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Vegetarianism in a Post-Agentic World.
If we no longer have to kill animals to survive, would we still choose to?
Narrated video essay · Published 3 October 2026
If We Didn't Need to Eat Animals, Would We?
Watch on YouTube. This is a separately produced narrated essay, not a recorded interview. The narration is synthetic and the original illustrations are conceptual diagrams, not documentary footage. Studio shows an English (Australia) caption track, though subtitle availability in public playback is still being checked.
The episode
What would we eat?
I was thinking about being fed goat's milk or cow's milk as a child, and about butchering animals as part of survival. We have treated those things as ordinary because, for much of human life, food and survival were tightly bound together.
In a post-agentic world, that may no longer be the case. If we can feed people well without killing animals, would we want to keep doing it? I find it hard to imagine that many people would choose the killing if they did not need to. That feels like a huge change: one less source of harm built into everyday life.
But what would people eat instead? We do not know yet. The useful starting point is simply that it would not have to be the animals themselves. The forms of food, milk, pleasure and tradition that replace them remain open questions.
Illustration and scene
Talking prompts
What did necessity make feel normal?
Which parts of food culture depend on killing animals?
Could people keep the taste, nourishment and pleasure without the animal?
Would animal-derived milk remain part of the future?
How might people who choose to hunt, farm or butcher understand the change?
Could reducing harm become an ordinary benefit of abundance?
Status
The video essay above is the current public work on this topic. A recorded conversation remains a future option; no conversation is scheduled at present. The essay uses synthetic narration and original conceptual diagrams, not documentary footage.