Clash of opposites

Here are the same levels of acceptance put another way:
Stage 1 - the sun is hot, the water cool, who gives a stuff about …”What did you say? Animals? You want me to think about … what?” With an attitude like that it’s probably not a good time to be talking about animal rights.
Stage 2, where a person might not agree, but admits this is a serious issue.
Stage 3, listening, re-thinking long-held habits and learning new ones
Stage 4, agreement and trialling the diet
Stage 5, moving towards being ‘vegan’
Stage 6, becoming a political activist and going public.

The Danger Zone
At stage 6, the political vegan encounters difficulties - with ‘stage one’ people we can fall into the trap of reacting badly when they respond negatively - we meet people who don’t normally talk about ethics or the philosophical issues concerning animals, especially with people like us. They avoid talking about anything remotely connected with animals. They purposely don’t ask us to speak about animals or veganism, and therefore we don’t have the right to speak about it, and if we suddenly bring it up we’ll be labelled as ill mannered, pushy or just plain weird.
With ‘stage one’ people we have to break down the mistrust and dislike that precedes us, by showing an interest, getting to know them, establishing some real trust. It’s useless to go ‘crashing their party’ by forcing them to listen to serious and potentially confronting issues.
If there is a spark of interest or even a question, then we’re in business. (That is, unless they’re just being polite and there’s no real interest at all). It’s so rare to find an unguarded, intelligent question, that it might put us on the spot, where we have to try responding intelligently, which means answering without using the occasion as an excuse to launch into things we haven’t been asked.
We have a lot we want to say but we don’t often get the chance, and find putting out tiny scraps of information frustrating. We may have become so used to assuming people are either insensitive or purposely closed down on the subject, that we expect the worst. We get exasperated. We force our arguments - we try to put a foot in the door, and then to our immense surprise find it closed in our face. The doorkeeper is defensive, privacy violated, instinctive response, ‘once bitten twice shy’ … the door closed on us for ever.