Addiction #05 — a bit of Clarity (05/26/12)
All right, folks … These last few posts have been a bit tough to handle for more than a few of you, so I am going to clear a few things up from my end and then simply let it be.
First of all, though I do sincerely support everything I have written (in both word & deed), I in no way, shape or form judge, criticize or condemn any of you for believing or acting otherwise. Would I love it if the entire human population would stop eating meat? of course I would! Do I dislike those who continue to do so? Of course not! Your choices are your choices and yours alone to make — just as the consequences for those choices will be yours to reap. My goal here is to simply present the Truth of the matter, so that your choices from here on out will be informed and conscious ones — that is all.
Finally, there are those of you who have taken a much greater step — those who are wondering about the killing & eating of ANY life form for food. As one dear Friend put it: “How do I know what is sentient?” … This is a great question — one that bothered me as well for many years.
There is an intuitive continuum of sentience that we all somehow comprehend. We feel it in our core that killing and eating fellow humans is somehow “wrong”, and most folks on the planet extend this feeling towards all “smart” animals (dolphins, the great apes, elephants, etc) … Maybe some folks eat horses and others dogs, and yet the majority of us feel that there is something innately repulsive about this.
On the other end of the spectrum, we feel no remorse whatsoever when we eat fruits picked from a tree. After all, the tree is not at all harmed in the process. Every food we eat falls somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. The goal, I think is not to be perfect (though it is possible to eat completely “Kill-Free” and still have a diverse and healthy diet), but to kill & eat as few beings as possible that are on the “clearly self-aware” end of the spectrum — which includes all animals (or as another Fried put it, anything with a heart) …
I have complete Faith that the entire human race will one day eat “Kill-Free”, and if you would like to know more about this method of living in perfect Harmony with your surroundings, let me know. Until that day, it remains a Truth that the first Power-full step that you can take in that direction is to replace animal meat with anything other than animal meat.
Consider with humility … Enact with Courage …
and Peace to ALL!
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