Nice! I'd love to do a show on this topic. What do you think about a show with the vegan guy mentioned above?
I'd love to hear that but I think he's (was) not exactly fit to expand on the topic very well :'D
What I might suggest is trying to get Ben Greenfield on (and it's also ben a few years since I've been up to date on the nutrition world, so maybe there's better now), but he's extremally knowledgeable on the science of nutrition and other health modalities, both mainstream and alternatives; got famous for his 'bio-hacking' approach, so mainly materialist based - but seems has also had a bit of a spiritual awakening these last few years too and I'd be curious to catch up on his podcast to see what take he has on the non-material side of health now:
https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/spirituality/
I think he'd be a great overall perspective on the mainstream health industry's lies (tho expect he'd probably just say it's just corporate profit driven, I bet he'd be curious of the Sk take on the wider deception mechanism), and be able to give relatively objective incites into alternative diets, and maybe can speak to the spiritual+material bodily health balance and how diet comports with spiritual side.
I'd love to do what I can to help make that happen, as you called for, but not sure where I'd even start lol
Thanks! Could be, I'll delve a bit when I get a chance.
That's a great example... And it's one that I've been revisiting lately.
Here's how it went for me and tell me if it did all fits with your experience. So, I like a lot of things eckhart tolle says and was looking for a new youtube. I came across this
Eckhart Tolle EXPOSED By This Simple Question (Vegan ...
There's a lot about this guy's presentation that I didn't like but I had to admit that Tolle was kind of all over the place in his response to a pretty simple question. And I had to admit that I'm not real comfortable with the industrial farming of animals... The pig's smart as dogs thing is especially difficult. And I also had to admit that I intentionally avoid watching all those animal cruelty videos that vegans love to push out there.
The end result of all of this for me was a shift in my eating... A compromise... a move away from the worst of the worst of the meat industry while not going to batshit crazy on the vegan stuff. I'm sure my approach has plenty of logical inconsistencies, but I think everything in this area is a bit of a compromise... Which maybe brings us back to the point about your friend... And the point about these Skeptiko dialogues
Thanks! I tried to listen to that reaction video but... I ended up just having to scan through to hear Tolle's response; the "reactor" is unnecessarily going to annoy me lol.
It's in the ballpark of my vegan encounter experiences, indeed. My feeling about what is happening with many of these v-militants is that they are riding high on a righteous evangelist type egregor, further amplified by a lack of essential fats that limit neuroplasticity and increase emotional / irrational thinking (ok that 2nd part was a joke, but I do recall seeing a paper on pubmed to that effect lol and in retrospect I think I fell into that trap/mold too when I was "v-ing") and they oft have a kinda simplex view of things with a few rehearsed talking points that have been debunked over the years... (familiar?)
On Tolle's response, I don't think he was very articulate or concise but as it was 'on the spot' and not in his mother tongue, I'd give plenty of slack. But overall I'd mostly agree with what (I think) he was getting at, in that if a person isn't vibing with veggy/veganism, then it's not for them and that doesnt impact their 'spiritual enlightenment level' at all.
Indiscriminately eating any cheap industrial crap that comes from the worst suffering is demonstrably wrong, in my opinion and those that do it are just ignorant of what is going on there (in every aspect), but if that's where they're "at", then it is what it is and we can nudge - but prob they need to come to their own realization.
Over years of delving into spiritual matters, I find the veggy/vegans honestly to be the least spiritually sophisticated, at least the ones that make a deal out of it anyway.
And for the while that I was studying nutrition, I found out that its
really an individual thing. EG there are athletes that are vegan, but on average it seems most people's bodies simply don't do well without meat/fish, so everyone has to simply experiment and see what works.
When you read a study of 100 people got cancer and they were all eating X; that to me means that
those 100 people are prone to cancer (that
maybe it correlates to X, depending on quality of the data). Take another 100 people, you'd very probably get quite different results.
When i see a vegan or carnivore or paleo or breatharian etc say '
everyone would be healthier when they do
this! YOU MUST DO THIS', is when I know to tune out; they didn't get the obvious individual / journey component yet.
For me, after wandering around all the stands in the convention, I've settled on similar-ish compromise to you Alex (though it hardly feels like a compromise now): for me it means limiting meat intake to only good quality stuff where the animals are verifiably treated well and the farming practices are sustainable. If I'm in a restaurant, I get the veggy option because I can't be sure. I only eat 1 or 2 meals a day anyway, so skipping occasions where someone is offering me something I'm not comfortable with, is easy. The compromise comes in the $-wallet sense lol
In my view, the suffering of the plant is something to consider too (though it's different), they are also beings that 'die for the life of others'. So I try intake the best quality I can of that lifeform too (and the environ where it's grown, ie where it's not sprayed like crazy with poisons in forced monocrop situation, which also destroys biodiversity, kills countless bugs, moles, mice, microlife etc and depletes the soil... something v-militants don't like to talk about).
Oh, this is way longer than I expected. Time for bed here (the most important health 'to-do' thing, after breathing and drinking water lol)