYTHING supports some political agenda, and while I may not be a vegetarian, I understand why it’s an ethical choice many make. Anyone who can look at factory farm footage and not feel uncomfortable is not someone I’d want to share a cab or a planet with. All creatures have the undeniable will and want to survive. Now my cats may not worry about death in the same way that I do, but fuck, nether does my husband or any other random person on the street.
Exactly. He would have been so much better off just never approaching that subject, at least not in this book. It kind of felt like he needed to look up the definition of ‘ethical’ lol.