I don't doubt that your body might feel odd after having not eaten meat for awhile, just as you might feel odd if you haven't eaten sugar for awhile and suddenly do. That doesn't mean that your body can't digest and I imagine if you ate meat again you would find after a couple of days you were fine. While you might not find eating meat as offensive you are coming off as very judgemental and self-righteous about it. Its fine that you've made an ethical decision regarding not eating meat and I can respect that but at the same time if you can't appreciate the fact that many people considering cooking food, including meat, important and you consider it sad and unethical that they do so that strikes me as being very self-righteous. When I was a teenager I shattered my leg in a motorcycle accident and one of my doctors was an exceptional Indian orthopeadic surgeon. In appreciation my family invited him to a steak dinner not realizing he was a devout Hindu. He still showed up, politely declined the steak and apologized that he couldn't eat the steak. I can't read his mind but I genuinely got the impression that he understood we were trying to honor him and felt bad that he couldn't accept that honor. He didn't have the attitude of : But appreciated the effort and understood its import.
If I can split the difference between you and Otto my guess is that you are correct that the enymes required to digest meat decrease if you don't eat it for awhile but that doesn't mean you completely lose the ability to digest meat. Even if you don't eat meat for a few years the first few meals might be rough but once your body realizes you are eating meat again it will probably return to producing enough enzymes to digest it. There have been cases of people who due to war, poverty or natural disaster end up having to go without meat for years but are capable of eating it again.
Anyone can eat meat, but like you said, it will make you sick if you eat too much before your body adapts - that's all I was saying. I think actually it's just the tremendous amount of protein your putting into your body and that's what's throwing things off. It's like when I use to travel, a lot of places didn't have cold drinks, so when i got back to the states i couldn't tolerate ice in my drinks because it would make my teeth hurt for a few weeks until i got used to it again.
They should just use chewing tobacco. While I find it disgusting it cannot enter my body so I'm fine with it.
If you would read my earlier posts in this thread you would see that that is exactly how I have felt every time I have been offered food that I do not eat. I have since then gotten extremely offended and pissed off by people -- mostly Mr. Meowgi but also you -- suggesting that it would somehow be more righteous of me to just accept the gift of meat. Or that I am selfish or disrespectful for not doing so. You're right. I do feel very strongly about this. And when I was younger I preached to others about it. I have spent a long time trying to achieve a zen about it and accepting everyone's choices as their own and as totally okay that way. And I honestly feel they are. EXCEPT: when anyone suggests I am an ******* for being a vegan and sticking to it. When that happens you bet my self righteousness will come out. I'm having a party to honor you, Sishir. In this party we will kick r****ds in the head. I have taken great trouble to arrange this party to honor you. In my culture, that is just what we do. If you don't participate, you will deeply offend me. After that, we will cut dogs in half and drink their blood. After that we will smoke the ceremonial peace pipe filled with crack. I have gone to great trouble to arrage each of these things to honor you. If you don't participate you will deeply offend me. And if you don't participate in them you are selfish and inconsiderate. Do you realize how ****ed up that sounds? I am not trying to tell people to live the way I do. I am trying to explain how f*cked it is that you would ask me to live the way you do in the interest of "respect."
If my 89 year old grandma slaved all day to make you dinner and you refused it I would have to kick your ass.
I want to be really clear about this: I did not imply that someone that offered me meat would offend me or that I would be angry with them. It's an incredibly difficult thing for me when that happens; I am gracious and apologetic to a fault for not accepting the gift. I am not offended by those people. I am deeply offended by people who tell me I'm an ******* for not violating my own ethics and going ahead and eating the meat. And when people press the issue you bet I'm going to tell them to **** off. It's not easy being vegan; it is very difficult. I do it not to crusade or feel righteous; I do it because it is very, very important to me. To tell me I'm being a dick for sticking to it is to tell me my most deeply held beliefs -- very difficultly maintained for 20 years -- are not just wrong but are (amazingly) unethical. However strongly I feel about the eating of meat, I would never try to make anyone feel bad about doing it. People in this thread though have tried to make me feel bad about sticking to my beliefs about it. That is at least as f*cked as telling someone they are an ******* for belonging to any given religion. And that is extremely f*cked.
I would love that, man. In all my years of contentious conversations on this board I have never wanted to punch somebody in the head as much as I have with you. You're a dick. And the fact that you pretend you care about animals is hilarious.
And if my 99 year old grandmother slaved all day to prepare you a young boy to rape and you refused to rape him I would have to kick your ass too. Dick.
Different strokes for different folks. Your grandma likes to feed dead animals to strangers, my grandma offers up sex kids. You have clearly expressed that politeness should trump any other ethical concern so I'm sure you'll have no problem raping a kid, even if you prefer to do that "as little as possible."
I want to say this too. If you knew me in real life, unless we went out to eat together you would never know I was vegan. Even if we did, you might not know. I keep it to myself. And I am very self-conscious about it if I have to ask a waiter a question. I am that way because I don't want it to be an issue. It is a personal choice for me and I don't much care to talk about it. If it comes up, more often than not I explain that it is only a preference and is not an ethical thing because I don't want anyone else to feel bad about their own choices. My offense here is only toward the idea that I am wrong to refuse meat when offered. When that situation arises nobody feels worse than I do. I encourage everyone else to enjoy it and I make jokes about my own freaky diet. I do not proselytize. Ever. And I promise you, Sishir, that the guy in your story could not have possibly been more respectful than me in the same situation as I take tremendous pains to be respectful and appreciative. But I'm not going to eat meat. I will take every step but that to make the person feel good but I will not take that one. And it is only in suggesting that I ought to that you bring out the worst of my feelings about the whole thing. Is there honestly anyone here that believes that the right thing for me to do in that situation would be to eat meat?
Well it was you who first felt compelled to remark on my eating principles. I don't know about here, but I'm sure some would say that the practice of generating humility and renunciation is of as equal importance as that as respecting life, or that it is actually the same thing. Some would say that there is nothing unethical at all about eating meat. It is the killing and the desire of killing that should be avoided. I would agree with them.
People that equate humility with life/death have, to my mind, too much time on their hands and too little experience with actual death. But, again, in matters of philosophy and ethics, I won't claim a higher ground than anyone else. That is only my read. It is further my read that you seem to be a Buddhist of convenience. I'm sure you've read all the books and I'm even more sure that you've found exactly what works for you in them and ignored the rest. And that's fine too. In fact it's probably sort of Buddhist. That's funny about how killing should be avoided but eating meat is totally cool. The Buddhist priests you referenced a while back obviously reconciled that by going door to door as beggars. You do it by going to dinner parties. Or grocery stores. Or restaurants. Or whatever. This thing didn't start because I felt compelled to comment on your eating "principles" (if you want to call them that). It started because you, in your vehement defense of smoking in public spaces, made stringent arguments about the ill effects of raising and slaughtering animals on the environment and Max called you out as a hypocritical meat eater. Rightly. In response to that you said you ate as little meat as possible, I said as little meat as possible was none and you spent a couple days trying to prove I was a dick for not sharing your belief that vegetarianism was right except when someone offered you free meat. And, hilariously, in that case it was dickish. You finished your last post saying you agreed there's nothing wrong with eating meat and that it's only killing and the desire to kill that should be avoided. I can't imagine any reason, in the face of that, that you don't eat meat every day. You don't have to kill or have a desire to kill to buy a quarter pounder, so why don't you? My opinion: you're a hobby Buddhist that likes to chastise others for not being as enlightened as you are and then violate whatever half-beliefs you have whenever it's convenient for you. Maybe that's not the case. But you got awfully freaked, for whatever reason, when I took issue (in parentheses mind you and with disclaimers saying it's totally fine if you want to eat meat sometimes but it's wrong to say it's "as little as possible" since it just isn't) with your middling position. It was a parenthetical comment, given with respect. And it's your sensitivity to that that's led us here. I'm glad for you that eat less meat than others if you are. But to suggest I should eat meat so that I don't hurt people's feelings is beyond stupid.
As a raging carnivore, I completely understand batman's position on declining to eat meat served to him as a guest and sishir I frankly a little surprised that you're giving him so much grief about it. Your example of the doctor was particularly ill advised, as batman had said clearly earlier in the thread that he feels bad when he is put in a position to turn down food that people have prepared for him and goes out of his way to be gracious about it. I really don't understand this idea that we should compromise our personal beliefs to avoid causing other people discomfort. Sishir do you think this should apply in other facets of life or just in the case of dining? For instance, if I'm a guest at someone's house and they start spouting a bunch of racist bs, should I just nod my head in agreement, so I don't make them feel bad? To me this is the equivalent of eating meat they have served, if I considered it wrong to eat meat.
If you notice I did say I respect him for his position and while he did say that earlier he went on to say how he doesn't feel he should feel bad and that he doesn't understand why people would be offended if someone turned down their food. But do you believe that eating meat is as bad as racism or in the BJ's own words "kicking r****ds in the head". I can respect an ethical position not eating meat but I find it odd that someone who was brought up in this society would make those sort of comparisons.
I have since then gotten extremely offended and pissed off by people -- mostly Mr. Meowgi but also you -- suggesting that it would somehow be more righteous of me to just accept the gift of meat. Or that I am selfish or disrespectful for not doing so.[/quote] Your comments though seem to show that you don't understand why someone would be offended in the first place. Your response is to get offended that we are even bringing this up. As I said I respect your ethical stand on eating meat but I do think its self-righteous for you to tell people "**** off" when they point out that many people take food including meat very seriously. I don't think you're an ******* at all for being a vegan and sticking to it. I don;t think you should not be a vegan. I think you should understand though that some people consider food important and why they might feel offended. You might not change and they might not change but the most each of you could be is more understanding. Do you equate eating meat with kicking r****ds in the head and smoking crack?
I don't get the sense that batman would be anything other than understanding about it. I think he's kinda made that point here. He's just saying, "please don't insist that i eat meat. because i won't." I think it's incumbent on the other person to respect that...as rare as that entire hypothetical seems to me.
