A Question of Peace and Violence

[Metalosh]

I'm new to the forum, and being vegan (only 1 and a half months now), but I figured I would share as much as I can with the community. I'm a writer, and currently working on an exploration of peace and violence. The words seem to be thrown around a lot in defense of the vegan philosophy, and it really interests me to see how many people have contemplated the issues deeply in of themselves.

 

For instance, it's easy to say that being vegan is a peaceful stand against the violence that our world is bombarded with, but this doesn't seem to hold much ground when one thinks of the nature of things. Peace and violence define each other, in a similar fashion as being strong and weak are very relative terms. This doesn't seem to have any meaning in defining peace, other than saying it is simply the absence of violence. But then we are left to define what violence is. Acts, ideas, images, words - all can be violent, but what makes them violent? If war is violent, then surely the idea of war must be violent. Does violence lay dormant in our words and thoughts? Is it any less "real" if it isn't acted upon?

 

Vegan food for thought..

 

-Mijo

[Richard]

To me it just depends what you mean by a word when you say it. If by "violence" you are talking about "physical damage", then it must be a physical thing, and thoughts are not the same (though they can lead to physical damage). Things can be described as "violent", but just in as much as they relate to it, not because they are causing physical damage. For instant, you can:

move violently = move quickly

violently disagree = strongly disagree

watch violent imagery = watch imagery which depicts violence

 

and so on, none of which are the same as physical damage being caused, the word just has different uses is all

[chrisjs]

I feel that the use of the term "violence" is only to simplify the issue, avoid immediate rejection, and perhaps invoke sympathy.

 

The real issue is the violation of rights... the real discussion is what are rights and who has them.

 

If we assign the right not to be killed (not the right to live, but the right not to be killed) to a chicken, then it's the violation of that right to kill and eat them. But if you approach it that way, you get knee-jerk responses along the lines of "so chickens should have the right to vote?" or "but it's a chicken" which goes nowhere.

[beforewisdom]

I'm new to the forum, and being vegan (only 1 and a half months now),

 

Congratulations on the very positive move.

 

The single best thing you can do to stay vegan and make it work for you is to invest a TINY amount of your time to get the nutrition information down. Even if you eat well now many people who do not know what they are talking about, even/especially on vegan forums will try to fill you with potentially damaging misinformation.

 

Here is a post I wrote about where to find brief and authoritative vegan nutrition information:

 

http://beforewisdom.com/blog/?page_id=462

[beforewisdom]

I'm a writer, and currently working on an exploration of peace and violence. The words seem to be thrown around a lot in defense of the vegan philosophy

 

There are many different kinds of people who are vegan or animal advocates.

 

Most vegans live their lives peacefully like most other people and do animal advocacy within the letter of the law. A more vocal minority is also peaceful, though needlessly offensive in the way they conduct themselves.

 

An even smaller minority of animal rights advocates favor "direct action" or violence against property, while strongly talking against violence against people. So far, the animal rights movement has been lucky in that those people have not crossed that line and that various groups who want to discredit animal rights activists ( http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/ ) have not done violence against people and framed an animal rights group.

 

You will find angry vegans who talk a lot of trash. Some are legitimately angry from actually *doing* ( versus typing on the internet ) things to help animals and as a result witnessing many horrible things. Others are just the ordinary types of angry people who gravitate towards political movements as an outlet for being angry.

 

You will find some of those posting on other forums, but like I wrote, most of it is just "parlor talk".

 

As far as this forum goes, you will find some heated exchanges about nutrition misinformation, but most of us are just ordinary people holding down regular jobs and going about our lives.