Why I am not a vegan

[Monica]

Also, when I said wild game hunting, I meant in the context of for food, not for sport. Killing for sport is stupid.

I'm glad we agree about sport hunting! Hunting by primitive people for survival, which was necessary, is entirely different from modern hunting, which isn't necessary.

It's unnecessary to destroy the body of anything, and just because the point of plants being sentient "has been addressed" doesn't mean I am in any way in agreement or satisfied with the explanations? Just because it has been address doesn't mean it has been resolved.

I posted links to my earlier comments, as well as comments by others, regarding plants. I don't really have time to retype all that, so I directed you to those posts. If you read them and then comment, I'm happy to respond. But I see no reason to spend time repeating what has already been said.

For me, it is like picking up litter. Sure I can choose to just leave it on the ground and 'let the Earth take care of it', but I can also just as easily pick it up and put it in the trash. The planetary mind is full of emotional and mental litter, and I work to clean this up.

Trying to clean up litter, while simultaneously tossing out more litter, makes no sense.

You are indeed correct that it is better to try and alleviate the trauma and suffering before there has been killing, by all means and that was included as part of the explanation of my technique

To say that you are trying to alleviate suffering before any killing, while simultaneously paying someone to kill animals for you (which is what you do when you buy meat) is a contradiction.

so once again I'm not sure where you are getting your ideas from that I am only focusing on the eating and my own pleasure gained as such.

In your post #346, you mentioned eating a total of 15 times. You never mentioned killing at all.

The inconvenient truth remains that animals must be killed before they can be eaten. Those who don't kill themselves, pay others to do it for them.

It is a subtle but important difference in perspective: Eating describes what is done to the dead matter, whereas killing describes what is happening to the still-alive victim (who is feeling fear and pain).

Also, if "paying the killer is a crime the same as the killing" is part of your argument, then everyone who pays taxes is guilty of killing due to the funding of the wars in the world.

Similar, but not quite. We cannot legally choose to quit paying taxes. (We can, but at risk.) We can, however, easily quit buying meat.

I'm not even sure why the discussion goes this way, I thought STO was about thoughtfulness and consideration of others

It is. The difference, apparently, is that I consider animals to be other-selves also...they are our younger brethren. I have learned that many people here on B4 don't consider animals to be other-selves. They think Service to Others applies only to humans. I think that is the crux of the disagreement.

and I see it that we both want the same thing, for there to be less suffering, but instead we waste endless energy in debates and discussions regarding methods.

I see your point. I think there is value in these discussions, and apparently others find value too, going by the large number of hits these 'meat' threads always get. A lot of lurkers are reading our words. This isn't about you and me.

How about we actually put our minds towards the actual issue of the fact there there are numerous PHYSICAL walk-to-able places where these things are occurring by physical people and we are instead living our day to day lives and chatting on a forum while these things are occurring. Guilty as charged here, I'll give you that.

That sounds like a good note to end this on! Peace!