In regards to eating meat

[Monica]

it is obvious from the examples above that there is no holding back. And I will continue to have mine and keep the option open to provide balance...

Yes you are indeed entitled to your opinion. Thank you for expressing it!

If you are still open to more discussion, I am curious how you determine where the 'balance' point is. Why must 'balance' include the slaughter of our younger other-selves and why is championing non-violence considered extremism?

If you care to elaborate, again, I am seeking to understand you.

As I recall, we did the opposite: several of us went out of our way to say that vegetarianism isn't a prerequisite for STO harvest.

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I am sincerely just trying to understand how the killing of animals can be reconciled with the STO path.
03-23-2010, 01:18 AM (This post was last modified: 03-23-2010 02:09 AM by Bring4th_Monica.)
Post: #50

You can feel free to cite any of my posts if you like. I do not regret voicing my opinions. I only regret that my opinions have unintentionally resulted in your feeling offended. Would you be willing to work with me to seek reconciliation? We might not ever agree, but can we at least work together to disagree respectfully and peacefully?

Am I understanding correctly that you see my above 2 statements as contradictory?

I will offer an explanation, if you are interested:

My statement was:

vegetarianism isn't a prerequisite for STO harvest.

We all know what the prerequisite for STO harvest is: 51% STO. That means that each of us might have up to 49% STS tendencies and still be harvestable. I don't think any of us intentionally seek out STS activities thinking we can get away with it, since we don't know how we measure up until we walk the Steps of Light. Hence, is it safe to assume that we all seek to maximize our STO polarity?

I also said: I am sincerely just trying to understand how the killing of animals can be reconciled with the STO path.


Both of these statements are true. I don't see them as contradictory. In the interest of resolving paradox, please allow me to clarify:

I am sincerely just trying to understand how the conscious killing of animals can be reconciled with the conscious pursuing of the STO path.

I don't understand it. I am trying to understand it.

None of us really know exactly how polarizing or depolarizing any action might be. It really depends on the person and his/her unique circumstances. Remember how Ra stated that participation in war might be depolarizing to an STO entity if they enjoyed the violence, but polarizing if their motives were to champion their country or their comrades? Same situation, different result in terms of polarizing. Killing is a violent act. Yet the motive for the killing can alter whether it's polarizing or depolarizing, whether it's STO or STS.

I would surmise that it's the same here. Is the Native American who kills the deer to feed his family polarizing to STS? Can I safely say that we'd all agree he isn't? He is doing what he has to do, and he is doing it with gratitude and appreciation to the deer.

Are any of us truly in the same situation as that Native American? Do we look into the eyes of our dying, younger other-self and take full responsibility for his death? Or do we buy pieces of its carcass wrapped in plastic, without giving it any thought? And, more importantly, is it necessary to kill that animal? Our lifestyles and food choices are vastly different than that of the Native American.

Most people eat meat unconsciously. They don't give it a 2nd thought. So how could that be STS? I don't think it is.

But, largely due to the efforts of the animal activists, who seek to raise awareness about animal cruelty, it is becoming increasingly difficult to remain ignorant. Videos documenting atrocities are readily available on youtube. Billboards paint the roadsides decrying the cruelty. Medical information websites clearly state that a properly planned vegetarian diet is not only adequate, but healthy. A quick search on disease statistics prove beyond any doubt that, after other factors have been accounted for, vegetarians enjoy drastically reduced risks of nearly every major disease. Another quick search yields clear correlations between the meat industry and environmental pollution. All of this info is readily available. Are people still ignorant? Or are they choosing to bury their heads in the sand?

Yes, there are theories that some people do better with animal protein in their diets. Those are theories, not proven facts. Even if they are true, eggs and dairy have animal protein. I have never understood why some people who didn't do well on vegan diet went back to eating meat, when just adding eggs and dairy might have sufficed. Furthermore, there is new data suggesting that abundant greens and superfoods can easily fill in the gap for those who think they need animal protein. It isn't fair to say that a person cannot thrive on a vegetarian diet when the produce they are consuming is a mere shadow of its former self, due to chemical farming. The addition of superfoods (concentrated nutrients to compensate for poor-quality produce), greens (rich in protein), and non-violent animal protein (organically produced eggs and dairy) requires a bit more effort than just grabbing a hamburger, but it can be done.

So, my question is:

I am sincerely just trying to understand how the conscious killing of animals can be reconciled with the conscious pursuing of the STO path.

I am confessing that I don't understand something. I don't understand how someone who knows what goes on in factory farms, who knows the statistics proving that vegetarians as a group are healthier, who knows that non-meat alternatives exist for nearly everyone (with very few medical exceptions) with a bit of education and planning, who knows the devastating impact the meat industry is having on the environment, who has seen videos of horrible cruelty, who has heard the wailing of the animals in pain, who has seen them frantically trying to escape the hunter's gun...If this person is actively, consciously seeking the STO path, then yes, I am having a difficult time understanding how this unnecessary suffering can be ignored and even defended.

extremism of any kind leads to elitism and elitism leads to STS tendencies...There are a lot of great causes in the world but you take it too far and you fall in the STS trap...Our history is full of these examples and we will repeat them it we don't learn from them. Crusaders thought they were doing great things, so did Marxists and Communists in Russia and China...But they only ended up doing great harm to both humanity and their causes...

I invite you to avoid the direct judging of any person in particular. Neither I nor anyone else has directly judged any person who eats meat. This is obviously a very volatile subject, and buttons are being pushed. Can we separate the action of eating animals (as a concept) from personal judgments directed at anyone on either side of the debate? Can we all work together to keep the discussion intellectual, about general concepts, rather than getting personal and directly judging the actions of any individual?

I shall attempt to break down the core issues, as I understand them, for the sake of anyone who might still be following this discussion:

Many vegetarians, myself included, see the unnecessary slaughter of what others consider 'lesser' beings as akin to the slaughter of what others thought were lesser beings (Blacks, Jews, etc.) but were later realized to not be lesser at all and thus that slaughter is now considered heinous.

If I am understanding you correctly, you don't consider the slaughter of animals heinous because you consider them 'lesser' beings. Just as our ancestors considered race/color/ethnicity to be the dividing line that determined an entity's worth, most people now consider the dividing line to be species. And, apparently, many Law of One students now consider the dividing line to be density. (Please correct me if I am misunderstanding you...I am trying to recap what I am comprehending from you so far.)

Thus, discrimination based on race is now frowned upon by most of us, but discrimination, and even the wholesale slaughter, based on species or density is ok. Am I correct so far? That is what I'm understanding from you.

So, what I'm hearing you say is that someone who disagrees with you, someone who feels that our younger other-selves (those of late 2nd density who may be nearing 3D) should not be unnecessarily slaughtered, and champions that cause, is now being compared to those who slaughtered 3D humans in the name of religion.

(Most of us aren't asking for equal rights for animals...we realize that's not reasonable...we're just asking for an end to the violence. Killing animals for food is simply no longer necessary, at least not on the wide scale that it is being done.)

Someone advocating the path of nonviolence, and championing the victims, is being equated with someone who used violence to force their views on others.

Am I understanding you correctly? If so, I do not comprehend the comparison. How can you compare championing nonviolence with the using of violence? Did you mean to say that anyone who has a view different from the mainstream is an extremist?