(02-24-2021, 04:38 AM)LeiwoUnion Wrote: Curious thread. I always found it peculiar when people begin to praise one path (theirs) over the others almost as gospel, failing to realize truths and paths are different. Listen to yourself and follow that advice, is my take on this. Each and every one of the diets is capable of forming deep personal distortions. Going for history, nutritional science, or even spirituality of others is often a road laid with confusion. If a diet makes one's mind, body and spirit feel good, why all the judgement? There's always lessons set up for one self to digest which are usually unperceivable from the external 3D point of view.
I think the point is more that from the vegan perspective, they do not see the separation of specie as a reason to not treat another animal specie as one of their own.
So while a lot of people wonder why one should have judgment in regard to another's diet, I think most people actually also do feel judgment whenever someone's diet would go against their own moral code. For example if anyone learns that some people in their town are cannibalistic, ate their own children or other people's children, or ate some dogs and cats, then they would probably feel judgment. These examples may seem extreme and one would think they do not apply for comparison, but I believe that is how a vegan feels about it. They hold a perspective of wanting to bond with all living things. They recognize all things as one family and as such feel the same empathy they would feel for the suffering of another human, if not perhaps even more because of the lack of the inherent greater responsibility of a human's in their own life.
Now I am not saying whether they are right or not, or if this can be extended to everyone realistically, but I do think their perspective makes a whole lot of sense. I don't think we can avoid feeling an ounce of judgment when someone does something we believe internally to be morally wrong. Who says that it is not a valid way to survive in the world to beat up and kill others to take their things, like you see a car you like and you just take your knife out and go take it. To certain people this is acceptable, so why would I judge them and impose an idea that they should work and contribute to society to earn something? Well I personally would not be well with myself doing that, then the work of acceptance is more along the lines of understanding why I am not over that either in realizing the oneness of these other-selves and myself, but it is clearly a work to be done and an expectation to not feel an ounce of judgment at first is unrealistic.
When things involve one's behaviors with others and the creating of suffering, then I believe judgment is most natural. Vegans merely extend the circle of their empathic inclusivity wider than most.