What a great post.  This has a little bit of everything in it as well as
blatant honesty and humor....  Good goin' Lara....   Oliva
----- Original Message -----
From: "lara" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> I dunno.  I'm sure one could find plenty of examples
> either to prove this or disprove it depending on what
> one's agenda happened to be.  Isn't Gandhi the
> poster-boy of the "Peaceful vegetarian" stereotype?
> It seems to me that almost every group I've ever
> belonged to has, at times, gotten pretty
> self-righteous about their own
> beliefs/aestethics/methods/ideologies/whatever, while
> at the same time perceiving "the enemy" as being very
> hostile and aggressive.  For example, I grew up in a
> Catholic household.  I like Catholicism, I really have
> few problems with it, I think it is a very
> misunderstood and unfairly maligned religion these
> days.  My best friend is gay, and I'm very involved in
> punk/indie/fashion/art related subcultures. So I go
> home and hear my (home-schooling, subsistence organic
> farming and hunting, holistic-health homeopathy using,
> meat-eating, breast-feeding, etc) family talk about
> "militant feminists and homosexuals" aggressively
> pushing their anti-family, anti-life, propaganda at
> the world (they don't hate the sinners, mind you, just
> the "sin").  And I hang out with my friends and hear
> them talk about the rich repressive Catholic church
> aggressively forcing censorship and rigid morality
> upon us, and the raw-foods vegans complain about the
> loud instinctos forcing their gory detailed accounts
> of raw meat eating upon the raw-foods lists, and I
> guess I just kind of feel like every group does this
> to some extent.  I tend to think I'm right and
> everyone else is wrong, whenever I really believe
> something, but because my "strong" beliefs change so
> often and so drastically, I end up feeling a bit
> ridiculous about my former zealousness. That hardly
> seems to prevent me from doing it again though.
>
> Maybe poor health in general, regardless of specific
> cause, is what makes people more likely to be
> antagonistic?
>
> -lara