Confederation and meat consumption

[xise]

Yeah, I think a big part of this is understanding where one another is coming from. Prior to being vegan, I was vegetarian for 10 years. Or rather to be specific, it was like 15 years with a few years of breaks where I ate meat. Perhaps because I've always been spiritual leaning and I was a philosophy major who particularly liked ethics, I always enjoyed discussing the ethics of meat eating, both when I ate meat (after being vegetarian for many years) and during my vegetarian years.


During these discussions, I would always concede the point that eating meat was unnecessary and increased suffering, but that I just wasn't able to manage vegetarianism right then with all my stresses in life. I don't think I ever felt defensive about my meat eating because, for me, the ethical standpoint was simply true to me - the logic for the ethics of meat eating was infallible to me from a philosophical perspective - but I simply accepted that I wasn't perfect nor felt particularly loving, and moved on with my life.


Now clearly perhaps for others don't see it in the same way philosophically - but the reason I bring this up is that because I was so easily able to concede that meat eating was increasing suffering in these discussions of 5-10 years ago when I was eating meat myself - I think I don't respect or as easily understand other people's defensiveness. And I think I could definitely become more loving and understanding by better understanding this defensiveness - or better yet by understanding what meat-eating people feel and think about all of this stuff because clearly my own thoughts, when I was a meat eater, seem pretty unique - so I really appreciate the overall conversation.