AF persons/actualists: why do you eat animals from slaughter system and/or sea creatures?

1) do you test veganism for a few years with the dedicated effort you made with AF/other meditation?

2) will you eat roadkill?


If you are AF/an actualist, it would be useful if you noted this at the head of your post so that we all know who's answering from what perspective/gain/accomplishment.

Thank you.

Defining cruel as =
(i) understanding what causes another being to suffer, and
(ii) delivering the same causes of suffering to such being
a - without beneficial outcome-goals (in terms of the being's benefit), and
b - despite being able to withhold such sufferance-causing action with no equivalent suffering to causitor's self, and
(iii) causitor taking the action for the causitor's pleasure, satisfaction, and/or sloth (causitor values its own non-effort (i.e., convenience) over the being's sufferance).

Not being enthusiastic about holding a strong sense of identity, I'm hesitant to call myself an actualist. But, I have been practicing actualism as well as meditation. I'm a vegetarian now, was vegan for a couple years, and raw foodest for about 7 months. My raw food experiment was as far as I went with the idea that a harmless and "pure" diet would bring about peace and happiness. My conclusion was that "I" was pretty much the same no matter what I was eating. I've also eaten raw, living wood grubs fresh harvested from a fallen oak tree - which basically look like a fat maggot and pop like a grape when you chew them.

Just a few days ago, I was driving and also practicing being happy and harmless. Going about 50 mph, I suddenly saw something small and black in the road. About ten feet away, I finally realized it was a skunk, and that it was alive and that there was no way I was possibly going to be able to steer clear of it. If I had swirved, I would've hit it with my tire, so I decided to try going straight over the middle and hope it would pass the low clearance. I heard a thump... thump... and I'm sure that it was at least mortally wounded if not dead on impact. My first response was a small tear, and feeling of sadness for the life that had just been taken. Then, I asked if my sadness would help the skunk at all (obviously not). So, I got back to feeling happy and harmless as quick as possible.

Now, I wouldn't eat a roadkill skunk, for sure. But, I don't think I would enjoy eating roadkill even if it had been a more edible animal. I'm not knowledgable in proper cleaning and preparation methods for animals anyway, as I've been a vegetarian for 12 years, and a non-hunter my whole life (though I did fish when I was a kid.)

What I've found to be true is that "being harmless" means that you are free from any sense of malice, anger, ill-will, etc. If you simply don't have malice, then nothing you do can be motivated by malice. If nothing you do is motivated by malice, then you are harmless. If you still kill bugs, or hit a skunk on the road, it does not come from any kind of malicious intent.

I still work for an organic farm, and eat locally and organically as much as possible. This just seems like good sense to me.

Hi Katy,

Firstly, I am free from the human condition. Second, I have been contemplating this topic a bit lately so I am quite interested in thinking it out further. That said, my thoughts are no where near definitive, and so I am quite open to considering any ideas proposed.



In the case of the "slaughter system," it is mostly because it is convenient to consume products derived from such a process. As I was raised in a rural area with cows as my neighbors, and having seen those same cows grow up and then be slaughtered (and eventually make their way into my belly), I do not find the process as I observed it (not on a mass scale) to be abhorrent in any way. Also, as I live in Dallas, Texas currently, it is hard for me to even know whether or not the animal was raised on a small farm or in a large facility.

Further, the situations that others are often (re)considering in this way (such as mass scale slaughter systems and the purported "inhumane" treatment of the animals therein) are, as far as I can tell, a byproduct of other societal/economic issues (most of which will end, or at least begin to drastically decline as the ratio of AF to non-AF humans trends toward an AF majority [especially at 51%]). That is to say: I've already done the one thing I can do to actually end the source of the perceived problem, whereas switching ones diet to vegan-only is akin to placing a damp band-aid on the wound of a patient whose heart is hemorrhaging.

As for sea creatures, I often fish for myself and-- depending on the location and the catch-- consume those fish as well (the others are tossed back). They are tasty, nutritious, and even more so than the "slaughter system" example I gave above, I find no issue with it. The fish I consume will be consumed by/into something eventually regardless (whether that be other fish, other mammals, the soil and thus the trees, etc).



I have not. I am considering it though, since it seems more agreeable with my digestive system. The hold-up is primarily with convenience and nutritional concerns; it currently has nothing to do with any ethical implications a person may relate to such a dietary choice.



That very much depends. Most roadkill is quite unfit for consumption for varying reasons (bruising, decay, industrial toxins, etc). I have consumed road-killed deer before and it was fine (it is legal to harvest some road-killed animals given certain conditions are met; some states require permits for instance).

*

And now a few questions of my own:

(Note that I make several assumptions given the context, your quoted section above, and the like; if it seems that I have made an incorrect assumption, then by all means, please say so.)

-If you could snap your fingers and "fix" the system, what would that system look like? What changes do you propose? Why?
-Would you advise a human to forfeit their personal salubrity (nutritional requirements or income requirements or whatever) for the sake of more "humane" treatment of animals or for the changing of the system?
-Are you aware of how regional food supply and supply chains (in general) function?

Trent

Katy,

Is this a question of what diet is the most harmless? If so, most harmless for whom/what? Yourself, every human, all sentient beings, or the physical environment in general? Each of those gives a different way to look at harmlessness relating to dietary choices.

Steph

Hi ka,

I really enjoy reading your threads and appologies that my response is off topic but it is something I have been contemplating for a while.

In regard to your above comment:
"Richard's system does not explain why he affectively devalues the mind as mind-sense (not 5-sense aggregator) as troublesome. Other than to say, its so great to be in no-self all the time".

I have been thinking about this for a while and it appears that people are as attached to "no self" just like they cling to "self".

No Self is just another self experience, there is no interior to find that it is empty. Just like when people state No Thinker, No Hearer, No Feeler by doing this you look to see that there is none setting up the whole "No Self" Experience.

So the AF people are not in "No Self" all the time as there is no space for either "the Self or No Self" just the direct sense experience.

Cheers
Jeff

Hi Katy,

I appreciate your efforts to get answers to these questions. I have been free of the human condition since 9/22/10 at 3:30pm in the afternoon. We spoke on the chat for a fairly long amount of time about the particularities of this issue and I think Trent's post aptly addresses many of the concerns you raised.

I would like to suggest, however, that the fundamental issue in this thread is not dissimilar to that in the thread this branched off from where you spoke at length with Tarin about what you felt was the importance of suffering as a tool to avoid further suffering. It seems to me that what you perceive to be the lack of emphasis on animal suffering in actualism then enables the harm of animals, which relates to a larger concern that you have regarding emphasis on suffering and its relationship to the cessation of said suffering.

Does this seem to be the case to you? If this is the case, I wonder if you could apply any of the insights or realizations from that conversation to this one as it regards questions of harmlessness?

In particular, the suffering emotion at play in this particular issue is grief. The grief arises as a result of knowing/witnessing (perhaps through first hand seeing or video or reading about such) the pain of animals who are slaughtered for human consumption, which activates mourning for the animal as well as guilt for human behavior in relation to these animals. My argument about the smaller creatures who are killed when one eats fruits and vegetables seems irrelevant because given the smallness of their size, we cannot watch them die, hence we are unable to feel grief or guilt about their deaths. If it is the case, as your post seems to imply, that mammalian life is more important than non-mammalian and microscopic life forms, then this hierarchy would also suggest that hierarchies would hold in other contexts as well, so that human needs would supersede animal needs. This is one conclusion that can be drawn from your dismissal of the death of smaller creatures in relation to vegetarian and vegan consumption of vegetables and fruits.

The issue of the size of the creature may seem insignificant but is important. It is important because it demonstrates that the compassionate response to the grief/guilt emotion only occurs for those creatures with whom humans can cathect, which is what accounts for the valuation of one creature's life over another creature's life. This reveals quite clearly the ego at play in this concern for other living creatures, because this concern is not universal but rather stratified in relation to human beings, who are at the "top" of the hierarchy. Furthermore, by ignoring the fact that the death of some creature is involved in anything a human could possibly eat, not to mention the modes of production of not only meat-based food choices but also vegan ones, one denies the very facts of existence on this planet and implicitly distances one's self from the inevitable fate of all living things, including human beings, which is that we will all die.

By pointing out that death is the inevitable consequence of life on earth, both in the form of lives--big and small--that are used for human consumption, and in terms of one's own eventual demise, I do not suggest that we should eat animals because they will die any way. To reduce the consumption of meat, which has characterized human society from its inception, to a single moral imperative belies deeper concerns about the nature of what it means to be "good," what one's relationship to suffering is, and the reliance upon certain behaviors for the formation of an identity.

To stage a critique of slaughterhouse practices and over-fishing is not the same thing as condemning meat eating universally. I notice your emphasis on slaughterhouse meat in your post. Do you mean to draw a distinction in how meat is produced as opposed to the fact of meat being eaten at all?

I readily admit that I was an off and on vegetarian since I was 15 years old and many of my vegetarian periods were characterized by a kind of righteous indignation about meat eating. I performed a deconstruction of my own problematic behavior as it regards notions of superior morality in relation to meat eating in the article, "Vegetarianism and Dreadlocks: The Politics of "Consciousness" and Cultural Identification," which was published in 2000 in Black Renaissance/Renaissane Noire. I do not assume your (presumed) veganism stems from a similar place, but perhaps you could discuss this issue in the context of what role it plays in your life and how you perceive your veganism as operating in relation to your identity.

Now I eat what is convenient, which quite often includes eating meat. It is also quite often convenient to not eat meat, and when meat is not available, I am still perfectly delighted with the wonderful food I am fortunate enough to be able to eat. I don't know if I would eat roadkill, having never hit an animal with my car, and having never been offered any.

Does it seem to you that your focus on animal suffering, and your response to it, addresses important or fundamental issues of your own personal suffering? If so, how? Would you be willing to discuss how you feel about meat consumption and what relationship that bears to how you think of yourself as a person? Is it the case that those who are vegan are "good," people and those who eat meat are "bad?"

Also, one other question--you suggest that privileging the "taste-sensation" is the reason one would eat meat, and that doing so "re-establishes the self." However if one were to eat tasty vegan food, because it tasted good, would that also "re-establish the self?"

Defining cruel as =
(i) understanding what causes another being to suffer, and
(ii) delivering the same causes of suffering to such being
a - without beneficial outcome-goals (in terms of the being's benefit), and
b - despite being able to withhold such sufferance-causing action with no equivalent suffering to causitor's self, and
(iii) causitor taking the action for the causitor's pleasure, satisfaction, and/or sloth (causitor values its own non-effort over the being's sufferance).

*

There are a lot of useful thoughts in these first posts. It may take me several days to go through what is here, just based on time alone. Looking forward to these and any more, personally.

Thank you!

On the issue of vegetarian diets being less cruel.. that was one reason I used to be a vegetarian for the 3 years I was. Another was that it made me feel better about my health, and yet another was that I felt it benefited the environment.

My undergraduate education was spent studying issues of sustainability as they relate to urban planning. One issue that came up often was diets and how they relate to environmental issues... both physical and socioeconomic. Although many see vegetarianism/veganism as practical for issues of morality, I have moved from that point of view because I don't feel an obligation to save the world any longer. Nor do I think meat eaters and corporations who perpetuate meat eating are assholes any longer.

One reason I can see a vegetarian or vegan diet being practical, however, is that there is considerable scientific research showing the production of many vegetarian foods (especially those distributed locally from the production source) might provide convenient and wide spread access to a food supply, while sustaining and in some cases re-generating (depleted) ecological resources more efficiently than an animal based diet. The distinction from morality here is that this is based upon the basic necessity of all living beings (human or otherwise) needing food/energy to survive and the means to biologically sustain access to that food/energy supply.

Steph

Hi,

Daniel wrote:


Katy replied:


In the context of affect, "psychic harm," Daniel is partially correct. One would also need to add the condition of being free of sorrow to be harmless, as sorrowful "vibes" alone are enough to harm another "being."

If you are implying that an AF person is capable of psychically / affective harming another due to ignorance, insensitivity, or lack of consideration, then that is technically incorrect. You see, it is one's very own self which is and causes whatever harm is experienced, not the particular body / event / whatever which is (mis)identified as the supposed cause. In other words "I" am always the source of "my" psychic pain; "I" am "my" feelings and "my" feelings are "me."

Trent

No. I think you could say I am accepting of holding a sense of identity (strong or weak) because I don't judge it as "bad". However, I am very skeptical about the usefulness of holding an identity, since: 1) It appears to be the source of the suffering involved in the human condition. 2) It just seems to be a factually incorrect perception of existence.
(by the way, I meant definition (b) of identity)


I don't really know what you mean by that. I think that if a person takes the identity to be useful and important, it's not likely to disappear anytime soon.


Alive. Here.


I didn't know "arise" could even be used like that in a sentence. I "arise" things? And what is the "data" in the AF link? I may not have the answers you are looking for. I just look at the identity (The distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity; individuality) and it just looks like a useless fantasy to me, and I would be quite content to not have one of those.



I think Trent's made a better response than what I could've said.



Perhaps. It seems that in some way they both could come from a sense of wanting to help others and not hurt them (altruism). Of course, I think there may be other things going on too. I really don't like to eat animals either, I don't like the texture of chewing on meat. I don't know for sure.

I have something to add, however. I missed this part when I wrote my first reply:

you wrote: "I am starting a thread on eating animals to determine if AF actually affectively avoids answering the topic or affectively chooses slaughterhouse animals and why."

Is that really the purpose of this thread? Are those the only two possibilities you could think of? It seems like you're saying "I'm starting a thread to determine if AF is deluded or cruel." Perhaps there are more possibilities you have overlooked? - Especially given that:
1) Actualism teaches how to eliminate the affective faculty completely such that one couldn't even begin to "affectively avoid" or "affectively choose".
2) AF is an acronym referring to a condition which may occur for a person. AF can't answer topics or make choices. Only people can perform these activities (unless perhaps if there is actually someone on this forum whose given name is Af)

Seeing the narrowness of your inquiry, I think maybe you will find yourself quite limited by what conclusions you draw from this thread. (By the way, I'm being sincere when I ask those questions.) If that really is the sole purpose of this thread, then perhaps I'll just excuse myself from any further discussion.

Not yet. However, I am currently practicing actualism.



Yes, I am human. The beings I eat no longer have active nervous systems, as they are already dead once I consume them. The beings that formerly had an active nervous system that I eat include seafood, chicken, and on rare occasion lamb, pig or cow. Also, there is no "who" that I eat, since "who" is "the interrogative and relative pronoun that is used to refer to human beings" and I have never eaten a human being. Which brings up your point to others in this thread about cannibalism. Having never been presented with a human being for consumption, it's never been something for me to consider. Have you ever seen a dead human being for sale at a grocery store, a restaurant, or been offered it anywhere? Same goes for roadkill.

Steph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_(pronoun)

Hi Katy,



There is no "being" the point is to cease "being". Being without feelings is also impossible as ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’.



The human body simply cannot continue to function without food it is a physiological need and not dependent on a self.
It is instinctive reaction to hunger, an emotional response that influences choice. This change in relationship between the food and perception is the self experience.




Without a self the human body still contains a a human brain capable of responding intelligently to its environment



Agree that our emotions influence every decision we make.



The practical evidence is there to discover investigate HAIETMOBA.

How is your investigation going?



From your investigation - When in PCE is there a self affectively preferring certain foods? You can answer this.




Do you fear that what is proposed is actually possible?

The biggest obstacle in this investigation is your self. Investigate how am I experiencing this moment of being alive

I would love to hear how your practice is progressing.

thank you and have a great weekend

Jeff

Hi Steph -

you write:

Do you think a vegatarian diet is less cruel? Is vegan less cruel than vegatarian?


you continue:

Are you not chosing a vegan or vegetarian meal right now, because you choose impracticality and to make you feel worse about your health? Or does vegan-eating not feel better for your health now?

*

You write:


Is the deliberate infliction of painful stimuli morality? [1]
Meaning: there is right cruelty and there is wrong cruelty
Meaning: there is better cruelty and there is worse cruelty

The opposite is clear as well:
Meaning: there is no right cruelty and there is no wrong cruelty

In both cases of morality (which concept you introduce...from where?) then morality exists.
WIthout morality, then there is still cruelty.
Meaning: cruelty is still cruelty.

Can you understand that cruelty is cruelty?
This is like: skinny dipping is skinny dipping.
This is like: choosing is choosing.
This is: cruelty is cruelty.


Do you hold any fear that choosing vegan eating will prevent your AF?
That you will be 'feeling moral'?
That you will be affectively choosing a 'right side'?

Why do you believe cruelty relates to morality?


*

your write:

What caused you to think these entities were assholes?
Do you choose now to think any other entities are assholes, other than of course your own asshole?


*

I am not 'being facaetious'.


*

How do you feel right now, if anything?
Will that right now lead you to AF?

*

Cruelty is cruelty. It exists without morality.
Do you see that?


*

Best wishes in your AF.

Cheers,
Katy

___________________________

[1] From Wikipedia:
Morality has two principal meanings:
In its "descriptive" sense, morality refers to personal or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores that distinguish between right and wrong in the human society. I
n its "normative" sense, morality refers directly to what is right and wrong, regardless of what specific individuals think.

Hamful = killing unnecessarily. Harmless = not killing unnecessarily. I eat meat, but I don't tell people I'm completely "happy and harmless". In fact what i do is I pay people to kill for me. I pay the slaughter house. Pretty revolting in one sense, but again, I don't intellectualize my way around this. If you look at all the objections to AF, you'll see that the standard defense is to engage the poster in intellectual masturbation and skirt around the problem until no more fancy words can be possibly thought of. Happens over and over again.

Trent, Steph, Stephanie, Daniel,

I do not have any other 'agenda' (i.e., "It seems like you're saying 'I'm starting a thread to determine if AF is deluded or cruel'" per Daniel). This is not my hypothesis: you bring your own issues to the forum and may keep ownership of them. If the outcome appears to you that AF supports willful cruelty, then that outcome appears to you.

I ask about AF eating (because eating is fundamental, and AF people bring up 'eating' upon achieving AF) slaughterhouse animals (because eating them is a choice, more costly than cooked roadkill, and it came up in private dialogue with an AF-claimant) and harm-doing to others without malice or sorrow (because a being can be cruelty without malice or sorrow).

I am keen to hear from actualist and AF persons about their eating, if you're eating from the slaughter system/fisheries animals, animals otherwise, or other diet (i.e., Daniel eats a vegetarian diet) and, for those AF/actualists, their experience of directly originating 'slaughter'.

This topic arises over other examples of cruelty because an AF-claimant noted (in private dialogue including the topic of their AF status) that hurting a human child is different and 'worse' than slaughtering a cow. That an AF person is actually choosing to be the triage of slaughter-is-not-bad-like-human-slaughter (enslavement, warfare, genocide, cannibalism, etc) surprises me. What has 'freedom from the human condition' to do with triaging cruelty? As a mammal, I find that slaughter of mammals has equivalences.

It appears people may be bringing their own assumptions, possibly even umbrage, to the thread. Is 'vegan' provocative of emotion and assumption, which require a self for basis? If so, then 'vegan' is a useful tool for evaluating one's own actual AF/actualism/emotion-arising.

Why could 'vegan' be a trigger among AF/actualist for emotions, identity-stories, morality, assumptions - mindstates which require a self-base?

I assume the AF people have no problem with any direct questions sans tip-toeing for diplomacy. I ask questions directly, with no malice, sorrow, rude intention, glee, spite, etc.

____


My food history:

I have returned to eating just from the vegan menu [EDIT: and whatever free food is put in front of me by friends, partner, family,etc]. I eat 1-2x a day with snacks and am active. I do buy manure which manure currently depends on a local slaughterhouse having a profitable market for its slaughtered animals. So 'i' am not 'vegan'. I aim to yard chickens or have a humanure system at some point. I have asked a hunter to kill a deer later this month for my partner and friends' winter food. Harvesting roadkill is illegal where I currently live and any roadside butchering in such a populated area would likely be disturbing to many. I have read that roadkill is sometimes turned to compost by the state.

[indent]I've eaten animals from the slaughterhouse and fisheries system.

I've slaughtered, butchered, hunted animals and fished fish.

I was raised in a house with traditional farming and fisheries roots, ate from the slaughter/fisheries systems, and entirely from a vegetarian menu.
[/indent]
I do not and did not have 'notions of moral superiority' or aspirations to 'save the world'. It is interesting how often people like to assume these feelings for others when they consider 'vegan', 'vegetarian' for themselves.

When I've eaten from the slaughterhouse and fisheries systems it is obvious i am cruelty to others.


_____


Have any of you thought about what you are eating since you posted here?

____


Convenience


Trent and SDK: you both claim freedom from 'the human condition' and you both cite convenience as your rationale to directly eat beings subject to a system well-documented in causing physical and emotional pain, i.e.,

May an AF person lean on their conveniences and ignore the cruelty they directly chose for others?

Because human history is replete with abuses perpetuated by the more-powerful leaning upon their conveniences at the expense of others' well-being, it is a reasonable basis for asking whether AF merits perpetuation more or less than other power-with-convenience ideologies.

________


Discrimination

Steph: you base your discrimination around a pig's life and human life on current English grammar:

I am reminded of a historic decision that made some human lives a mere 3/5 of a person, before that object property; beings also deemed not worthy of "who" status.
What if English grammar makes pig a full fledged "who"? What will your identity decide for itself then?

Are you understanding you being slaughter system or are you caching your actual choices in transient grammar?

________


Ignorance of the preparation of roadkill

Trent and SDK: you both cite not knowing how to prepare or be offered roadkill:

Trent: on what basis do you know that most roadkill is quite unfit for consumption? If 'you' no longer have a basis for feelings (an 'i') then you no longer have a memory for assumptions or aversion. Without a self's assumptions and aversion, what is your basis for your unfit proposal?

Without feeling aversion, in pure gustation, roadkill is very easy to prepare: treat like other ph-neutral foods and cook well. Trent, bruising results in chewing or before chewing. Does it matter when bruising occurs? Again, do you have aversion feelings?

Internet is very helpful with road kill prep, Brunswicks stews, etc.

______


Morality

Steph and Stephanie : you both cite a moral motive for your previous dabbling in vegan and vegetarian diet:

What makes cruelty a moral issue?
Are either of you afraid to be associated with the vegan 'camp' which is often deemed 'trying to save the world' (steph) and having 'notions of moral superiority' (stephanie) and its potential effect on your effort to be free of the human condition?

It's just your choice to repeatedly be 'hurting a being' (on its terms) if you have the option of walking away with no harm to yourself. There is nothing moral here.

Cruelty is cruelty regardless of whether someone says it is right or if someone declares its wrong; cruelty will also exist without a declaration of moral encampment.

How does your actual food effect your AF and harmlessness?


________


Technicality



Like morality, does actually being cruel, actually causing harm to another depend on affectation? Cruelty is cruelty; affectation is not relevant. One being (who has the option to not do this with no consequence) is deliberately causing another being pain. One is being harm to another without the obligation to be such harm.

________

My partner eats animals, my colleagues eat animals - this is fine by me. To each their own.

These people do not claim actual freedom from the human condition. I would like to know how your freedom from the human condition is reducing the harm you do to others, starting with the most fundamental of choices: what you are eating.

I am direct with everyone and appreciate your willingness to shine a light on this fundamental corner of your existence and its relevance to your actual/virtual freedom and actualism.

Just as an aside, a friend of mine who is a neurologist recently suggested I read the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes and said it was probably the most important book on health written in the last century.
Taubes, a frequent contributor to the peer-reviewed journal Science, is brilliant and obsessive about ferreting out bad science. He has spent years looking at the issues related to diet and health. This book, for which Taubes conducted something like 600 interviews and did research stretching back into the Colonial era, is one of the most mind-blowing things I've ever read. In it, Taubes presents extremely compelling evidence that many of our basic assumptions about healthy eating are flat wrong. We are told that the healthiest diet is one that is high in carbohydrates, low in meat and saturated fat, and rich in fruits and vegetables. Taubes shows that, in fact, you can trace the rise of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and even cancer to diets that are high in carbohydrates and low in saturated fat. What might be termed the "paleolithic diet" is what we are meant to eat. Carbs mess up our metabolism. He presents evidence that the resulting high levels of blood sugar/insulin drive fat into our fat cells, cause cardiovascular damage, give tumors the food they need to grow and replicate. You can be a vegetarian and still take in saturated fat, which is not harmful, through sources like ghee, butter, whole milk, half-and-half and coconut milk. A vegan diet, in light of this hypothesis and evidence, seems like a very bad idea. I'd highly recommend this book.

This reminds me of the arguments about free will that essentially go - there is no homunculus (self), therefore the homunculus can't be held responsible for its actions...

I wonder if the AF'd think that there is no harm, pain or cruelty in the world just because the previously delusional basis for understanding these things has been removed.

But with the removal of a delusional understanding, would they then not find the *actual* harm, pain and cruelty in the world to be of greater urgency than any fanciful 'psychic pain'?

And do they not know that their actions and existence can indirectly support and perpetuate harm, pain and cruelty in the world regardless of how deluded the responses of its victims?

Or that historically a tremendous amount of harm, pain, cruelty, and consequently suffering, in the world has had its cause in neither malice nor sorrow, but simply from the ignorance, insensitivity, or lack of consideration of the well intentioned?

Katy writes:

"As a mammal, I find that slaughter of mammals has equivalences."

I do not find such "equivalences." Is it possible for anyone to hold a different point of view and that be valid? I am thinking specifically about an issue like abortion. On one side, group A strongly thinks that a "murder" is taking place. On the other side, group B thinks that though something certainly does "cease to be," when one has an abortion, this "life" is less important than the life of the mother, or the potential (maybe not so good) life of the child, and so it is important and valid that one should be able to obtain an abortion if circumstances seem to dictate the necessity of such.

It may not be possible to arrive at who is "cruel" or "not cruel" in that case, or in this one, as it pertains to the question of murder in that case and generally speaking, murdering people is thought to be something all human beings should avoid, whether they are free from the human condition or not. Perhaps here, as in that case, there are some that experience meat-eating as harmfulness and some who do not. If one differs with another about the nature of that experience, then the notion of what constitutes harmlessness will be vastly different. An actually free person who undergoes an abortion, for example, would be seen by some as being a responsible and prudent individual and by others as a joke regarding the idea of harmlessness. Who would be right? (That is basically a rhetorical question.)

And, as I alluded to in my previous post, while I do not relish the idea of animals suffering, I do see a difference between a cow and a human child. If two of them were caught in a river and about to drown, I'd save the child.


Katy asked:

"May an AF person lean on their conveniences and ignore the cruelty they directly chose for others?

Because human history is replete with abuses perpetuated by the more-powerful leaning upon their conveniences at the expense of others' well-being, it is a reasonable basis for asking whether AF merits perpetuation more or less than other power-with-convenience ideologies."

***

Again, you make the leap here from "convenience" to "cruelty they directly chose for others," which suggests that for *everyone* there is a causal link between meat consumption and "directly choosing to be cruel to others." I am suggesting otherwise.

Since yesterday was Columbus Day, and National Coming Out Day, let me attempt a parallel argument. One could argue, and some do, that simply living in the United States and paying taxes here perpetuates a brutal government that has its origins in the genocide of other people, many of whom it continues to marginalize and exploit, while at the same time denying people the right to marry and serve openly in the military because of their sexual orientation. Isn't simply living in the USA "directly choosing to be cruel to others?" Would it be incorrect to confront all the ways in which living in a 1st world country, that regularly exploits people in so called 3rd world countries, not to mention all the ethnic and sexual minorities living in the USA, is willfully choosing to enjoy the benefits of exploitation--of human beings, both historically and currently?

But it is more convenient to (continue) living in the USA, is it not? One can certainly move to another country, many have done so, though it takes some effort. It is definitely the case, however, that not everyone (and probably not everyone here on this forum, or even in a university humanities department) would agree with this interpretation of what it means to live in the USA.


Katy asks:


"Without feeling aversion, in pure gustation, roadkill is very easy to prepare: treat like other ph-neutral foods and cook well. Trent, bruising results in chewing or before chewing. Does it matter when bruising occurs? Again, do you have aversion feelings?

Internet is very helpful with road kill prep, Brunswicks stews, etc."

I prefer not to eat roadkill largely for reasons of preparation, in the same way that I prefer not to eat chitterlings, which can be bought at the grocery store.
______

Katy writes:


"It's just your choice to repeatedly be 'hurting a being' (on its terms) if you have the option of walking away with no harm to yourself. There is nothing moral here.

Cruelty is cruelty regardless of whether someone says it is right or if someone declares its wrong; cruelty will also exist without a declaration of moral encampment.

How does your actual food effect your AF and harmlessness?"

Katy, it seems to me a moral argument to suggest that eating meat is "hurting a being," the implication of which is that hurting a being = a wrong action. If you do not think "hurting a being" = a wrong action, then this entire conversation is moot. And cruelty is something that is subjective, as my examples above have tried to show, and depends largely on the person doing the defining.

I see no link between being actually free, being harmless, and meat eating.

Hey Katy,
I'm having some difficulty understanding your writing. But, to be clear, what you're saying is that your only agenda is "to determine if AF actually affectively avoids answering the topic or affectively chooses slaughterhouse animals and why?"

Thanks,

Daniel

Thanks for posting this. It was the push I needed to go low carb (hopefully for good, but I've said that before!)

Craig

No one can avoid doing harm at some point, whether it be vegans causing insects to die through the harvesting of crops, or the hygenic causing germs to die by washing their hands.

The important point for me is that the human condition causes human beings to be intentionally harmful to one another through malice and sorrow. Although it is an intentional doing of harm, we are driven to do it through the feelings that run riot and the hormones that drive them - this is why we are not free, and this is why you hear people say they were not themselves when lashing out at others in anger, and it extends to committing heinous acts such as murder whilst in a jealous rage. Or in a more innocuous fashion, when driven by lust we are overcome until the lust is spent, and then we can find ourselves "back in the room" wondering what came over us. But I digress..

In actual freedom, if the human condition of malice and sorrow is extinguished, then we will no longer intentionally commit harm upon one another. Yes we might step on an ant while walking, but if you aim to accomplish 100% harmlessness while still living in the world I think you are imagining the impossible.



When you come to see how narcissistic all feelings are - we are selfish to our very core - you may come to realise as I have that ignorance, insensitivity, and lack of consideration are usually side effects of being an identity.

The PCE reveals a clarity of intellect, an effortless and spontaneous sensitivity and consideration for others that are a real breath of fresh air.

Obviously we're never going to dispel the ignorance that stems from an inability to know everything under the sun. So for example until you learn about the cruelty involved in the production of cage eggs, you will be unlikely to choose to pay extra for free range or organic chicken and eggs. Correcting this type of ignorance is a systemic issue for modern society, and not something individuals should beat themselves up about too much IMHO. But if you're still buying cage chicken and eggs, shop around and you may find that free range doesn't necessarily cost a lot more.

Craig

HI Stephanie -



You ask:


Validity only requires that a conclusion find its premise.

Validity requires only you and your support. Validity is circular logic, like feelings; 'i' and 'my feelings' and 'my feelings' are me' in AF parlance.

However, as you state your actual freedom from the human condition, then why is 'you' using circular validity based entirely on self?

Please help me to understand your claim of 9/22/10, 3:30 p.m.: from what human condition(s) is(are) you free?

_______

You continue in the abortion vein, writing,

Please see the definition I set out for cruelty previously.

When you [A] see that your actions are excruciating to another being , and you are free to stop your actions with no adverse condition taken on by yourself, do you stop? If you do not stop, cruelty continues, and who is cruel, A or B?

In your full paragraph, you both

--- try to make a scenario of vague causality (the relativity of "'who' would be right?") into an absolute law of vague causality (the eternal relativity of 'who' would be right ever?)
[indent][indent]Perhaps you hope to avoid any association of cruelty with your convenience ('convenience' from your earlier post), by asserting that sometimes one just can't find a perp, a 'who'. That is true sometimes, but that does not mean it is true all of the time. Sometimes there is an obvious 'who' inflicting cruelty[/indent][/indent]

-- try to assert the fallibility of finding the actual 'who' who is responsible on the basis of a lack of absolutism (i.e., absolute law, non-relativity)
[indent][indent]does the absence of an absolute law binding phenomena mean phenomena are absolutely separate? For example, relativity has yet to reconciled with quantum mechanics by an absolute law, yet they both apparently existent.[/indent][/indent]

And you yet maintain your relative preferences for various hierarchies of mammal life absolutely.

On what are human preferences based if not a self?

On what is your actual freedom from the human condition based if you have preferences and a self?

________


Does your actual freedom eliminate harm to others or just harm to you?
What harm does AF claim to eliminate, in being 'harmless'.
_________

You write:

What gives rise to this assumed behaviour?
Are preferences biases? Can biases arise without a self?
What is your actual freedom when you prefer?

_______


Yes, I asked:
"May an AF person lean on their conveniences and ignore the cruelty they directly chose for others?"

and I continued:
"Because human history is replete with abuses perpetuated by the more-powerful leaning upon their conveniences at the expense of others' well-being, it is a reasonable basis for asking whether AF merits perpetuation more or less than other power-with-convenience ideologies."

and you follow with

Where do I call your choice convenient? This is your statement. Where do I say 'meat consumption'? This is your creation. Why do you disown your words and try to adhere them to me?

It is also you suggesting


Where do I say "*everyone*"? "Everyone" is entirely your creation.
My query goes out to AF persons and its aspirants, the actualists.
Why do you disown your words and try to adhere them to "katy"?

[In your first post you dismiss the death of 'smaller creatures' and assign your conclusion to me. Why does size matter to you? I raise insects in my home, and before that I still did not have this bias. Why do you dismiss, then assign your choice to me?]

_____


you continue:


Certainly.

However, this thread right here is about slaughter-systemed animals as food for AF persons and aspirants, because actually free people refer to eating less and being harmless, free of feelings.

If you want to start a thread about the above and your AF-state you will find me an avid reader. I hope you do start this thread. The above certainly invokes an american human condition.

Yet, you are choosing to form a link, right here, between slaughter systemizing non-human animals and 'a brutal government that has its origins in the genocide of other people..."

Why do you make this link? You wrote previously of righteous indignation and later in this post of morality - creations of your own mind, neither of which were in this thread without you.

So it can be asked:
[indent]
Does a marginalized, exploited person remain hypersensitive to 'morality' - perceiving it/invoking it where it was not before - when the rights of 'animals' are defended before the bona fide repentance for and cessation of human genocide, marginalization and exploitation has occurred?

Does a marginalized person have adverse feelings for 'morality' because 'morality' has legitimized institutional, pervasive cruelty against selected human mammals?

Does a marginalized, exploited person resent ideas that are also adopted by apparently non-marginalized and apparently non-exploited persons (or not equivalently, not sufficiently marginalized/exploited persons like the actually marginalized/exploited person perceives) or even ideas adopted by the marginalizers?

Would the marginalized person benefit from ignoring any and all ideas which have support form the marginalizing group?
[/indent]
_______

The vegetarian sect of Pythagoreans outcast Hippasis for pointing out the actuality of irrational numbers.
Yet, irrational numbers prevail today.

So the rationalists become irrational themselves. On what basis? Did they need to be 'right' even when wrong?
_______


So, Stephanie, are you averse to acknowledging the pain of non-human mammals, because first 'the Unites States' must renounce/repent/(other) for its "perpetuation of a brutal government that has its origins in the genocide of other people, many of whom it continues to marginize and exploit, while at the same time denying people the right to marry and serve openly in the military because of their sexual orientation?"

Would that be holding 'innocent' slaughter system animals hostage merely to piss off the marginalizers/non-marginalized?

Would that hostage-taking be based on a feeling and a self?

Regardless of the above, what does it feel like to hold a new calf then pull its whiskered lips off of the teat and milk of its mum in order that there is cheese enough to throw away?


And...why do you say the United States continues the above cruelties?
What is the United States doing besides being 12 romanized characters?

You surely know that 12 romanized letters do not continue the aforementioned cruelties.

Individual people make individual choices to deny people, to genocide people, to marginalize and exploit people (to slaughter-systemize animals)
Individual people choose to welcome people, to save each other, to foster each other's best potential.

Which people are 'the United States' right at this very now?
Which non-human mammals are the United States this very now?

____


You choose to create an artificial maw between your freely chosen actions and non-human mammals going to the slaughter system to feed your freely chosen actions of convenience (you call them convenient). This is like remoting actual 'bondage' and its overflowing, horrific abuses to a far distantly worded, gentile 'our peculiar institution'.

Well, color me Camp Irrational Number. Your distance from slaughter system is illusory.

How exactly are your conveniences which directly cause the existence of a brutal system and directly cause cruelty to human and non-human mammals via the slaughter system, different from prior justifications of convenience and cruelty?

And for which others is your actual freedom harmless?

______


You preference:

What is the basis for your preference, assumed behaviour?
A self has preferences. An identity has assumed behaviours.

_______

You conclude:


Eating meat is not hurting a being. Eating meat is harmless (unless you choke, or anaphylact*).
Only you suggest a moral argument that eating meat is hurting a being.
Why again do you want your ideas ascribed to 'katy'?

Why do you expand slaughter system to 'eating meat': are you looking for a team?

A giant blond model wore a tee-shirt while dating a football player earlier this year, and the t-shirt wrote, "real girls eat meat". Are you a real girl hoping to recruit Team Meat Consumers as your back up (singers)?
(Which reminds me - totally unrelated - do you know Rev. Billy and the church of stop shopping?)

The thread I started is not about 'meat consumption'; you're free to start one.
____

Meat is inanimate. Animals winded through and animals working in the slaughter system are animate, sensate and often brutally hurt and hurting beings.

Have you ever seen the process from start-to-plate?
When you watch a video of this process what feelings go through your body?
Conversely, have you hunted after becoming a good shot with a firearm?
These are direct experiences available for your choosing.

_________________________
*Daniel Johnson: i am actually free to use nouns as verbs and verbs like 'arising' more actively than 'giving rise' to. If you manage to get through non-native English writers, you'll probably follow my language. Unless you affectively don't want to.

HI Jeff -

you asked: How is your investigation going?

It's interesting and changing. I am glad to be amid your, Stephanie's, Trent's, Steph's, Daniel's, DhO experiences. It's amazing the variety of experiences everyone brings to the table.

Thanks for checking.

How is your investigation going?

Yeah, in response to this aside, and in response to the other thread about "a forum as good as this one dealing with conventional success" I would recommend this website:

http://crossfit.com/

They discuss fitness with a very pragmatic, open, and practical point of view (much the same as the values of this forum), and include lots of discussion on the paleolithic diet as well as the zone diet which they seem to say is a good but slightly inferior version of paleolithic.

This discussion has also got me thinking of going back to a more paleolithic diet, which may mean dropping my vegetarian diet again.

This discussion would probably be better on another thread, though, as the purpose of this thread is "to determine if AF actually affectively avoids answering the topic or affectively chooses slaughterhouse animals and why."

Hi Daniel,


What absolutely no actually free person or actualist has explained so far is:
- how they are making deliberately preferential (affective) choices without a self/identity, and
- how they are harmless when their choice directly causes pain to another.

As the weeks go one, one begins to say, well, there may be no answer, because AF persons may actually be affective, preferential creatures as they were before 'AF-attainment' and remain as harmful/capable of harm as they were before 'AF-attainment'.

__________

So, Daniel, tell me how does an 'actually free' person/aspirant make preferential choices (i.e., to maintain their own 'convenience' as noted by Stephanie and trent) without a self? If there is no identity, what is "convenient", and "who" seeks it?

/If/
you think choosing is not based on feelings (and the self, which self AF persons say they 'extirpate'), and are not random,
/then/
what/who is the basis of their choice?

___

Would/can you describe or define this 'actual freedom' to which you aspire?

HI Craig -

you write:

True. Yet, not everyone calls themselves entirely free of the human condition, claiming extirpated the self, and being harmless.

As with Stephanie's handling of absolute conditionality, I ask you:
does the lack of absolute conditions ('no one can avoid doing harm at some point') mean that there are no relative conditions? For example, no one can live in space, therefore there are no astronauts?

How can you be clearly thinking when you say both that there is nothing absolute --- 'no one can avoid doing harm at some point' and yet aspire to (claim to have achieved?) an alleged absolute condition of permanent 'Actual Freedom' and absolute harmlessness?
____


You write:


Agree. Saying that we may no longer 'intentionally' commit harm is very, very different from 'Actually Free' people declaring themselves "harmless". And, I agree, they are professing the impossible when they say they are harmless.
Sic semper Pythagoreans...

___


Mic Hoe:

Agree: the road to hell may be paved with good intentions. Therefore, the malice-free and the sorrow-free 'Actually Free' person may be paving someone's road to hell.

They might consider dropping the 'harmless' bit, which they can easily do since they have not, to my knowledge, claimed infallibility.

____


Now, why does an 'Actually Free' person claim to have no feelings, self or identity, claim harmlessness, yet choose to feed themselves for 'convenience' (in their own words) upon systems that are wretchedly harmful. Do they refuse to become:
-- super-stealth uber-hunters, or
-- eat roadkill, or
-- eat impartially what is given (soup kitchenistas or dumpster swandiving)?
Lacking feelings, 'Actually Free' people should be snacking on anything and everything of nutritional value, including actually competing some mornings with suburban coyote for the neighbor's roaming jack russell.

___

It does not matter what AF persons eat; it matters that AF-claimants declare themselves harmless, free of feelings, free of any self whatsoever, and free of the 'the human condition' and yet make affective choices derived from themselves and their life-time assumed behaviours.

They seem especially inclined to the human condition in this thread, not so much free of any human condition.

I can claim that I put on my invisibility shoes this morning, 10-14-10, 6:45 in the morning and remain incapable of invisibility or its presentation.

HI J Groove -

I've eaten greens and meat/tofu (had no issues with tofu, though some people do) for months on end over the past two years -- no grains, very low starches, minimal sugars, and it resulted in amazing healthfulness.

It was also outrageously effective in and essential to knocking out a two-year systemic infection which had already faced major intravenous treatment, new antibiotics, supervised and clinically significant herb protocol, acupuncture, massage, yoga, strategic exercise, and most importantly, the intention to 'be well' regardless. I perfectly understand why, when one is unwell, one must get very basic in your food: greens and protein (lean meat and tofu worked equivalently). Carbs, especially grains, almost immediately increased the symptoms of the infection. I can eat grains now (past two weeks only) so long as I am "calorie restricted", which is no 'restriction' to me.

And, now, I can definitely see how eating grains (filling, bloating, long-term digestion, bearer of the blessed "food coma") settled, rapidly populated, and sedated pre-city/state cultures into agricultural statis and largesse: suddenly everybody is sated for hours on end, calories accrue quickly. With grains, people can look out at the fields and at the weather and anticipate that they will be sated in the coming months. No one is constantly wondering how many hours until the next laborious, risky hunt.

Paleolithic diet has remarkable effects. So does any elimination diet. It's really amazing to see the effect of food on anyone's body and thinking.

yes. it appears pinpointing a daily bodily function (eating) illustrates to date that the 'actually free' are indeed actually affective, emotional, preferential selves retaining the capacity for harm. That's fine with me. May everyone some day be happy and harmless. To claim these things without substantiating and even evidencing the opposite is quite 'Newspeak" a la "Ministry of Truth".

People so desperately want freedom, are not satisfied with the PCE/kensho/now that they are irritated by anyone who examines and questions this dream of Actual Freedom.

Food and eating has been an excellent tool for discovery.

___


So far, in a thread about eating, affective choices and harm and the claims of 'Actual Freedom' adherents, no AF-person has substantiated their claim of harmlessness. So far, no 'Actually Free' claimant has shown that their stomachs are no longer preferential, that their selves are entirely gone. So far, no one defines the human condition from which they are now free.

This thread awaits an 'Actually Free' someone/actualist to explain how they make non-random choices (preferences that only a self will have) about an essential bodily need (eating) and claim 'harmlessness' while chosing to eat animals from the slaughter-system and/or worsen starving seas in eating from the fish farms and vast overharvestment.

If you become 'Actually Free' and devoid of self and preference, Daniel, you should have absolutely no qualm about eating a dolphin from the cove you mentioned earlier this summer, no?

___

I hope everyone feels well, peaceable and enjoyment in our now-world. Is claiming actual freedom really a positive mantra? That's fine. Much better than a negative one.

___

Seeing that no Actually Free person can explain how they continue to make affective choices every day about their preferential food selection (simultaneous to the claim of extirpated self), why do you pursue that which is not in evidence?

What is unsatisfactory about the PCE/kensho/now -- which each person can directly evidence -- that you want to believe unquestioningly the unevidenced?

This is faith and faith is fine, but conviction lasts longer.

Faith is irritated by questioning (or even becomes violent), conviction is augmented by questioning.






___

I appreciate your and everyone else's thoughts and experience contributed to this thread. More minds are indeed better than one.

Hi Katy



I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that Tarin, Trent, Christian, Stephanie (and the others who have become actually free) use different terminology to refer to their actual freedom? Or do you mean that not everyone - such as you and me - are actually free? I don't see how it relates to what I said, so what point are you trying to make here?



I didn't say that there is nothing absolute. I also didn't claim to aspire or have achieved a condition of absolute harmlessness.

For you to be putting words in my mouth that I never said, this conversation is absolutely broken. Everything that follows those misrepresentations, then, is meaningless.

____




You've just helped me understand why Richard provides dictionary definitions so frequently. I will avoid doing so here because you're perfectly capable of looking up the meaning of harmless yourself. You've chosen a very narrow definition of the word harmlessness (which I would prefer to call 'absolute harmlessness') and then constructed a straw man argument upon it throughout this thread. This has nothing to do with actualism, or with what is being claimed by those who are actually free (as I understand the claims).

___



That's a really strange idea. As a man of strange ideas myself I chuckled. Sincerely, however, I think your suggestion is a silly one. Actualism is a path of sensibility over silliness.

___



This is the one I really wanted to ask you about. Why do you claim they make affective choices? I can only surmise you do not understand what is meant by affect in actualism. The dictionary definition should suffice here too.

Perhaps you can explain what you mean by "affective choices". My assumption is that it means making a choice as a result of an affective state of being. By that definition, I would not expect an actually free human to be capable of making affective choices.

Sit vis nobiscum
Craig

Hi Jeff -

Thank you for your post. Could you provide any clarity to the queries below?

You wrote:

Yes: I've really appreciated how food may query AF and AF claims, particularly since AF claims no feelings,no affectation, no harm.


Agree. Many persons and ideologies use food choices to eliminate/control the power of hunger and to explore the thin line of instinct and self-arising craving/entitlement.

So...
...How do AF-claimants claim harmlessness as well as non-preferentiality when they prefer animals that are slaughter-systemed/overharvested to the extinction of others (harmed) over road kill, dumpster diving, crackers and bean dip?

...Why do they claim the absolute condition of actual freedom, but then claim the impossibility of absolute conditions to support not reducing the suffering they choose to cause with their self-arising food choices?

I get the impression that if any topic can be associated with morality, then the topic is morality to the AFer. And an AF-person/actualist seems to loath being associated with right-and-wrong.

Yet....

...AF persons here show special concern for human mammals over non-human animals (animal-killing is right, human-animal killing is wrong). Isn't that preference based on an self?


And...

...why do the actualist and AF respondents here arise so many assumptions here and assert them to be my views? Aren't assumptions dependent on a self?

____

When taking with tarin, one generally gets a sensible, logical reply/query with which one can usually found their own conviction after consideration. Is anyone in this thread actually free (i don't want a literal answer), because people seem illogical, irritated, sarcastic, preferential and assumptive in their answers in this thread. Help?

____

My examination of sensate existence is not really an examination, but more of a on/off switching. Sensate-ness is interesting, compelling, and relaxing. So, it is frustrating to see that the consequence of such sensate-ness could lead to increased assumptions, irritability, preferences, illogic and harmfulness. Your thoughts?

Can this issue be answered for oneself by experiencing a PCE and coming up with the answer?

Olá k a steger,

First, your direct questions and words here should be very useful to open some eyes and minds.
Second, I´m not another Actually Free claimant, and yes, any other claimant here never had passed by whatever neurobiological process like Richard did (possibly he still being the unique guy living that irreversible brain mutation).
The labeled "Actual Freedom" seems to be similar to that Natural State achieved by Mr. Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti (aka U.G.) and the No-Self Path achieved by Ms. Bernadette Roberts.
Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, remember? Accidents happens ...

Therefore, the "Actual Freedom" from Richard have another background and goals and so on. And like any idiosyncrasy in the Nature full of diversity, species and sub-species, this Actual Freedom movement for transformation of the conscience to allow peace-on-the-earth here/now started by Richard is not materialist passive, spiritualist and/or transcendentalist. So, the Third Alternative and its own lingo is a good way to show new things without all that old stuff from U.G. and Bernadette. And also needs grain of salt over it.
But I repeat: maybe I´m wrong in this investigations ... Life hide plenty of surprises yet to be discovered.



Are your searching for the best diet to the human body without harm another animals and avoiding hurt their environment/habitat?
But we consume not food but ideas. What we buy are not clothes, but names and labels.
I will quote U.G. again:

"What I have found of and by myself runs counter to everything anyone has said in any field of human thought. They have misled themselves and misguided everybody. You still fall for all that because if, for instance, you were to change your diet you would die of starvation. But I want to live forever! Can you keep me alive and healthy, the way I have lived for ninety years of my life? No? But that’s all that interests me!
When once it throws out everything that has been put in there by your filthy culture, this body will function in an extraordinarily intelligent way. It can take care of everything."
(http://www.ugkrishnamurti.net/ugkrishnamurti-net/SWAN_SONG.htm)

In my personal case, I still eating cows, pigs, chickens and fishes, only the sufficient minimal portion to preserve my muscles and general body health (mainly the brain and nervous system. Animal protein is fine to this).
I avoid - but don´t suppress - sugar, milk, chocolate/cocoa, coffe, gluten and alcohol.
I eat a lot of natural organic food with fibers and drink fresh water and fruit juices.
Probably 2000 kcal/day: I´m young, 37 years old, height: 5' 8" (173 cm) and weight: 155 (70 kg).
And I make intense physical exercises every day due my profession as self-defense instructor in my martial gym/school.

I´m not harmless in your view, and your are correct. But I´m direct to the point, pragmatical if you prefer.
If, like that famous airtravel accident on Andes mountain range, I need to eat a corpse, I will morn for, but any salt or spice will be very welcome to help my taste.
Sincerely,

Luciano

P.S.: ...and each day I hunt my own prey food into the bushes of the savage market place. Maybe I´m the last paleolithic guy in this Actual Age

Hi k.a.,

I've had the same problem with AF (and some other problems, too, which I may communicate at a later time). Much of the method seems pretty decent--try to feel good; notice you're being silly when you start getting bent out of shape by things; try to experience physical reality through the only route available to you, the senses. On a pragmatic evaluation, it certainly seems better than the histrionics that many people put themselves through. But much of the dogma* of the AFers seems downright incoherent until you realize that, despite Richard's seeming fondness for dictionary definitions, he merely defines his key terms in whatever way suits his purposes (whatever those are). "Harmless" is an exemplary case of this. Here is the merriam-webster definition of "harm":



The most interesting part of this definition is the examples. Only the first example of the use of the word "harm" has any implication that harm is characterized by any intentionality (malicious or otherwise) on the part of the agent of harm. The others clearly imply that harm is something that can be done to a person regardless of the intention (or intentionlessness) of the agent of harm. So malice is not necessary for harm. And, since most of us can imagine a situation (sorry Actually Free people) in which a person acts with malice, but accidentally benefits the person that they intended to harm, it seems safe to say that malice is not a sufficient condition for harm, either.

So is this what Richard (or his acolytes) mean when they describe themselves as harmless? Clearly not, as you have seen, and as we can all see in the selected correspondence. Then what do they mean? Well, I'll forgo a detailed analysis, but it is fairly clear that in "The Actual World" harmlessness means that both:

1) You do not desire to harm anyone.
2) No harm can be done to you.

I know, it's a strange perversion of the normal meaning of "harmless," but any technical vocabulary ends up doing similar things.

Now, some might argue that no "Actually Free" person ever explicitly says such a thing. True enough. But unlike Richard** et al., I am not incapable of making inferences. Given the fact that Richard claims that the hallmarks of AF are "freedom from sorrow and malice," and jumps from there to the invalid conclusion that this lack makes his ASC possess the positive characteristics "happy and harmless," I went ahead and supplied the necessary assumptions. That is, "if a person is free from sorrow and malice, they are happy and harmless." But that's a pretty vacuous assumption, and not one that most people would agree with. How could that work? Perhaps some of our AF friends can tell us the "facts." But, since they can only claim to be free of one of the types of harmfulness (malice), and malice is neither a sufficient nor necessary condition for doing harm, they can not claim that they are harmless in the typical sense of the word. Rather, AF person can do harm aplenty, they just do it through mistakes or naivety. Unfortunately, they seem not to have noticed this (maybe because it stands so awkwardly amongst the other tenets of AF?). And, as a nice bonus, they are outside of harm themselves. At least that's the substance of the claim, as far as I can tell.

Now, it's been said before that "ignorance is bliss," but I had never taken the saying as an earnest recommendation. Perhaps, k.a., now that you have seen the "happiness" and "Peace on Earth" that arises from such ignorance of one's effects on others, you, too, will attain to the ASC of happy harmlessness in a factually infinite and eternal world in which peace reigns, cigarettes aren't bad for you, you can't do most math or classical physics, and everything you say is, by self-definition, a fact.

Or, maybe the AF folks will start becoming a little more honest, and just define their ASC by what it lacks--suffering and malice. That's not so bad, after all.

best of luck,
-D


*1. a : something held as an established opinion; especially : a definite authoritative tenet
b : a code of such tenets <pedagogical dogma>
**http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-noumenon.htm

Hi again DK,

Why you still deviating/diverging from the subject here?
Only curious ...

Hi Jason L,

you ask:


I am not sure which issue you mean here. So many have come up in the thread.

I will say, though, that five-sensing (what you call PCE, I think) doesn't seem to 'answer' anything. It doesn't query anything either, at least not philosophical queries, as far as I can tell. In sensate, I can think about Q&A that are related directly to utility (i.e., would a fork or spoon be better to use on this meal), but philosophy and ontology evaporate.

____


What I am querying here is how people claiming freedom from the human condition, an extirpated self, no feelings whatsoever and harmlessness are making choices about a critical bodily function: eating.

I chose to ask about vegan/vegetarian and slaughter-systemed animals, because those
[indent]1) often evoke emotion and feeling biases in a non-AF population, and
2) it is easy to make an argument that cruelty and harm are directly caused by a person's choice, and
3) it is easy to see if a person is affectively triaging a self over other lives.[/indent]

I do not care about what people eat, but I like a solid structure in which to test people, their claims and their product.

____

Instead of finding a neutral inquisitiveness and fact-focus, the AF-claimants and AF-aspirants immediately brought evasion, assumptions, feeling into the replies.

None explain their own use of words like "harmless, free from the human condition, no self" - yet, after choosing to use these words, they will only point to a website of another man's words to explain the words they choose to use.

My god, in a power outage, the AF-claimants in this thread are truly screwed if they need the darn website to know what freedom they have acquired.

____


Because being in sensate-now/kensho/PCE is pleasant (when no pain is being applied) and that alone is worthwhile as anyone can quickly determine (without use of an external source like a website), I wonder why these AF-claimants don't just clean up their claims and vocabulary.

1 -- For example, stop saying "free of harm" and 'harmless". Just say somthing along the lines of 'going back into an innocent mindset', maybe?

2 -- Instead of saying, "I am free from the human condition", say something you can actually describe or define. Again, what happens when the server is down? How do you know what you've done if you can't explain it for yourself?

3 -- Versus declaring no self and no feelings, no discrimination, just acknowledge you do have preferences, that you do value your species over others, that you are creeped out by bruised roadkill. Maybe stay clear of this third point entirely and keep pitching the so-called 'PCE'.
___


Obviously, anyone can and should say whatever they want while they can. Further, if people feel actually free that's great. If they think they have no feelings and they have extirpated the self and want to tell the world, ok. A sense of freedom is lovely no matter if you spend that freedom marching for freedom or spend it in chatter.

But, when they do this, they take the human condition, they take people's suffering, they offer a cure, and then get grumpy and 'GroupThink' when they are asked to explain. If they are free of feelings as they claim, they hide it well.

___

As for me, I am just running a test on the data they have provided (harmless, free, no self, no feelings). I appreciate everyone's contributions and, to the AF-claimants, am content you are free at least to yourselves. That is the place it matters in truth.

Hi D K:
You write:


Yes, I agree completely with this. Some AFers in DhO have a good way on instructing on the present moment in sensate absorption (which is really no absorption at all just a five-sensing without a distinct Awareness).

I have no idea why aspirants and some AFers would continue to entangle themselves in ideas for which they need a functional internet and server to proxy for their own answers on the points they themselves cannot answer (harmless, free of human condition...).

Hi Luciano,

You ask:


Excerpting from my posts earlier tonight:


No, I am just running a test on the data they have provided (harmless, free, no self, no feelings).

What I am querying here is how people claiming freedom from the human condition, an extirpated self, no feelings whatsoever and harmlessness are making choices about a critical bodily function: eating.

I chose to ask about vegan/vegetarian and slaughter-systemed animals, because those words/concepts
[indent]
1) often evoke emotion and feeling biases in a non-AF population, and
2) it is easy to make an argument that cruelty and harm are directly caused by a person's choice, and
3) it is easy to see if a person is affectively triaging a self over other lives.[/indent]


I do not care about what people eat, but I like a solid structure in which to test people, their claims and their product.

you write:


Thanks for clarifying. I am only testing 'harmless' of those who claim it.

People are making very heady claims here, so they should be able to answer simple questions.
[indent]( AF-people are quite beholden to the actual internet on which they rely to answer simple questions, like, 'What do you mean when you say you are free of the human condition?")[/indent]

______

One conclusion seems to be that very simple words, like 'vegan' and 'roadkill', can cause 'actually free' people to revert to having a self with feelings, preferences, judgments.

From what I've read, I can't tell who actually got grumpy in this thread.

Since AF people don't have free will*, and don't experience compassion/empathy, they eat meat out of habit?

* I guess nobody does

Have you had an actual PCE before? Was your affective faculty in operation? If not, I guess AF people eat meat for reasons that are other than affective.

HI Jason,

You write:


I must be the one bringing 'grumpy' then, if no one else sees it.

I am a bit definitely a bit disappointed (not in anyone). I hoped people were actually free (and I still hope they are free to themselves) and could answer mere questions about themselves.

Yet they invent many new stories and displace ownership of these ideas onto others. After making their claims, they cannot speak for themselves, but defer to a webpage.

So, I am a little disappointed. I hoped to dialogue with actually free people who could make such bold claims, then explain what they meant. Now, I find myself amid people with lots of emotions, assumptions, preferences who are claiming otherwise.
That's ok. My disappointment is entirely based in me, no one's 'fault' but my own hopes.


___

I would have to say the term PCE is not one I use. The words 'pure consciousness experience" are the 'Richard lexicon' which I cannot personally explain.

I prefer sensate. I don't even mean 'sensate absorption' or 'sensate experience', both of which imply a base (self, Awareness). I see a few zen writers having expressed the state as well.

The sensate moments I have are easy and relaxing. It must be said that absolutely no pain has yet been (thankfully) applied to me during these intended moments, and I do not know what happens to 'sensate' with painful stimuli.

I can say that I cannot think philosophically when 'sensate', which prohibition is rational to 'me'. Philosophical mind depends on a self originating the thinking. Sensate expressly evaporates self/awareness.

____


Do you experience PCE/sensate?

I haven't experienced sensate/PCE before, that I remember.

Hello k a steger,

This people here claiming to be actually free maybe had pass through by one consciousness mutation, but not an *actual* brain mutation.
Perhaps only Richard and another few had suffered this painful process inside their nervous system.
"The Emotional Brain" by Mr. Joseph LeDoux suggests a possibility - due the evolution - to change the direction of processing stimulus of the human brain.
So, AF could be similar to that near-death experiences reported around the world, but ending with the self/Self clinical death. Some freakish neurobiological tranformation into the head.
After Richard, nobody else claimed by this organic and sensory mutation.

However, a consciousness mutation doesn´t need a massive neurobiological mutation. The end of the chemical flows that are automatically experienced as instinctual passions is enough, I agreed.
On this aspect, after more than two full years of investigations into Actual Freedom Trust website, reading the Richard and Peter´s Journals and making some connections with my early researches and previous experiences and tests and so on, now I´m also an Actually Free man: I recognise perfection in the kink of the nature, I´m happy and harmless with my body and others human bodies, time is just measured movement in space and life in general is an accidental gift in this universe always changing itself. Common sense and serendipity abounds here!
That´s enough to the safety and harmony of this body. Improvements will be welcome, of course.
The historic advent of the writing changed human mind and allow more conscience and subjective thought. And this process never stopped since that.
Hence, is very plausible a consciousness mutation today after so much acumulated knowledge and scientifical and technologocial advances.
That old paradigm called "Human Condition" sucks!
Best regards,
Luciano

Hi Katy, There is no I there to do harm or experience affective feelings. There is no choice to eat meat based on whats right or wrong. There is a freedom to eat without fear of guilt or desire to do harm.

While there is a self you are not free to choose anyway as at your very core is an unconscious reaction, your instinctual response a reflex action, the stir of passions is consciousness.

In my investigation of Buddhism I came to the conclusion that all life was precious and so set out to become a vegetarian. So now I rationalized all life is precious but its ok to eat vegetables. So now I had could judge what is to precious to eat and insist on others seeing this logic.

This act of charity I undertook because of my beliefs and because I gave myself the pleasure of pleasing myself. By not eating meet I would be rewarded by the good karma it generated which was all in my self interest. Luckily I have 5 children who have no desire to identify with the Holy image of a compassionate Being and demanded to be satisfied with a balanced diet.

It is a good exercise to reflect on why you believe AF people should not consume meat.

As soon as you have belief you have come to a conclusion. You have now become fixed and have dropped your sensitivity to be open and listen.



It never crossed my mind as a practice. Why would you want to control the power of hunger - to diet? There is a more efficient way to loose weight which is to increase your exercise.

Make your practice your ongoing experience no need to restrict yourself to certain times places or choices.



The intellect knows to consume animals that are slaughter-systemed/overharvested to the extinction of others (harmed) over road kill, dumpster diving.

This is based on the knowledge of the quality of the food and its fitness for human consumption. Is there beer with the crackers and bean dip?





You have answered your own question does that mean your judgment is made regardless of the response?




When it comes to eating I don't eat humans there is an intellectual choice to eat animals, vegetables and fruit.


Part of the practice is reflective contemplation, an investigation and analysis of the self in action. You have asked a number of people similar questions in regard to their diet and questioned their answer. Are these questions not your view?



I believe that people who have responded have done so to help in your investigation. Sometimes the answers are structured to encourage investigation. Sometimes we read more into the replies then what the author intended. Why does one person feel different to another when they read the same sentence? This changes with your emotions and should provide insight into how you experience this moment of being alive
.____


have a great weekend
Jeff

Good questions KFS. I think its great that you're attempting to push actualists to clarify their claims regarding self and affect. The contradictions between what they say and do startle me at times, too. That said, I judge them entirely genuine and hope that clarity will emerge in time. Here are some of my thoughts.

One way that AF could argue in response for extirpation of affect and self is to say that after however many years of being alive a construct of habits continues on even in the event of a fundamental extinction of self. In which case the question becomes one of agency and creativity and the making of choices. AFers say that the imagination goes. Perhaps once the self has been extirpated the construct that remains is without malice but also without the capacity to form a new self that actively pursues harmlessness - with the emphasis on 'actively'. Thus the self continues on with some of the same harmful habits, only now they are devoid of any intent to harm. It might be expected that with more local self constructs and harmful effects the changes for the better occur rapidly and simply. While more general and abstract harms might require a critical mass of AF attainers to effect. To take it to a logical extreme: a world where all had attained AF, the exploitation and violence in which we are all implicated would naturally diminish to a sane level in time. All of which is to view AF attainers as largely passive actors where sila/ethics/morality is concerned.

As to absolute harm or harmlessness. I would argue that it's simply impossible. This I think was Stephanie's point up-thread. We are all complicit in the violence of the world. Quite apart from how good/mindful we are in our food choices, point to any aspect of technology that we commonly live by, and some aspect of its coming into being can be traced to heinous exploitation. The only decent path is to be honest about our unavoidable complicity in the inescapable exploitation and violence of the world. A complicity I would add that can be minimized but not avoided by any action/s we might take. And at the same time as we are honest about our shameful complicity, also show some compassion in regard to our limitations to right the causes of that complicity. The world is an irredemiably compromised place without exception - and regardless of intent.

If I'm correct your argument is not a righteous one against the 'slaughter house system' as such, but rather you are asking AF claimants to clarify claims regarding motivation, emotion, harmlessness and extinction of self. These seem incoherent to you. Yes?

I'm curious how would go about making AF claims coherent while still maintaining its (AFs) obvious power and impact? That is, without throwing out the baby. At this point, what is going on with that incoherency seems a far more interesting point than continuing to trip up AF claimants. Perhaps that incoherency is only apparent.. Any ideas?

Damon

edit: spelling/grammar.

Hi Damon:


You write:


That is correct.

Based on private dialogue with an AF-claimant who triaged human life over non-human life (a self-based triage), I chose a relatively common test as a platform on which any AFer/actualist could field their claims and their experience.

The lens of dietary choices, especially wherein one party is eaten as a result of the free-will choice of the other party, allows the responding AFer/Actualsit to consider:
[indent]a) how are you 'harmless' in your actual choice, and
b) how do you lack a self when you prefer one form of meat (from an industrial system) over another form of meat (roadkill harvest, or even cannibalism).[/indent]
[indent]
Certainly, if everyone had said, 'I am a vegan', then questions would have followed querying the harm in eating anything, breathing, etc.

If one claims to be harmless, they should be prepared to substantiate their words. No one forces anyone to make claims here. In choosing to claim, be ready for questions.

More useful: be ready to share the answers which back your conviction in your claim.

Do not refer to someone's webpage; this conveys faith, not conviction.
[/indent]

___


AFers, actualists, and anyone, can be free of malice and sorrow, because those are emotions strictly arisen from themselves of free will. Freedom of emotion depends on one's commitment to self-observation over 'time' and interactions, willingness to let emotionalism subside/go, and on the influence of neurological inheritance and development.


____




Yes, me too. But, first, to be clear, I do not want 'to trip up' anyone. I sought to resolve nonsensical AF points via logical tests of AFer's own claims via a platform and clarifications from the AF community.

I am genuinely interested in their actual answers and how those answers describe the Actual Freedom they claim.




1. "The obvious power and impact:"
What the actual freedom community does is communicate clearly, that "you can extirpate the self if you allow for sensate-ness, and, eventually, 'you' allows 'sensate-ness' to be everything: all sensate, always." No observer, no Awareness of. At first this sensate-ness comes with some rush or electricity, because the self startles/has some reflex. Eventually, there is sensate-ness ongoing and ongoing. After one leaves sensate-ness, one realizes how relaxing it was and how even staying close to full sensate-ness will keep the body and mind pretty relaxed and content.*

To me, it is because actual freedom says the self may be extirpated with this sensate process, that a person practices sensate-ness with such remarkable precision. One understands their objectives: just sensate, ignore the arising of an observer. I appreciate the efficiency of this particular AF-teaching very much.

So, focus on sensate-ness with no self as a plausible goal (and disregarding No Self, Awareness, self). Pay attention to where self arises and go only as slowly or quickly as your current self allows.




2. "Pure Consciousness Experience" (PCE): absurdly antonymic.
The wiki-definition of consciousness: "a subjective experience, awareness, the ability to experience "feeling", wakefulness...It is an umbrella term that may refer to a variety of mental phenomena." Could your leader Richard be more opposite, more misleading here? If you are actually free, you will read those words as constructive points from your fellow constituency, not an insult to the fellow.




3. Stop with the 'harmless' claims. To claim harmlessness is tomfoolery. Some people have stated in this thread they intend a relative harmlessness. They should say that: 'happy and relatively harmless'.

DhO is a sharp-minded community of lively, curious people. And this community is very precise when it gets into meditative topics, methods and diagnostics. And this community is good about making language say what they intend. So, AFers can say what they intend, which is 'relatively harmless'.




4. Be willing to amend (self and/or system). If something is illogical or absurd, cannot be verified, nor justified, is not helpful in any of its absurdity, then LET IT GO. Gap's new logo did nothing for its product, so they reverted to the classic. If you're offended by a comparison to branding, you are truly distancing yourself from actual freedom. If you want people to get AF, then your success is judged by successfully helping people get actual freedom (while GAP's branding will be judged by profit), and you would be remiss to ignore or belittle any constituent's feedback.

If one uses only this thread as a blunt diagnostic tool, people might see where their latent selves persist (affective preferential choices) and let those latencies dissolve, and/or they might see some technical flaws ('harmless') in the AF lexicon the defense of which merely undermines AFs strengths (sensate, plausible freedom).



5. Don't fall into ideology: AF's adherence to nonsense lexicon and claims puts it in league with religion, and all religions have superfluous bits/infrastructures. Unless a religion is sought, cull the AF garden regularly of nonsense.

People may be excited about AF, because it is satori/other without the baggage of a long-standing world religion. Some AF-claimants were raised in the oldest geographical centers of Buddhism and may be rebelling inadvertently against the nonsense they saw in the Buddhist infrastructure. (I have heard accomplished Thai monks state in the middle of their academic presentations that enlightened persons will have a certain thickness of lips and rosy color - these monks showed this in a Powerpoint presentation!)



I don't care, having no religion myself. These are each observations that I believe to be useful to Actual Freedom's presentation and perpetuation. To each their own, though. AFers may also not care, but they are in this forum and have said in private dialogue that they do care to help people become 'actually free of the human condition'. [edit: replaced 'goal' with 'condition'].



If it's a reasonable goal worthy of everyone's time, then there's no benefit to being sloppy with it.

_______

What are your thoughts, Damon/anyone?

_______
*I caveat this point, because no one is hurting or trapping me in any way. Sensate-ness may be dreadful in such a scenario. We know that we humans can endure any surgeries in a meditative state, even calm self-immolation, even nearly fatal environmental pressures . However, when we are subject to some other person's controls and pain infliction, the ability to be sensate/remain in a meditative state is less evidenced, far less claimed.

Are you ultimately asking how can an AFer prefer something without an affective faculty?

If yes, then maybe we could use the analogy of a robot, which has no free will, and no emotions, yet can make choices based on programmed self preservation, and harmless regard for other like robots, but has no programming for actual harmlessness to robots unlike itself.

HI Jason:

You write:



I am literally asking about AFers and actualists food intake choices, and their choices' relationship to being harmless.

Their answers will tell describe their affective faculty (or lack thereof) and support or contradict harmlessness.


*


AFers, does Jason's analogy describe you if you replace 'robot' with 'human' throughout?

HI Jeff --

you write:
.

Is there an 'i' there to receive harm, if such 'i' is on the receiving end of 'your' choices?

HI Jeff -

Thanks for your reply.

you write:

To be clear, I have never said "AF people should not consume meat."


1. Why do you introduce and attribute to me a belief that I do not have and have not expressed?



2. If I do not express this, and only you raise it here, then is it your belief and your inference that 'AF people should not eat meat"?

[indent]2a. If this is not you belief and inference, whence did the idea "AF people should not consume meat" come?[/indent]



3. If this is your belief/inference/, is assignment of your beliefs to someone else part of getting to Actual Freedom?

[indent]3a. Whence do your beliefs/inferences come if you have extirpated any self?[/indent]

____


However, if you intended here that it would be a good exercise for me to try believing your introduced idea ("AF people should not eat meat"), please just explain your reason for the recommendation of such an exercise, and I may give your suggestion a try.

I think AFer's affective harmlessness extends to everything since they can't feel malice, but actual harmlessness only extends as far as other humans. The goal of harmlessness is about living peacefully with other humans only. There is a line drawn. Harm/no harm to another type of animal depends on what use it has, if any.

Hi Katy,

You have asked a number of people who have identified that they are AF and they have responded a number of times that why they eat meat is not due to a moral choice or belief on their part.

So if they are not making a moral choice based on belief what is left? Is it possible that it is you who are perceiving that they have made a moral choice or belief?

In the previous paragraph I identified why I had previously made these very same moral choices based on belief. I proposed a investigation in a sentence which I now see was poorly constructed which is a problem of not rereading what I had written before I posted, I am sorry and there was no intent to infer that AFers should not consume meat.

cheers
Jeff

Hi Jeff -

you write:

Not entirely - they placed their assumptions about moral superiority, save-the-worldism, etc on me.
___

[10-17-10 edit (for some typos not all! and... the following: Please recall that I have never expressed and do not express moral superiority, save-the-worldism, righteous indignation or convenience (which Trent, Steph and Stephanie do) with regards to eating slaughter-systemized animals.]

I espouse no opinion on eating slaughter-systemed animals at all; I clearly wish to know how AFers and actualists can claim harmlessness and having no self when making choices that actually harm others and which choices are derived from personal (self) preferences.

No AFers addresses this. AFers and actualist are inexplicably providing their own assumptions/beliefs, and -- for reasons that add further query to this thread -- ascribe their own assumptions/beliefs to another (me, 'katy').

This is not contrarianism on my part. I am not interested in challenging illogic for the sake of challenging. I would be busy all day with that, every day, to no end.

I raise these points and seek answers because people are stating that they have attained a freedom from the human condition and that others can too. That is quite an offering that I eagerly am testing for myself.]

___

I am asking AFer about how they make such free will choices

Trent and Stephanie (AF) actually note that they eat others because of convenience.

This raises three logical questions:

1 -- 'who' is the basis for determining convenience? Their selves...?

2 -- 'who' is the basis of suggesting their own beliefs ("moral superiority", "should not eat meat", "righteous indignation", "save the planet") and then, 'who' is suggesting them as mine? Their selves...?



Need I actually say that my words are not critical, but curious? I am curious. I take people at their words, that they have no self/are free of the human condition. They make public claims and can field logical questions.

This is my process for taking something new in. Are only compliant, unquestioning, obedient types welcome to AF?
I do not think AFers intend a 'drink-the-Coolaid community.'


and,



3 -- because the AF-claimants (here and chez Richard) note the harmless condition of their actual freedom, I need to understand how anyone can ever be harmless.
I think we have resolved this in noting that AF intends 'no intent to cause harm' here, but they say it with word selection that exaggerates their intention until otherwise dropped/amended. Yes?

____


Lastly, though i've asked for clarification, AFers do not yet describe what being 'free from the human condition' means for themselves (but refer to this 'Richard's' verbose website), all while they are keen to say that the claim of actual freedom is a claim of their own actual freedom:

Stephanie writes in "on Who is or Is Not Actually Free"


If actual freedom is one's own claim and state, why do they not provide a description/definition for what they mean and hope to share?

[10-17-10 edit cont: Several have said and agree that freedom in one's own view is important. Distinct from one's own estimation of one's own freedom is "Actual freedom": its identical, replicable method (actualism, which is said to be as good in the middle and as in the end; which I can personally attest that sensateness is very useful every moment is sensateness) and an identical, replicable outcome: no self whatsoever (on the heels of a physical feeling in the brain stem. see Brain Stem thread).

Therefore, one's freedom in one's own estimation is, indeed, all that matters. And it is unrelated to the questions about the method, the claims and the outcome.]

Thanks again and hope you have a great weekend,
Katy

I have to say I have found this thread quite disturbing.

The AF people seem to be justifying killing animals on the grounds that they [the AF person] have no self to feel bad about it?

To me this seems to be leaning towards the Ideological psychopath position.

They are trying to compare eating vegetables to slaughtering an animal to blur the moral lines between the two acts.

I might add some clarity by mentioning that fruit and vegetables survival depends on being eaten. this helps them spread their seeds through animal/human defecation, and thus their 'agenda' is to be eaten. Fruit grows sweet and tasty to be attractive to roaming consumers...

Now, I am not necessarily against eating meat [although I do not] but I find it very worrying to hear arguments like:

"...action is OK because I do not have a self to feel bad about performing said action."

Alarming.

Another perspective seems to be that they just do it because thats what is done, or because it is convenient.

So [hypotheticaly] If an AF person in Nazi Germany hears:

"OK, the jews are really just animals, and from now on we will kill those pesky animals where ever we can and from now this is the new Norm..."

Does the AF person, having no ability to feel bad for another, and now having a new set of mental definitions around the Jewish race, do they just happily and harmlessly start packing them in to the ovens?


Can an AF person answer this fairly simple query with out the layers of convoluted excuse making and justification that have preceded this post?

I would like my fears about practising AF allayed as up till now I was very Interested in it.

Seth.

P.S.
1. Is AF 'harmless' just where it suits you?
2. Is it possible to gain AF and still have very little wisdom or to even be highly unintelligent?
3. Could a government enforce AF to have a race of docile followers with no free will?

Hi Seth Ananda,

Being disturbed leads to new discoveries, so that is good.

If I might point out, much of this thread contains the perspective that:

“I have a favourite sentimental belief regarding “ABC” {in this thread ABC = eating animals or malice toward animals or intense animal farming}, and I want to persist with my favourite belief whilst also wanting to attain happiness through AF”

As far as I understand it, beliefs cannot exist in AF. So any belief arising in us is a great trigger to ask HAIETMOBA.

I notice in another thread you comment you have not read the Actual Freedom Website; imho it is most important to read this website first.

Cheers
John

Hmm nice side step of the issues raised. Thanks at least for a reply though

I have read much of the undigestable edifice of information now at the AF website.

Waiting for a reply that addresses the Issues raised.

Seth.

As far as I can tell, AF is all about living peacefully with other humans.

Jews being recategorised as animals wouldn't happen because they are human. And AF people probably wouldn't follow a nazi philosophy as it is based on having affective ideals.

Also John Mitchel, what exactly is sentimental about not wanting to see beings suffer?

Many psychopaths justify whatever suits them with an Ideology. If AF becomes an excuse to behave in appalling ways to others, as you have no self to feel bad about your behaviour then there is an Inherent problem in the system.

It claims to make people happy and harmless, yet people here are unwilling to even consider whether supporting the meat industry goes against the Harmless principle.
Sure you might not have a self feel bad about murdering your neighbour but is that really a good thing? Is there any wisdom in AF?

Maybe people here really just want the happy part so they can be unthinking zombies for the rest of their lives?

If I say for example that murder is wrong or bad, and you shout "Thats just a belief! we are free of beliefs and are therefore free to do what ever the hell we want!" then to me that is leaning towards the psychopath's MO.

Seth.

P.S. This is not about the meat Issue really, but more about a willingness to Justify ones actions based on a state, which can allow for uncaring...

Nice. But Isn't Human as different to animal in terms of cruelty just another belief.

Exchange the nazi hypothetical for some situation where eating some other nationality becomes normal.
If a person gained AF would they discontinue this or would they justify their actions with, It doesnt matter as I have no self to feel upset for my food?

Seth.

I don't think there's any murderous intent in an AF person. They feel no malice and they have a regard for other people.

Without feelings/identity, there's no good/bad. Just silly or sensible.



AF people have to think because they have no feelings to help them decide.



A psychopath feels malice. An AF person can't.

I don't know why there is a regard for humans and not animals.



Eating another nationality doesn't compute because human is human.

Hi Seth,

I would not participate in a Holocaust of other human beings, but I would eat steak, because I recognize a distinction between human beings and animals. Human beings offer something unique to society that animals do not. People are not animals even if people sometimes maliciously refer to other people as animals; in fact, people refer to other people as animals in order to dehumanize them, implicitly suggesting that animals are not the same as people. It is fallacious to equate the Holocaust with eating meat precisely because of this critical difference between human beings and animals.

Likewise, there is no need to "feel bad" in order to avoid killing another person. I would never be motivated to kill another human being out of malice, so there is nothing to check, nothing within to discipline by "feeling bad." Furthermore, as an actually free person I could not have a "new set of mental definitions around the Jewish race" because race is a social construction with no basis in actuality; not only does being actually free mean I am completely devoid of the malice necessary to oppress a "group," it also means that I see the delusional nature of the group mentality in toto. In fact, acknowledging such socially constructed divisions of human strata, as if they were actual, is the bedrock of the very oppressive behavior you suggest "feeling bad" will prevent.

And as Katy has pointed out many times, this is not a thread about vegetarianism; it is actually a thread about slaughterhouse practices, which is distinct from a debate about vegetarianism itself, despite its misleading title. A conversation about slaughterhouse practices is actually a conversation about the corporate food structure, which could be extended to various aspects (including those not related to meat consumption) of food production.

As for your first question of being harmless only when it suits one, I would offer several points. Looking at the definition of the word "harmless" might be helpful here:

–adjective
1. without the power or desire to do harm; innocuous: He looks mean but he's harmless; a harmless halloween prank.
(Dictionary.com)

The question about being selectively harmless is a misunderstanding of what the harmlessness of an actual freedom is. There is no "choosing" harmlessness when one is actually free; one simply is harmless and one is powerless to be otherwise. In the absence of a motivating force to harm another being, creature, or object, there is no harmfulness. The harmlessness of an actual freedom is the complete absence of malice, and one cannot exercise malice "when it suits one," (when would it ever be suitable to do such?) because it is impossible for an actually free person to be malicious. When there is no identity extant, which is the mechanism that produces malice, one is completely and totally harmless.

To your second question about intelligence--being actually free does not mean that one understands all things.

To your third question, I am not sure if I can answer such a hypothetical as this. I can say that being actually free does not make one "docile," if by that you mean easily manipulated.

Hi Seth -

My take-away from this thread: AF-claimant is apparently claiming a relative condition for themselves.

Observing its relativity, it is illogical for one to expect an AF person to experience a cow mammal as like a human mammal. through their senses [i.e., these will appear as unlike entities to AFer]

Yet, to an outsider's own relative view, such AF persons can do damage to themselves and others while having no malice or sorrow: i.e., driving off a cliff in a snow storm, eating others. See John Wilde's thread on Alexithymia.

[indent]Based on this relativity, if Stephanie eats a cow sandwich, but refuses a human sandwich, then any non-Stephanie may deem that AF Stephanie has preferences, aversion and precedent knowledge (of sin, of right/wrong, repulsive/delightful -- i.e., a lack of innocence in current actual choices). This may not affect Stephanie's actual freedom from her self. [/indent]

Your points about consequences of this relative condition of no-self-happy-harmless are logically quite true, in evidence today and through history.

____


Outside of AF, and within Buddhist thoughts, there is a rich dialogue dealing with this realization no self, but which uses insight and develops no self to be "not non-other".

Just watching cows/not-me over time and living may directly reveal cow's "not non-me" being to 'i'.
A.k.a., 'i' am not non-Stephanie. [i.e., not different entities; AF persons cannot be expected to see this being only 5-senses]


[EDIT: removed a stray footnote, corrected indents!]
[Edit: a few hours later, bolded text]

Interesting, thanks Stephanie and K A Steger.

Steph, one question this leaves me with is would you kill a Cow yourself? Would AF allow you to do it without feeling disturbed or sorry for the cow in some way?

I am a country boy originally, and grew up going Hunting. I have killed many animals, and although I loved the hunt, I never liked the last moment of putting down an animal kicking on the ground. I still remember vividly every moment where I actually took away the life of my prey. I could never shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong, or doing an Injustice to the animal, so eventually I stopped. I still ate meat though, till one day I visited a friend at work at an abattoir and watched the horror the cows go through and the utter callousness and malice the workers showed those animals.

That was it for me. Vego.

So what would the experience have been like for an AF person visiting there?

thanks, Seth.

Hi Seth,

I do not know if I would kill a cow myself. I do not have the proper knowledge of how to do so or how even to then prepare the cow for consumption. The logistics of killing the cow, and preparing it to be cooked and eaten, would make it unlikely that I would do so. In the same way that I am completely unable to produce sugar for my tea, there are a variety of foodstuffs I consume which I will (probably) never have to produce or prepare myself. How I will engage the production of that food, should I find myself in a situation where I need to produce such food, would be decided in the moment based on the situation at hand.

I don't know what the experience of visiting a slaughterhouse would be like, because again that would require me to speculate about something which does not actually exist for me; which is to say, I do not know what kind of thoughts I would have were I to visit such a place. What I do know is that whatever was happening my response to it would not be an affective one.

s.

Hi Seth -

Again pointing the Alexithymia site, Tarin writes:


Outside of you and I (apparent non-actualists), this thread seems to lack AF-persons who actually have killed another being and actually know how their meat comes to their 'no self' chemoreceptive tongue. You and are the actualists in this experience so far and we've both noted changes we've made as a result of actual experience.

Showing a preference for who is worthy of slaughter and who "offer(s) something unique to society" is clearly a preference from a subjective source with feelings about how beings are valued by 'society'.

(Where 'society' here is offered by Stephanie as another subjective object of a creative mind and for which there is no fixed, observable sensate object 'society', where furthermore, such 'society', even in its every day usage cannot embody a single subjective value like the assignment of "uniqueness" unless one is quite assured that they actually speak for everyone. I.e., Dictators: they are quite assured that they may speak for everyone, deem what is society, or else.).

Anyway, while such AFer may be blind to its feelings and having a callous lack of sensitivity to what is actual and as a consequence to its choices, an outsider may agree that this is a subjective actual freedom (with regard to harmlessness and non-affectation), like being born-again from one set of beliefs into another, and may be like the Emperor's New Clothes except that cruelty is actually happening not delightful naked naivete in the streets.

So the emerging value in this thread is, for me, helping to define the methods and types of "no self" and their causes and conditions consequences. I am no denomination (AF, actualist, buddhist, etc), but am keen that there may be a very cooperative 'no self' state.

I am appreciative to everyone here for their sharing of personal experience and am particularly appreciative for Stephanie, as a person claiming "freedom from the human condition", for contributing. It may be quite a challenge to know 'other's experience, but other is made more recognizable when it speaks for itself.

________

In the buddhist traditions of no self there is also often debate.

Some buddhist schools note that 'no self' is an ultimate state to be achieved, others caution that any 'ultimate' is not possible and creates a misleading foundation. There are more ideas that enter subtle logic.

What buddhist schools agree on with regards to 'no self' is that such a state will engender compassion for all beings, for example:

-- we observe a chimp.

-- over time we see that chimp has attributes of many animals and we can say it is also "non-chimp".

-- over time one may see that one has attributes of myself, but also attributes that are non-myself.

-- one can interact with others in this realm of expanded, even boundless labeling and conclude: i am also non-chimp.

-- non-beings may interact innocently where the the labels extend boundlessly.

thus roughly approximates, with logic, just one (preliminary) direct insight cultivated in buddhist no-self.


________

AF's no self, in this thread, is apparently not concerned with others, and is selective about how far it will extend the boundlessness of no self, rather has a belief-boundary around the extent of 'no self', such as animal hierarchies at which peak homo sapiens sit and which other beings have a demoted "value" in "society"

One can agree with AF that this 'no self' is an alternative of buddhist 'no self'. This AF perpetuates harm to others through otherization.

_______


Outside of any school of thought, one can say that 'cruelty' is commonly perceived as a deleterious attribute.

With no system-context (AF, buddhism),

1. cruelty often inspires aversion/avoidance:
most people don't want to be around it and don't want to do it. (There is a reason slaughter systems are guarded from view, as are child prostitutes until beliefs and law are enacted and enforced).

2. Cruelty often inspires the feeling of being overwhelmed/helpless/useless/defeated/impotence.


3. Cruelty often inspires rage


and on, and on...

π. Cruelty may inspire measure skilled engagement.
Where compassion for all parties is requisite.

___

I have found AF's focus on sensateness (if I understand its misnomer "Pure Consciousness Experience" correctly) truly helpful in reducing self and can see that it may even extirpate it (as noted by Tarin elsewhere that AF does extirpate the self).

I can also see that any 'no self' that maintains 'otherization' is essentially not 'no self', and is an alternative form of otherization.
"I" -- any 'i' -- can otherize just fine and do not seek this form of no self.

Therefore, the AF forum is for me no longer productive. Good luck, people!


Thank you and cheers,
katy


[Edit: numerous typos, spacing, a few additions/changes in 15 minutes following post]

No one cares about the thousands of micro bugs killed just by moving. Are you going to feel emotional pain all day, everyday because of this? Probably not. Why not?

I think all of us normal people must have an animal hierarchy due to the affective faculty. We may want to be actually harmless to all life, but to an AF person it must be a bit silly because if we tried, we'd be overwhelmed by the impossibility of it and start up the animal hierarchy again. This maybe why AF people base it all on usefulfulness - silly or sensible.

Hi Jason,

You write:
You may be overreaching into nihilism, here (and you ignore the impressively resolute and caring Jains world over who do care about the invisible microbes, too). Nihilism is one of the responses to being overwhelmed. It will come up again and again as a provoker of insight, or one will align with it permanently in despondency.

Stephanie's point is different. She affects preferences for cruelty. She identifies strongly with groups of maligned humans at home and abroad, and, until they are made whole, no 'animal' will pass these humans in her line of hierarchies.

That's ok: she has malice derived from pain here. She also has kindness derived from the same pain.

I do not see Stephanie as just 'Stephanie Now'; it is possible, given her posts, to see her within probable outcomes over time. She has referred to her child in the DhO, and children are ever-refreshing, mind-expanding. Their deliberate growth beyond parental hindrances can be wonderful and most liberating to the parents.

Sensateness affords her time to open away from her history, sensate yoga and undefined space, being born again. This is excellent, and the aspect of AF to be celebrated in actualists, experimenters, achievers.

You write:
Whether free or not, you are responsible for your every choice.

Jason L, are you speaking without direct experience of hunting or killing? Because, if you are, perhaps you are being silly.





_____

*bolded "all of us normal people", who are they?

I don't know anything about jains, but they probably don't feel as much emotional pain when a micro bug dies as when a human dies.

You've probably mistinterpreted Stephanie, and made assumptions about her that are erroneous, e.g. 'has malice'. I better let her reply because I can't speak for her about what you've written.



I don't know what you're trying to say here.



'All of us normal people' are those of us with an affective faculty. But I guess you assume AF people have an affective faculty and that's the reason for your interpretations.

Dear Jason -

Excellent..

[indent]--- you can see now for yourself that you prefer some people's interpretations as buffers to [x] (you insert why you like animal devaluation: or as you say, "No one cares about the thousands of micro bugs killed just by moving. Are you going to feel emotional pain all day, everyday because of this? Probably not." [/indent]
[indent]
--- and you are averse to other people's interpretations and call those "misinterpretations".[/indent]

Well done.

Having these affective preferences for the opinions which suit your needs may make you more ripe for actual freedom than you realize.

Consider tarin's quotes below: from Aleximythia thread (I added spaces to facilitate my reading it):
In actual freedom you may have all the feelings and beliefs that you want; no other AFer will claim to see them; you will claim not to have them.

______

If you want to get to that AF place, reading/posting in this thread will estrange you from AF. Your brain is engaged otherwise here. Stick with the instructional threads and a practice support group. There are many who will kindly help you.

If you are in this thread b/c you seek something productive, let it out and let's see what it is.


Good luck, young buck,
katy

Seth,

If you find AF indigestible, then I fail to see how any response to your questions will mean anything to you, Understand the website first, if you are really interested.

Cheers,
John

I wasn't always able to make sense of what AF people write, but now I do for the most part. Your writing really confuses me, as do a lot of the other posters who write about spiritual things and AF in one post.

How did you come to the conclusions that SW,
'affects preferences for cruelty'?
'has malice derived from pain'?
'has kindness derived from the same pain'?

Hi Jason,

For me this thread shows the result of emotional beliefs meeting Actual Freeedom, either the beliefs are seen for what they are and discarded, or the believer discards Actual Freedom.

k a steger said " the AF forum is for me no longer productive. Good luck, people!"

My luck was finding the AF website a few years ago, everything since is hard work, but so worth it!

cheers
John

If one discards AF, what other method/philosophy can render people physically harmless to other people (except in self defence), in effect, eventually creating a peaceful human society (each member living peacefully with other members)? What is the alternative?

Ok, some people think no one is AF, but right now it's up to each person to experientially find out for themselves.

Agreed, the words "tried and failed" sum up the outcome of all systems prior to Actual Freedom. It is stunningly obvious when it is pointed out.

That there are people achieving Actual Freedom for themselves now, I find to be awesome. No dogma, mantras, prostrating, gurus, just understand the discovery that is AF, work hard, and Virtual/Actual Freedom is possible.

On the subject of this thread, Richard made an interesting observation regarding pacifism (I dont recall where it is), that a society made safe and secure through the capability and the will to defend itself, will throw up pacifists critical of the very war ability that keeps them safe. Is the analogy obvious with "moral" vegetarians from a society efficiently nourished, in part, by animal farming?


cheers

HI Jason -


For me, there is no 'spiritual' here: I noted awareness of similar debates surrounding buddhism's 'no self'. If phrases like "not non-cow" confuse, it's just jargon from those fields, like 'PCE' is to AF. Otherwise, I too am confused by some posts.

So, Jason, I do not understand what motivates you to be in this thread applying your wits and momentary existence here.

If you like actualism, just go for it. If you're bothered by treatment of life as objects, then work this understanding into your practice. Don't be afraid of being alone, if you are. Too many questions here about who is interpreting is redundant and inherently subjective. You can see in each post who is writing for themselves. That's that.

I am making choices from what is actually experienced with my eyes, hands, ears, smell, mental relative reasoning, and mental relative insight: slaughter is not often the choice of a free person.

Further direct experience with hunting is that being an excellent shot is incredibly relevant, yet no matter how sharp, I am still responsible for killing a life where a PBJ would have been plenty.

Hence, from my experience, vegan is a natural choice and makes for calm eating, as does not overeating.

[If you want to go away from personal knowledge, note the science concluding that cooked food (roots and grains) points to our evolution, brain and softie-long gut. We are highly adaptive, but our teeth, nails and gut indicate a cooked, soft grain-veg-root diet.]


So, it is my relative reasoning and my direct experience that finds these claims of 'freedom from the human condition' in this thread to be an unproductive pursuit and a grotesque rationale of self-importance.

____

jason:

These are just here as corresponding 'interpretations' to Stephanie's and Trent's 'interpretations'. Interpretations valuing and devaluing life/anything require Identity as the basis. These may be 'interpretations' or 'misinterpretations' at your will.


Take care and thank you for your posts.

Katy





_______________
recap:




WIthout morality, then there is still cruelty.
You are your choices for yourself,
You are your choices for others.
You are your choices.

The weight of evidence actually has grains as a recent evolutionary diet addition, the human organism evolved to eat fruits, animals/insects, vegetable matter. Grains required the development of both farming and cooking, which are too recent to have any influence on evolution. Further, it is highly likely that meat was essential for the development of the large human brain capable of reasoning and self awareness; due to the necessity of omega 3 fatty acids for large brain growth. Free range animals were the major source of these fatty acids. Fortunately for the survival and thriving of human civilisation, our ancestors behaved with pragmatism.

Does your "relative reasoning" and "relative insight" occur within a framework of societal beliefs, and instinctive passions esp of nurture and desire? If so, why do you not doubt this reasoning & insight, especially given the wealth of information available on the AF website?

cheers

Hi Katy. It doesn't seem like you (virtually) know what it's like to be AF yet, i.e. had a full on PCE. I haven't either, so I don't know exactly what the AF perspective is like. It sounds like something that one ought to experience at least once in their life. One PCE isn't going to make a person AF, so there's no need to worry about becoming AF.

If in an AF, people have an affective callousness, then they may have an affective compassion as an opposite. Every feeling seems to have an opposite.
If they have a non-affective regard for human life, then maybe they could choose to have a non-affective regard for all sentient life.

Dear John,

There is no weight of evidence.

You may cite several authors and research, and I may do the same. I cite soft-gut-roots science to illustrate that research may go any direction it wants.

You may believe your beliefs. I have direct knowledge of killing for my food and witnessing killing for my consumption. Do you have such direct knowledge?

Direct investigations make decisions best for my changing, boundless self (physical body and beingness connected to all being).

If you have not slaughtered or hunted for your animal food, you are taking lives in willful ignorance and self-importance.

You may do so, of course, but it logically would undermine your efforts to achieve less/no self.

If you are american or english, there is a likelihood that you are overweight and overconsuming. If you want to leave affectation behind, your self's silly psychological control over the stomach 'needs' are a fundamental place to start.

What I am reading from actually free people in this thread and practicing actualists is that they recite information without having actual direct knowledge of what they recite, hope to be true to support their beliefs.

___

Over the past few years I developed an intense chronic infection during and following a trip to a rural and 'developing' country.

I have a lot of experience with dietary modification and testing outcomes. I returned to eating animals this past year because my partner needed to see that I was boundless in my solution-quest. I return to no eating animals now, because I have tested it and its consequences on my physical body and my beingness connected to all beings.

What works for me, after much thorough investigation, is feast-famine cycles. Hungry body makes good use of what it is given.

People who advocate the paleo diet often exhibit no clue about a paleo lifestyle.

I see for my self living at this moment allows me other options versus torturing others for my consumption.

Since when are plants/microbes/fungi not alive? What is your basis for such an assertion? Or a place to eventually get to after investigating the social identity.

Kindly visit the following webpage: in the lower right corner there are two counters (one is pictorial) that start from the time you open the webpage:
http://thezenvegan.blogspot.com/
Leave the counter open while you are on the DhO, and then check the counter when you leave the DhO.


I opened this thread, because people claim here to be free of 'the human condition", the "self", "affective being", free from all emotions, including suffering, and they repeatedly state that they are harmless. They may say any words their minds may form, but do they walk their talk?

AF-claimants in this thread evidence their unchecked beliefs about what they eat - they have beliefs in what is 'convenient' (where any convenience requires an identity to determine 'convenience' and 'inconvenience'), they allot special status to humans as offering 'something unique to society' (which 'society' does not exist in a fixed form and cannot represent a fixed value of what is unique, even if Miss Dunning would like it to be so and to be hers), they adhere to paleo diet "evidence" in a knee-jerk parroting of apparently credentialled thinkers without upholding the paleo lifestyle or merely acknowledging that they are not a paleolithic being...

Ok, but why do they say they are harmless and chose harm for others?
This is not no self. This is delusional and will put miles between a person and their goal of no self.

Eating is fundamental to life. One can experiment with dietary choices broadly for long periods and not die from the adaptions. Therefore, eating choices are an easy metric by which to witness the existence of identities, selves, harm, and bondage or any diminishment therof.

That each of the claimants of freedom from the human condition do eat food is clear evidence of having the human condition.

However, allowing for necessities like actually eating (and allowing for their sweeping choice of language), they claim harmlessness and no self.

Therefore, I thought they would eat roadkill and other freegan vegan foods.

Nay, such AF-claimants herein eat what it deliberately wants.


David Nelson, you ask:"Since when are plants/microbes/fungi not alive?"
this is actually your question: what is your answer?
To me, these beings are alive, and they lack nervous systems/ ganglia.

I wrote: "If you have not slaughtered or hunted for your animal food, you are taking lives in willful ignorance and self-importance.
You may do so, of course, but it logically would undermine your efforts to achieve less/no self."

You ask: What is your basis for such an assertion?
me: what you eat is your choice. being preferential reasserts 'you'.
David Nelson, are you not aware of the processes though which beings are forced to satisfy your feeding preferences?

vegan is also preferential. it may also re-assert a self. Steph and Stephanie explain their save-the-world and black renaissance respective identities in above threads with regards to their earlier vegetarianism.

Eating everything is not preferential. this is why i have asked about eating roadkill. Eating everything does not require forcing sentient beings against their wills into machined miseries.

Eating everything and not giving market to cruelty can produce one's relative reduction in knowingly causing harm.


Questions for you, David Nelson:

1. do you crave the taste of cooked animals?

2. do you chose what you are actually eating?

3. are you attached to physical appearance of your body/ do you look in the mirror or reflections often?

4. have you attended your 5-senses to an animal's slaughter?

5. have you slaughtered a being or hunted and proceeded to eat it?

6 . What happens to your physical body when you stop eating animals, animal products for six months?

7. What thoughts arise when you do not eat animals for six months?

8. what happens to your skill sets (adaptive thinking, adaptive cooking) when you do not eat animals for six months?

9. what dietary investigation have you done with the same dedication you apply to no self/AF?

10. have you been kept standing in piles of feces for weeks on end, being shoved about, then corralled towards a shoot where the smells of blood and stress fill your nostrils and you are yourself sickened and fearful?

11. Do you wish #10 on any being?


You are looking for some freedom from the human condition. It may depend on your choices.

If you want to leave affectation behind, your self's silly psychological control over the stomach 'needs' are a fundamental place to start.

Bon appetit, ami.


_____

[edit: removal of footnote stray, spacing, added "not", replacing 'expect' with 'produce', added "AF" to #9]

Dear Katy,

Thanks for your reply. It's all very interesting and exciting!

Certainly research can be, and is, twisted to suit human biases, and none of us have first hand experince of the evolution of our species. I personally find the issues of grain toxicity, and grain seasonality, compelling. I have no dietary preferences now, have been vegetarian, sproutarian, and Sear's Zone at various times. The Zone diet had me feeling best, but I also find eating in moderation suits me now.

I kill fish, my home-reared chickens, and dangerous animals that come near our house. Prior to reading AF website, I had trouble with killing any animal, being of somewhat sensitive personality most of my life. I would find even killing a spider disturbing. I have also killed diseased rabbits to end their suffering, and prevent them dying in proximity to/under our home.

After finding and eventually embracing AF, I became aware of my nurturing instinct arising, I could see nurturing coming as though it were a bubble surfacing in a motionless pond, breaching the surface and rising into the air. By seeing this happen, and not giving the nurturing feeling any support or sustenance, it started to lose its substance, and ceased to have any influence. Afterwards I could kill an animal of necessity or pragmatism; in doing so I encouter no sensation of cruelty, and no internal moral debate, no sympathising with the animal. Interestingly, I don't kill diseased rabbits anymore, prefering them to infect as many other rabbits as possible before they die. (Rabbits are a pest where I live).

I have worked for decades in large corporations, and I concluded that processes of debatable morality exist in all levels of industrialised society; indeed how could it be otherwise given the ubiquitous problem of the Human Condition. The upside of industrial processes is they feed, clothe, provide heath support; they employ us all and improve our existence.

I would expect where the Human Condition declines, that malicious corporate processes would be made harmless, how could they not?.

The question I have in conclusion is: does your awareness of "torturing .. for ... consumption" disturb your here-and-now feeling good?

best wishes
John

I can see how AF is a type of 'no self' even if the AF person eats meat. They simply do what makes sense with the knowledge that they have. The AF person doesn't have a spiritual connection with anyone else because there is no affective faculty. They don't feel empathy. There's literally no psychological identity, just a flesh and blood body. If someone inflicted pain on an AF person, they wouldn't feel anything affective, so it wouldn't be seen as anything bad/evil being done to them. Likewise, when they inflict pain on another, it's not seen as evil, just a matter of fact.

As for claims of being harmless. That just means having no affective intent to harm anyone/anything, and having regard for the wellbeing of other humans (I suppose they could choose to have a similar regard for other animals. There would have to be a logical, not affective, reason to do so though). A machine doesn't need affective intent to do its job, nor an affective faculty to do one job and not another.

Dear John,

Thank you for your reply. It is useful to me, and I appreciate that you write from direct experience on the matter of killing for your consumption. I do find your experience interesting.

John, you write: Yes.

Previously i have lived near a community that largely does not believe in evolution (my training is bios logos which instructs darwinian evolution). I remember the first public talk I gave allowing for creation along side of evolution: my chest relaxed of tension, likely resulting from no longer holding an oppositional stance to ideas and beliefs.

One can have different ideas, work for their furtherance and not be in opposition to other ideas. The relaxed feeling has endured availing me to a broader base of experiences through others.


John Mitchell, you write: In the same way too much water is toxic, I now have little fascination with the various molds (with possible afla'toxins') living in our grains, nuts, whereas this has concerned me in the past.

I am senescing now toward an eventual end, and may experience some more sudden terminating experience at any moment. This has been the case since my birth. While I have ways to reduce the impact of organisms I host, death will occur from some means, and death is outside of my control, nor is a concern.

(One reason death is not much concern for me is that I have had an experientially diverse life with relatively few external and harsh controls strictly enforced on it, and have experienced some interbeing).

It seems like this body works better when it, like the wild animals it sees day to day, has time to experience hunger (how disparate that we may choose to experience hunger in this lucky life). Google also chemotherapy and fasting for more.



John Mitchell: Before I got sick, I valued plumpness. I see that 'overweight' is not inherently unhealthy or problematic.

[I am trying to recover an article regarding a technically obese man who runs daily and has wonderful 'vitals'; he was part of a short study years back.]

For me, lean became a consequence of feast-fast, which feast-fast was a result of seeing a reduction in systemic symptoms of infection. [see also Bonnie Bassler, TEDtalks: the esperanto and local dialects of bacteria.]



John Mitchell: Thank you for noting your direct experience of killing. Below, I speak to my experience of killing home-raised animals.

Do you eat slaughter-systemed animals, or have you seen/experienced the process as an observer?

In reply to your spiders and your disturbance in killing them: I give spiders water (run a strand of it with your pinky in a semi-circle around them which allows an exit if they are not wanting water) when I find them in the kitchen or bathroom not running away from me. It is fascinating to watch them drink such a volume of water (several pinky-strokes), then rapidly go back to coverage. I must say: this interaction brings me joy feeling.



John Mitchell writes: John, i see no moral debate. A moral debate exists in the air of one's consciousness; as you note, moral debate is 'internal'. i do not have this.

What I experience in slaughter is the animal's physical writhing, its struggle to be righted to a position of natural comfort and self-control, its rapid blinking and wide-eyed alarm, it's salivating and mouth opening and closing nervously, flailing tongue and limbs, it's panicked vocalizing.

This is not a happy or harmless for me or the animal.

AF-claimants in this thread chose the above for convenience, societal supremacy and a desire to not be labeled moral by themselves or others. Those claiming actual freedom of self while stating their harmlessness choose the above without direct knowledge of it. This is willfull ignorance and self-importance.


John: why do you think the airy, locationless consciousness concept of morality has any bearing on your choice to kill?


In order to kill I must cultivate a feeling which can overcome innate resistance, which resistance you call instinct: "nurturing instinct arising". I do not feel free when ignoring the nurturing instinct; I feel joy when experiencing interbeing directly.

[indent]1. Interbeing directly relates to felecity, and interbeing is often triggered by nurturing (see giving spiders water, above)

2. To experience interbeing, one must know degrees of non-self and non-other (i.e., there is much of the short-lived 'katy' that is non-katy, that is non-human and is composed of all existence and is as boundless).

π. The more one chooses options that harm others, the less they experience interbeing and less of the marvel of now existence is available to them - they remove the knowledge of other existences and interbeing direct knowledge from their short-lived experience; they contain themselves to the label of 'human'.

(i.e., the more i identify with katy and her choices to otherize (and harming others for self-satisfaction is the ultimate otherization), the less 'katy' experiences interbeing, where interbeing is a content, fascinating, boundless experience which seems like 'humility + delight + gentleness + boundlessness'.)

4. Removing labels and self's heirarchies, one can experience remarkable (not mystical) experiences of interbeing in the this actual life.[/indent]




AF-claimants of this thread self-isolate to a narrow personal relativity [1], applying which ever lens will self-certify their affective preferences, while choosing to publicly claim the achievement of being 'harmless' and having no affectation, self or identity.

Further, AF-claimants, whose gospel is direct knowledge through five-sense awareness, rely on knowledge developed by others: that microbes exist.

Yet, they alone place microbe existence and death on par with mammal death. If 'death' is what makes these two experiences relatively equivalent to the AFer, then this explains the relative meaninglessness of their new condition. It is not free, it is entirely self-relative, affective and depends entirely on their current existence in this relative democracy [2].



John Mitchell writes:


Corporations: I have no issue here, and do not understand why you import them here and with 'morality' again (other than Steph's up-thread reference to assholes in the context of corporations). For me, I cannot remember a time when infinity was not the lens through which existence is apparent to me. Corporations in the context of infinity are like less enduring rocks, but often more enduring that CEOs actual lives.




Kind regards,
katy


____________
[1] RE: Alexithymia: Absence of Feelings or Blindness to Feelings
11/1/10 10:19 PM as a reply to John Wilde.
Stephanie K Dunning:


and

RE: AF and vegan diet: where is your (affective) choice now?
10/12/10 8:09 AM as a reply to k a steger.


and

RE: AF and vegan diet: where is your (affective) choice now?
9/28/10 3:37 PM as a reply to k a steger.
Trent H:
.

and

RE: AF and vegan diet: where is your (affective) choice now?
10/12/10 9:50 PM as a reply to Mic Hoe.
Craig N (actualist?):




[2] Me, now:
Individual choices are increasingly reduced as populations increase, and forced controls are increased on such high-population groups by a minority that intends its own free will choices be met. In an overpopulated world or in a country in which you have no voice, you become like today's slaughterhouse mammal.


[3]
John, you ask in immediate up-thread:
My answer are the words which you have excluded: "I see for my self living at this moment allows me other options versus torturing others for my consumption." My now is my action is my choice, regarding food or otherwise, and there is no disturbance. Further, I feel joy when interbeing directly. Please see bolded, indented section above.

Visited. Read an article about animals in wine. Sounds delicious. I am drinking a nice chianti at the moment. I have yet to meet any of them in person but they are great on paper. I'm sure any AF-claimant (that is not just a claimant but a bona-fide), as you put it, is fully aware that they do not live in the paleolithic era. This is most certainly 'outside the box' thinking here and you are inside the box. The argument is something that you have created or accepted from somebody else. Let me put it this way. I am a plant person. I have several wonderful house plants that I enjoy having around and taking care of. If someone wanted to kill one to eat it, I would not allow it. I enjoy having my plants around. If I was a passionate person, I might even get upset at the prospect of someone eating my plants. But that's not going to happen.

Conversely, what is your problem with the diet of other people? I think it is acceptable and even advisable (in an environmentally conscious/health manner) to eat less meat than, for example, the average American diet entails, but if my neighbor still wants to eat more I don't feel any need to interfere.
Again, lets be clear. Animals are alive. Plants are alive. Fungi are alive, even if you would aim to banish their existence from your feet or other bodily crevices. Microbes are alive, and the soapy holocaust that is washing your hands might surprise you under the microscope. Millions of skin and other body cells die and nobody sheds a tear. When the leaves fall from the trees they decompose and provide nutrients for microbes that provide nutrients for the trees. Have you seen The Lion King? of course it has never been advertised as such I eat everything. I eat things that are delicious and things that are not so delicious. I eat things that are considered to be healthy and things that are not considered healthy. I eat animals, fungi, microbes and plants. How could my eating choices be an "easy metric by which to witness the existence of identities, selves, harm, and bondage or any diminishment therof" ? Interesting you include roadkill. My grandparents live in northern Minnesota where adult deer are frequently hit by cars. They have a freezer full of cuts from fresh road kills and I've always found the taste/nutrition to be more than satisfying. Also to the scientific world they could be considered to be alive. Things that are alive become dead. These things are possibly sources of nutrition. A nervous system is a mechanism that allows a sophisticated response to the environment of an organism. Many different biological systems have been developed to respond to an organism's environment. You might be surprised how elegant a plant's environmentally responsive system is, for example. I am aware. What would happen if humans stopped breeding cows? Would they go extinct? You will not be able to convince me that plants are not sentient. No. Yes. No. I do look in mirrors often, or as often as I need to to check things such as dirt on the face, food in the teeth, objects in the eye. I also consider clothing fashion to be an art so I will, on occasion, dress in an appealing and sharp manner suited to the occasion. Yes. Yes. Vitamin B12 deficiency.Nothing. Nothing. 'no self' and AF are not the same thing. Lets be clear here. I don't recall anything I have done with the same dedication as I apply to AF lol what?! Absolutely not. I am well aware that many plants processing animals are in terrible condition. Many companies in many places are in terrible conditions, harmful for many living beings. Am I going to make it my personal mission to eradicate all such happenings? In a way, yes, but not in the way that is advocated ubiquitously these days. I buy free-range eggs and meat when I can afford them, because buying is voting with your money. I do not agree with the practice of modern hog farmers. So as a result I don't buy pork/ham/bacon/ribs/pig. But I will accept if someone offers me or there is no alternative.

Dear Katy,

I think there’s a point of difficulty with language; “interbeing” is clearly a key experience for you, but undefined and perhaps unknown to others.

Related to “interbeing” is your experience of non-katy, non-self, non-human knowledge, boundlessness, remarkable experiences of interbeing. Again the language is difficult, and it suggests you are referring to altered state of consciousness.

Given you express a background of interbeing-ness, and experience a possible altered state of consciousness, it may be inevitable that AF answers to your questions will be unsatisfactory for you. You would interpret AF to be wrong, whereas an independent observer will simply see two points of view that are mutually incompatible.

You would conclude, for example:


If Katy's experiences and convictions are mutually incompatible with Actual Freedom, there may be little value in further discussion, we will literally be talking about two different things.

regards
John

Hello David Nelson,

I appreciate your reply and abundant relevant experience.

Let me answer your questions now: What in you causes the assumption that I have a problem with people's diets?

I have noted only the illogic of AF's (and adherents) claims of "harmlessness" in the context of their food choices. I have also noted that maintaining food preferences requires a self through which to generate preferences.

Most people around me eat animals (I have and do, too, as noted above (see freegan, other posts), and I have no interest in changing anyone's choices. I do not consider eating choices moral, right (or wrong), better (or worse). I consider my choices my choices. I do not claim harmlessness.

It's relevant that many people generally do not assert publicly claims of no 'self' and being 'harmless', and that AF and adherents do make these public claims.

"Harmless" may need to be tempered if AF seeks association with logic (which it needn't). It is a wonder, though, that a group should profess harmlessness when its adherents are routinely self-compelled to counter that no one is harmless.


To your next point: i have already agreed that plants are alive.
To your related point: that i cannot convince you that plants are not sentient. Agreed: I do not do this "convincing" activity (i do choosing what's useful for my self), and what constitutes 'sentient' is a long trail.

Where you reply to my writing: David Nelson ok, well, you are distinct in this from your AF/actualist peers and the AF website among whom and in which it is noted that AF will extirpate the self and reference much of the state of no self.

To your next question: How could my eating choices be an "easy metric by which to witness the existence of identities, selves, harm, and bondage or any diminishment therof"? It cannot, because you specifically say "i eat everything". Please see up-post wherein I noted last week that to eat everything is not preferential. Being non-preferential removes self-arising biases based on food selection.

Your experience with roadkill: people may be better able to see 'from one of their own' that roadkill can be tasty and healthy to eat, when prepared correctly, like anything else. Up-threads by actualists and AFers assert otherwise.

That's one potential outcome.

David Nelson: Your candor and clarity are especially appreciated. Endorsement of the state of no self is throughout the AF website and amid the AF/Actualist community. Either way, your/their/my thinking is fine with me. I noted previously that I am leaving the forum for reasons of inutility and illogic (which certainly may be my own as much as AF's/AF claimants/actualism).

David Nelson:
(Indeed: "what?!" could be laugh-out-loud here in a condition David acknowledges is terrible?)

David Nelson:
If there is ubiquitously advocated way, the internet is not telling it and i remain unaware. As to your personal mission to eradicate all such happenings in a way: i hope such eradication will be perceived as beneficial to the recipients of your mission on their terms.

David Nelson:
You could be speaking for me, here. I am affective creature indeed.

As noted earlier I leave the AF forum, but for posts made in this thread. I do not think pointing out the illogic of AF claims is purposeful for its practitioners, and AF illogic is not purposeful for me.

Thank you and best wishes,
Katy

Dear John,

Thank you for your reply. As previously noted I leave the AF forum finding it illogical and lacking ultimate utility for me (and possibly the same of this thread for AF/Actulist aspirants), but for further posts to a thread I opened.

I do not refer to an altered state of consciousness. Again, as a non-mystical, quotidian and logical conclusion one can see that one is like others, more like that not. On this basis, harmful otherization without provocation is counter-intuitive (against the nuturing instinct you mentioned having had before studying AF).

This is interbeing: do to others as you would have done to yourself.

While you live in a relative democracy and relative heath, you may make many choices for yourself. If you are submitted to strict control of an Other (i.e., the slaughter system, hospice, asylum, etc ), you may wish that the nurturing instinct be alive and well in those around you.


Kind regards,
Katy

Dear Daniel Johnson, Trent H, Steph S, C C C, Jeff Grove, Jason L, DK, Luciano, Seth, Stephanie K, John Mitchell, David Nelson, J Groove, Mic Hoe, Craig N, D C,


This thread has been open little more than a month, and I leave it feeling well provided for, thankful for a candid unfolding tailored to my queries and experience, usefully expanded by all of yours.



Thank you,

katy

Thank you for the recommendation, J Groove. As a current Ph. D. student of biochemistry I have been reading many papers relevant and focused on this topic. Optimal nutrition is preferential in my experience.
This can be viewed in many different contexts. Take digestion, for example. A meal can be agreeable if it is adequately nutritious and absorbed over time. If too much food is absorbed too fast the consequences can be disagreeable. One can recover (I have many times) but it is preferential to avoid this.
If you eat fats, and like you suggest saturated fats, the total meal will be processed as such in the stomach to spread this fat around. When it passes to be more completely digested the meal will be in an emulsion, so to speak, wherein fats are absorbed, perhaps protein is absorbed (as is often the case with meats), and sugars and carbs are absorbed. If its just a bunch of carbs they may be delivered to the cells so as to trigger the "energy storage" response. There may be an increase in insulin to store extra energy. Many biological systems regulate the intake/output of organismal energy. An important system for regulating energy balance in this sense is the endocannabinoid system, for example. This is why people that consume cannabis may experience "the munchies". If this regulatory system is out of whack, or if the cells energy balance inventory/registry is out of whack, disease can occur.
Nature makes what works best. When nature does make what works best it is at one particular moment in response to the events at the moment that it can sense. Please keep in mind that evolution in Paleolithic times occurred within set of nutritional limitations. So 'nature' did not have a choice. But nature has made a way to configure its actions while taking into consideration the occurrances from groups of moments, and this can be called sentience.
So man has evolved to have a special form of sentience. This and that can be said about 'man vs. the animals', and much of it may be true. So the evolution of man has seen surviving on harvesting plants and surviving on hunting animals. Probably also eating insects, algae, and other wild things. I grow organisms in my lab. In nature they are never eating optimally. If I ate optimally I would probably more productive and be healthier. Also my food would taste better, but I can't always do this. I think that the only way to be optimally nourished would be through a tube. So I am sub-optimally nourished and it suits me fine. I had an amazing hamburger (name=ham, meat=beef) at an emergent chain named "five guys" yesterday and totally enjoyed the whole experience of dining there. For one, all the staff were smiling and engaging, making sure I was having a good time. Also they saw I was hungry and athletic so they provided me with more food than a normal person would eat. I know because I saw people who appeared not to need so many calories getting smaller portions. Wonderful. Ok I may not be a food-critic but I must give a plug to Five Guys because such a simplistic dining model must be applauded (and not just by GQ magazine).
That was Monday (11.9.2010) and today is Tuesday (11.10.2010). Yesterday was "Moon day" and today is "Tiu's Day"
Please don't confuse this. I ate a double hamburger last night, chicken wrapped in too much pepperoni for lunch, and steak for dinner. I feel great. Lets be clear here. Eat what you want and even do what you want. Just find out what is it this 'you' that wants. I think that the aims of this forum are not far off from this. Also I understand that this is the "Dharma Overground", so I will not dis-acknowledge sila. quoted in scriptures:



[Ananda:] "What, O Venerable One, is the reward and blessing of wholesome morality?"

[The Buddha:] "Freedom from remorse, Ananda."

"And of freedom from remorse?"

"Joy, Ananda"






We may describe this conversation from many different standpoints but I am curious to hear yours as I have very much enjoyed reading some of the recent threads on here and their authors' contributions.

David Nelson writes:
Above present affective opinions and illustrate the classic "is-ought issue" (David Hume) of the same sort often attributed to (hypothetical) vegetarian moralizers (of which there are apparently none in this thread as of yet).

The is-ought issue occurs when something that simply "is" is extended by a person's affective inference "ought":
[indent]
I.e., he is muscular, therefore [he ought to be] tough."

i.e., she is vegetarian, therefore [she ought to be] moral."

i.e., biology is the study of life, therefore [it ought to be] objective."

i.e., "man has evolved, therefore [ought to have] a special form of sentience."

I.e., Nature is, therefore [it ought to be what works] best."[/indent]


A logical speaker free of subjective opinion might say, "Nature is" (where "Nature" would be used as a conventional placeholder for "darwinian evolution", "all that is", "infinity" - what ever subjective speaker wants), but cannot conclude that it "makes what works best", because

[indent]- there is no evidence of Nature making or not-making (and if there were evidentiary Nature making what is best, then such Nature would also necessarily make what is worse in order for the relativistic condition of 'best' to exist;

[indent][indent][indent]+ therefore a logical person would agree that "Nature makes what works worst" and nullify their own "best"-bias of diet, because this diet is caused by such finite, best/worst-making Nature, and

+ therefore such a logical person would agree that their same food choices may be consequently also "worst" because the diet is caused by that same finite, best/worst-making Nature)[/indent][/indent][/indent]

- however, there is no evidence (without subjective opining) that Nature/anything is "best" (or worst), and

- there is no evidence of man having evolved a special form of sentience[/indent]


Only a personal identity (Self) may host these artificial hierarchies ("Nature makes what works best" and "man has evolved to have a special form of sentience"), which persons do host (consciously and unconsciously) to maintain their self-relative aspirations for what 'ought' to be (their) reality. Such a person could accurately reflect their self-centeredness by saying, "My view of Nature is what works best for me."

Nature is what you (may) make of it (within relative restrictions)[1]; i.e., you are your choices and lack therof.


Where David Nelson truncates his chosen selection of buddhist sila writing...
...the writing continues (using the same monk Nyanatiloka's translation, Anguttara Nikaya 10.1,as posted on accesstoinsight.com):

"And of joy?"

"Rapture, Ananda"

"And of rapture?"

"Tranquillity, Ananda."

"And of tranquillity?"

"Happiness, Ananda."

"And of happiness?"

"Concentration, Ananda."

"And of concentration?"

"Vision and knowledge according to reality."

"And of the vision and knowledge according to reality?"

"Turning away and detachment, Ananda."

"And of turning away and detachment?"

"The vision and knowledge with regard to Deliverance, Ananda."


What is "concentration"? In buddhist context, it is mindful here now, stable, without clutter or binding, wherein feelings and perceptions are seen and not held, yet come and go until they cease.

In no self/no identity/sensateness-sans-observer, there can exist no "Nature makes what works best", there is no "man has evolved to have a special form of sentience" outside of meaningless, parroted or creative babbling. A David Nelsonship may be such a clear, infinite and babbling brook, delivered from its finite identity.

And, such clear, identity-less infinity being would not hold views of "best" and "special".

David Nelson: What is this best, optimal Nature and special sentience that David Nelson may want?



____
[1] Edit 11-13-10: "(may)" captures relativity
Other edits for clarity (examples, AN 10.1, cause-effect)

I have expanded the up-thread from its initial 11.10 (11?).10 post for clarity and query.

For any person at any given time there exist a set of choices. One is the best choice and then there are all of the others. Without the ability to discern from "best" and "not-best" we would be silly creatures indeed!

This is true, too.



_____
* understanding that 'best' is preferential and requires a self to make distinctions of best, better, worse, not-best.
In terms of food, one may be choosing that their own best food is worth another's own worse life.

How is eating a vegetarian diet going to reform the parts of the agribusiness industry that are cruel when the vast majority of people prefer to eat meat, and won't change?

Hi Jason L,

You ask:
Practically speaking, you are your choices. The choices of individuals, both in apparently one-off actions (Rosa Parks sitting) and in accumulated actions (Temple Grandin), have affected noticeably their respective industries of cruelty. [1]

Even a no-self state, which state is claimed by AF and buddhism alike, can generate choices, yet possibly not re-generate an affective 'you'. (I do not know).

Regardless, why generate any choices you directly know to be cruel to others where abstinence from such choices is available?[2]






___________
[1] Clearly, Ms. Parks, many times honorary doctorate, had a lifetime of choices building up to what history often recounts as a single action.

[2] Please note: I am not advocating any choice for you.

An agribusiness CEO changing his/her mind about how killing is done could make change happen. A vegetarian/omnivorous individual with enough influence could make a stand also, and maybe something would change. However, simply being vegetarian wouldn't save any animal from cruelty in the agribusiness industry.

'You are your choices'.
I don't think anyone's going to buy this on this forum. Although I guess the idea somehow makes sense if you hold onto feelings of nurturance and the concept of interbeing?

'Regardless, why generate any choices you directly know to be cruel to others where abstinence from such choices is available?'
The act of eating is not cruel, and simply being a vegetarian won't change the agribusiness industry as the massive majority of people prefer to eat meat and will continue to do so. Agribusiness will only change when people with enough influence over/within the industry actually do something to make changes.

Hi Jason L,


Such a CEO is a person who has accepted the obligation to generate/maintain and execute profitable plans, and who responds to the interests of the shareholders. "Changing his/her mind" about how (if) killing is done can occur so long as changing ties into a change of plan that will keep the company profitable. A CEO would be irresponsible to do otherwise, and perhaps even personally liable to cause plans to be executed which are not aligned with the duty of care (and which duty they chose to accept as a Chief Officer).

A CEO of a large corporation may be charismatic and persuasive, but, even where CEO's agenda is supported by the majority shareholder (with majority voting rights), CEO has limited ability (dependent on that majority consensus and the ongoing neutralization of any oppositional minority investors (who may be 'activist', i.e., being the largest minority (i.e., at 4% ownership) and most publicly critical of of senior management (i.e., the CEO)) to change a company. Such CEO has their hands full and still has no omnipotence to change the choices of consumers (i.e., you and I).

Privately owned companies may have more flexibility (particularly if there is one owner calling the shots, not, say a private equity team controlling management for a public offering), but private companies are still bound by consumer choices (unless they have other sources of revenue and seek to run another business without regard to consumers and profit -

[indent][indent]+ this is one source of warfare, by the way: conducting one side of one's existence in an unsustainable manner and 'funding' it through forced revenue (slavery) and conquest (pillaging). Therefore, a profitable, consumer-driven company has considerable effect on peace and democratic order).[/indent][/indent]

If your view is on today, the effect of one meal choice by one person today is relatively small. If your view is patient, then persons' choices about meals accumulates over time, and may achieve a critical mass profit-worthy of CEO and board changing products, production lines, policies and procedures, employment, etc.

Forms of cruel-otherization often follow this apparently 'slow' timeline (slow because changes may exceed one person's lifetime). For example, while my great-great grandmother had limited rights, her actions in aggregate with the chosen actions of other beings have accumulated over time to culminate in my current rights, which are significant freedoms over hers.

You are your choices and your choices affect others.

____

you write:
true. Neither is driving necessarily cruel, however, if you drive (even your electric car) deliberately over pedestrians you will have been cruel to such pedestrians. The choices you make for you have consequences for others.

____

you cite me and opine:
The AF forum concerns 'extirpating the self' via ceaselessly sensate being in equilibrium with the external conditions of right now (else it could not be described as 'motionless' and 'still'). A self generates and is re-generated by making choices. No-self is also generating and re-generated by its choices. Unless in a vegetative state, both you as a Self or you as no self (actually free or enlightened) generate and are re-generated by your choices.

A key difference in buddhist no self and AF no self is in the acknowledgment, or lack therof, that their being - their choices - affects others, and where such effects result in care for other, or careless otherization.

_______
[Initial post:11/14/10 10:13 AM
Edit post: 11/14/10 11:44 AM
adding last 12 words]

In developed worlds, the vegetarian population doesn't appear to be increasing relative to the overall population. Vegetarians will probably always be a minority group. The actions of a few people, publicising what goes on within the perpetrating businesses, and who have the credibility to garner huge public support, could be effective right now. Simply being a vegetarian without the actions of these few people would be like voting for a fringe party in a political election. It achieves nothing much.



How does the act of eating have consequences for others that make it comparably cruel to driving over pedestrians? Whatever I eat is already dead before it got to me.



A key difference in buddhist no self and AF no self is that the AF no self has no instinctual passions, therefore their choices can't regenerate a self. AF people are aware that there actions affect other people, and they act considerately. If they were to kill an animal themselves, it would likely be in a way that minimises pain as that is considerate to non-AF people* (the majority of which prefer to eat meat). I guess other humans is about as far as full on actually caring goes for AF people, but that doesn't mean there is an affective self inside. They are flesh and blood bodies doing what they do.

*I also see no reason why they would prolong an animal's pain, or kill in an inefficient way.

The method (if you were trying to describe it), to my understanding is not merely, 'ceaselessly sensate being in equilibrium with the external conditions of right now'.

Hi Jason -

Thanks for contributing again.

You write:
I appreciate that your questions are taking another practical view on dietary choices to achieve something "effective right now".

The thread, however, was started as a lens through which to learn how actually free claimants function in the world, because they claim having extirpated the self, freedom from the human condition, and harmlessness. Therefore, I return my attention to that arena.

In this thread their claims of harmlessness and no self (no basis from which to generate preferences) while making deliberately selective choices (including preferentially eshewing roadkill, creating a "special sentience" for 'man' and self-preferential hierarchies of life (where, surprise, humanity is 'unique'), deeming the slaughter of another not-abhorrent (this is an especially self-centered view), actually advancing 'instinctual passions' in hypothetical 'optimal' diets for a long gone possible human ancestor) are absurd.

A community of AF-claimants and subscribers entitling themselves to take another's life while claiming to be harmlessness and have no ego, does not need my membership.

I chose a lot in the name of absurd, and not this.


Kind regards,
Katy

Hi Katy,

Bottomline, you do not like killing animals for food, and not eating meat prevents bad feelings from arising and enables you to feel good (from feeling nurturing). Ok.

Claims of harmlessness are toward other humans only. Although I don't see why AF people would go out harming other animals for frivolous reasons.

'No self' is in regards to having no instinctual passions, i.e. aggression, fear, nurturing, desire (the sense of being).

'Special sentience' is your phrase. However, humans do appear to be unique in that we have a self reflective consciousness to a much higher degree than other animals.

AF people are quite open about having preferences. On the AF website Vineeto said that one of the things left after attaining AF are preferences. It is only you (as a non-subscriber in this forum) who equates having preferences with having a self. With the perspective of having a self, it is easy to conclude that.

'deeming the slaughter of another not-abhorrent (this is an especially self-centered view)'
In the case of AF people, there is an absence of instinctual passions, i.e. no self.

'advancing 'instinctual passions' in hypothetical 'optimal' diets for a long gone possible human ancestor) are absurd'.
Who here is trying to advance the instinctual passions?

'A community of AF-claimants and subscribers entitling themselves to take another's life while claiming to be harmlessness and have no ego, does not need my membership'.
People who wish to hold onto feelings of nurture, which means holding onto fear*, aggression*, and sadness*, would not want to be members. Although, AF is not about 'belonging'. Actualists are just a bunch of people who do a certain method to achieve a certain goal. There are no shared beliefs among practising actualists about anything other than things directly pertaining to the method and the goal (even then, I don't think belief is required). Eating meat/not eating meat has nothing to do with the goal of AF. It is a preference, and there will probably be an AF person in the future who prefers a vegetarian diet.

*Guarantees a world with war and crime for a long long long time to come.

HI Jason -

you write:
Not quite: since I have hunted and slaughtered, I directly know killing and now prefer not to.

You write:
David Nelson refers to 'man' having a "special form of sentience" on 11/9/10 11:41 PM as a reply to J Groove.


Otherwise, we bring non-identical perspectives on AF right now, that's all. I understand your other points.


Thanks,
Katy

http://voraciouseats.com/2010/11/19/a-vegan-no-more/

I stumbled upon this and this thread came to mind. It goes into a number of the concerns voiced within this thread.