In regards to eating meat

[Diana]

Which raises a question: what's your position on using lumber for houses, etc? Can sawmills be equated to slaughterhouses?

Good question. I think the two are comparable. It's easy to choose not to eat meat. It's harder to avoid lumber, depending on how wealthy you are. My house is somewhat "green," and when I build another it will be more so. There is so much in this current world that is based on unconsciousness (wasting resources, destroying resources: cutting the rain forests down to graze cattle, exploiting 3rd-world countries for profit, and on and on). We are all culpable if we consume the products made from these resources by being part of the market for them.

What I do in my life is simply do the best I can in every area I can, and endeavor to be as conscious as possible. Which brings me back to eating meat. If a person consumes meat, and is a carnivore, the traits of a carnivore are part of that person (aggression, predatory nature, attacking violence, etc). From the meat eaten, the carnivore consumes fear and enslavement (if commercially farmed). I can extrapolate from this that the carnivorous aggression/fear/violence has something to do with the fear/aggression/violence that predominates in our world. A quote by Albert Einstein:

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." —Albert Einstein