Peter: > the less animal foods people > have in their diets, the less concern they have & and the less > responsibility they take for the quality of community & interaction. > Fact is that I have no recollection of any vegan sympathizer ever > coming out and expressing support for the guiding principles for this > list. Go figure. Bob: >Peter, you've been close to vegan for years. To what do you attribute >your resistance to the destructive zealotry that infests your peers? Possibly because when I was young I was extremely naive and to survive was forced to build a well-developed bull-shit detector... Luckily, there are many on raw-food and a few in the M2M who are able to maintain an open and critical mind on these issues. But I think many who get into raw foods are very insecure and traumatized people looking for simple solutions to what often are complex problems. Many vegan, raw food & natural hygiene schools of thought deliver just this but the price is often a displacement of feeling or dislocation of function with the consequence as Ellie puts it, the wrong kind of neurons being detoxed. A good example of this is on the issue of killing animals for food where the perceived suffering and cruelty of the animals resonates with the abuse that once took place. This explains why it is so difficult to discuss these matters because the vegan will in identifying with the perceived pain of the animals be operating from a lower part of the brain - the limbic system - which is the level of consciousness at which the original abuse took place. In more times than not it becomes an exercise in futility to try to establish communication as this terribly hurt, inner child has no concept of reason, only this inner wound that too painful to be faced in all its cruelty cannot be healed - the consequence being that the person arguing for eating meat becomes the demonized symbol of the original abuser. This behavior not only acts as an outlet for the pain but also functions as a way of avoiding the memory of what truly happened back when. Anyway, this would be an explanation out of the classical, primal paradigm and makes a whole lot of sense to me. Best, Peter [log in to unmask]