The reason I preferred to respond the way I did in your original comment, is because I noticed two things that make me doubt you are actually willing to discuss with an open mind. The first is that in your original comment there are quite a few remarks in which you assume the moral high ground and judge others en masse while you have actual contact with a limited sample of people through which you observe the behavior you claim you don’t understand. The second is your personal experience, which as you mention it, is equally limited as far as what it takes for a person to end up eating animal meat.

So I wrote, probably quite badly, about a fragment of another person’s life. Trying to paint a picture of a way of life in which there was no cognitive dissonance, hypocrisy (you do realize that these are not nice things to say about another person, right?) or even conflict. What was equally important, in my comment, with the mention of this one person, was the fact that I mentioned that almost everyone lived like this in the past. Which, I guessed, while probably not enough to make you re-evaluate your position, might make you question both the validity of the moral high ground and how your experience helped formed your beliefs about eating animal meat.

Unfortunately, seems like I guessed wrong, because you reduced my comment to “human eats meat for survival”, when it was more of a “human makes peace with killing, butchering, eating other animals while actually caring for all animals”.

It’s not that I didn’t see what you wrote about “eating meat for survival”. I even quoted this specific part of your comment. So maybe it’s not that great assuming that I didn’t when you read my response.

But who will judge whether or not a person is eating for his survival? Who will judge whether or not someone is being a hypocrite? I mean, most of us, at any given time, are on a different path of life, with our own unique experiences. What might seem obvious to one person, might be something the next person wouldn’t even be able to imagine because of different experiences. It’s not like artificial (books, movies, infotainment, what have you) stimuli are the same thing with actually experiencing the world. Especially when it comes to nature with its extreme vastness of interactions.

You claim you were put off from eating animal meat by watching a butcher killing a chicken. Why should I feel bad (hypocrite? lying to myself?) or less of a sentient being when after, myself, helping to butcher a goat (I mean, do you have any idea what this requires? the sound of skin separating from what is underneath? the sound of internal organs when you slice it’s body open? the flow of blood? the smell of it all? and if you do have an idea do you think the idea is comparable, as far as impact goes, to the actual deed?) and while feeling seriously overloaded by the stimuli (in a young age mind you, less than 10 years old the first time I did it) at the same time being at peace with what I was doing?

Finally, being in an urban environment, at least when I mention it, is not indicative of more options (like food stores, or supermarkets) but indicative of a way more limited environment as far as natural stimuli are concerned and how people’s perceptions of the world are formed. It’s easy, if not a complete certainty, to be completely oblivious of many of the horrors involved in how animals feed themselves. And documentaries, neither smell, nor capture enough of this. So, I, for one, won’t judge neither a person who is put off by a killing of a chicken nor a person who isn’t. I can see how different paths might lead different people to different perceptions of the world. I even find it interesting to observe the differences.

ps. I like to do a little experiment when (which you 'll almost never see me do) I say “I don’t understand X”. I replace that part of the text with “I really don’t like X” and if the text still makes sense, I pause and think.