Obstinate to the core

A vegan’s conscience is outraged at the very idea of slavery and particularly the obstinacy of thought that we can’t survive unless we enslave animals. It’s reminiscent of the ending of human slavery in USA when they predicted inevitable collapse of the cotton and sugar industries – but the industries survived and thrived … and soon enough the idea of enslaving humans became repugnant and then illegal. It could be the same for animal slavery. We can survive and thrive without eating animals or using by-products or co-products like leather, and we can more than survive without consuming the body parts of animals themselves. We can also be happy and healthy without being clothed or entertained or medicated at the expense of animals. But that isn’t believed by most people. It isn’t even taken seriously. And that’s our great challenge.
But when it does happen, once it is realised, then it’s business-as-usual for humans, then we can get on with human development, uninterrupted. Once we drop the animal dependency, and not until, we can address the other major problems still facing the world, such as war, disease, pollution and hunger.
The agony of the human race is it’s obstinacy, having solvable problems held back by a collective reluctance to drop animal slavery. Instead of challenging ourselves to work with Nature we attempt to bypass Nature and fail over and over again. Our addiction to animal products compounds our obstinacy, so we stand less chance of surviving because we remain slave masters to animals. And why should we not? We seem to have got away with it so far? … but all that means is the thief hasn’t been caught yet.
A compassionate society can’t grow whilst human slavery exists, and now stepping further - the only chance humanity has of surviving is by giving up bacon at breakfast and leather shoes and aquariums full of sea creatures. The lot must go if we want to move on.