Maintaining the inanimate for safety

Many of our most treasured objects today are complex structures. Machines. And something special is involved in ‘owning’ one (or even many). Owning something involves a principle of ‘care’ - we are automatically involved as soon as we adopt something. We ‘care’ for our cat, care for our car. Car maintenance, aircraft maintenance, teeth maintenance, each highlight the risk of not attending to them - like the failure to maintain an aircraft ending in catastrophe. But all this caring, maintaining, cleaning, etc. takes time and effort. Each application of care costs us something. The insurance industry encourages us to be indecisive, it profit from our wobbling between ‘just-in-case’ & ‘it may never happen’. They offer us two choices: either we spend money and feel safe or we neglect safety and save our money. That’s a nice dichotomy, scaring us into parting with our ‘hard-earned’ cash. And so we enter each day, worrying and frowning, carrying a list of things to do, things to be maintained. ‘Overwhelmed’ is probably the best word to describe our collective groan.
We don’t know how to prioritise - a little care here, an insurance policy there … safety, safety, safety but it’s never ending. We spend our life searching for the best insurance. Which brings us to veganism. To some vegans it’s an insurance policy. The food almost guarantees body health (because it’s such a safe & healthy diet). Some vegans are extremely health conscious. They respect their bodies as temples.
Now I don’t follow not the most intelligent vegan diet, but it serves me well enough, physically. It ensures a clear conscience (cruelty-free foods); it’s cheaper to eat this way; it’s less environmentally damaging; it builds (a bit) better-disciplined character and, most importantly, it acts as a rock. It makes me feel safe.

The inanimate

Saturday 27th February

By dropping the animals-are-useful model, we step into a world of imagination where we can imagine the animated soul in things, not just in humans, not just in animals, but in everything. By seeing that there is a soul (or whatever you call it) in everything we show it as worthy of respect. Worthy enough for us to grant it some attention.
One of the most beautiful objects anyone could aspire to own and use is a flute. A human can be “risen up” by the wonderful flow between themselves and this musical object. Here might be an example of the inanimate becoming animate - flute responding to flautist. The object comes alive, not like an animal but in another no less convincing way. Objects can be beloved because we can have what feels like a relationship with them - our car, cat, kids, money, mirror. Take a mirror for example. It responds to me by showing me my face and that makes a mirror a useful item. Or other things we can get attached to, like my bike. The object speaks to me and if I fail to listen, if I don’t ‘hear’, if I don’t maintain it properly, the brake cable quietly rusts away and snaps at the worst possible moment. I suffer the consequences.
Our attitude towards our inanimate possessions is a template for how we deal with the sentient beings in our care. If we’re careless with the things we own it’s likely we’re not too sensitive about the living beings in our care.

Sucked in

When we work to protect the rights of animals we also barrack for people. There’s an interest in the quality of life each has. There’s no cold-hard attitude here but an indefinable quality indicating a breadth of interest that often shows up as a talent for interacting with others. Maybe we call him or her a ‘people-person’. Their interest is in making things flow smoothly.
Now it would be good if all these sensitive humans, ‘people-persons’, transferred some of their ‘people-attitude’ to the objects they use. The objects might say “thanks mate” if they could speak. But whether they can speak or not, or whether they have a being of their own or not isn’t the question here. It’s about a consistent attitude to every interaction we ever have, with animate and inanimate, that is the training ground for things to come. What diverts us from all this useful progress is misinformation, hubris and a reluctance to realise that we’ve been taken in. We’ve been made fools of, especially in regard to animals and so it’s with animals that we can make a useful start to reverse it.

Animal Rights needs energy

For most people it’s not animals they feel strongly about. They may not be prepared to contribute their energy that way. After ‘work’ and home duties there’s maybe not so much energy left over, to splash it about ‘fighting for the animals’.
That we believe animals (i.e. food animals) are low on our priority list and that we think their treatment is not very important reflects a rather alarming attitude in humans. And yet it’s probably coming from a very basic survival instinct connected to the preservation of energy supply, and that in turn is linked to an attitude about energy itself. Where does it come from, how profligate are we in spending it?
We might firmly believe that all energy is the same - a finite resource (like the finite quantity of fuel we have in the petrol tank). We might resist the pressure to push ourselves too hard for fear of draining this valuable resource. But we end up afraid to DO things with it.
We restrict ourselves. We don’t volunteer to take the initiative. We’re always wanting to withdraw (from our already-too-long list of nagging responsibilities) because we’d rather keep what freedom (read energy) we have. Not waste it. Not do. But we have to weigh that against the guilt of not-doing! The daily dichotomy is, in itself, an energy drain. We weigh up our responsibility for things we own or have taken possession of or that we’re in charge of (like table, bike, food, kids, houses, spouses). They each take our energy. Protecting or promoting the rights of enslaved animals is particularly energy consuming.
If we act for them (as in working for Animal Rights), as their ‘guardian’, we may want to serve them because we love them. In the much harsher world, where animals are made to work for us, the care given to them is differently motivated. More cynically, more superstitiously, we know we’d be wise to attend to their welfare because they’ll respond better if we do. We’ll get more out of them. Attention to detail, on both the objective and personal level, makes things work better.
Energy. For animal guardians their energy is not about cold hard efficiency or substance, it’s about ‘soul’.

My bike

I love my bike. We have a good time together. But to be truthful, I have an abusive relationship with it. I don’t look after it. I don’t clean it. I don’t even oil it when it squeaks! But I rely on it every day to get me around. I occasionally pump up the tyres and curse it when I get a puncture. My bike serves me well but I don’t really have feelings for it. It’s just metal and rubber. It isn’t sentient and I’ll probably run it into the ground and when it’s no longer rideable I’ll dump it and get another one. It wasn’t an expensive bike and therefore not worthy of much respect!!
The things we own and how we look after them reflects our attitude to them. Sure, we care about the look of them and the operation of them if it suits us, but bikes don’t pose moral questions for us. I’m not scared of my bike.
Is it though that I’m scared of abusing something because it might ‘bite back’? Whether it’s a child, a car, a dog or a planet, it’s the same attitude: we choose to respect or we choose to abuse. And surely it mostly applies to our fellow travellers, humans. Towards them we usually show respect or regard, especially if there’s no reason NOT to show it. And the animals about us, we may even have those same feelings for them. If so, why not for objects? Is this going too far? This ‘attitude’ takes such a lot of extra energy. Or does it?

Objects

An animal can never be just an object we own. The difference between various consciousnesses - my table, the living tree, the sentient creature, the human being - each level marks a difference in the respect we show. There’s a lot of difference between an abusive relationship and a loving relationship, one is parasitic, the other symbiotic. Humans haven’t learnt how to be symbiotic with animals because we can’t resist enslaving them.
Valuable resources and useful animals we take. They are ‘there for the taking’, the bounty humans are entitled to, for their ‘survival’. With a lack of respect for them and a lack of appreciation for what we already have, we always seem to want more. That’s the addictive nature of humans – never satisfied. With anything we want, then take, then use-up, we always graduate to boredom with it and dissatisfaction. It’s like unwrapping a box on Christmas day, containing a beautiful puppy dog and six months later, going off on our holidays we have the (by now) dog put down. That which we tire of we develop contempt for. The contempt is useful to allowing us to distance ourselves from the ‘object’. Any semblance of similarity between us and our victims is downgraded. The satisfaction-addict (the human) is accustomed to using; use, not come-to-know. For that we are prepared to compromise conscience. That way we get most out of them.
In other words, certain things the human wants and we’re used to getting what we want. And when we get them we take them for granted. And part of this is like any addict addicted to anything, we expect ‘it’ to be there. The whole thing operates to provide me with what I want, so animal, farmer, animal industry, shop keeper, they all have to be in line, for us. If they give us any trouble or if they’re not forthcoming, then it’s serious business. One faulty link and we’re out of ice cream.
Each of us are codependant on each other, so we have fail-safes to prevent links being broken. We have to take ‘measures’. Farmers struggle to get animals to cooperate. They don’t recognise that animals have a life of their own where the human interest doesn’t plays a part at all. The thought of animals being anything other than a resource for human convenience is anathema to any animal farmer … to build up a relationship with the animals is unthinkable, especially if you intend not friendship but murder. So, animals are there for profiting-from and the human, in dealing with animals, will inevitably abuse them. Any docile animal, any useful thing, any potentially profitable object is up for grabs; to use it becomes a natural consideration. Everything is a business opportunity, and to bring the profits rolling in we must contemplate compromising a few principles. At that point the abuse starts and it may well be ourselves joining the ranks of those who abuse to gain personal advantage.

Can we be sad for others?

Even if we ourselves don’t actually take part in the grisly act of murdering animals themselves, we give permission for others to do it. We don’t feel as sad for them as we do for ourselves. We actively support what ‘they’ do to laboratory rats and farmed pigs.
It seems that some humans are able to hurt animals without a second thought. Some can’t. Although those who can’t would have nightmares if they saw what went on they avoid that by simply not-looking. It seems that many of us kind hearted people can stand by and watch yet not-watch. It’s a little like watching the school bully beat up a small kid in the playground and pretend we are witnessing a fiction. For some it may be thrilling. For some it’s not.
Imagine the pig being a victim of bullying, taken to its most extreme form - the pig at the slaughter house being pushed into that chute where they will have their life terminated. This is where we could feel the nastiest prick of conscience. When we ignore it, when we don’t respond, when we still don’t do anything about it, that’s when guilt can make us feel uncomfortable. We might try to justify it, to lessen the guilt. And because it is just about impossible to justify the way we abuse animals we have to retreat into self-deception - we are forced to objectify what can’t ever be just an object.

Sad for ourselves

Sunday 21st February

As we get older, as we reflect on our life passing, we might see the outcomes of some of our life-held attitudes. We might see some of them as having spoilt our life, not the great life-changing events or decisions but damaging us by the sheer routine of habit. In particular we have eroded something rich in our very core by our habit of animal-eating, three times a day, every day. At each bite we might have been reminded of the diabolical things we’ve been instrumental in doing to innocent, sentient animals. It’s sobering to think that within the next second one hundred and fifty thousand animals will have been executed!!!!

Future

Most omnivores are asleep but are fairly benign personalities. As they realise the mistake they’re making they will, eventually, come to act more intelligently. They’ll have the courage to listen to what’s being said and realise that it’s incontrovertible. Then, once vegan, they’ll want others to be too. They’ll look for opportunities to discuss their latest progress in life with anyone who’ll listen.
These giant steps, taken by people today, may seem less so in a decade’s time when, inevitably, everyone will be talking about food, illness, clothing and shoes in the same way we talk about global warming today.
But however passionate we are, on either side of the argument, about animals having right, we need to look at why we think as we do, where do our attitudes come from and why do they become more fixed as we get older? What is our attitude to the future and the far future?

Hidden away

Something seems profoundly dodgy about animal food, something about the fact that we never see the animal we eat! We only get to see meat in slab form, for which we pay quite a lot of money. We want the end ‘product’ but we’re not interested in its provenance, unless product-quality’s involved. The animal, the easily-replaceable source of this product, doesn’t concern us. Even if it did we wouldn’t be able to get involved any individual who we proposed to eat. We aren’t even allowed to look inside farms today let alone get to know the animal we’re having executed.
I suppose one could say that the meat product itself is a transmutation of a living entity into a non-living one an objectification of the living being. At some stage in our adult life, in each of our Mephistophelian contracts, we trade compassion for lifestyle advantage. According to this contract we can “eat-drink-and-be-merry” just so long as we keep quiet unless to avow that vegans are wrong about the safety of plant foods, and to follow on from there that vegans are conspiring to kill us by imposing a vegan diet on us.
And why? Because ‘animal people’, not having much luck with humans turn to animals for solace and seek revenge for what meat-eaters have done (and still do) to their beloved animals. “Vegans want to steal our pleasure in life. They are spoilers. They aren’t like us”.

Essential for life?

Despite our great gains as humans, with a long list of brilliant discoveries and advances etc., we’ve nonetheless succumbed to misinformation. It’s the kind of gobbledegook persuasion we should have instinctively rejected long ago, but the pill has been sugared. The central misinformation that has almost destroyed us is that animals are essential to our survival. We’ve meekly accepted what we’ve been told - that we need to eat them to survive. If this isn’t true (and obviously vegans don’t think it is) then we’ve invested heavily in one carefully constructed fiction.
Set against this, vegans are emphasising that plant-foods are perfect for humans to thrive on. Nutrition experts (employed by the meat trade), in their quite opposite belief, advise customers to “eat meat or you’ll die” … and who amongst us knows enough or feels confident enough to risk their own physical well being, let alone the lives of their kids? We dare not argue with the ‘white coat brigade’ or defy their authority. Even to question the scientists (and their bosses) would seem reckless. These in-house gods have ruled by word alone, instructing us that “food of animals” is like the fresh air we need to exist. It isn’t an arguable subject. For most people the use of this ‘essential life-element’, comprising animal food (and clothing), is a non sequitur. It’s not up for debate.

Self deception

Both farmer and consumer alike have attempted to deanimate the animate. It’s like staging a coup d’état on Nature. We’ve attempted to neuter whole swathes of species for personal use. Over the years we’ve executed billions of animals, none of whom were indicted or brought to trial for any crime. None have deserved any of the punishments we’ve dished out. It’s just been a wash of conscience-crushing cruelty and destruction. By doing harm like this we humans have brought upon ourselves the greater worry of all - pretending to ourselves that what happens to animals doesn’t actually happen!! What we do by manipulating our perceptions like this harms us in a fundamental way, by our believing something when we know it isn’t so.

The bite-back

Most people are strongly attached to their sensory instincts rather than their ‘spiritual’ instincts. Eat, drink and be merry … please don’t spoil that … don’t take away my favourite …
There’s maybe some shame when we realise the damage we’re doing, making one of our “choices” - we try to counteract it by “steeling” ourselves. When it comes to the use of animal food, trying to pretend it’s not a bad choice, trying not to think of the horror behind it all and trying to think well of ourselves. That might not be so easy when we have a stomach full of meat and we know we’re involved in nothing less than murder.
What’s the cost here? Perhaps it’s our very sensitivity we’re putting on the line. Compassion, humanity, intelligence, call it what you like, each is compromised by the use of animal foods. Specifically we’re compromised by the enslaving of the animals that produce these foods. The real danger to us is that while they seem docile (and we imprison them to make sure they remain so) the animals do bite back. They inevitably do us damage . . . but we can’t resist eating them.
Because animals represent such rich pickings for humans, it would seem like madness NOT to take advantage of the situation; but by choosing to go this way (using animals) the harm seeps in through our own guilt and eventually it kills us. Our use of animals symbolises the worst in us and that acts to damage us, acting like a dead weight, fatally slowing us down. The guilt or shame, call it what you like, might be heavy in itself, but wait, there’s more. The waste of money, the un-well feeling even a chronic health condition, the embarrassment of being addicted to the stuff – all this keeps us where-we’re-at, immobilised. If we’re not looking into these habits (and the possibility of changing them) then we’re passing our time in indulgence - mindlessly consuming the most ugly things on sale in shops.
The lounge-room lizard becomes the exploiter, willing to take what they can from every available source. The profit-makers love it. They’re willing to do the dirty work for us if we agree to not make a fuss about it – the deal is that we stand by whilst they do terrible things to ‘their animals’. Our complicity with all this is as shame-making as the deeds themselves. It takes a heavy toll on us.

Do something about it

Perhaps as consumers we are not only brainwashed by misinformation but bedazzled by the abundance of food treasures available - steaks, rich dairy foods, soft woollen jumpers, elegant leather jackets plus many affordable items too numerous to mention. So attractive is this Aladdin’s cave that we can’t pass up the products, co-products and by-products of animal origin just “on a point of principle”. So the horror continues.
Laying aside our mea culpas and trying to be quite dispassionate about it all – what exactly is going on in the human mind? Yes, we see the wrong of it all and no, we don’t want to see it. We know something has to change but let it not have to start with ‘me’. In the true spirit of ‘repair’ we don’t want to start the ball rolling. Our ‘vehicle’ is lying in a ditch, broken down, and obviously it isn’t going to repair itself. Obviously it will lie there until WE do something about it.
If something needs to be done for our world we need to start somewhere, to repair our collective conscience-migraine with one pain killer. That might seem like a good idea, in theory. Vegans would say that we merely have to address the central tenet - that animals have been very badly done by - particularly farm animals. It reflects the human speciesist attitude and our own individual involvement is crippling the collective conscience. Alongside the destruction of our physical world lies a parallel world of damaged ethical standards. To address that we’ve developed a conscience-driven immune system that warns us if we ignore it. The less we take notice the weaker our immunity becomes until our central safety core is so badly damaged that we are out of control.

Conscience

Is conscience an instinct? Certainly there’s no tangible proof it exists but we all have one and it links us in our common pursuit of ideals, happiness and enlightenment. It might have no physical presence but we all know it exists.
A numbed conscience lets us get away with things but a troubled conscience casts a dark light on some of the things we do. Is it pricking us when we buy a steak or do we feel nothing? Either sub-consciously or consciously, we presumably suffer ‘conscience pain’ unless we purposely switch it off.
Over aeons of development, the human mind has learned how to section off certain unwelcome perceptions. Animal eating is such a sensitive subject that we’ve had to find ways of reassuring ourselves about it - “it’s okay, everyone does it”.
Just to help us along, this has been manipulated by the interested parties. People, who need to make their living from us, pound us with their messages on TV, in newspapers or commercial radio. For big business, animals are the big earner. Whether customer or producer, to humans ‘animals’ are here for our benefit. Usually we only consider what we can get from them. And it’s here that the conscience is supposed to remind us of the give-&-take world, where it’s not all take. Conscience is here to remind us of the danger of taking part in animal-slavery.
People today, even educated people, convince themselves that because they haven’t been main players in the torture and murder itself, that they can’t be held accountable for what goes on “down at the farm”. But for any person with a grain of honesty about them, they know they are supporting it all with their dollars. Even though we know (or can guess) what goes on “down at the farm” we try to suppress it. We try to become the Cold Hard Bastard. The trouble comes when we meet with sensitive and kind people who ask us quite innocently how we can possibly go on supporting “The Animal Industry”.

There’s no such thing as conscience

Conscience should weigh heavily on people - how could it not? If it happens in our aware-ised world it hurts us. It worries us, that we’re so cruel to animals. We humans are inveterate worriers. Perhaps we worry in our sleep, but during the day we certainly bring our worry into our daily moods. I reckon grumpy disposition is nothing more than our conscience grumbling. Our faces show it too, with that familiar tired, hardened-by-life, cold, vacant, gobsmacked, de-energised, detached look. The look of us humans is something we all notice in each other.
Science has no proof of the existence of conscience! Fancy that! Many scientists (and non-scientists too) believe that ‘conscience’ is secondary to the interests of human advancement. So, to avoid the white-coat brigade with their proof-positive mentality, one might need to veer towards “greener” people, who use intuition to find answers. Intuition is surely reliant on conscience.

Evolution of conscience

Being blasé about animal treatment - why does this matter? Simply because we’re side stepping something we wouldn’t be proud to be part of. By supporting cruelty we’ve sold down the river our hard won humanity, which has been achieved by the vigorous use of our conscience. We’re the inheritors of an ancestral list of brilliant and beneficial human discoveries. Not only have many of them been useful to us but mostly they’ve conformed to conscience … but food doesn’t appear in this list. We can’t be proud of what we’ve discovered here. ‘Food’ is not only associated now with danger since so much of it today is so badly tainted but with mind boggling levels of cruelty. The modern farm, where they practice mutilations and confine animals, is the perfect example of what is patently outside the bounds of conscience.

An attitude problem

Not caring about what’s happening to all these animals, every day, in our name, is simply the predominant attitude problem humans have. The reason we have to alter this attitude is that animals are not inanimate. They feel, move and have many life-functions similar to us. So, why do we abuse them or give the farmer the nod to enslave them? Perhaps it’s because for the majority of humankind, there is a belief in the need for animal foods. This is spurred on by a taste addiction for them (in all their ingredient varieties) as well as an economic attraction for them – they’re the cheapest, most highly subsidised, (and therefore) ‘bargain’ food products on the market. For that we condone a corrupt system of animal husbandry.

The inanimate

If I think the animal thing is sad and another person doesn’t, perhaps it’s time to look at what ‘animal’ is and what it symbolises. Animals and the way we treat them show us the ugliest side of ourselves. Finding out what is done to them is a wake up. Animals are not so very different to us, they’re sentient, they feel pain and they probably suffer as we do when their well-being and life are threatened. But the most abused of them and the way their abuse reflects something ugly in us is not much different to the way we treat the inanimate.
I would say that the most useful thing I possess is a table, my desk, a place where I sit and eat and write. I love my table - I made it. I’m proud of ‘my’ table. I chose the wood, paid for it and did the carpentry. I didn’t grow the tree but I feel I have the right to call this table ‘my’ table. It’s my property. I can look after it, abuse it, even chop it up. I don’t have to wonder how the table is feeling, or what it thinks about my ‘owning’ it because, of course, objects can’t ‘feel’ or ‘think’. Does that mean I can treat my car, my bike, my table in any old way I please? Legally I can. This must be how a farmer thinks about his “right” to treat what’s his, in any way he chooses, not only his tractor but his “stock” (like warehouse stock). Essentially it’s carte blanche; you can do what ever you like. Because animals are considered property (like my table or my bike) they can be loved and nurtured or they can be exploited and even killed. We deal with property as we please, with impunity and legal immunity. Farm animals are regarded, to all intents and purposes, as inanimate: not without life but without the right to an unexploited life.

Ah! But the sadness

For those of us who’ve explored and found vegan living to be a big answer to a lot of difficult questions, we’re over the moon. Our exploring has paid off, except that now we’re as sad as hell.
How do we get over the sadness of the situation of animals? We live amongst people who are shut off from their own feelings so that they can eat and enjoy animal foods. These days we don’t have to be well educated on the subject to know what is happening to those animals and what they’re going through so that their ‘owners’ can make a living from them. The sadness is for the animals but it should be equally for the human who is shutting off their good side to enjoy the products of the dark side.

Omnivores

The omnivore isn’t ill enough or guilt-ridden enough yet to change attitude. Our collective consciousness is still stuck in the pit. We don’t really believe we’ll ever get out of it since we don’t believe there’s anything yet discovered to make us feel safe enough to explore the escape routes. Very few yet want to go exploring on their own.
If we’re going to explore veganism we want others to come with us, we want to sell our idea firstly to the people we like. But we can’t make it seem attractive enough. How do we convince our fellows (friends) to give up what they’re used to for what, as yet, they don’t know exists?

Looking at the other side

There “could” be many reasons for eating meat, caging animals and experimenting on them. An exploitative approach to animals is certainly advantageous to humans – it’s cheaper and easier all round when you’re the dominant species. It’s especially attractive to urban consumers. Only in the past thirty years (a mere pinprick of time) have we city dwellers known about there being so much cruelty involving ‘food’ animals. But there’s always been some sort of ‘knowing’. It’s a bit like global warming, pollution and starvation. These problems are as old as the hills. And so is our guilt about it all.
Humans have dominated their environment, including the animals, for two million years. Now there’s a chance to change all this. The transition may take as much time as it takes us to realise most of our illnesses are strongly associated with the eating of animals. At that point we’ll say: “This has gone far enough!!” and that will be the time for us to become seriously herbivorous and non-exploitative.

The starting line

Vegans want to be thought of neither as missionaries nor as too mild mannered to speak up. We want to be taken seriously and have what we say considered constructively. Whatever we say must be on a “suggestion only” basis. There should be an understanding that whatever we vegans say, we still bottom line respect the integrity of the person with whom we’re speaking. Veganism is egalitarian and vegans should have enough self confidence not to need ego boosting. We don’t need to have people agreeing with us but then going home and falling back into their old habits. We should welcome robust debate, encourage disagreement, tolerate the uninformed. We’re not out just to win converts.
O course it would be nice to be in true communication. The trick is surely to tread a delicate balance between informing and staying on an equal footing. A vegan’s job is to guide information across a very rocky, resistant road.
But however smart our approach, however slick our arguments, however nice a person we seem to be to others, we just represent one side of the debate. (Of course, as it happens, we’re on the right side!!)
Since all of us want to be right, does that create an obstacle? It’s a bit off-putting to meet and talk with someone who thinks they’re right all the time … and how right does a vegan feel? Well, in truth, very right. So if vegans are given the chance to show how right we are we should be short and sweet. No need initially to go into great detail, simply establish the launch pad, tell people where we stand so it’s clear – we don’t touch the animals. This is the start of it all. That’s where going vegan starts.

Vegans are reference books

Contrasts jolt people. On the one hand we have the fit and vital individuals and on the other the ones who are sluggish and dour. There’s a lot of illness around, obviously linked to what we’re eating, particularly if we’re still consuming animal foods. With so much fresh information coming through, in books and on the Net, we see a chance to break free of all of this. We’re maybe shaken by compassion and a fuller consciousness. In the end, the impact of what we learn might make us want to disassociate from the animal habit altogether.
The more we follow vegan logic and the more it impacts on our own lives, the sooner we get our lives back on track and want to pass the whole idea on to others. Convincing ourselves about it all is one thing, but how do we convince others without sounding like preachers. How does one human speak instructively to the next?
We vegans need to be more like reference books. We need to be reference points for information and never be surprised when we’re asked for our suggestions. The contrast we make with conventional lifestyle is at the very least intriguing – people do want to know what we’re about; we seem to have thought things through and come to a conclusion and seem to have a few answers. We’ve got to welcome questions, even welcome the devils advocate. We should be like a book, not look like wowsers. And never come the preacher. The last thing we want is to be avoided out of fear of confrontation.

Solitary confinement

In our quest to educate others we need to take care of ourselves at the same time. If we’re not careful our much valued veganism can isolate us. We know it’s our source of inner power, but at present we’re alone in this. Effectively we have been marginalised and are being silenced. Vegans are more alone than other 99%’ers since we’ve taken it upon ourselves to express our dissatisfaction with the status quo. Plus we encourage others to leap into the void with us, which is probably why people are afraid of what we’re trying to tell them and what we want them to think about.
Meanwhile the manipulating of the truth goes on, unabated. The 1%’ers are pushing in the opposite direction, towards less thinking and more spending. Not surprisingly they are winning, since they’ve been building their networks for thousands of years. They’ve cornered the market, which means they’ve addicted most people to the things they want to sell them. In theory, we ‘99%ers’ needn’t succumb in the way we do. We’d rise up against the general world of crap commodities, food or otherwise … if we were united. But we are each in our own corner. We’ll never think for ourselves let alone unite until we’re at least free of ‘the pit’.
Using unscrupulous methods, the 1%’ers get what they want because they know the 99%’ers are not united in opposition to them … and that’s because we’re united in favour of their products. We’re hooked mainly on thousands of individual animal products which we buy over and over again. The bare faced misinformation concerning animal foods and animal farming methods, keeps us in the dark and keeps us therefore spending our money enthusiastically. But as new information comes to light, the penny drops.
Sooner or later we come to realise why we are (most of us) so chronically unwell. The causes are becoming obvious. Vegetarian foods and diets are already being tried by those who are getting themselves better-informed. As the ethical dimensions of the arguments grow more obvious, alongside health rationales, more people are moving towards veganism. Once many do, changes will start to show up in our society.

Educating the masses

Our society today remains specifically un-educated about certain things and the 1%’ers prefer to keep it that way. Living in our present world of misinformation feels a bit like living in Faulty Towers. In this hotel there’s only a very grudging reception clerk who is not only unhelpful but has no useful information. It’s often like that in schools, where kids can only learn what’s on offer and can’t find out what they want to find out. When censorship and misinformation reigns there’s little chance for any useful learning to take place and therefore no significant chance for change. This aligns with 1%’er interests. Animals, their rights and our right not to eat them, represents a subject so sensitive that it is deemed (by them) threatening. If we can penetrate their defence shield with alternative information it will be done by using our wits alone. We won’t need mass advertising techniques or big publicity stunts but simply information speaking directly to peoples’ intuition.
What vegans have to say needs, to some extent, has to be taken on trust because we can’t prove anything we say. Our main aim should be to launch ideas that trigger a waking-up response in peoples’ minds, so they’ll want to question things and question us. In order to establish the essential trust they need to make the first move they’ve got to want it and be sure they’re not jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Even over food nothing is certain; we haven’t been vegan for more than a couple of generations for humans to be certain about the safety of it. And it’s true, that we can’t provide assurances at all since even nutrition is still a contentious science. For my own part, I have to rely on certain overseas scientists who give the vegan diet their gold seal of approval. There is no solid ground here for most people. Ethics are subjective and the idea that any of us, let alone animals, have souls is unprovable. How then do we shake people up and bring them out of the pit? And we’re speaking here of modern day, sophisticated, educated, free-willed adults, not a bunch of dummies who are easy to persuade. Vegans and activists in general often sound desperate when they’re issuing orders, when they’re saying “GO VEGAN”, “Save the Animals, Save Your Health, Save the Planet”. But behind our desperation is enough sincerity that the movement for Animal Rights can be instinctively taken on trust. However carefully we deliver our message there’s no recipe for assuring our own acceptance and trustworthiness. We do ourselves no favours if we seem pushy or weird. Sophisticated intelligent people won’t easily be convinced. And if they can’t trust us there’ll be a ‘disliking’ of us … the very last things we want. We don’t want people to be turned off - quite the opposite.

Invisible duct tape

Veganism isn’t well known. We have virtually no (willing) audience for our subject. We, as vegans, need to be able to handle that reality before we handle anything else. We must know about the powers we are up against and essentially know that, at present, we are effectively being censored.

You don’t have to listen to us

If we’re hoping to reach people face to face, without the use of computers, we need to come up with a very interesting form of ‘total delivery package’. If we want to connect in a more interesting and inspiring way we have a lot to learn, as a movement, about how new information like ours is taken in. Firstly we’re up against a lot of cynicism. People have good reason not to trust ‘the soothsayer’. No one trusts a salesman or politician anymore. If we really want to educate people, one on one, we have to wait for the other person’s willingness or us to do that. In other words, tedious though it may be, we have to wait for permission to speak. Without that we have no listeners, unless we want an audience of drones. And surely, the animal rights movement doesn’t simply want people who lamely agree with us. We aren’t collecting numbers or wanting to gather people who’re bored with their lives and are looking for a bit of excitement or are willing to accept any old recipe. Our cause needs to bring in imaginative, creative people. We need to take on the vibrant, difficult-to-persuade people, whose sense of free-will is strongly embedded. We must be able to satisfy them otherwise we’ll win no useful recruits. If we can’t answer the big questions for the cynical listener we won’t break through the strong personality’s protective shield … and we won’t even get the ‘big questions’ asked in the first place, unless we’re approachable as people. Today an unwilling audience doesn’t exist! No one can make anyone listen, let alone agree.