The genes of cows don’t care if cows are happy. Cow genes ‘win’ if human farmers opt to reproduce millions of cows for profit. Human beings are better consumers and more manageable subjects if they are always a little unhappy, dissatisfied, longing for relief and too stressed to care about injustices.

You weren’t born ashamed of your desires — the world taught you to treat your hunger like a liability because desire makes people unpredictable and hard to manage. In practice, this means you police yourself: you dilute your wants, you hide your real fantasies, you lower your standards, you ask for less than what you feel, you convince yourself your dreams are unrealistic or embarrassing. Men learn to associate desire with guilt (“I don’t deserve this,” “I should be humble”), while women learn to associate desire with shame (“Who do I think I am to want more?”). Once desire becomes something you correct instead of something you follow, you stop changing your life and start negotiating with your own soul. The blade cuts deepest when you see that what you call “being reasonable” is often just fear dressed up as maturity.