Veganism

There is an old story about Abraham Lincoln. Back when he was a lawyer and with a few fellows had to constantly travel from town to town he once came upon some baby birds. Their nest had fallen out of the tree it was in. Lincoln made the group stop and others to help him put the baby birds back into the nest and the nest back up in a tree. His fellows made fun of him for his "sentimentality". Lincoln simply said he could not have slept that night knowing he had left those baby birds to die on the ground.

His roommate at the time, a young teacher called Görlitz, later recalled that Van Gogh ate frugally, and preferred not to eat meat.[21][22]..."...he would not eat meat, only a little morsel on Sundays, and then only after being urged by our landlady for a long time. Four potatoes with a suspicion of gravy and a mouthful of vegetables constituted his whole dinner"—

"As told by Kafka's close friend Max Brod:

Suddenly he began to speak to the fish in their illuminated tanks. "Now at last I can look at you in peace, I don't eat you anymore."

Eating Meat, Jonathan Safran Foer, pg 36.

In his later years Tesla became a vegetarian. In an article for Century Illustrated Magazine he wrote: "It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarous habit." Tesla argued that it is wrong to eat uneconomic meat when large numbers of people are starving; he also believed that plant food was "superior to [meat] in regard to both mechanical and mental performance". He also argued that animal slaughter was "wanton and cruel".[97]

Three or four ways to suffering:
1. The lack of a sufficient over I (super ego) to stand back and pay attention and judge your actions and whether or not they adhere to whatever moral laws you've made for yourself.
2. How much forethought, how far into the future you were looking when your 'I' (ego) established it's personal moral laws. Less forethought means less seemingly altruistic behavior and thus more causing harm towards others.
3. How good or bad you are at discernment. DO you demonize everyone around you?
4. Once you perceive someone is performing an action which causes 'unnecessary suffering' do you try to use force to get them to change their ways?

To me eating meat is symbolic that this world is pretty much hopeless. While there is much suffering that it is complicated to fix, eating meat is very straightforward and yet, still, people just don't care.

I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Foer this last week. It is primarily about the evils of factory farming although touches on the rest. Driving home from the airport with my wife I was thinking about how a sizable percentage of animals are skinned while still conscious and even have their legs, etc cut off while still conscious. Was thinking about this and feeling depressed and furthermore much more depressed that I live in a world where all of this is obvious enough to everyone but they just don't care.

I mentioned this fact about factory farming to my wife, about how they often don't successfully even render the animal unconscious before they start skinning, etc it.

Some of what she does in response:
Claims its awful time to bring it up. Why right now?

But no matter what time I bring it up it's an awful time. If she's in a good mood, why would I ruin it by bringing such a thing up? If she's in a bad mood, then I'd just be a sadist to bring up such a thing. So it's gone for years. It's always a bad time.

This though ties into the fact that indeed for ever thinking about such things period, yes I'm am some kind of sadist/masochist. Why would I ever think about something so negative?

This is the positivity cult. My wife is a member. Perhaps we're all members to some extent.

I try to point out how incredibly negative it actually is, to try to avoid ever thinking about anything negative. That it means you believe that nothing can ever be done about any negative thing and instead it's best just to pretend that such things don't exist.

It may be some kind of wisdom to take such an attitude to some extent. (Please lord grant me the courage to...) But going too far with such an attitude is incredibly negative. To instead at times face the horrors around us and try to be better, at least try to not contribute to them is courageous...

Then it's bad for one's health. How can she think that when her husband has been a very near vegan for 6 years and is pretty healthy? She thinks I'm a freak of nature. But still she could research the matter online very quickly. Or believe I'm being honest when I cite the literature at least....

Then, no really it's just about me trying to control people. I want to control her. I point out that this is demonizing me. Actually when two people disagree about something there's a decent chance one of them is wrong and the other is right. Why shouldn't they discuss the matter and give the reasoning, the facts behind their opinion?

To the best of my knowledge I've never caused a single person to become vegan or vegetarian. It does depress me. I work in a hospital even, a place where you might think people would care more about the suffering of others... Even my wife is completely closeminded, simply refuses to think about the subject at all. It does symbolize to me how hopeless the human race is, as what could be more obvious? Incredible suffering to those whom can't defend themselves, while also even hurting ourselves in the process and still almost everyone does it.