Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Between a rock and a hard place

The horror stories about animals on farms and at the abattoir are a cause of some grief for vegans but not only vegans. They horrify and confront sensitive non-vegans too, but for them it’s mixed with a fear of finding out too much. Whatever they do hear always implicates them personally, and more so when they realise the scale of the atrocity. If their heart isn’t touched by what is shown or described, then we can assume we’re dealing with a cold hearted person, or possibly a person trying to bury their head in the sand.
We may feel depressed about the animal holocaust, but it’s a question of whether or not we are prepared to act to prevent it (or rather act to discontinue our support of it). How horrific do the stories have to be, to make us boldly step away from it? Or does the engender such fear in us that we dare not under any circumstances act in defiance of members of our own family and network of friends? People-pressure and social acceptability are so powerful in our society that solo flight is almost out of the question. We can’t act independently even though we know we should. Animals, from which our foods come, are badly used and we know it. But even though we feel guilt, even though we know animal foods are nutritionally dangerous, we may yet not be able to act. It’s a choice of doing nothing or going all the way - there are no in betweens. And once gone ‘all the way’, in reality, there’s no going back. It’s as if we step out of one world into another, one level of maturity into another.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Eating out and speaking out

I go into peoples’ places and I’m offered the usual snacks and drinks. I’m met with utter incomprehension when I decline. If pressed, as soon as I tell them my reason, I’m considered a little weird. Nice people race around and find something I can eat. But nice or otherwise most people are defenders of the faith. They secretly resent my finicky eating habits. For that’s what they seem to them. I sometimes pick up a mild sense of irritation. I may be slightly respected for my “philosophy of compassion” but not often does anyone ask me to explain anything.
If they did they’d expect uncomfortable answer. They’d feel guilty however hard I try to soften the blow. They’d expect me to say something about today’s food - that it contains too much fat or sugar, or something about food being too high in protein. They’d expect me to mention it being harmful to health … yes, yes, they’d agree, to a point. But it’s a tight balance for anyone venturing into this mine field. On the subject of animal rights or veganism non-vegans find themselves standing on a razor’s edge. They want to agree but just enough to put us off the scent – they dread us moving onto information about the animals themselves, hens in cages, etc. So as a vegan I’m usually not asked to give reasons for my food choices. They may give me a smile but they see me as a social pariah. Vegans have to not care about any of this. How can they think otherwise? In most cases people know so very little about this subject.
What is it, apart from the animal thing, that makes it all so awful? The foods people eat every day? It’s hard to go past the word ‘poison’ – animal foods make us fat, they encourage heart disease, diabetes and cancer, and perhaps worst of all they cause guilt. Any sensible person, not too badly addicted to any one animal product, wouldn’t go anywhere near meat counters and dairy sections of the supermarket. Always passed. Avoided. But that’s where it often ends, privately, a plant-food buyer, an avoided person for fear of their words.
But sometimes we do get to talk about some of this. We come to a point where we’re given permission to speak, and it’s then we need to be ready. Up our sleeve we should all have a few interesting points, facts, something to catch the attention, something that will stick in the memory. Given the chance we might say something, not too much though. We hopefully say something that sounds reasonable, as if we aren’t making sweeping statements. If we try to be too outrageous we draw too much fire and making it easy for them to change the subject or get us bogged down in fine details … all the familiar tactics used to control the discussion in one direction to avoid dealing with more uncomfortable things.
As animal activists we won’t be ale to answer all the questions about diet and nutrition and health but we should try. Our best approach is to appeal to the heart, to assure people of the general safety and health of a plant-based diet and then move on to how the animals are treated. We might at some stage want to mention that they are treated like machines.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Popular poisons

Animal foods are popular even though they are harmful to health, because people like the taste of them and because they are easy to find. People love them. There’s a great variety of them so we’re spoilt for choice. They appeal because you can eat straight from the fridge or they don’t need much preparation. A lamb chop, an egg, a block of cheese. That’s a big selling point.
As supply follows demand so demand responds to abundant supply. To clinch matters, certain ingredients, like milk products, are heavily subsidised so, for instance, soy milks cannot compete pricewise. And products like milk are so plentiful and inexpensive that the food industry uses them liberally, as an ingredient to cream-ify, enrich and bulk out their products. It makes foods taste rich and substantial.
What’s so attractive about animal foods is that they provide an instant satisfying sensation - in savoury foods it’s the blood or saltiness that attracts and in non-savoury foods there’s usually sugar and flavourings added to make them taste delicious. Animal foods are made to be seductive. This is food we crave.
Our love affair with animal foods has never really diminished, despite the recent drive in our society towards vegetarianism, and that’s mainly because even with the absence of meat there are still the cheeses, creams and egg additives keeping us hooked. Any number of cheeses, for instance, have been developed over the years to titillate the palate. The food manufacturers have used every device imaginable to make us want them, and the more sold the easier it is to create the endless variety of foods to maintain people’s interest. Popular animal food products are eaten from early childhood, advertised constantly on television and are encouraged by family pressure, reinforcing our eating habits. These foods have become as natural as fresh air - we can’t contemplate life without them. They are present at just about every meal.
Drip by drip these foods imprint themselves on our minds, lock into our addictive centres and then slowly poison our bodies.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Labelling

We are all consumers and we all need help to make the right decisions. One big help is in clear and full labelling of products. When something is suitable for vegans then a “this product is suitable for vegans” label makes shopping that much easier. It’s common in other countries but not in Australia. When we’re after a food product with several ingredients, vegans want to be sure it’s free of those dreaded items.
I go into a food store with my reading glasses in hand, ready to examine the microscopic print in the ingredients list, to catch any animal products listed. But I have to know that albumen is from eggs, that whey is from milk and gelatine is from hoofs, and many more sneaky terms they use to hide items that come from the abattoir. If the product contains nothing objectionable, the least they could do is make what’s in it clear, and better still, put a tick next to the word ‘vegan’ on the front of the packaging.
We need good labelling so that we can make informed choices. If we are eating foods from abattoirs or the co-products or by-products of animal farming or the foods whose ingredients contain these products, it should be clearly stated. We have the right to know what we are putting into our bodies.
Vegans, and that includes me who is too lazy to follow my own advice, should write to product manufacturers who make vegan-suitable products. Tell them we appreciate their ingredients and ask them to label their products vegan friendly, or some such. Not only am I lazy but I’m forgetful too. When I’m off food shopping I forget to take my glasses, so of course I can’t read the damned ingredients list anyway. I have to refrain from buying something because I’m not sure what’s in it.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

No room for pessimism

Even though we are up against the very worst attitudes, unbelievable levels of indifference, almost total lack of responsibility towards the weak, acceptance of a value system geared up to damage future prospects, all this shouldn’t make us pessimistic. It’s the ultimate challenge, to face each other and, despite such different viewpoints, resist the temptation to go to war against each other. It’s as if we are the victims of a divide-and-rule system, designed to keep us at each other’s throats; to keep us bickering; to keep us weak. Our non-acceptance of each other’s views easily turns into a non-acceptance of each other, as whole persons. Dislike and disapproval too easily becomes “dismiss and destroy”. We bully in order to win. But there is nothing to win. All we do is spoil the one chance we have of coming together. Pessimism keeps us weak and at war with one another. Example: vegans fighting meat eaters.
Take another example of a fight in the home, where the dominant adult goes ‘over the top’ with the rebellious child - the adult shows disapproval of a child (for behaving badly), ignoring the fact that this young person is trapped by their own inexperience of life. By showing how the child is lesser, because of their behaviour, separation starts. Then follows an attempt to exert pressure on them, to bring about better behaviour. This strays into non-acceptance of the whole person. It then becomes really destructive. Both parties recognise something is badly failing, that a faith is being broken, that things aren’t progressing positively. And the further we go with it the less chance there is to restore balance. Even violence creeps in. At this point there’s a feeling of being overwhelmed, like something is irrevocably failing, and pessimism is all we can hold onto. We abort on each other - the parent gives up on their kids, and vice versa.
If we can be optimists, through thick and thin, we can break the vicious circle. Break the ‘victim’ mould. We can insist on forging a positive reality. When we see violence, we can try to see past it. And then we can see it giving way to non-violence. It’s as if the quarrelling is purposely trying to set ‘itself’ up for a break through, where the optimist is actively avoiding the trap of separation, and never letting go of the possible positive outcome. Recognising there’s a valuable lesson to be learned the optimist finally succeeds in breaking through
Yet another example: If I predict that the value of my house will drop because Abdullah has moved in next door, I am a pessimist; the optimist would see things differently – their value system would be based on something more wholesome. So, instead of being resentful I make friends with Abdullah. And this good neighbour would become my greatest asset. The pessimist sees the gloom. To the optimist, Abdullah might be the one person who can lift the gloom. What better aim could there be than to focus on changing things for the better, moving towards the integration of different cultures, with the aim of building the global village. If we bring this about it will simply be because we are capable of it.
What could be better than living together like they do in the garden, where cats and cabbages and kids all rub along nicely together. In a future world there won’t have to be any need to be hurtful or getting personal in our arguments and certainly no reason to eat pigs or milk cows or kill chickens. If we are up to date with what’s happening in our world, we’d already know that being vegan and having a plant-based food and clothing regime is possible. Once we can reach this point, then it’s just a stroll along the garden path to where it all gets easier and easier. Where it becomes natural and fashionable, and then to think nothing of it.

How NOT to meet our opposites

Friday 25th September

How do we relate to non-idealists, to the dry-as-dust pragmatists who only see through dollar eyes? The antediluvians we live with are often oblivious to a certain quality of life which seems so obvious to so many of us. It makes living amongst them uncomfortable and frustrating. When we find resistance to our ideas, even hostility, and they to ours, it’s usually because we are each proposing two opposite life-styles. There’s a great gulf between us and if we work hard enough we may come closer. If we don’t work at it together we’ll inevitably move further apart - in our attempt to put space between us, we make value judgements of each other and end up in a state of mutual dislike. The stress of being on unfriendly terms with each other sucks the very life out of us and makes it that much more difficult to pursue any worth while discussion. It’s toxic in terms of human relating.
So, if we do separate from others, for whatever reason, and then compound that by making personal value judgements, it inevitably comes back to bite us later. Fairly or unfairly, we become the subject of criticism and our feelings get bruised and egos hurt. Of course this mightn’t matter if we could accept that: “what others think about us is none of our business”, but we don’t. We can’t. We are involuntarily part of a collective belief system that makes us all react badly to being thought badly of. And that bruised reaction marks the start of things going wrong - we retaliate to criticism with ever more value judgements; those we judge retaliate back; any communication we may have once enjoyed goes sour; we make sweeping generalisations in order to create even more separation. We desperately want a sense of being right. And we end up about a million miles from having an intelligent exchange of views. This is how NOT to meet!

That type of energy

Thursday 24th September

Our society admires those who get ahead, but should that include those who get ahead by squeezing whatever they can get from the land, the animals or any other bonanza?
The successful people may be kind and loving to their family but when it comes to their money, or rather to their source of income, they can be ruthless. The advantage-takers are so keen on success that they will even enslave innocent animals to make money. And by contradicting humane principles they thumb their noses at everything the idealist stands for.
The idealist would rather forgo the chance to make money than get mixed up with anyone in the business of advantage-taking, especially on the scale that animal farmers operate. Consumers connive with the pastoralist or the factory farmer, making them immune to criminal prosecution and applauded for giving the consumers what they want. This alliance is strong enough to keep the idealist left out in the cold.
Idealists get little encouragement. They’re often called ‘bleeding hearts’ or accused of trying to subvert society by ‘the alliance’, but they enjoy one significant advantage. They have an ambition to serve the greater good, and this principle pays back in terms of energy, a special kind of energy. By acting as guardians to children, animals, forests, the marginalised, etc., life is given some meaning, and when that’s combined with the principle of harmlessness a special type of energy is created.
Many people aren’t aware of idealism or the energy it produces. Perhaps they don’t miss what they’ve never had, and so they miss the point of why the idealist works so hard for what seems like so little reward. But idealism and the belief in better things to come produces a self-perpetuating energy that works on the basis that what you put it you get out. And the more you get the more you want to put in. It’s quite unlike the superficial energy that comes from money-making or advantage-taking.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Our equals, the animals

The withdrawal of care or in fact the complete absence of any relationship at all with captive animals is perpetuated right through to the killing chambers, where the animal’s life is terminated. That emotional separation carries through to the packers and sellers and finally to the eaters of the animal.
How do we come to be this way, with these animals? How can we change? How can we come to love animals, not just the cute and cuddly ones but all animals? – well, obviously not by eating them. That’s the first step in changing the nature of our relationship with them, and of course that presupposes vegan principle. But from there we need to go a step further, to prevent the habit of hubris regaining a footing – we need to regard animals as our equals. Which doesn’t mean of course giving animals the vote or a license to drive a car but to allow them to live alongside us, respecting them for their sentience.
Egalitarianism is really a gigantic levelling process, where dog, human and tree exist on one level, where (other than areas specific to species or gender) there is effectively no separation. If we can be one way with our beloved dog, then surely we can be that way with any living thing, even the most loveless. If we can love those for whom we have a natural affection, then shouldn’t we be able to extend that love to the unlovable?

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

How exploiting works

It’s a nasty trait, taking what isn’t ours. But we do love a bargain, and domestic animals seem like a bargain, in terms of producing food for us to eat. They’re easy to handle and easy to keep captive. The animal exploiter can make money out of them and the consumer can enjoy them as a product. Unlike the animals we have at home, the farmer feels nothing for these animals as individuals and the consumer doesn’t either.
We’re trained from an early age to see these animals as ugly, or at least not cuddly or cute. This means we won’t feel affection for them. We see them as ‘beasts’. This word sounds sharp and it is used to describe people who act disgustingly, therefore denigrating animals and making them seem disgusting. Indeed these beasts are, through no fault of their own, disgusting, since they usually live in filthy conditions.
If ordinary people have no feelings for them and farmers don’t either, what chance to they have? They’re kept in slum conditions and when the time comes these animals are transferred like so many shares in a company, to the next owner. They may have been living on one farm all their lives, almost like a child in the family, but at the appointed time they are let go without a second thought. The animal is transferred to another person and thence to another place specifically designed to destroy them … money is exchanged, the deal is done, and if there had ever been any care shown towards them it is now forgotten about.
To the farmer it makes more sense if care had never been shown in the first place, then the theory is: what was never known can’t be missed. On this reckoning animals are subjected to the most inexpensive board and lodging. No emotional attachments are made and the farmer’s children are encouraged not to pet them. They are treated as machines (laying eggs, giving milk, getting fat enough ‘for market’) and when no longer economically useful they’re executed.

Monday, September 21, 2009

The wisdom of animals

If we were all to go mad tomorrow it would probably be because we tried to find out who was to blame for the mess we’re in at the moment. Because we’d have forgotten to share the blame around and in particular forgotten to blame ourselves. But then it’s pointless to judge and blame anyway – what’s done is done. It’s best surely, to move on. Towards repair. It’s that reluctance most of us have to glance in the mirror, to look for a reality that might be different to the one we know, and not to find something that scares us. How much better to see a reflection that confirms the way we are going, that shows how to continue to repair. Not just the crows feet on our face but the newer understandings we’ll need for repair. For a start, an understanding that we aren’t as strong as we appear to be. That, after all, we aren’t ‘the dominant ones’, and that there’s an urgency to earn a new reputation by losing that very sense of dominance.
Our history has been so black because we’ve never had any real interest or concern for other beings. In consequence, we’ve become outcastes in our own world, our superiority leading us to believe we can control all the other animals and life forms. But to those of us who don’t see them as inferior, we’ve come to respect the animal world and see that in many ways it is a wiser world than our own. It would be good to explore the reasons for this … but there’s not enough time. For the present it’s all about repair. We’ve strayed so far from the natural order that we need to get back ‘home’ as soon as possible, to where we can exist together, peaceably. And we can learn to do this from the animals themselves. If we have a lot to make up for then they have a lot to teach us. But nothing is possible on that front unless we are at least following vegan principles.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Avoiding meltdown

At present, in the natural world, if animals were capable of judging us morally, we’d be very much ‘on the nose’. We don’t have a good reputation, so we need to earn our way back to re-acceptance. Humans have become so used to regarding our own species as supreme that it’s almost impossible for us to imagine things switching around. Or rather imagining how the animals are thinking of us. They seeing us as dumb and as barbarians or worse. Imagining that it is we who are left out in the cold.
If, godforbid, there were a major global collapse with destabilisation of social structures and food shortages, how would things turn out I wonder? As hunger hit we’d quickly understand to what extent we’ve lost touch with Nature. In such a crisis we might find animals much better able to survive than us. We humans, especially those in the affluent West, have never learnt to grow food or deal with adversity. Most of us have only ever lived on easy street. We’ve been softened by our dependency on animals for so long that we can’t imagine any sort of a satisfactory life without them (their flesh and by-products).
To start to repair before the eleventh hour and help avert a collapse, we need to act. At home in our food. On the world stage with a loud and interesting voice. There are a million different ways to start the repair if we attend to animal food first. Nothing substantial can be achieved until this key stone is in place. And once this is positioned everything else can be built upon it.
Repair. We can’t pretend not to have noticed the need for it. It’s a simulktaneous repair on ourselves (our habits) and the infrastructure of our world. If there were a world scale collapse where would we be without a plan B to fall back on? Woven into the matrix of that plan is our sanity and creativity, both of which we need to access. to pull us out of any collapse.
Precisely what we wouldn’t need is seven billion deranged humans, gripped with fear, adding to the collapse - at such a critical point, we might well see the need for repair but be suffering so much fear that we can’t do anything much about it.
It’s likely that, once we break free of addictive habits and develop some self-discipline, repair is just a matter of pulling our hand out of the fire. Or to use a water based analogy: the great ship of society is sailing towards rocks – it hits and begins leaking. It needs running repairs to avoid sinking. Steering away from the rocks is difficult due to the inertia of the ship – it’s taking on too much water. The atmosphere on board is panic. Any essential running repairs are made harder because of the panic. Everyone seems transfixed by the rocks ahead.
Repairs are slow and the ship is getting heavier and disaster seems inevitable. Rescue is unlikely. Should we jump? (give up?). With animal cruelty so deeply ingrained in human nature and with our deteriorating health, humans are feeling overwhelmed by the scale of it all. The need for repair is so overwhelming and so you could say that the ship of our society is foundering.
Vegans are suggesting a way to avert catastrophe, by offering an idea for steering away from the rocks and for repairing the gash in the side of our ship. To repair the cumulative damage we’ve done to ourselves and our world we need a simple-to-understand safety principle, that suggests how we go about self-repairing and how we go about mending environmental damage too. The very beginning of this repair involves boycotting animal farm produce, because it is this, more than anything else, that has caused and is perpetuating a near catastrophe, on so many levels.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

One day

When we see what we’ve done, then things may change for them and for us. When people help them by stopping eating them, that’s when it can happen. Then we’ll feel concern, for their comfort and well being. We’ll treat them with as much dignity as we do our own children and companion animals at home. Then we’ll have true animal liberation. To reach that point, to keep up the momentum we have now, to bring this to reality, we’ll need to keep both the dream and the cost of it at the forefront of our consciousness.
Just as environmental consciousness has come about, by way of mass concern for the planet, it follows that we will eventually show the same level of concern for animals and then presumably we’ll drop our animal-eating habits. It all flows naturally when it begins to feel normal to eat exclusively from plants and only wear clothing that hasn’t been made with bits of animals’ bodies. As time goes by we’ll forget why we kept and ate animals, and veganism will be so normal that we won’t have a word for it. By then we’ll acknowledge animals by being at their service, and atone for what we’ve done to them. We’ll rehabilitate them and provide refuge for them in safe sanctuaries. And we certainly won’t be breeding them!! The very idea of interfering with another species’ breeding cycles let alone keeping them in captivity will be scorned. The stories of how it was will be recorded and read about in history books in much the same way as the experiments of Dr. Mengele on humans in Nazi Germany are read about.
When humans realise their mistake and make amends, they’ll become guardians. Animals will regain their lives. Hopefully their individual and irreplaceable souls will find peace. And when we eventually come to rescue these animals, from farms and research labs, it’ll be a two stage process. It won’t be as simple as turning them loose, “to lead a ‘natural’ life”. They’ll have been so completely altered from their wild state that they wouldn’t be able to survive for long on their own. We can only retire them and intervene to stop their breeding … and hope to hell they can forgive us.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Farm animals

Farm animals, and this peaceful cow in particular, are all victims of abuse. This is matter of great concern, but only for those who’ve made it their business to look behind the scenes. Those of us who see what they are doing to animals know we have to try to stop it. Our concern is for them – but ‘concern’ is usually reserved for our own children and other humans, and sometimes for the environment, but it isn’t usually extended to these animals, because that would show up all the terrible things we’ve done to them. So we collectively put our heads in the sand. We’re unwilling to fess up, it’s just too messy to think about.
The bottom line is that all animals face execution. Their destiny is so preordained by ‘this other species’ and their fate so inevitable, that all we can hope is their innocence protects them; that they don’t see what’s coming when their last day comes.
Humans who eat animals think they can get away with all this, but it’s likely that the adrenalin rush produced by the animal’s terror at the point of slaughter, saturates the body tissue and makes their flesh toxic. Those who eat it are poisoned by it. It’s not unlikely that some of the terrible diseases afflicting humans (and their companion animals) are linked to these toxins. Truth is: if we kill them, they kill us.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Farms

We’ve been trained to see animal farms as benign places. And, heaven-forbid, animal research labs too. We value the work farmers and scientists do, even the ones who ‘work with animals’. Consumers along with factory farmers and vivisectors are becoming increasingly desensitised. For instance, consumers let themselves be persuaded that an animal lab is a benign place, and consequently pharmaceuticals, developed using the animal model, are also benign. Consumers say they know nothing about what goes on in labs. They’d rather not know because it’s difficult enough to object to food from farmed animals let alone drugs tested on lab animals, and so this whole subject is ignored as somehow irrelevant. We make the whole thing seem benign. But benign it is not! Well, not to animals it isn’t. For surely every captive creature experiences not only confinement but the denial of any affection. One can only hope they don’t foresee the terrible deaths awaiting them.
If we humans can’t see the wrongness in this, there’s probably a reason - it’s likely that we bypass the guilt about it and make laws to okay it because we need to feel safe from being punished for what we do to them. We all do it by spending money of animal industry products, but there’s safety in numbers. Animals can never pose any direct threat to us, and if they can’t show any retaliation there’s no reason why we can’t go for broke. And we do “go for broke” since we cling to the absurd belief that animals were ‘put here’ for us to use as we please. The represent profit to the farmer or the vivisector and they benefit humans in general (or so we believe), indeed we do it because there’s something in it for us. We turn off the protective gene and turn on the gene of indifference, justifying it by believing animals don’t have feelings (in the sense that we humans do).
And hey presto, we’ve turned them into a machine. As machines we needn’t feel anything for them … as distinct from the very opposite feelings we have for companion animals. If it were a cat or dog being treated badly we’d have the TV cameras down there, recording everything….but not with these creatures.
What is the difference between a mistreated dog and a mistreated cow? Why is it that we aren’t interested in the cow’s emotional wellbeing and why do we not give a stuff about a hen’s health unless it’s going to affect her ‘egg production’? And more to the point, why aren’t we concerned for ourselves and our fall from grace, over this? Over such a pathetic, spoilt-brat attitude as - “I must have milk on my corn flakes or my day just won’t start out right”?

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Cow prisons

Why should we care about cows living on prison farms? This question is at the nub of things. Surely cows are the living example of how we’ve made a machine out of Mother Nature. We’ve harnessed Nature to supply our own vast needs, and insured our future survival by having many animals ‘on tap’. This is victory achieved! We can guarantee our major food supply. We’ve done it by using our brains.
Again, illustrated best by the cow, with our useful knowledge of the biology of this animal we have taken control of her, body and soul. Keeping a cow as a milk-producing machine involves forcibly impregnating her, letting her carry a calf to term, letting that biological process take its course, to stimulate her mammary glands to produce maximum milk. We also very cleverly manipulate her genes.
By disposing of the newly birthed calf, in order to draw off its mother’s milk for us, we arrive at a perfect example of slavery. Certainly in Nature ants enslave aphids and terrible predatory things happen between creatures, but everything, predator or predated, is always allowed its sense of being part of the natural world. But not cows nor any other farmed animal. They are enslaved, shut up in cages or enclosed by concrete, and in constant contact with cold hard steel. They’re attended by cold hearted humans who, at their convenience, have their animals executed.
Something in our instinct should tell us this is profoundly wrong. But most people’s instincts, in this regard, have been cauterised. We see no wrong in it.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Milk

So, many people today are realising that cow’s milk is not nutritionally essential, and even that it is unhealthy. Because there are thousands of different products made with it, almost all people still continue to buy milk or foods that contain it.
There’s a tendency for we humans to insist on getting what we want … perhaps it’s a Dominant Species thing - we want it and prefer to get it without struggle. Milk is legal and it’s cheap, it’s subsidised and plentiful. It is therefore the favourite ingredient by many food manufacturers. It is a truly struggle-free product. Fresh supplies are available everywhere. We often need go no further than a few meters down the road, to the nearest corner shop, to get our milk … at which shop they sell many other products, also made with milk (as a chief ingredient). As consumers we almost fall over ourselves to get milk, because we can only contemplate our tea and coffee with it (and therefore unable to imagine life without it!). Everyone has a carton in their fridge (except vegans and lactose intolerants). There is no more prevalent consumer item on the market, and therefore milk is a guaranteed money spinner for the industry. They’ve turned it into something as natural as fresh air. They say it’s essential to human life. So, buying milk is an entrenched consumer habit.
We forget that whenever we buy it, milk, we help to finance cow prisons.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Economics of farms

Perhaps humans have no sadistic need to harm animals for the sake of it. It’s just that economics dictate how we keep them whilst alive and how we bring them to their deaths. We do what we have to do, to get what we want from them without spending too much money. Since the world is a very competitive place, on board and keep must be at low cost. The most successful competitors set the standards. For example, cage-eggs are kept cheap and so every egg farmer in the world must cage their hens or go out of business. It’s the same with all commodities. If milk is cheaper to ship in from Singapore then we’ll buy it from there … Australian dairy farmers eat your heart out!
To get milk (her milk) and sell it for a profit (our profit) a cow must be cheap to keep and high in yield to supply customer demand. All farm-animal produce is big business. All farm animals die for it.
The idea of being compassionate enough not to buy it would not be understood by most people. For two million years humans have used animal products. In almost every culture on the planet they use animal products. Why change that?
Leaving that question hanging in the air, how must it seem to people who’re totally unaware of ‘vegan principle’ or the idea of ‘animal liberation’? It must be bewildering, the idea of voluntarily denying oneself of thousands of products in the shops. It might seem absurd. In our culture there’s huge emphasis on the enjoyment of food. More so, when animal cuisine is seen as an art form. To add weight to the meat-eater’s perception of vegans being self deniers is the question of masochism, which leads on to all sorts of denigration and much humour at our expense. In contrast is the promotion of the idea of enjoying animal foods, reinforced by the belief that it makes us strong and healthy.
If that belief is set firmly then it would be almost unimaginable to see the need to reverse it all. People mostly believe that factory farming is cruel but they don’t think animal products are anything but beneficial, not unhealthy. And likewise, omnivores can’t imagine animal products being satisfactorily replaced by plant-based products, anywhere in the near future. This means, pretty much, that denial would have to be the order of the day.
A vegan diet seems impractical (whereas of course vegans know it isn’t), so they continue to eat their familiar foods … and, in consequence, deprive animals of their lives.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Animals wild and enslaved

If an animal is wild (and not regarded as a pest to humans) we study them, marvel at them and protect them . . . although sometimes we hunt them too. But if an animal is docile and edible or can make useful products for us, then we put them into the domesticated animal category. They are put to service. Their freedom to escape is out of the question. Usually their body movement is restricted. We take these animals very seriously indeed because they aren’t meant for entertainment or for studying but are essential elements in the human food chain. It follows: if an animal is not for cuddling or admiring ‘it’ must be for enslavement.

[There’s a word problem occurring here: the pronoun ‘it’ never referring to animals because they are not its. I use the plural ‘them’ for ‘an animal is wild…’ (above), then use ‘it’ to refer to animal (below). I used ‘it’ in an earlier blog to describe a foetus of a calf. We have gender specific pronouns for humans because their gender is always obvious but with animals it’s not. Vegans are trying not to use the neutered ‘it’ for animals but what singular referral-pronoun could be used I’m not sure about]
Emotionally, if humans get too close to these particular animals, it puts them in a tricky position later, when they’re signing their death warrants. If we enslave them it’s guaranteed we’re going to make them unhappy, and then since they are going to be murdered (when big enough or exhausted enough) we mustn’t get too friendly with them beforehand.
Humans never truly consider the happiness factor of modern day farm animals. Their happiness would be about the last thing we are concerned with; we are after all holding them in prison and in slum conditions, as they serve out their pre-abattoir days. When the time is ripe and they do arrive at their last day, it must be the unhappiest day of their lives …
Or perhaps it’s their happiest, since it brings them blessÄ—d relief from the torment of keeping company with humans.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Companion animals and the fate of others

Our animals at home are captive and many suffer, but never as much as non-companion animals. Our ability to do what we do, to especially farm animals, comes from our treatment at home of our ‘patting’ animals, the ones we like to touch.
Our attitude to animals in general is a paradox. It’s curious how we humans can be close to our cats and dogs, even sometimes closer to them than our own species. We follow them around the park picking up their deposits and indeed do everything for them to make their lives happy, despite the fact they only offer companionship, (“only”!). We do all this for them even though they produce no useful products. We call them pets because we pet them, they are intimates with us. It’s this companion element (in certain tamed animals) that we put most value on. Mind you, when this element isn’t produced in sufficient (emotionally viable) quantities we have them shot … well, ‘shot’ full of lethal chemicals to ‘put them to sleep’. Excepting valid euthanasia.
When they can no longer fulfil their role as companions their relevance ends. When our companion animals are alive we give them the very best - love, food, shelter, expensive medical care, all of which may be withdrawn at the drop of a hat. When a decision to end a life is taken, by the human concerning the animal, that cut-off ‘ability’ contradicts how we say we love them. And if that’s a worry then how is it for those ‘non-companions’ animals? Those who are only valued as property, and edible property at that. These animals have no life experience at all, unless you count experiencing the daily torture of being slaves of humans.

Sux

Friday 11th September

Humans will manipulate anything to gain personal advantage. We exploit resources to strengthen and protect ourselves, and we do it with most enthusiasm when there’s no danger in it (like using animals in captivity). We call our advantage-taking pragmatism. It lets us dream up systems and put them into practice, factory farming being the most extreme example. We hold animals captive and subject them to slavery, so that our food and clothing supplies are available on tap. Whole livelihoods are provided, courtesy of animals. And we do it to them because we can, because there are no negative repercussions. (Or so we think!)
Take the cow for instance. She is the victim of theft and assault on a daily basis. Her fate is in the hands of humans who want her milk and who use force to get it, 20-40 litres being sucked out of her each day. The new born calf is pushed aside so we get the milk … we steal it for ourselves, shoot the calf … and this is the way things have always been done. Now we hardly notice it.
The farmer gets rid of the calf (usually shot on day one) or if ‘its’ really unlucky it’s kept alive, to be tortured by force feeding (called ‘fattening’) or if female sent to ‘calf prison’ till ready for ‘milking’. The calf serves its main purpose in embryo. The foetus stimulating its mother’s mammary glands. Afterwhich it’s no longer useful to the farmer and worth more dead.
It’s a sad thought that we abuse such a peaceful creature. I guess, anthropomorphically, both cow and calf are unhappy about all this, but the whole ugly industry keeps rolling on. And will do so while it’s still legal. This is why us beautiful vegans have got to campaign the bejesus out of it.
The milk is drunk: the profits made: the cow enslaved, and does this make us unhappy or ashamed? Not exactly, because most people have never even thought about it, or if they have they’ve chosen to ignore it. Maybe this is today’s Main World Problem – we’ve been nicely brainwashed, to the point where we no longer discriminate for ourselves. We ingest thousands of product containing milk and yet never once think about the rights and wrongs of mechanically sucking milk out of animals. It hasn’t entered our heads.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

The dangerous species

We humans may think we’re free but perhaps we’re trapped by our fear of loneliness and loss of freedom. To prevent this loss we try to safeguard it, climbing the ladder of society in the hope of gaining enough influence to feel safer. Or we build up stocks of money, to feel safer. To that end we exploit all available resources, to feel safer. The most readily available and most exploited resource is the animal. Animals are money.
We show great care for friends but we care for making money even more. If we truly respected money we wouldn’t waste it, we wouldn’t accumulate it for safety reasons, or be cruel to get it or push others aside if they’re in our way.
Take animals as a resource. They represent money and the prospect of their being exploited comforts us economically. Whether or not it’s a valuable sentient animal, if it makes money we aren’t constrained. The more money we make from this resource the safer we feel.
In our quest for security we become pragmatic. We try to justify the unjustifiable and generally desensitise ourselves until compassion and imagination are too weak to make any difference. That’s how we exploit the bejesus out of animals. This makes humans the most dangerous species on the planet.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Instinct before understanding

To make up our minds about big issues we’re likely first to feel it out and then to try to understand details. That instinctive how-does-it-feel reaction sways us more powerfully than mere understanding of issues. One can communicate by feeling and translate with it. Something that’s not clear often becomes clearer when subjected to our own instinct. We may not be able to read others’ thoughts (thank goodness!) but we can all read each other’s feelings. Our capacity to feel and guess and imagine help us grasp things beyond our understanding. For instance, we may not need to understand the psyche of a cow to know how she feels when her calf is taken away? (Cows aren’t allowed much time with their calves before they are removed within days). It’s impossible to know how an animal thinks, to be sure. But with imagination and instinct we can guess. Anthropomorphically speaking we can rely on our instincts to tell us about things that we can’t provably ‘know’ … for instance, like knowing how this cow feels. We can safely say she feels badly, because she’s captive, powerless and forced to lose her offspring. Who’d be foolish enough to argue about that?
If we take away an animal’s freedom we take away her very soul; loss of freedom is inimical to all wild creatures as it is to humans. Once we allow animals their freedom and liberate the captive ones into sanctuaries, that’ll be the first time we’ll be able to restore relations with them. And after that, as long as we aren’t violating them or disregarding them or treating them as if they were inferior, we can truly living with them. Then we can enjoy being close to them.
It’s this wanting-to-be-close that we do best and what we like most about ourselves. The buzz from animals is not so very different to the buzz we get from kids. Animals and children always bring out the very best in humans. If we’re NOT interested in ‘closeness’, then animals might mean little and their fate even less. They may be seen as objects, certainly not seen as equals. They are, after all, there to be exploited.
With attitudes like these, animals all over the world continue to be in grave danger. That’s why to vegans this attitude, allowing separation to take place, is so concerning.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Doing what we’re good at

Humans dealing with ‘underlings’, pushing them down at one moment and being friendly the next, using this confusion tactic to emphasise that there’s no actual regard for the individual, just a wish to get the most from them. If they are deemed essential to our survival, as are food animals, we enslave them and kill them too. What we do to animals is undoubtedly the ultimate in violence.!
I like to think that, at heart, humans are non-violent. We’re naturally friendly. We’re not natural tormentors, we’re much better at alleviating pain and appreciating beauty. And we do that a lot of the time. Many humans like making life smoother for others, like being good neighbours. We act usefully to help the vulnerable, not just out of kindness but because we are fascinated by the paradox, the contradictions and the empathy and challenge of it. Humans can be very caring for ‘the other’, whether it’s an ecosystem, a needy person or a companion animal. We get involved in ‘foreign causes’ and we do it, to some extent, out of kindness but mainly we do it because it’s interesting, it’s challenging and it’s about being on the repair end of a problem, somewhere. That’s the allure, the chance to observe something not immediately understandable. Number-one hobby for humans is exploring how close we can get, to experience ‘other fascinating consciousnesses’. Closeness is satisfying. That’s proved by the affection we feel for our companion animals at home. We like having company and we’re good at being companions ourselves. We’re great lookers-afters. It’s one of our greatest skills.
That’s what humans do and do well. But we don’t seem to appreciate that with talent comes both privilege and responsibility. And the balancing of these great forces is what the adult experience boils down to. And that should be enough for us. The source and subject of our complete satisfaction. But it isn’t.
And because it isn’t we engage in diversions, the worst of which is killing. When we lend our financial support to the animal industries in any form whatsoever we betray animals. We know we do it and yet we’re torn by the fact that the animals are our most reliable resource. They are vulnerable and available. It’s guaranteed that from animals we can satisfy many of our primary needs, be it food, shoe leather or wool. The animal industries meet our demand. And their raw product is alive before they kill it, reducing the animals they use to mere ‘foodstuffs’ and commodities. The consumer is torn between the need to be contemptuous of animals to access the product needed and the chance to be rid of it all and to enjoy a guiltless and beautiful relationship with them.
For most of us animals aren’t the means by which we make our living. That we eat them as food is an anomaly because we have no reason to. We kill them as food but not out of hatred nor really for any very convincing reason. Most often the whole abattoir-butcher-meat-eating thing is an unthought-out activity. But if one were to think about it, one would probably opt for the benign relationship with animals, if only to feel happier.
As a person moves towards becoming vegetarian they get acquainted with their own sensitivity, to see a need and then respond to it. The reward is in being closer to other living entities and addressing their problems (and farm animals sure have a lot of problems). And thus by doing what we’re best at we enjoy all the pleasure of a heightened sensitivity.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Relating to others

We project altruism and we think about possibilities and opportunities, and sometimes we pour our altruism into great causes. Which brings us to Animal Rights. When we’re aware of our own altruism, (like parents can be with their kids) we go on to apply it beyond the home and beyond the personal, and do it for other people, other species and even promote ideas which might be of interest to others. Altruism is like an outer- field-experience for developing empathy. Animal Rights is just one of the great empathy causes. Another is planet care, another is social justice - many people divide up their stocks of altruism between them, whether they pertain to personal interest or world matters. It’s valuable empathy business we like to be engaged in. Who doesn’t want to be seen as empathetic, altruistic and enthusiastic?
For us, as humans, empathy is our forté. We can feel almost as much for another’s loss of life as for the loss of our own. Humans are often drawn to compassion. Like when we see death amongst starving children, or any sort of suffering in children. It’s just as heartbreaking to see exploited animals but more than heartbreaking is the deliberate ending of their young lives, by execution.
Any damage to a young one, be it human or animal, is hard to handle: it could be starving kids, it could be lambs at slaughter. It’s not simply an empathy for the dying but for the suffering that goes before it.
The ability we have (we ‘responsible’ adults) to inflict suffering, purposely and carelessly, whether it’s by denying kids food or in the caging and killing of animals, is opposite to empathy. It’s the ‘separation process’, moving away from ‘the other’.- preliminary to exploiting and killing. As we have to feel alienated to the enemy we’re about to kill so too with animals, before we submit them to an unnatural death.
In human dealings when we turn against each other, there’s separation. It can be as bad as war. If war is the manifestation of first-stage violence, then second stage requires alienation plus disrespect for ‘the other’, as an individual – these don’t need to be engaged or straight away killed, simply enslaved. In this stage of violence, humans take away an animal’s dignity (plus freedom, ability to socially relate, have sex, forage for food or live in harmony with Nature) but we have an execution in store for them, and whilst they’re still young. This requires a very malignant spirit in the human being. And yet a creepier trait is the compliance of almost everybody using animals. It’s mindboggling to think that any adult human can live with this much on their conscience. But of course they don’t bear the weight of it much at all, because they’ve learnt to manipulate their own conscience, or worse, allowed themselves to BE manipulated … either way, it’s worrying. Most of today’s men and women are still willingly following like sheep (“If you do it, so will I too”) with nary a hint of a question about what we do being immoral or even unconscionable .
To do what humans do to animals is bad enough, but it’s the consumer who has the last say and upon whom we animal activists ought to gang up on. It’s they who consume and yet allow others to do the dirty work for them. (Although in truth, there is no practical way the consumer could raise and slaughter the animals they want to eat, or milk them).
If you’re a meat eater and an animal product user you have to sleepwalk through this bit. No adult, especially here in the Western world, can possibly argue ignorance any more. In recent years there’s been enough information about cruelty to animals and factory farming to sink a battleship. So, it seems we just can’t be honest about our attitude to these animals. We can’t grow up. We can’t wake up. We don’t want to wake up - the bell rings, the body is shaken but the eyes remain closed. And, we believe if we can keep our eyes closed long enough we can fall back to sleep again, when ‘the awakeners’ have gone away.
Maintaining relationships, whether with spouses, lovers, offspring, parents, friends or anyone we know well, is the big lesson today. But we’re so busy on our human relationships we neglect the others, particularly when those living beings are useful to us. Animals especially. The sort of relationship we have with farm animals or laboratory animals couldn’t be worse - we exercise power over them unashamedly, we grant them no rights, allow them no freedom or fun. And only grant them the ‘privilege’ of staying alive until we want to kill them. That’s about the most cynical foundation for a relationship one could imagine.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

We don’t need to understand animals

When we come across people who are different, we either alienate them because we fear them or we make an effort to get close to them and make them feel at home. Maybe they remain a mystery for some time but their differences are usually more interesting than threatening. Maybe we don’t understand them, but do we need to? The more differences others have, the more they bring us ‘out of our shell’. The more they do the more we can learn from them - how they operate, how they see us and how they respond to us. The more we watch them the more we learn about ourselves.
That valuable form of learning isn’t only between humans. We feel close to creatures, find them fascinating, learn from them and try to understand them? But surely the question is, why should we want to understand them when all we really want is to be close to them?
Most humans are fascinated by any kind of connection with an animal. Surely what we like most is if they like us. But more importantly, it’s that protective feeling we have towards them, and us ready to act as a friend or guardian to them. If they need help, and many do, we’ll be first in line.
Vegans are vegan because we see so much need for help. But even for those who aren’t ‘animal people’, even if they eat them, for any of us guardianship comes quite naturally. It’s an integral part of human nature. It’s normal and instinctive to protect kids, for instance. It should be normal to protect animals in the same way. And many we do, but some we don’t. We actively conspire to attack some animals, those we eat and use. And yet in our hearts we all have a soft spot for creatures, mainly because they are less powerful than us. Hopefully we look out for them, especially when they’re in trouble.
Humans are good at this. We do it well: coming close and getting involved. Dogs, with thousands of years of being close to humans, are also good at it. In fact they’re renowned for it - being protective of us and being loyal and friendly. We know less about other animals but probably they’re all like this, especially amongst their own kind, being protective of their young and acting for their wellbeing, guarding the vulnerable, creating safety and encouraging growth. In other words, this guarding, caring, altruistic trait is characteristic of both animals and humans. In humans, altruism springs out of us instinctively, as it does animals. But there’s an element in humans that animals don’t have; we ‘do’ altruism. They don’t ‘do’ it, not intellectually or by design or to be correct, it’s autonomic with them.
Altruism in humans is (not always) a response plus a reflection on that response - “oh, wouldn’t it be great if I were altruistic, not just for my kids and family but out of charity, beyond home”. That’s how, I think animal rights advocates feel; they step beyond self interest to attend to the urgent interests of a repressed slave population. We certainly don’t need to understand animals to do that.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Different-from-me

It’s usually interesting to see the differences in other people and in other species. The diversity of life is fascinating. The differences in others, which put them at a disadvantage, whether it’s racial or species difference, can stimulate a sense of caring in us, perhaps not so much from kindness but from interest.
By experiencing at close quarters different people, different life forms, different ideas, it can help us grow. Foundational ideas, like non-separation and non-violence, suggest a new approach in how we treat each other. In tandem, these two ideas can smooth the way to an acceptance of animals, as being of equal importance to humans. On some levels we seem superior to them, on other levels they’re superior to us, but however we see them, we can learn a lot to our own benefit. We don’t need to hurt them (or eat them) to benefit from them! By realising some of the superior qualities they have we’re more likely to re-think how we treat them.
Animals understand their environment better than we do. They may have better survival skills or better relationships because they aren’t gratuitously violent with each other, don’t nurture revenge and aren’t judgemental. We could learn a lot by observing them. Accepting animals on equals terms is not too distant from respecting people of different cultural backgrounds, who show us some wonderful qualities we might emulate.
Our reactions to those who are ‘different-to-me’, whether different species or humans of different cultural backgrounds, might help us switch over from distaste to admiration. We can learn a lot from foreigners, whether they’re human or non-human.

Pay-back time

Friday 4th Septtember

If we refuse to accept the dietary changes suggested by vegans, there might be a lot of worry in store. What arguments do we use to refute what they say, what arguments can we put up against the by now well known health danger of meat eating? Heart disease, cancer and diabetes are each associated with eating animal proteins and fats, but that’s not the only worry … it’s not just about health, it goes deeper, to the core of our own self control in the face of a troubled conscience. If we support the abattoir we support taking advantage of weak animals to benefit ourselves. That’s a badge most humans wear when it comes to animal abuse. It’s along the same lines as the abuse of women or children, or spoiling our environment or fishing-out the oceans.
All exploitation comes at a price even though it might not be immediately obvious. And because we don’t see it straight away we continue to exploit and think nothing of it. But eventually the damage shows up on our own doorstep, if not in animal cruelty then in the ill effects of eating animals. We discover how deep the hole is we’ve fallen into, so deep that we don’t know what to do to make amends.
If we do care about the animals’ plight and the great advantages enjoyed at their expense, then we may not begrudge giving away some of those advantages. Sure, we’ll have to deal with some inconvenience, but be paid back by good health and a lighter conscience.
It’s a straight forward move, from being an abuser to becoming a repairer. Sooner or later we all have to move that way and as soon as we do, as soon as we start to respect the natural order, we can develop, evolve and expand our consciousness.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Boycotts and information

The job of convincing users of animal products to boycott them is quite a task. Why should they? “What’s in it for me?”. Perhaps it comes down to an act of faith. Perhaps it’s a matter of forecasting fashions, that one day the mass response of boycotters will divert mass dollars to non-animal products, allowing billions of animals to be released from jail. That’s the picture we can present anyway, take it or leave it.
People don’t really disagree with us about the benefit of this happening or that it will happen, but they’re fearful of a vegan diet, where it’s painful to think that so many of life’s little food pleasures would be wiped out in this one decision to go vegan. With so many people thumbing their noses at logical arguments about animal rights, meat associated diseases, eco arguments, etc. they may no longer be in control of important daily decisions they’re making. All the time a black hole of doublethink exists about animals, our ability to follow through any serious train of thought is reduced, making ethical decisions impossible.
For example: we skew the impact of something we see on TV. It’s a news story, footage of a direct action raid on a factory farm. The media shows the pictures of the conditions food-animals are kept in. Viewers are duly shocked and appalled by what they see. But they see it as a fiction, a story, having never stepped into one of these places or smelt the corruption there, first hand. (Indeed, for some decades it’s been impossible to gain entry to any factory farm, abattoir or research lab, for obvious ‘security’ reasons).
Our job is to touch people’s hearts and get people power to grow. But how? What can be done to prevent fear of life-without-animal-products? How can we allay health fears while convincing people they won’t lose taste sensations as vegetarians? How can we instil passionate enthusiasm for a boycott of animal products? Why would a person drop the “what’s-in-it-for-me?” Why be altruistic? There are too many questions for some. For others there may be many reasons why they do eventually settle into veganism, because of worsening health, worries concerning animal abuse, etc., and each individual will come to recognise their own trigger point. But it’s theirs to press, not ours.
Surely the animal rights movement is secure? It doesn’t need anything other than what is has now. Vegan activists are beavering away at the very beginning of a gigantic shift in human consciousness. We’re not after converts. We don’t want people to simply agree with us. Surely all we want is to stimulate discussion and enquiry. As communicators we shouldn’t want passive acceptance. It’s an individual’s own choice to find out what they need to know, and then to jump in when they’re ready. If that subtle process is interfered with by the urgency brigade change will be slowed and hostility to veganism increased.
We need to take up an optimistic image of forecaster, to help people imagine how-things-could-be. Let them know it doesn’t hurt, going vegan, whilst promising to be around while they take their first steps, their leap of faith. We can encourage them to know that each one who goes vegan makes it that much easier for the next one.
“Everyone’s going vegan!!” Vegans expect a snowballing effect to happen any time soon. But in reality, it may be earlier days than we think. But surely it’s just as true that envisioning creates the reality. And so we project how things might be – an extremely different, freer world, where all things are freer, including animals, including environment and including poor people. Could we handle such a world?
Back in this reality, of today, it’s food that jumps out at us. Before reaching the ideal we’ve got to be fit for it, which means we first need to know the great benefit of a change in eating habits.
The main reason a vegan diet is still regarded as a threat is because it touches on so many interrelating attitudes, and for many people that’s too overwhelming. Vegans need to convince their friends that these causes, ideas, groups, can all cross connect, between issues concerning compassion, ecology and social justice. It’s like being multilingual, it’s useful for talking to anybody, in ways they will understand. We should be communicating about all the issues so that nothing is left on the backburner. Then we’ll reap rich rewards for all concerned … not for the animal industries though!

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Direct communication

Non-violence, as a word, doesn’t sounds very promising. It feels somehow right but somehow weak too. We know what it’s not - a negative, “not violence” - but what is it? What’s the essence of effective and powerful non-violence, that wears one thing down and builds up something better?
As a counterweight to animal eating we are vegan. If we want to talk about that we don’t need to confront anyone or be judgemental, not because we don’t want to give offence but because too many people (vegan included) are looking for a fight. They find it attractive. It makes direct action seem to be the only effective way of making ourselves heard, but is it going to be a non-violent event? An ‘action’ isn’t just a rescue mission it often involves some media coverage, some drama, a theatrical event that will attract our attention, plus it usually promises all the excitement of a stoush. A direct action event usually makes headlines and through the story we get good publicity for the animal issue in question, along with pictures of ‘the confrontation’ and questions at work the next day, “Did you see us on telly last night?”.
After an event has been reported and shown on mass media it feels as though we’re making progress. The message is getting out there. But unfortunately long lasting change isn’t brought about by last night’s news, it’s more about this morning’s breakfast. It at the shop, in our own trolley, that it counts. Now, this afternoon’s shopping expedition doesn’t sound very dramatic or exciting. But that’s where changes takes place; until we can reach the shopper shopping we won’t stop them reaching for the packet of bacon or the carton of eggs. And we will never reach them while we set up a contest of wills, because we’re up against the consumer’s freedom of choice. Everything vegans do, all our rescuing and protesting activities, have to be measured against the consumption of bacon and eggs. All the time people are refusing to change their eating habits they won’t associate the word “ugly” with “the animal industry”, they’ll see the very opposite. These industries provision us. These shops that sell us shoes and groceries are hardly ugly to most people, since they spend so much of their time in them!
Vegans could mount picket lines outside every shop in the land but we’d need an army to do it. So instead we have to educate people. Whenever we have the chance we should be at the ready to engage people about ‘the animals’. We can talk as casually about this subject as befits the people we’re talking to, as casually as one might chat about a movie or a book we’ve just read. It’s just new information and new ideas. By keeping up our sleeves lots of embarrassing facts and logical arguments we may never need to use them. Instead we can listen and talk as if we were discussing last night’s football results. We needn’t use what we know, but it must be there as a back up. These facts we know, that they don’t, are both shocking and deeply uninteresting to those who ‘don’t want to know’. What we know may be left unsaid. We aren’t engaging in a stoush. We’re not preachers either unless to paint in a background of people full of compassion and peace. And let’s say we get people to agree that we aren’t speaking garbage, then, with our information passed across, our role can be over. Then it’s up to them whether or not to act. To ask advice, etc.
After dropping the egg and bacon habit, life should follow on more easily and certainly more logically. But of course none of this will happen if a person thinks he or she has been railroaded. It’s the free-willed human being we’re talking about here, pre-vegans, those who have decided not to take up principle-driven self discipline for whatever reason. We, as advocates, need to discover each of those reasons, so we can unravel them.
Whether railroaded or obstinate or plain couldn’t-care-less, most people given the chance are spenders, conspiring with animal abusers, jealously maintaining their right to choose what they eat. It’s as if they build walls of thoughtlessness to fight off the wicked vegans, because to them it’s an anathema, the idea of animals having rights, the idea of no more animal products on the market. These consumers aren’t necessarily hard hearted or implacably anti-vegan, it’s just that they’re in love with animal products and won’t relinquish them under any circumstances.
This is why vegans have their work cut out. We’re in the business of communicating with people, explaining to them why they should boycott animal products and why spend their money more humanely.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Not to be defensive

Well, it’s probably true to say that most vegans, including myself, would like to see the animal industries closed down immediately. It’s like having an Auschwitz in every town. Every main street in the country is awash with the corpses of executed animals. You’d think that anything anyone could do to clean up this mess would be work well done. However, the trickier side to all this is a that we are aware of the momentousness of our times. Decision time. We seem to have arrived at a turning point in human history, right here over animal rights no less. It isn’t just a global-scale physical collapse facing us but an ethical collapse of the same proportions. It’s haunting us to death. What humans are inflicting on animals is making us face our worst demons, namely the part we play personally, adding to the part we collectively play in causing pain and death. We’re aware of it, we’re afraid of it and yet we embrace it every day, when we’re shopping. In the shop we try to cauterise our feelings. We try to build mental walls to stop thinking about the issues, and hope like hell we don’t meet that vegan friend who never stops talking about animals.
For us, as vegans, when we’re talking to non-vegans, when we get ignored or ridiculed, it’s so unfair and … we’ve all been there … it’s such a stupid reaction. And yet it’s perfectly understandable. Constructively it’s grist to the mill for what we each will have to say soon. Vegans need to experience the rebuff, the tired joke at our expense, the blatant ignorance, etc. Vegans need to become ace communicators and learn to handle the reactive “never-trust-a-fucking-bean-eater” comments. Rather than entering into the argy-bargy, instead of taking the same old moral-high-ground approach, we could turn things around and regard these little injustices towards us as nothing. It’s all useful stuff for the communicator. The usual reactive responses we get aren’t really a threat to us, rather we should see them benignly, as a cries for help. Let’s face it, meat-eaters for many reasons, would like to be other than they are, and if only for weight reasons many of them would just love to explore the vegan diet.
There’s never any need for vegans to go on the defensive, especially when purposely provoked. When we do we create a ‘them and us’. Approach is tricky because our senses say combat is the right way to go, but on another level we know it isn’t. The ‘meat-is-murder’ campaign was designed to shock, using that most evocative word to act as a wake-up call. Now we need fresh slogans, to not appear frayed. The message is our creative patch; animal rights is the juice of our creativity. We don’t need tired, angry, lecturing (like these blogs I write!!!). We don’t need exortation. It bores people. It offends people and worst of all it suggests we haven’t got anything new to say.
The old accusatory image needs to be sloughed off. Hurling facts and figures into people’s faces is twentieth century speak, in the style of: ‘if you can’t persuade them bomb them’. We’ve got to be cosier than that!