[A well-intentioned comment from the audience: he or she is using the name "Eyedontexist".]
[…]
In my perspective, even if a person genuinely believed they needed to reincorporate animal products into their diet to be healthy (accurately or inaccurately), it should be regarded as a tragedy and done to the most modest degree possible, always aiming to do as little harm as one can - not treated as a spectacle or celebrated as ‘I’m finally free from oppressive veganism’ and treated as a free pass to be indulgent without limitation.
I think society hammers in the idea that physical desirability is a metric of a persons value or worthiness of being loved (especially to women) and it’s always sad for me to see somebody internalize that notion and struggle with self-worth but it’s not an excuse that makes harming animals acceptable and the suffering is minuscule in comparison to the reality those animals go through.
Some of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met are old, “fat”, and do not approximate conventional beauty standards in the slightest. Beauty to me is the kindness of a persons heart, how they care for others, the depth and intensity of their mind. All things within our power to cultivate through our choices.
Being honest and real is important to me but being kind and gentle is important to me too (for the type of person I would like to be and not everyone has to want to be that way). I would have approached this topic differently than you did but I think the bottom line of the points you make are essentially right.
The questions I often grapple with are, how do we reconcile with humanity’s inhumanity and stay loving towards our fellow humans? Not because they deserve it but because we cannot sustainably change each other through shame.
I sympathize with your anger and recognize it as a manifestation of profound and reasonable despair. I appreciate you continuing to fight the good fight in the face of it all.
I don’t expect that you’ll agree with all the sentiments I’ve shared in this comment but I just wanted to share them anyway.
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You don't believe any of these three statements, that I will here quote back to you in reverse order:
3. "All things within our power to cultivate through our choices."
2. "Beauty to me is the kindness of a persons heart, how they care for others, the depth and intensity of their mind."
1. "Some of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met are old, 'fat', and do not approximate conventional beauty standards in the slightest."
No: the difference between being beautiful and being ugly is not within our power to cultivate through our choices. You need to recognize that the majority of people are powerless to change their own ugliness: it wasn't their choice, and it is beyond their power to command.
No: beauty and kindness are two totally different things —and "therefore" beautiful people are quite capable of being cruel —and cruel people are quite capable of being beautiful.
Pretending that you don't know what beauty means is the lowest order of deception. Pretending that beauty is a consequence of kindness or wisdom, as you do, would be truly evil and immoral: whereas I am encouraging people who are ugly to cultivate these other (intellectual) virtues, you are instead saying that ugly people are incapable of them —only the beautiful are intelligent and wise. And, in this pretense, you think yourself virtuous, and that is the most sickening delusion of all.
There are some remarkably ugly comedians here who hate me: they have seen beautiful women showing interest in me at the comedy club —and neither beautiful women nor handsome men ever showed interest in them. A few of the comedians have openly talked about this with me: they've seen that I have some kind of charisma that they don't have. They should have other, better reasons to hate me, but they're not even capable of being envious of my writing or things I've accomplished or experienced under the heading of "the life of the mind". One comedian here said to me, directly, that he has never once had a beautiful woman come up to speak to him after a show, whereas I've had this experience innumerable times when I wasn't even performing on stage.
Equality is not equality, therefore it is called equality. The shallow end of the pool helps people to reach the deep: dealing with physical inequality —honestly— is necessary because it prepares you to deal with intellectual inequality [at the deep end of the same pool].
