Persuasion

We’re in a tricky position as self-appointed advocates for animals, because we assume the right to talk about them on account of the fact that we don’t eat them. That’s a strong position to be in but it doesn’t give us the right to advise people what to eat or expect them to agree with us. Or even to listen to what we have to say.

How we go about persuading suggests various stages of acceptance, theirs of us and then ours of ourselves.
1. We need to be invited to speak on this subject
2. We need to earn the listener’s respect and interest
3. We need to be convincing and go easy on the moralising

4. We ourselves need to agree with vegan principles
5. Put them into practice
6. Become an activist, communicating, educating, informing and being sensitive to people’s problems regarding their food addictions and their relationship with animals.


Starting at stage 5
Some practising vegans might choose not to be activists. Even if vegan food is the best food for them to eat, it doesn’t mean to say Animal Rights is a realistic cause for them to promote. It may be seen as a hopeless case, and becoming an activist a waste of time - better to leave ‘politics’ to others. If ‘home vegans’ speak about it at all it’s mostly to the people they know.

Stage 6
If we decide to go further and attempt to persuade people, to protest, demonstrate or get into direct action, we first of all would need to believe the cause is worth promoting, and despite the seeming lack of interest amongst people, we need to be optimists, both seeing the urgency of change as well as seeing what is already happening in people’s attitudes. It’s a mixture of people’s concerns with the sort of foods they’re eating and a concern for the animals being used for food. If those twin concerns are pointing to a need for personal change then, with some of that high energy (from our vegan diet) we should be able to direct our activism into inspiring these people.
We have to keep our feet on the ground however. We have to realise how unaware 95% of people still are about the level of animal cruelty and the dangers in eating animal foods. From most of them we can expect negative reactions. They can range from indifference to passionate resistance. And so if that’s the way things are today, we might have to get used to that, by recognising the different levels of acceptance.