**Broadcast Exclusive - "The Pare Protocol: Society’s Final Comfort or Its Undoing?"**

Broadcast Exclusive - “The Pare Protocol: Society’s Final Comfort or Its Undoing?” By Anya Sterling, Ethicist-in-Chief

NEW YORK — It began as a wellness trend on private island retreats. Now, “Pare” is spreading across suburban kitchens. The protocol is simple: you place a fruit or vegetable on a stone, close your eyes, and focus on its perceived “flaws”—a bruise, an odd shape, a spot. Then, you pare away every single imperfection, discarding not just the bad, but the perfectly good flesh surrounding it. Participants describe it as “an act of radical self-mercy.”

But leading moral critics are sounding the alarm.

“It’s a perfect metaphor for our time, and a dangerous one,” warns Dr. Helena Vance, professor of Applied Ethics at Columbia. “We are teaching a generation that the only way to deal with a blemish is total excision. You don’t save the apple; you gut it until it’s a perfect, sterile core. This isn’t mindfulness. This is the philosophy of cancellation applied to our lunch.”

The ripple effects are already visible. Schools report a sharp rise in children refusing to eat any fruit that isn’t “perfectly uniform.” Couples are filing for “Pare Divorce” after one partner demands the other strip away all “negative behaviors”—anger, fatigue, indecision—until nothing human remains.

“The Pare Protocol doesn’t ask you to deal with complexity,” Vance warns, her voice dropping. “It asks you to destroy it. First it’s the apple. Then it’s your work. Then it’s your neighbor. And when you’ve pared away everything that made life messy, interesting, and real—you are left holding a stone. Alone.”

The hashtag #PareOrPerish is trending. The stone industry is booming. Society is choosing perfection over substance. And we