As vegans (who are also animal activists) we’ve made it our business to look, and what we saw turned us vegan. And by going vegan, by protesting, we are hoping to carry with us a large proportion of our community on a wave of fashion, in being green and being ‘vegg’. With a large alteration of attitude in our own society the nature of businesses change to keep in step with the new demand.
Is this a great surge of compassion? Is it an awakening to healthy food? Is it just a fashion statement? Maybe none of these really rock the boat. The upset and consequent root and branch change of attitude may be shock-based. It may come from indignation, that we’ve been eating food from such places and not told the truth. The realisation that we’ve been kept in the dark. The question to parents, politicians, and teachers “Why didn’t you tell us?”. All of this, the energy food, the cruelty-free food, the new awareness, it all makes up a package. It’s wrapped in blame of others for not bringing us up better informed, but in the end, the springboard for us, personally, trying to move over to a vegan consciousness, this is achieved in very ordinary ways. Fashion forces may not be strong enough yet to carry us seamlessly from one world to the other so personal resolve comes into the picture, we have the rationale for change, but the will power?
As we move into adulthood or at least a state of independence where we’re cooking our own meals, we have to focus on the job in hand, we have to move on from blaming those who didn’t tell us. Blame who anyway? Just about every one of us has blood on our hands. We can even blame ourselves more than anyone else for perpetuating our own mistakes even when we knew they were mistakes. So, bugger blame! It’s a waste of space. I reckon we should drop the blame thing and move to pro-active doing. A whole lot of vegans do just that, because for them there’s no time to waste. DO something. LOOK at things … and it will follow that when we see how pigs are forced to live we drop pork, see the battery system operating we drop eggs, see an abattoir and drop everything else. Everything that has a face.
That look! If you’ve seen an animal at the abattoir, as it is led into the execution chamber, its face is unforgettable - looking at you as they face their own violent death … and the noise of her despair alongside the groan of machinery. This is quite the most diabolic scene imaginable. Enough to stop us in our tracks, check habits, boycott and fume silently. For a while this is a huge enough project in itself, but later when the food issues have been resolved and shoes and clothes are sorted then, as a practising vegan, we take time to look further and see something sadder than anything we’ve seen before, a loss within ourselves of our faith in human nature. If we feel only sadness this is more constructive than anger.
This blog is on holiday 22nd Dec - 2nd January
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