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Great post -- as a EA whose parents were born in Taiwan, I also feel some of this dissonance. For example, Eastern culture around altruism is focused on "helping your family and friends" instead of "helping strangers". At our wedding, we asked for donations to charity in lieu of wedding gifts, and my entire side of the family opted instead to hand us red envelopes stuffed with cash, with the explicit request to spend it on ourselves not to donate it.

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Absolutely amazing post. I think my favorite types of posts are the way EA affects our everyday lives and the intersection of EA and familial culture is super under talked about. I have been working on being vegetarian as well, and have just chosen not to tell my family besides my sister. In fact I’ve visited and just eaten meat while there. I don’t know how my Latin American mom would take it (I’ve taken to calling myself a social omnivore for this reason). Part of me thinks this is insane but also makes sense? Idk, thank you for this post

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Hi - hope the best for you! I think one legitimate and potentially the best course of action is to be not veggie when it comes to family meals if you think the conflict of telling them you're vegetarian would cause significant disutility presuming that you do not always eat with your family. A high impact career or animal welfare donation would easily outweigh the disutility of some animal suffering and it would be a shame if the move from 80% veggie to 100% would cause psychological distress as to reduce your impacts elsewhere.

Hope it all works out for you and wishing you the best!

Bill

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You expressed my thoughts better than I could, thank you 🙏

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A month or so ago my daughter informed me she was thinking about becoming a vegetarian and she was going to start by choosing the vegetarian school meals. I don't think it lasted the whole week!

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(One thing I guess I'm proud of is our neutral stance. She knows her diet is her decision. My parents lied to me about it. She decided she no longer wants to eat lamb because they're killed as babies.)

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