RE: Finding a space where vegans and meat eaters can agree to differ, and still be friends
As a former vegan, I really appreciate this post.
When I became vegan, I was coming at it from a biblical, Christian perspective. (This already placed me in a politically incorrect place among the vegan community, and I found their publications to be antagonistic to my wider worldview.) I believe that God originally created human beings in a garden, where they ate plants, living in harmony with the animals, and there was no death. I thought that I could return to this "perfect" way of eating and human-animal relationship. It worked for a couple years before I suffered from severe fatigue, tooth decay, slow hair and nail growth, and 40+ day menstrual cycles. I had to come to grips with the fact that my body was not a "perfect" Garden of Eden body and the plants I was consuming were not "perfect" Garden of Eden plants. Those plants couldn't give me everything I needed to be happy and healthy, and my body couldn't even absorb and use all of what they were giving me.
Since this realization, I have tried several different nutritional approaches, constantly refining the ones that work for me and discarding the ones that don't. The tradition-oriented approach of the Weston A. Price Foundation has had a significant impact on my own trial and error approach.
I also had to let go of some of my perfectionist and idealistic attitudes. Due to our income level, my husband and I can't always afford organic and/or humanely-raised food. I have accepted that this responsibility is not mine to shoulder. When I am purchasing the best food that is available to me and that I can afford, I am not culpable for every person's actions toward that food along the way. I do not control the price or selection. I do not feed, care for, or slaughter the animals I eat. I do not plant, chemically spray, or harvest fruits and vegetables. I am not in charge of legislature pertaining to agriculture and food production, and I am not a wealthy owner of a food company, raking in profits from outrageously-priced health food. I am content to do what I can, let go of what I can't, and allow others to make their own decisions without criticism. What I eat and who I am are separate. It took me quite some time to accept this, as I began conflating the two at the age of 14 when I decided to practically starve myself.
Anyway, bravo to you for encouraging dialogue about this highly-polarizing topic!
That biblical, Christian perspective is interesting to me, as I just came across it yesterday in another post. But it also perplexes me, as it seems clear to me that after the fall, humans were very different beings, with different needs. Jordan Rubin's book "The Makers Diet", which excludes pork and shrimp for example, but not other animal products, makes more sense to me as a Christian guideline.
I'm also a great fan of Weston Price's approach. Given that his expectation was that he would find healthy vegetarian diets, the fact that he didn't find any vegan traditions is significant. I did a couple of posts about him when I was first on Steemit.
Looking at another traditional perspective, a correspondent from India once told me that the monks were vegan because they were living a spiritual life of contemplation, but it was understood in India that only the monks could do that. Anyone living in the physical world needed some animal products for sustenance.
Very wise. In the end, that's all any of us can do. Make the best choices we can for our overall health - physical, emotional, financial, spiritual - and not stress about the rest. After all, the worry is probably as harmful, maybe more. As are any feelings of hatred that we might project onto those we disagree with.