Why I am not a vegan

[Diana]

Okay, well then I have a thought.

Say you have a person who day to day lives their lives in service to others, simply because that feels natural to them. They volunteer, they help old ladies cross the road, they aid the poor and in general spend their days spreading love and working to do good for others. The only twist is that despite all of this service, this person eats meat, not constantly, but it is part of their diet.

Is this person STS or STO? Is the apparent service to self of eating meat enough to completely dispel the service to others? Will this person inevitably be unharvestable because of this aspect of themselves? No matter how much good the person might do because they eat meat, they will, for their lives, be serving themselves?

This kind of thinking is not the way I view this subject matter. I don't care if I'm "harvestable." I don't care about any "rewards" I might get if I don't eat meat, or if I do service for others. I don't do it for me, or because I am the other, or because what I do to others I do to myself.

I do STO because I have compassion. Because I am not so egocentric that everything has to be about me. That is not to say that I don't take the one full responsibility in this life—me and the way I live and decisions I make.

I don't eat meat, and support the industry which inflicts cruelty, because I care about the animals. Because they experience horrible lives often from day one (on factory farms—cows, pigs, chickens...), because it isn't necessary, because being part of an industry which inflicts unnecessary pain is something I cannot do based on compassion. I wasn't always aware of what goes on in the industry. When I became aware, I had to make decisions based on that awareness.