Emerald

Thank you. It's important to keep getting people to face with the truth of how they actually feel about their own choices. People lie to themselves when they are out of integrity with their own values. I did the same thing until I went Vegan 9 years ago, where I was always justifying my own actions through rationalizations of futility, like "It doesn't matter anyway because animals will still die." And the biggest challenge around making the shift is to recognize my own power and the fact that I had been choosing a course of actions that was partially responsible for bringing about outcomes that harm animals that I did not want to happen. I just denied my own power by rationalizing that small power was the same as no power. And that way, I could avoid taking responsibility for my own choices. More than any kind of rationale as to the benefits of abstaining from eating meat and dairy is the ability to get someone to face squarely with the truth of their own values and feelings.

Veganism is a choice that I have made to stay in integrity with my own values and to honor my own boundaries because I want to utilize what little power I have to reduce suffering... not a coping mechanism to deal with shame. And everything you've written here is a coping mechanism through which to defend your own dietary choices (to yourself) and to discredit the values and choices of Vegans, so as to make your perspective "correct" and their perspective "incorrect" in your own eyes. And you wouldn't need to do all this Veganism invalidation, if you felt your actions were truly in integrity with your values. You just want to feel better about your choices, so you have to rationalize yourself that Veganism is delusional, a coping mechanism, wrong, unsustainable, unhealthy, unspiritual, unnatural, harmful, etc. Non-Vegans do this type of rationalization all the time to invalidate the choices of Vegans to get comfort from their own cognitive dissonance. It's trying to convince everyone that Veganism is wrong because they can't handle the fact that some people choose Veganism and that it is a valid choice that comes from deeply held values and not some pathology. Also, you can find plenty of anecdotes of people quitting all sorts of diets. Like, I could find videos of people quitting a whole food omnivorous diet or a Keto diet or the Carnivore diet in favor of a Vegan one and reporting feelings so much better and healthier. But these anecdotes don't mean anything about the actual health and sustainability of the diet itself. Plus, people who quit Veganism tend to want to invalidate Veganism itself as "unhealthy" or "unsustainable" because they have Vegan values... but have chosen to abandon living by those values. So, it is precisely people who leave behind a Vegan diet who have the most incentive to create narratives around the Vegan diet being unhealthy and to seek validation from people who will tell them, "Don't worry. It's obvious that the Vegan diet is unhealthy and unsustainable. You're correct for changing your diet." But it's just the same kind of rationalization to assuage guilt and to go unconscious to the misalignment of values that people who have never been Vegan before have... but on steroids, since that person has already become conscious enough of their values to make the choice to go Vegan in the first place. So, it takes a lot more mental gymnastics to assuage the guilt and cognitive dissonance for people who go Vegan and then quit. They have to find a way to put the toothpaste back in the tube. But in terms of ACTUAL research that's been done (of various studies and meta-analyses)... plant-based diets are associated with healthier BMIs, lower cholesterol, and lower instances of heart disease and stroke (the number one killers). So, there is no science backing up your assertion that Veganism is unhealthy or unsustainable. It is just an incorrect assumption that you must hold onto to justify your own actions to yourself.

I'm not making the claim that a cow should get more rights within the context of a human society than a human has... and that is a straw man of my position. My argument is that the life and well-being of a cow should be treated as more important than the fleeting pleasure the human feels while they're consuming the cow for pleasure. Like, if it were like "Either this cow will be killed or this human will be killed."... by all means... kill the cow if those are truly the only options. That's why I have no problem with people eating meat or animal products to sustain life IF it's really necessary to sustain life. And I believe that all animals get to prioritize the life of one of their own species over the life of that of another. So, I have no problem with humans considering humans more important and killing other species of creatures to save and/or sustain a human life... any more than I have a problem with bees stinging another creature they believe to be a threat to their hive or a lion eating an antelope. A species prioritizing others of its own species is just part of the circle of life... and projects no false hierarchies of importance onto nature. My issue is when human beings operate as though they are superior to other creatures in some absolute way. And because of this grandiosity and illusion of human exceptionalism, they feel their own fleeting sensory pleasures are more important than the entire life of another sentient being... or even the well-being of the eco-system itself.

You're shifting the goal posts. That isn't what you said in your original post. In your original post, you said that the existence of Veganism is an "insult" to thousands of years of traditions and "throws them away" and that that's specifically why you're not a Vegan. And that is quite a different claim to "We will never have a Vegan world due to the existence of culinary traditions." It was very much a justification for your own choices by framing Veganism as "bad because it's a threat to culture"... and not a neutral impersonal statement of how a "Vegan world won't happen because of culture". --- But to your goal-post-shifted point, I suspect that the realization of a "Vegan world" is one that will happen through technological developments regarding lab-grown meat, dairy, and eggs and not through the universal practice of Veganism. But despite a "Vegan world" not being something that will happen in our lifetimes, one can always choose to reduce harm now by going Vegan and taking a small chip out of the profits of the meat and dairy industry. And one can choose to live in integrity with their values even if it isn't going to solve the whole problem. Most Vegans aren't Vegan because they believe that the whole world will go Vegan and the idea that Veganism is going to solve the whole problem. Instead, they look to neutralize their own participation in a system that they disagree with... and for Vegans who are also animal rights activists, they try to persuade others to do the same. Think of it a bit like this story... "A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement. She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference!” The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied, “Well, I made a difference for that one!"

That's a very optimized and logical way of going about communication as it gets directly to the point and there's no extra fluff. And that is precisely why it's such a foolish and unwise suggestion.

I suspect that AI will impact human industries in the same way that the invention of the camera in the mid-1800s impacted the art world and the way we collectively think about art. Basically, it will eliminate many industries that are about meeting an objective need that a computer can do better and faster with... and it will bring even more meaning and value to things that are more about human-to-human subjective needs that can only be met through human actions and interactions. Prior to the invention of the camera, art was mostly a matter of practical importance where wealthy people could pay an artist to render their portrait or a still-life of the objects they own to showcase their wealth. Of course, there were always more conceptual artists like Hieronymous Bosch and Giuseppe Arcimboldo (both painters from the 1500s) who were very ahead of their time. But the vast majority of artists were hired as a means of "being the camera before the camera" for wealthy patrons. Then, when the camera was invented in the 1800s and became popular, many working painters abandoned painting in favor of photography because it was an easier and faster way to do the same job. But then, with the artists that stayed in the field, there was the birth of Modern Art... and so many different creative deviations from what was before. And over the course of the next century (from around 1850s to 1960s) you got art movements like Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Fauvism, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, The Bauhaus Movement, Photo Montage, Trompe-l'œil, Kitsch, etc. This is when we started to ask questions like, "What is art?" or "Why do humans make art?" I suspect the invention of AI will cause us to question, "What is labor?" and "Why are humans moved to labor?"

It's actually a really common defense that meat eaters use to justify their dietary choices to themselves. Like, "How selfish are you for prioritizing the life of a cow over the life of a carrot? Shame on you for not being conscious enough to see that those two things are no different?" But deep down, they know it's a bullshit argument that they themselves don't even agree with.

Are you making the claim that, if you went Vegan personally, it would undermine all these culinary traditions? Or are you making the claim that you disagree with adopting Vegan diets because it will eventually lead to some pattern or another of undermining culture? Either way, both of these perspectives are clearly empty defenses that you've given as there is no threat that Veganism is going to wipe out cultural practices... and also no one even challenged you on your choices. You're just using these as shields because you feel guilty and needed to come up with a narrative to square the circle of your own cognitive dissonance.

I don't feel shame about being alive, though I would like to lessen the impacts of suffering that my lifestyle causes. I just don't want sentient beings to suffer and have a premature death... as I have a strong visceral reaction to it and a sense that I want to make it stop. It's a bit like if you're watching a really gory horror movie and you squirm and hide your eyes because you don't want to see such a tragedy happening and you're hoping that the victim will be okay. The main difference is that the horror movie is real in this case. Can you not understand how a person might have such a reaction that doesn't come from shame... but instead comes from empathy and the ability to feel the feelings of others who are in pain? Is that really too abstract of a concept for you to consider that someone might recoil at such things and change their own behaviors as a result?

First off, I went Vegan when I was squarely in the working class... working for $12 per hour as a substitute teacher and my husband was a server at a restaurant. So in a first world nation, you need not be super wealthy to go Vegan. In fact, a whole food Vegan diet is cheaper than a whole food diet that includes meat, dairy, and eggs. It's just that an unhealthy processed Vegan diet is more expensive than an unhealthy processed omnivorous diet... and the cheapest diet possible is the unhealthy processed omnivorous diet. But the whole thing with Veganism is specifically about abstaining from meat and dairy when you don't need it to sustain life. So, I see Veganism as a dietary and lifestyle choice that is only available to people who are in a well-resourced enough and technologically developed enough society to exercise that level of compassion with their choices. And I see the increase in the commonality of Veganism as a wonderful fruit that grows from the tree of collectively moving up the Spiral Dynamics spiral towards a more loving, connected, and compassionate world. And I see it as a great privilege/responsibility combo for people who are living in well-resourced, technologically developed societies where we have the means to consider the impacts of our choices... and therefore a responsibility to consider the impacts of our choices. But it's always some middle class person form a wealthy nation arguing against Veganism like, "Veganism is only those with a cushy modern lifestyle who don't have to worry about eating meat to survive.". And I'm like "Yeah, that's you buddy!"

I'm sure he's genuinely a Nazi/Nazi sympathizer. But it's really clear that he's just doing this to be a spectacle as he knows it will drum up controversy and get the spotlight on him. He's like a little kid that acts up in class to suck up all the attention in the room

Certainly, there are many Vegans that operate that way.... as anything can be crafted into an identity of goodness. (Yet again, even being an anti-Vegan can be crafted into an identity of goodness... and you see tons of anti-Vegans building an identity out of their opposition to Veganism.) But personally, I really don't care that much about Veganism as an identity... as I tend to have a lot of the culture's negative associations with Veganism and it isn't something I broadcast unless I'm being directly challenged on it or if I need to tell a server at a restaurant about it... or if I'm arguing on the internet about it. Like, when I think of the word Vegan... I too think of a pretentious person who only eats artisanal foods and who gloats about their lifestyle. This is in spite of being Vegan and knowing many Vegans who aren't like that. It actually makes me cringe a little if people were to perceive me that way. The reason why I went Vegan is watching videos of animals being slaughtered and abused in the meat and dairy industry and having a visceral response to the suffering. Then, I became viscerally aware of how my actions were incongruent with my values. And I realized that, if it weren't for the dirty work being done for me outside of the scope of my awareness, I would not be okay with harming or killing animals to continue eating meat if I didn't absolutely need it to sustain my life. I just have a really strong reaction to the suffering of sentient beings... both human and non-human sentient beings as I see that they are capable of suffering. Like, the other day I was mindlessly scrolling on Instagram and I ran across this video that I first mistook as a video of a frail new-born baby bird resting in someone's hand. But when I watched it for a little bit longer, the person holding the bird balled up some kind of food (maybe bread?) in a tiny ball and opened the bird's mouth and shoved it down the bird's throat and then pinched the throat a little bit down and down and down to make sure that the bird swallowed the bread. And I was like... is this person trying to feed the baby bird? Or is this person stuffing the bird to eat it? And I eventually realized that the person was stuffing this frail, near-death bird and that they were about to eat it alive... similar to how in some cultures, octopus is often consumed live. Then, I imagined myself as this frail bird... powerless and my importance negated, with my suffering and frailty being exploited and demoted in importance in favor of a more powerful being's momentary desires. And then I started feeling this sense of injustice but with no authority figure to stop in to assure me that what is happening to me is wrong as reality just is and there is no absolute sense of right and wrong. And then it's like a "What if the law of the jungle is what is moral and correct?" and "What if badness is good and goodness is bad?" And it creates this sense of chaos of tumbling end over end in a meaningless unjust universe where there is no way to say in the absolute sense "This is wrong." And that is true. A serial killer could come and torture and kill you and all your family members... and even that would be just a matter of perspective to determine what is right or wrong. Certainly, there have been eras where the just thing under the law would be to kill many innocent people. Then, the only way to sit in my own sovereignty and to find a center point within the chaos is to realize the truth is "From my perspective, exploiting the suffering of animals for pleasure is wrong." And in order for me to feel anchored into my own subjective truth and subjective sense of justice, I have to bring my actions into alignment with those values. Otherwise, I just feel out of integrity and unstable in myself.

I suspect that, when a person is in a position where they must kill animals or it becomes normalized, there are ways to numb out to the initial awareness of the cruelty and any empathy towards the animal. And all of that has to repressed. It's why it's great to live in the present day where many of us needn't desensitize ourselves to the sufferings of sentient beings. But I get why that repression of empathy has to happen for those who must frequently kill animals. It would be too much to deal with to be sensitized to that dimension of reality if one must frequently slaughter animals. Like, I once had a dream that I walked in on a man who was torturing a rabbit by holding its genitals up to a circular table saw... not enough to kill it, but enough to seriously maim and torture it... and to cause severe bleeding. And there was no possibility that the rabbit would recover. So, I went up to the rabbit, quickly grabbed it away from the man turned it around and quickly fed the entire rabbit swiftly through the table saw head first... until it was split totally in half. And I was holding the left side of the rabbit in my left hand... and the right side of the rabbit in my right hand. Then, it hit me that I had killed the rabbit and I realized that something had permanently shifted in me in the dream and that some innocence was lost and that my relationship with life would never be the same again. And there was this feeling of an emotional "dropping away" that happened within myself. I suspect there is something similar that happens whenever a person takes an animal's life. The innocence drops away and with it, there is a disconnection and numbness.

That's my point entirely. I don't want people to bullshit themselves about their ACTUAL motives for eating animal products. And arguing about the semantics of a word (in this specific context) just muddies the waters and gives people more hiding spots to hide from themselves. People in a state of cognitive dissonance will use any tool you give them to hide from themselves... including the flexibility of the definition of a single word. And my intention is to help people realize that they are in this pattern. Self-honesty about ways we're out of integrity with our values is a great catalyst for growth and change... including making lifestyle choices that are more sustainable for the planet and more merciful for animals. Plus, from a personal growth perspective, a lack of integrity with our values will contract our scope of awareness in order to protect ourselves from realizing our lack of integrity. And in our attachments to our identities of moral goodness and aversion to recognizing the potential for evil in ourselves, our fears of having that identity of moral goodness overturned because of our incongruence between our actions and values will cause us to twist and mangle our entire epistemological framework to avoid "falling from grace" in our own eyes and to remain "the good guy." This is especially true for people who tend to have strong black and white moralistic judgments and an investment in the notion of punitive justice towards evil-doers. They'll do anything to avoid ending up on their own chopping block. And consuming animals and animal products as a person who (deep down) values the lives of non-human animals who doesn't want them to suffer, creates a TON of cognitive dissonance. Facing all of that reality after 27 years of cognitive dissonance was far and away the most difficult thing about going Vegan... way beyond abstaining from any kind of food. I'm fully convinced that the most effective way to get people to open up to making changes in their lifestyle is to help them be honest with themselves.

Yes, the illusion is real and valid... but is still an illusion. But the illusion is necessary for Truth to wake up to itself. And both relative duality and relative non-duality together equal out to Non-Duality in the absolute. The same is true of the finite and infinite both being part of the absolute Infinite. And good and evil are both part of the absolute Good. It's like the Dao... the wholeness includes the parts and wouldn't be a wholeness without both parts.

It's all a matter of perspective... as it is just looking at snapshots of an infinitely complex thing. And no duality could describe it fully. But it checks out with my glimpses in my medicine journeys that the nothingness element of God is Masculine and the everythingness element of God is Feminine. When I went through ego death in one of my journeys, it gave way to the nothingness element of things and there was no Emerald and no reality that Emerald inhabited. It had all only ever been a story and there was blank empty consciousness with no observer. It was like Emerald was a character in a story... and then, the enlightenment was that the book was thrown in the fire and the story forgotten in its entirety. And there was no time or space... nor was there a sequence of events. Yet, somehow (in a way that is inexplicable from my human perspective) there was also the experience of the everythingness element of God. And I understand it now as "rising up out of the nothingness". But that is a concession to make it make sense to my mind and to communicate it. But in the everythingness element of God, it was the Yin/Feminine element of God... which included the experience of infinite everythingness including infinite suffering. And it was infinite Feminine everythingness that was being loved relationally by the Infinite Masculine God consciousness. But it was two sides of the same coin. And "my consciousness" (as God) was grieving all griefs and suffering all sufferings at the deepest level possible... and it was knowing and loving all things in infinite eternity at the deepest levels, forever and ever in an ever-increasing exponential expansion of Love and Knowing. And this Love and Knowing was Masculine... and the everythingness was Feminine. Being with infinite Love and Knowledge was excruciating to this facet of God's awareness that was more Feminine. And so, out of mercy towards itself, it limited this part of its consciousness and re-created the Emerald story anew and spun up the reality she had previously inhabited just as it had been "before" the eternity of nothingness that arose as a result of the ego death. So, from the vantage point of the Feminine everythingness... the Masculine is experienced as infinite unconditional Love towards all things in the everythingness. But to speak form a slightly different angle... The Feminine is about the illusion of separation and duality... which is where relational love (with a lowercase l) between two separate beings comes into play. And this is the way that we tend to think about love as human beings, as we think of relationship when we think of love. So, we tend to think of love as Feminine because we relate it to femaleness and the association between women and social connectivity. But when the Masculine awakens itself through the eyes of one who is incarnate in the realm of the Feminine (the Maya), there is the realization of Love (capital L) as a unitive oneness with no separation and no relationships... as a singularity has nothing to be in relationship to. The way I would describe these glimpses is that through the experience of distance from the ego story (which is very different than the ego death that I described), one recognizes themselves as Love and that all other things are Love... and that nothing exists outside of this Love. So, from the perspective of that which is based in singularity and not a relational twoness... Love is Masculine.

@Leo Gura I decided on what the new word should be called that specifically refers to the meaning of "avoiding death and starvation." The new word is plar. So... don't misconstrue matters of survival as matters of plar to justify selfish actions.

Fine then. We can quibble around with semantics and definitions. Let's refer to what I meant in my previous as "avoiding death and starvation" so as not to muddy the waters... as I am specifically referring to "avoiding death and starvation" when I say the word "survival". What new word would you recommend to refer with specificity to "avoiding death and starvation". Or should there be no such word in the English language to describe that particular concept.

Haha! Accurate.

Why are you mad?

That is true in the particular way that you mean it when you use the word "survival". And I am fine with you using the word survival to describe people using selfish actions to benefit themselves at the expense of others... because it comes from the survival instincts. But that is not the way I was using the term survival... as I was using the term to refer to what it traditionally refers to, which is literal life and death. I also consider it a matter of survival (in the way that I mean it) if a person is dealing with scarcity of food and water, even if death is not likely to happen. But let's not monkey around with the semantics of the word "survival" itself as it will just muddy the waters and give people more rope to hang themselves with with regard to their denials... and let people off the hook with regard to facing their own integrity issues, cognitive dissonance, self-deceptions, and blindspots around their own incongruent actions. And of course, someone rationalizing rape or eating animals as a matter of life and death when they don't need to do so to literally survive (aka avoid death) is survival in the way that you mean it around justifying selfish actions taken at the expense of another.

Thank you for checking them out!

\ The Masculine is the spiritual. And the Masculine is about the singularity of God and non-relationship. The Feminine is the material and Earthly plane. And it is about relationship, which requires separation... and a sense of self and other to realize. So, the Feminine is about connection through the lens of the illusion of separation between self and other. And the Masculine is about the realization of oneness, when all is realized as God and there is no longer any sense of separation. So, it is likely that you associated the Feminine with oneness because you relate the Feminine to connection and relationship. But in order to have connection and relationship, you have to have the illusion of the duality of self and other. So, the Masculine is about oneness. The Feminine is about twoness.

What Leo calls survival is like "self focused things we do for our own ends". But what I mean by survival is literally life and death. So, I know he is using Leo's colloquial definition of survival to justify eating meat as a 'self focused thing he's doing towards his own ends'... but dishonestly mincing it with the weight and gravity of the "life and death" meaning of survival. It's a bit like how sex is part of survival from the colloquial way the Leo uses it. And then someone would dishonestly use Leo's definition of survival to justify raping someone to themselves because "Sex is part of survival... therefore raping someone is valid because I need it in order to survive". But I personally, don't have any problem with people eating animals if they literally need it to survive or if they are dealing with genuine food scarcity. If I was starving and I didn't have any other food sources or I didn't know where my next meal was coming from, I'd have no qualms with eating animals or animal products. I just disagree with consuming animals out of pleasure and convenience... which is the reason why 90%+ of people in first world countries consume animals and animal products (regardless of whichever other justifications they might provide to obscure that truth from themselves). But I don't see people as evil for partaking in eating animals... just unaware and disconnected from the realities of the suffering. It's just like I was before I decided to go Vegan... in a state of cognitive dissonance and denial about my own choices and the outcomes they are tied to that are incongruent with my values. That's why I never try to convince people to go Vegan... but instead to simply be honest with themselves about their true motivations to consume animal products and to examine if that's actually in a alignment with their own values or not. Like, even if a person chooses not to go Vegan... they should at least be honest with themselves. And of course, we all feel better and more on solid ground when our actions are in alignment with our values. The issue is that a very large percentage of people (maybe half or more) hold Vegan values where they don't want animals to be harmed for food if there are other food sources available... and who would avoid it altogether if they had to slaughter the animal themselves. But most of these people with Vegan values don't live in integrity with them. Hence the rationalizations and justifications and shadow boxing with imaginary Vegans or Vegans on the internet.

My experience is that, every time a meat eater goes into a "complaining about Vegans' or "Arguing with imaginary Vegans in my head" argument... it's almost always about doing mental gymnastics to justify prioritizing pleasure over animal life and animal suffering. Most people don't agree with this. But they have to find a way to lie to themselves so that they can convince themselves that they're not acting out of integrity with their own values. And they project their own self-judgments for living out of integrity with their values onto Vegans (and that's true, even if the Vegan is being vocal about their Veganism.)