Winning the un-won

It’s relatively easy to convince the few who are already beginning to take us seriously, who are at ‘stage two’, but the vast majority of people on this planet are nowhere near there yet. And it’s these people who most need to be contacted. Not to change them by force but to understand their fears and the ignorance behind their thinking. We have to discover the cause of their obstinacy. We have to try to unearth their deep set collective prejudices. Only when someone is ready to let go of their resistance and admit there’s a case to answer, will they be approaching stage 2, where we can then be freer to speak.
If we, as vegans, are asked a question we may have our reply off pat We may be so sure our answer is accurate that we forget how it might sound to the questioner. Before we answer questions we have to ask ourselves how someone is going to feel when we tell them what they asked about, but which they’ll probably not want to hear about? In answering, it’s easy to twist the knife, to remonstrate, to garnish our answers with a little barb of guilt. And that usually works in our favour for about ten seconds, until they realise they’re being lectured, which is when their reaction usually kicks in – a reaction designed to protect their lifestyle.
This is why whatever we want to say should be halved. Surely the trick in talking animal rights is not only NOT to twist the knife but to tread carefully over the red hot coals we’ve slipped under their feet. If they feel offended then we must say less than intended … even to the point of ‘throwing away’ a line or two, just to keep things on an even keel. The best way to hold people’s attention is to deliver some of what we want to say and then pull back in time to avoid them turning off. If that means putting our case more casually than we’d like, even subliminally, then it might be more effective that way. We can’t afford to forget how justified people want to feel, how much they want to disagree with our basic premise and how much they want to stop listening. We’re trying to inhibit each of these reactions whilst passing across useful information.