Turning vegetarian - need advice

[xor]

That was before he became Hitler. He used to eat sausages, drink, smoke, paint, and behave as a human.

 

You just had to go there.

[Taomeow]

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

[Rara]

@Taomeow Can I just say, although I don't see 100% relevance in everything you have said, you have made a great point. On reading Chaung Tzu, this has hit me:

 

"The perfect man is pure spirit...Neither death nor life concern him, nor is he interested in what is good or bad"

 

Earlier in this chapter, he talks about fact man eating animal...that it just is that way.

 

Perhaps my "moral" view is deluded somewhat. Careful consiration will be taken by me but I thank you for your persistence in wanting to help me understand this!

[gatito]

 

"The perfect man is pure spirit...Neither death nor life concern him, nor is he interested in what is good or bad"

Sounds like something with which Adolf could have said....

Edited November 11, 2013 by gatito

[Taomeow]

@Taomeow Can I just say, although I don't see 100% relevance in everything you have said, you have made a great point. On reading Chaung Tzu, this has hit me:

 

"The perfect man is pure spirit...Neither death nor life concern him, nor is he interested in what is good or bad"

 

Earlier in this chapter, he talks about fact man eating animal...that it just is that way.

 

Perhaps my "moral" view is deluded somewhat. Careful consiration will be taken by me but I thank you for your persistence in wanting to help me understand this!

My pleasure -- and I thank you for your open-minded and thoughtful consideration.

 

For me, Zhuangzi has long been one of the great sources of inspiration as well.

[Rara]

 

Sounds like something with which Adolf could have said....

Rofl. Exactly, hence why I now see what Taomeow is getting at. Opens up a whole new can of worms!

[xor]

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

 

You took the ball and ran with it. Same kind of argument as the "meat is murder" dehumanizes meat-eaters, this one is a pandora's box of dehumanizing vegetarians.

Edited November 11, 2013 by xor

[Rara]

That being said, even if I go veggie, I won't be committing mass genocide

[Rara]

 

You took the ball and ran with it. Same kind of argument as the "meat is murder" dehumanizes meat-eaters, this one is a pandora's box of dehumanizing vegetarians.

Yes I stayed clear of commenting for a while as I feel everything went a bit off topic. For the record, whatever I do won't be for the sake of agreeing with any argument. I won't be chaining myself to any fences outside McDonalds etc lol

 

Nor will I judge. It's just simply something I look to experiment with as my heart is saying to do so. But other peoples opinions don't make a shed of difference to me.

 

Must remember, I only actually asked for dietary advice, not a moral debate

Edited November 11, 2013 by Rara

[gatito]

That being said, even if I go veggie, I won't be committing mass genocide

 

If you go veggie, you may find it impossible to resist.....

[baiqi]

Chaung Tzu said:

 

"The perfect man is pure spirit...Neither death nor life concern him, nor is he interested in what is good or bad"

 

Sounds like something with which Adolf could have said....

Certainly not, Hitler had clear opinions of "good" (aryans) and "bad" (jews)!

 

Hitler never was a vegetarian,by the way it is all 3rd Reich propaganda!

Anytime you talk about vegetarianism, you end up with a Godwin point.... I'm a bit tired of this.

Edited November 11, 2013 by baiqi

[Taomeow]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/9859294/Hitlers-food-taster-speaks-of-Fuhrers-vegetarian-diet.htmlCertainly not, Hitler had clear opinions of "good" (aryans) and "bad" (jews)!

 

Hitler never was a vegetarian,by the way it is all 3rd Reich propaganda!

Anytime you talk about vegetarianism, you end up with a Godwin point.... I'm a bit tired of this.

 

I think going to reliable sources, getting the record straight, and gaining a clear picture in one's mind is worth it though, for any and all purposes -- even this one. It's true that people tend to get tired fast of facts that don't agree with their ideology, but sometimes one has to tolerate this exhaustion brought about by blows to his or her credo... this, too, is cultivation, and might make an idea or two weaker but YOU, only stronger.

 

So, according to his food taster, the unnameable Godwin point was a dedicated one hundred percent vegetarian, see the testimony:

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/9859294/Hitlers-food-taster-speaks-of-Fuhrers-vegetarian-diet.html

 

(Please copy/paste the link, it appears to be unclickable but if you paste it it takes you there.)

Edited November 11, 2013 by Taomeow

[xor]

But although he referred to meat broth as “corpse tea”, he was not fastidious about declining meat. Dione Lucas, his cook before the war, claimed that he was a fan of stuffed pigeon and he was also known to be partial to Bavarian sausages and the occasional slice of ham.

 

Are we also going after all animal activists after this? Just curious since alot of Nazis were into that sort of thing.

[Taomeow]

We are not going after anyone. We are trying to put to rest some delusions -- e.g. of moral superiority of vegetarians as a group and their excessive peacefulness as a group. These are lies. We are going after the lies. Does it bother you?

[xor]

The polarization is not useful either way. Not all vegetarians are peaceful isn't that obvious? Diet doesn't change you into peaceful or violent toward people. Nor does it make your teeth fell off in a few months.

 

There isn't any morally superior position to be gained here. If you read my posts with a clear mind you will see I'm advocating a moderate position and against dehumanizing either personal choice.

[gatito]

There are three main reasons for being a veggie (and categories thereof) : -

 

1. Health

2. Moral conviction

3. Spiritual conviction

 

Which category of veggie was Adolf?

 

(I'll give you a clue - it wasn't 2. or 3. )

[gatito]

I'm a meat eater, no I'm a omnivore. Yet I think the vegetarian life style is morally superior. My yard stick being- If you don't have to hurt something than don't. Its a simple moral code I don't live up. I don't think Meat is Murder or people should look down on people who eat meat, but I look up to people who vegetarian. I think they cause less pain in the world.

Here:

I think a group that is vegetarian, one that is sensitive enough and cares enough about the welfare of animals is much less likely to treat humans so horrendously.

 

<In advance> there's an old canard about Hitler being a vegetarian, he wasn't, he liked blood sausages. Disregarding that, I'd wager your vegetarian group is more peaceful then a carnivorous one. Undoubtedly there are exceptions, but as a rule I'm guessing.

 

While I'm generally on the side of those who think vegetarians are better for the environment. I just saw a TED video that showed movement of large herds, were vital in keeping areas from desertification and the solution to counter growing deserts was moving large herds through dry areas periodically. Thus huge herds of cattle may well hold the power to regreen large swatches of earth.

 

 

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

 

 

We are not going after anyone. We are trying to put to rest some delusions -- e.g. of moral superiority of vegetarians as a group and their excessive peacefulness as a group. These are lies. We are going after the lies. Does it bother you?

 

@ Taomeow

 

I'm a bit confused about your position here.

 

Are you saying that the learner is telling lies and/or is deluded?

[Rara]

Lol, seriously got two threads going on in one here.

 

As previously stated, I'm making no moral statement whatsoever. I'm just not eating animal when it's all out of my fridge because I just so happen to click with cows and sheep...and eating them the other week has just made me feel like a hypocrite. Eating meat right now just doesn't appeal to me...and I don't care what others do. No superiority, no activism or preaching...just I'm not eating meat.

 

So if we want to talk activism and morals then ok, but it's not a topic that I really care for so I'm out from here.

 

Thanks for all the advice, all taken on board!

[xor]

I'm out of this one then. Would love to continue to morality debate though without derailing the OP.

[Brian]

*** STEWARD COMMENTARY *, **

 

While this thread has gone waay off-topic, I've discussed with the OP and he feels the thread filled its original purpose. Rather than attempt to disentangle the two comingled discussions within this one thread, I propose that we consider the topic to have organically changed during the natural discourse and, unless someone wishes to launch a new thread specifically on dietary morality, to allow this conversation to continue. Splitting the thread would result in discontinuities within each of the resultant threads, I think.

 

*** END COMMENTARY ***

[i am]

Oh goody. I don't have to hold back from posting then.

 

It seems to me that this thread has unfortunately turned into one where the main players aren't understanding each other correctly.

 

All I can say, based on a quick reading of the last couple days, is that Taomeow is attacking, if you can call it that, an attitude, a feeling of superiority, and false reasoning. Not a group of people. But a belief many in that group hold to.

 

Not that it's bad to be vegetarian. That the reasoning behind a lot of those peoples choice is a flawed one. And clearly she feels strongly about it because even though I haven't been here long, I've never seen such heat from her

 

If some here can't avoid taking that personally, misinterpreting who is being addressed in certain responses and all that, it's more their issue.

 

For me...I'm working on doing what feels ok to MY sense of right and wrong. Whether my senses are flawed is a whole other discussion...but my choices are not made without a lot of thought and data. Well...at least not the choices I've put a lot of thought and reading/experiencing into anyway

[Taomeow]

I_am, thank you for granting the benefit of your superb reading comprehension to my humble contributions.

 

I feel exceptionally strongly about the issue for a bunch of reasons -- I mentioned that I've been doing nutritional/herbal consulting for a good number of years, so what I get to experience by way of health, moral status and so on of people coming from all manner of dietary backgrounds is not limited to my own experiences with personal choices and theoretical musings by any stretch of imagination. I've seen people die because of dietary fundamentalism, and I've seen people sentenced to death come back to life, and even now, as this discussion unfolded, I found myself facing a bit of a dilemma...

 

I've been asked to do a consultation for a woman from India, aged 30 and diagnosed with cancer. She is a cultural vegetarian, and has never even tasted meat, fish or eggs in her entire life. The cancer she has developed, a blood-based one, has a particular affinity to vegetarians, not all of them but those who have unfortunate immune system abnormalities which result in an ongoing immune conflict that sooner or later can cause either the B-lymphocytes or the T-lymphocytes or both to mutate. Eating animal products can't prevent this by itself unless the true offenders are removed from the diet, but it can often delay it, because of a whole host of protective factors in healthy meats and seafood (l-carnosine, butyrates, fat-soluble vitamins A, D and E, omega-3s, B-6 and B-12, folate, zinc, and on and on -- long-term vegetarians tend to be low or deficient on some or all of these, in addition to underproducing HGH, proteolytic pancreatic enzymes that are potent cancer busters, and on and on. The junk science that ignores all these factors or attributes diseases of vegetarians to some other factors abounds, but I'm light years past that, wouldn't even know where to start -- dinosaurs? trilobites? -- how far back I would have to go to disentangle the knot of BS. Kellog's invention of breakfast cereals to clean out 'impure" morals of "bad Christians?" The fact that India which has the highest percentages of vegetarians also has cardiovascular disease rates that are the highest in Asia, and in women, as high as in the US, which for the rest of Asia is unheard of? Honestly, I know too much to even be in this thread, and I made a grave mistake as I mentioned earlier when I thought I could do something useful by just recommending a book and bailing out. God only knows an online black hole can exert a strong enough pull to pull one in against her best judgment. I take the responsibility for not noticing soon enough that this is one of those.)

 

So, back to the Indian woman. Long story short, I learned two things about real (cultural, traditional) vegetarians so far. First, they do not let their dietary tradition spill over into larger issues of life and death, right and wrong, and so on. She was pregnant with her second child when she was diagnosed with cancer, and opted for an abortion so as not to delay the treatment. It never occurred to her or her husband (who is our translator, since her English is limited) to drag any "moral" considerations into this decision, it was just something that "happened the way it happened, bad timing to bring another child into the world, hopefully there's going to be a better time for this in the future." Second -- it was immediately clear to me that the woman's vegetarianism is nothing to argue about, it is what it is and we should work with it, there's no "personal choice" involved in true cultural vegetarianism, you are born into that, you can't choose or abandon this, and by the same token, if you are born in a Chukchi family of reindeer herders in the tundra, you are born into your tradition and you can't question eating meat anymore than you can question your parents' and grandparents' and ancestors' right to live, to be on this earth.

 

But, without of course questioning, even for a second, the vegetarian status of this lady, because in this situation I am definitely not entitled to (if it was a Western vegetarian with this kind of complications, of course the first thing I would say would be, "frackin' quit it already"), I had a dilemma. She needs supplements to make up for all the deficiencies (which, incidentally, were confirmed by lab tests I asked her to ask her doctor to order, measuring the levels of a few crucial vitamins and minerals) and among these I mentioned desiccated liver tablets and fish oil, which would cover some of the territory if accepted. She asked if that's available in capsules. Yes. Would you take these? Yes, absolutely.

 

There we go. I breathed a sigh of relief. Of course it never occurred to me to point out that these are actually animal foods-- calling them "supplements" does not change the source they come from, animals. I'm sure she understands that (she has an MS in physics and is very intelligent overall), but... again, I saw an aspect of a cultural vegetarian that I have never seen in vegetarians "by choice." Subjectively, I feel much more empathy for cultural vegetarianism than for the countercultural kind (to me, the latter is often just infantile rebellion against the family and society, basically an equivalent of throwing an existential tantrum -- while I can understand the emotions behind it full well and have been tempted to throw one on many occasions myself, still an adult might want to look for more productive expressions of dissent methinks...)

Edited November 13, 2013 by Taomeow

[i am]

Having grown up in modern-day America, it's hard for me to understand not being able to go against your culture. Do you find, with some other countries, that it's not an option? I mean I know it would be offensive to ask someone to do it. But since most people I know threw off one or another major aspect of their parent's culture, it's not a given for me that someone wouldn't choose to abandon their culture.

 

But like I mentioned, born & raised in the US, I may have a skewed view!

[Taomeow]

I think that's where love finally comes into the picture. I suspect people who don't go against their culture were loved children once -- not loved the way we see children "loved" when mom calls from work and dispenses an obligatory "I love you" over the phone. And not loved in the head, from a safe physical and emotional distance, the way an estranged or emotionally unavailable dad "loves" his children. No. They were kids whose mothers didn't wear their photographs in the wallet, squeezed in between credit cards, to show to the world that they indeed had a child -- here's your documented proof. No. Those other mothers carried the actual child in their arms. And did it in a manner that would require the child to be massively abnormal to rebel against.

 

Some cultures fare better than yours or mine in this respect, though in modern times few are perfect. It is a little known fact that the real and exceptionally reliable predictor of whether a culture will manifest itself as peaceful or belligerent is the way it treats its infants and small children. If this treatment is based on the idea that the child is all wrong until made right, and sets about making and breaking him or her to fit a particular mold, it is going to be warlike -- and the harsher the treatment, the more aggressive. If children are loved in the form of actual accepting and caring physical presence of the parents, never abused, even are "spoiled" (in our understanding of the word, i.e. never punished for being, well, children), the culture is going to be peaceful. In neither scenario food choices have any impact. (Source: Derrick Jensen, "A Language Older Than Words.")

Edited November 13, 2013 by Taomeow

[xor]

Ok if this fine let's continue.

 

There was some confusion I think about being countercultural and choosing vegetarianism. Personal choice doesn't necessarily mean you are being countercultural. Some people may choose vegetarianism for spiritual reasons nothing to do with veganism for example. If you lump everyone whose chosen to be a vegetarian with the hostile crowd you are doing everyone a disservice.