Check the talk

In any conversation on serious issues such as animal rights we should automatically check all the time, to be sure we aren’t becoming too volatile, or that the conversation isn’t becoming too one sided (too much of my stuff and not enough of yours). If a person is left out they’ll feel put-out, like they’re being lectured at.
Conversation needs to be interesting and worthwhile, disagreements notwithstanding. Most of us like to explore the pathways of one another’s thoughts and beliefs and, wherever our discussions take us, in the end we need to leave one another on a positive note. So we can resume at a later date.
For vegans, animal rights may be a deadly serious subject but it has a particular up-side. Veganism is a rock. The pursuit of the dream of an entirely vegan world gives us a great deal of satisfaction and puts meaning into our lives. But to get the most out of ‘talking about it’ we need to get good at it - learn details, become knowledgeable, be informative, and then there’s a chance we can jolt others out of their long held attitudes (their long-held sleep).
For vegans there’s a danger. We argue what is to us an incontrovertible case. Vegan principle. But the trouble is, for people who have stumbled upon veganism and consequently ‘Gone Vegan’, they, that is we, that is me, think were right. But that doesn’t and shouldn’t mean we are right in everything we believe in. We’re surely all of us are learning machines and discovering agents?
If, for dysfunctional reasons, we are still caught up in ego-ey things, it’s likely we’ll want to be seen as special. And special people are right. Right all the time. Vegan’s have sometimes a small problem here, me included. We think we are right. We get careless with our arguments by leaning too heavily on the moral imperative. We think we can shock people into conversations and thence to conversion, with stories about the horror conditions on animal farms and slaughterhouses. And sometimes it tips the scales and gets people thinking. But often the resistance is so fierce when people are not ready for a moral battering, that we need to be able to let it rest and not try to go in even harder or even go on-and-on about it. Then we can live to fight another day.
By not becoming too rabid about our subject we’re more likely to be seen as a selfless advocate, someone who is not in it to win personal kudos but simply to represent the need to protect animals.
However careful we are at presenting as “animal guardians”, it won’t always sit well with everyone, and that can be a tough lesson to learn for vegans. If others don’t understand us we must nevertheless try to both understand them and win their respect for what we are trying to do. We shouldn’t in any discernible way show we expect their immediate agreement with us - to save animals before saving ourselves. They may not agree with us and have good reasons for their own views - a view, already honed and worked-on by us throughout our lives. In our own minds we may have thought, and come to conclusions about certain major issues – like ‘the animals’. My view will not, for instance, be easily altered by certain belief systems that you’ve got. And so it is with meat eaters, and it will be an interesting unfolding in the art of communication, to see the progress of future dialogue - vegan to omnivore.
Looking ahead, it’s VITAL we try to always keep on side with them, even when sorely provoked. “Them” are us, as we all were (excluding child vegans). We, as ‘ex-cons’, need to explain (if we’re allowed) how egalitarian we feel and therefore how reluctant we, as vegans, are to leave them behind.