Taomeow

Nope, did not. I was responding to Thelerner who brought it up.

Quiet mind reflects anything but itself, 'cause mirrors don't self-scan.

Oh, I see. Well, it's pretty human then, not vegetarian vs. meat eater. People defend what they eat. Gluten-free people have to make excuses and justify their choice with this or that food sensitivity and still they get odd looks and, quite often, lectures. Organic-only people are processed by non-organic people in all kinds of ways, organic and not very. Ethnic and cultural minorities who eat things that are weird to most Americans, like organ meats, do it in secret or get a "yuck" from muscle meat eaters more often than not. And a Mexican neighbor of mine stopped talking to me when I told her I don't eat tamales anymore because I don't eat corn anymore. She thought... well, I don't know what she thought, but she doesn't talk to me anymore after the tamales confession. So, you just know the side of it you face with the facet that your diet is, but change the diet and you'll see the rest of the facets. They are all the same. Many, many people are gastronomically xenophobic. I've a Taiwanese friend with whom I eat out fairly often, and he thinks that people who don't eat everything are creepy...

De_paradize, looks like you had a special way to read dozens of posts on this forum by White Wolf Running on Air. You think being portrayed as monsters should be fine with meat eaters, and if it isn't it's their failing all over again, insecure ego. And what I think is that vegetarian extremism (and militant extremists are the loudest group of vegetarians, believe it or not, though of course not every vegetarian is militant or loud) is as threatening to my ego as a mouse suddenly scurrying into the middle of the living-room is an affront to the insecure ego of the cat. Incidentally, I know too many vegetarians who abuse their cats and dogs by feeding them grains-based diets. Where's their compassion when each and every one of these animals develops cancer is anyone's guess.

Toys of the adept: a dragon turtle, a gourd, yarrow stalks, compass.

That was before he became Hitler. He used to eat sausages, drink, smoke, paint, and behave as a human. Once he decided he's superhuman, he quit eating meat, drinking, smoking, painting, and started a whole bunch of campaigns against some of these (e.g., ordering production of science-for-hire that would "scientifically prove" whatever he no longer liked to be "objectively" harmful. The whores obliged, obviously.) How about Charles Manson, a vegan? Does he strike you as particularly moral and peaceful? I could give you a long list of vegetarian lunatic killers, in fact why don't we start with the Bible: the first murderer in history was the vegetarian Cain who killed the carnivorous Abel, not the other way around.

Cool! I'm feeling less and less alone in my ivory tower of good coffee. And, yes, the downside of mastering good coffee is, the world suddenly fills up to the brim with bad coffee. That's your Laozi 101: nothing is "bad" until there's "good."

I currently live on a continent that was described by the first European visitors (who proceeded to take it away from the native populations of people, animals and plants) as paradise on earth. They wept tears of toxic envy when they saw the way people lived here. In the official report by Christopher Columbus to the queen of Spain, inhabitants of this land were described as "the most beautiful and healthy, happy, kind and loving people anyone can imagine." None of them were vegetarians. The newcomers proceeded to kill their animals and use the people to ride (sic), even though they had horses, they preferred to force the men and women on all fours, mount their backs, and go places. Those were moral, god-fearing civilized people convinced that their way to express their humanity was vastly superior. Or whatever else they thought. Who gives a fuck what anyone thinks, in the final analysis it's the practical outcome of actions that counts. And the practical outcome of love the way our civilization expresses it is mass murder. My attitude, Rara, is nowhere near "fuck it." Unless we are talking about arguing with fundamentalist cultists -- and food issues are a source of many a fundamentalist cult. Then, yes, with few exceptions, that's the attitude.

Humans don't murder less, they murder much much more, what has changed is the style and methods, and changed for the worse, not for the better, contrary to our indoctrination in our make-believe progress. The all-time record for mass murder so far is held by the 20th century -- just WWII alone killed 80,000.000 worldwide, and there's been hundreds of other wars, revolutions, genocides, government-made famines (not counting natural disasters, for which our agricultural methods are a sitting duck regardless of other factors) whose combined death toll dwarfs all murder committed by humans in all prior centuries. During which, incidentally, every next one, give or take, resulted in a greater absolute numbers of murders and, with perhaps one exception, in a greater percentage of world population being murdered. However, famines brought about by grain agriculture were the main cause of deaths in most centuries, not wars. It's easier to make illusion-based decisions than reality-based decisions in every case -- illusions are pliable, they easily adapt to the latest agenda, latest whim, latest round of brainwashing, anything that works the illusion can bend and shape it any which way with utmost ease. Reality is a bit less obliging, alas. The only thing I advocate is decision-making based on reality. Not vegetarianism, not meat eating. Reality. But even that I don't really insist on. As a Russian poet said, "a deception that uplifts us we cherish more than a multitude of truths that don't."

What do all those skulls stand for?

For some oranges, apples are enemies of Citrus Power cult.

Spontaneously perceiving, consciously evaluating, and forming an opinion or even a moral stance does not "bother" me. It comes naturally, and it is also practiced in my lineage. (You meditate into wuwei by removing the thoughts from your way, and the way to remove them is to pass a judgment on them as soon as they appear: "right," "wrong," or "for later." That's the best way I know of to stop your own thoughts from "bothering" you.)

I have rattles, bells, flutes, a kalimba, an erhu, and a shamanic drum. I will do a divination before taking the drum through TSA though. It has a temper...

Trying to improve on nature is what got us in trouble to begin with. If humans were the ones who invented the eating of species by other species, I would be the first one to protest. As things stand in reality though, I protest humans eating what isn't theirs for the taking -- forests and grasslands, rivers and oceans, air and natural electromagnetic fields, light and darkness, biodiversity, rain and sunshine, life on earth. If none of the things humans do that cause 150 species to go extinct every day touch the heart of someone who is too sensitive to eat one of those not going extinct, I call this beautiful vegetarian oblivion. Vegetarianism is used by some as a moral right to obliviousness. I find it unpalatable. Do something if you care, or don't do anything if you don't care, but don't do something that is fake and think you've arrived at a place of moral superiority. Just stop being holier-than-thou toward meat eaters, because you are abso-frackin'-lutely not. Not by one chicken. Your dietary choices kill a whale every day, a bluefin tuna every hour. Just follow your vegetarian food chain all the way to reality and you'll know what it is you are really eating. Just to be clear. You don't have to change what's on your plate. But don't hit anyone on the head with that plate, it is all bloody and gory and as much, or more, the outcome of butchery as any steak. Seriously.

I believe "troll" refers to "online behavior" rather than "human validity." One can be a fully human human being and engage in trolling, which makes him or her a troll for purposes of the exchange in which his or her trolling has taken place. And I do think people who don't troll are better partners for online discussions than people who troll. Doesn't mean they are better people for all purposes -- some of those who troll online may be using this and only this outlet to vent their otherwise inexpressible angst, misanthropy, ennui, chagrin, or whatever it is that fails to float their boat. We all have something to cry about, don't we? But making others suffer because of that only multiplies tears of the world. Ideally one would know the human being behind the troll and, when appropriate, perhaps try to accommodate the trolling behavior if it is well justified by the human necessities of the whole person. But without such knowledge, online you are stuck with the reduced version of a human being, his or her virtual self. And that's not exactly what we as a species evolved to understand and interact with, so the internet is still in its primordial soup of elements in this respect, you do encounter many unicellular organisms here, and you can't do anything to "dehumanize" them because this virtual self is only part of the eucariote and never had full humanness to begin with.

My ignore function is in my mind, I don't relegate decision-making to technology if I can help it. There's scores of posters I ignore, some in the moment (when they're talking nonsense), some on a regular basis (if they always talk nonsense), some when they touch on certain subjects (if I remember they always talk nonsense on those particular subjects, but are capable of making sense talking of something else.) I almost always summarily ignore bullies, racists, idiots, the chronically rude, the self-important, the dishonest, the short-fused, you name it. In other words, anyone I would ignore in real life, I ignore on the forum. If they engage me, however, I try to practice taiji, which I also do in real life. Taiji of the mind can be as lethal as the physical kind, but I never use it in a fully engaged manner, just as I wouldn't in real life. And just like in real life, there's scores of wonderful people who get ignored from time to time through no fault of theirs, simply because I don't have the time to give them my full attention even if they deserve it. Life is life, time is time. Technology will never catch up with my mind.

Drugs...

9th, what's the source of this one?_^_

Looking to gossip, she says, "She likes duck?" He says, "Her son likes duck." Duck!!

Like steam from hot tea, waiters hang over our meal. 'Nosy bunch," he says.

They are just straw men... Who knows what people are like here? -- scarecrows, crooked! (this is my translation of an actual haiku by Issa.)