Reply #27: Good & wise posts in this thread.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

The posts by Mizmoon & SiouxJ about power & guilt
especially.

I use the x in the box at the end of smug anti-veg threads.
They are made to get the goat of veggies, so I personally
just say No thanks and x them out. I've been a veggie for over
30 years and don't have whatever it takes to fight people
who are adamantly smug and really perverse in their opinions.
Perverse in the sense that they are saying things to
deliberately provoke.

Part of the reason I don't eat meat (and am increasingly
trying to be vegan) is for the peace. There are
words of war and words of peace, acts of war and acts of
peace, thoughts of war and thoughts of peace. Not eating
meat adds to the peace in all those realms. I don't then
want to get into a mental/emotional/physiological stance
of war to argue or battle with the deliberate provokers and
mockers of not only what I believe in but what I do. I am
put in the position of hating these people whose minds &
habits I would change if I could. And in a state of war I
can't make people act more peacefully from their hearts
outward. I love to talk with people who are curious about
vegetarianism, but that's not the same thing as battling
the provokers.

Yesterday on the black forum on CSPAN one of the lesders
used the term "positive anger" that I had never heard before.
I took that to mean focusing this anger we feel against lies
and injustice and cruelty and cynicism, focusing it with some
kind of loving, compassionate hand. I find this very hard to
do myself. I am so easily filled with Billy Budd-like outrage
at the provokers' mockery that I can do no good but only escalate
the ire and bile. But if others try to counter that mockery
maybe it's possible to do so with a positive anger, meaning
not get into the anger the other folks want to provoke. I have
found myself that I can't do it, or not for long, and all I do
is get so upset myself that I'm not really doing my way any
good and not changing any minds or hearts. I'm in this for the
peace more and more, and if I can't further my beliefs with some
reasonable semblance of peace in my heart, then for now I decide
not to, at least in terms of the subject of this thread. I'm glad
this forum is here, it's a nice enclave, so thanks for those who started it and keep it going.