Why I am not a vegan

[anagogy]

Where does choice come into this for you? On what basis do you make choices?

I choose to always see things in their best light, whatever it is that I look at.  That involves looking at the world through sources eyes.  You can tell when you are looking at the world through sources eyes because you actually don't feel terrible.

I agree. But that is not what is happening here. This is partly semantic, because I could say that you are resonating with misery by consuming it. I don't resonate with misery. But I do have empathy. I am not advanced enough to see a calf torn from its mother, put in a pen so small it can't move, alone for its lifetime, force-fed, plied with antibiotics and growth hormones, crying and in misery, then taken to slaughter where its pitiable life is ended in more cruelty, so humans can have veal, and not think that is unnecessary cruelty. (Let's add here that humans can survive without animal products, whether they want to or not.)

But see, Diana, here's the thing, there will always be something of that nature for you to be sad about.  Your empathy, while admirable in some respects, is misguided.  Not that there is anything wrong with empathy (it has its place), but just the fact that you allow that negative image to dominate your perspective so absolutely.  You focus on the absolute worst condition you can imagine and tell that story over and over again, and many other vegans do the same.  You can't even begin to imagine the infinitude of horrible things out there for you to be aware of that are probably so much worse than this image you've painted of animal suffering.  Suffering on a magnitude that would psychologically destroy any of us if we were to behold it.  I think some of you have this image in your head of a future state of the world where everybody wants the same thing, and none of it is negative.  I'm sorry, but that is not part of this world.  Never gonna happen.  You have to make peace with that.  Or you can be miserable.

That is what I mean by resonating with the misery.  You can keep looking at what you don't want to see, and feel terrible, or you can look somewhere better.  That horrible thing is going to exist in some reality somewhere whether you look at it or not.  Might as well focus on well being instead.  Far more productive.

When you say you are not advanced enough to see this view that all is well, I'm sorry, but I think that's a cop out.  I think it's more that you don't want to let go of your pain.  You're attached to it.  But you can't focus on injustice, and hope to experience justice.  All the universe can give you is more injustice.  Everything is always happening in infinity.  What part of that infinity do you want to experience?  Focus on that if you want to be happy.  Everybody asks for metaphysical answers to hard life questions, but nobody seems to actually want them.  Most people aren't interested in truth, they just want confirmation and validation to justify themselves and convince themselves that their actions weren't futile. Everyone is trying to control the uncontrollable.