Stepping Out

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Alice goes looking and finds a bottle inviting her to drink. She follows the instruction, “Drink Me”, and takes a risk. She steps into the unknown. She enters another world, and her first instinct is to make friends. She meets all sorts of interesting characters but they don’t acknowledge her. She shows acceptance but they don’t reciprocate because they inhabit another world. In that world, unlike ours, they accept things as they are, undemonstrably. Theirs is not a world of change (whereas ours is). In Alice’s wonderland her characters don’t see the point of befriending her or listening to her advice. Very rude, thinks Alice. They see no purpose in following her example, and I suppose that’s a metaphor for human obstinacy.
In our world, on our ‘learning planet’, we’re given as many opportunities as we could wish for, so that change can flourish. But we hate stepping out of the familiar and into what we’re NOT used to. The “Drink Me” instruction on Alice’s bottle is not followed - kids might risk it but most of us adults wouldn’t, we’d be too set in our ways and too suspicious of entering any radically new world, even to find a new slant on our problems. I guess we’re reluctant because the new and radical seems unrealistic or even ridiculous.
But for people like vegans, we’re taking on something beyond our comfort zone. As we step away from the familiar dimension, it’s like buying a new house off the plan – it needs a leap of faith from idea to commitment. For vegans it’s a matter of boycotting commodities, and applying the idea to see what it has to offer, and then to hope for something amazing. And once found not only is it amazing but of course it’s relevant to one’s whole life, not just one part of it.
For those new to it all, looking towards vegan principle as a guide, we examine all the good arguments. Then we make an assessment. If we step onto that bridge that carries us over to a beyond-the-present world it isn’t an escape route, but it will settle us safely away from the predominantly carnivorous society. This is no holiday bridge, it’s a way across to a positional place fro which to work. By being outside, looking in, we can point to ways that our society is fundamentally flawed and repairable.
At the heart of repair is the simple principle of non-violence. To vegans harmlessness seems highly significant. But to non-vegans, who haven’t looked that far, it doesn’t represent a universal principle and so it isn’t significant enough to apply it to one’s life.
And there, between the vegan and the non-vegan, the great difference lies.
No one wants to waste time on trivial matters and veganism, to non-vegans, may seem utterly trivial in the greater scheme of things. So, vegans need explain why it isn’t. If we get a chance we have to communicate why vegan principle is significant – that it’s linked to the universality of non-violence.
Although we know what we’ve found has transformed our own lives, for others nothing like that has happened, nothing significant in their life has been transformed. For them, it’s likely, there remains a belief that no one simple principle is capable of making transformatory changes.
Vegan arguments, logics and statistics can help to turn that view around, but we need to translate everything into a language that can be understood by anyone, kids, grandparents, aunts or uncles. We have to continually return to the basics, to emphasise the importance of not being hard in our attitudes. And never cold, especially in this matter of animal treatment. Our feelings of warmth towards exploited animals is about not being cruel to weaker beings. That’s simply an anti-bullying, anti-exploitative stand. It’s at the core of what vegans need to be talking about.