Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Turning nasty

In public some vegans protest in the streets or in the media for Animal Rights. In our fierce fight for ‘rights’ we mightn’t have any room for fancy ideas, like “having all-round-respect for animals and humans alike”.
In our daily interactions with people, it’s this one small weakness amongst ourselves that screws animal advocacy. It’s one of the main contested issues within the Animal Rights and Vegan movements - how we appear to the general public, how our words are couched, how we deal with contentious issues sensitively. Same say “go in soft”, others like to throw their moral fists about. The whole process of communicating effectively is what ‘we’ are surely all about?
Here’s an omnivore listening to us. Hearing all about our interest in Animal Rights. The question may well revolve around listeners’ reactions to our initial impact, our image, around the question of whether we are people other people can identify with. It comes down to gut reaction – about vegans – and whether they are violent or non-violent in nature. Every adult omnivore (I can only speak of ‘Western’ countries) is surely familiar with the standard line of animal rights ‘emotional blackmail’. It is connected to that old school idea in conversation and debate, trying to prove someone is WRONG. That’s all very well for something mathematical but not useful for moral reason – for this very reason. To be wrong, to be right, scored debating points, competition, and when the debate turns to such a touchy subject as this one is, we remember the conversations. We remember those cringeings and humiliations of being proved wrong or foolish.
An omnivore listening to a vegan never knows if being with a vegan who may threaten to bring up Animal Rights isn’t like being thrown up over by a drunk. How does any omnivore know that ‘our views’ will be expressed in a reasonable way. As vegans, if we come across as fierce, we may reinforce that old familiar evangelical image. “Outraged and vegan” or “outraged at …” whatever the subject we get steamed up about, it’s the outrage that sounds so ugly and ridiculous. Oh yes, when Gough Whitlam said in 1975, “Maintain your rage” that was valid enough. At the time we were all outraged that Gough had been sacked. But our outrage dissolved, and if we as activists only do ‘outrage’ that won’t be enough. Vegan shouts: listener cringes. What the listener does NOT do, I believe, is say “that is so true, from this moment on I join you in your outrage, not if they have a ham sandwich in their lunch pack! So, okay if outrage isn’t the cool image, then what is?
I’m not sure personally that we can even attempt to answer that question because we aren’t in control of our emotions. I won’t flinch at watching footage of animal cruelty. I hate to see it but I’ve seen so much of it, and I know it underlines the rotten core of some humans, I know it reminds me to kep my focus on the ‘outrage against animals’ but I also know it’s a trap. That it interferes in our speaking about this subject. All important is how we seem, how forgiving we are, how creatinvel intelligent we are and how much and how deeply we respect other humans. It isn’t just animals. So, we speak so we create great waves of trust and promise no pouncing. It comes naturally to the truly peaceful person but for old warring natures like mine we have to learn this lesson the hard way. Preferably just drop the aggro attitude. That’s if we want to advocate. Communication is going to be a long an patient processs. This is whye delivery is so important.
But vegans are natural talkers (!!!). And do a lot of emailing, writing, telephoning, speak through art and any number of ways, to connect this vegan message to people. But hell, face to face communication is hard enough, over any other medium this delicate message is even harder – how do we protect people from fearing us as preachy-threatening-evangelical? How do we avoid that image? Even when face to face it’s almost impossible so in any other situation, in letters-to-the-editor, in radio interview, a few sentences recorded for the news, there’s just too few signals getting across, to make it ‘safe’, for omnivores to listen to us. They can’t protect themselves from us except by running away. Does the listener really need to confront vegan ‘violence’ in the tradition of the slogan, ‘Meat is murder’? Omnivores need to trust us, that we won’t ‘turn’ on them, crush them or make fools of them.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Protests looking ugly

As vegans we may be convinced of our own non-violence, and then we ‘do’ an angry protest. To people who see us are we off-putting? The high moral platform gives us confidence … we are so obviously right!! We may not see how, drip by drip, our protest is sounding too harsh, even violent.
To be non-violent I think we activists (so-called!) do need to consider developing a level of control, where words are strong but not frightening and where voices are loud but not screaming or disapproving. Collectively we can get too big for our boots, and seem over confident or brash. The vegan public face is sometimes off-putting.
…Whereas, at home it isn’t like that at all. Here we’re okay, since we aren’t trying to impress anyone but our self. Lifestyle-wise vegans are pretty much fine examples of non-violence, and in many valuable and important ways. It seems a great shame if we wear our dark side in public, even when it’s just a one on one.
Privately of course, a more wonderful ‘at-peace’ spirit you’ll never find. That’s because vegans have low levels of “spending-violence”, i.e. buying, say, animal-stuff or guns or something supporting crime. At home vegans are cool and it’s only when we’re trying to be effective, outside home, we hit trouble. Like when we want to be ‘hot’ (passionate) and something goes askew.
It’s our appearance that lets us down. Vegans should of course feel utterly safe - why be nervous in ‘outside interactions? When we go up against the ‘big-bad-world’, face some opposition, face some curly questions, how do we handle it? How do we come across? Maybe we’re happy just to come across as peace-niks. Yes, even when that sounds a bit 1950s. ‘Peace’, afterall, is a timeless tag which never goes out of fashion.
In this one (obvious) way this is what veganism is about - a simple non-violent boycott and highly effective if many join in. Commodity-wise, the greatest act of violence is where we exert power – where we spend our money. Imagine, in the grocery, no one is watching, we can spend on whatever we please. If that support violence then our decision, at that ‘private point’, needs to be changed.
Certainly vegans can’t be accused of violence at this point; our stance here, mainly in regard to food, is that where there’s no replacement product we do without. For vegans that ‘do-without’ decision (rather than compromise our no-touch-animal principle) relates mainly to animal foods. We don’t do them. But it’s to do with other commodities too, because of what they contain.
I know an 18 years old (very attractive female), very into only vegan food, but she’s stuck on shoes. She loves shoes. What woman doesn’t? But there isn’t any alternative to leather fashion shoes. Here’s where she may want to NOT touch but touch them she does, by buying leather shoes (referred to as an ‘animal co-product’ since it is economically on a par with the food part of the animals).
Why does my ‘vegan’ friend wear leather on her feet? Maybe it’s the fear of social suicide - a beautiful dress, a magnificent everything else and it all falls to pieces if she wears canvas foot apparel.
Of course this usually isn’t so much of a problem for men, well not for me certainly but then I’m not 18 and not dating. And of course it doesn’t matter eventually because as soon as business opportunities appear for a different line of shoe, then a whole range of magnificent plant-based footwear will suddenly appear … and at competitive prices. The Chinese might be doing it already and can do not just because of lower labour costs but because plant fabric is cheaper. The world is moving towards cutting unnecessary costs by ‘going-plant’. It’s going that way and fashion will shift towards both non-animal foods and fabrics. However it all depends where we spend our money. If you join the boycott and sponsor alternatives, fashion changes. And it’s the fashion market which determines whether we get shoes, namely a switch over to the plant-based variety.
But back to my friend. She’s facing the compromise and tying her hands. It must be annoying to her that she can’t actively promote vegan principle or Animal Rights. Therefore, it has to be said, the peace initiative is in everything we eat or wear or think and a central tenet of vegan lifestyle and attitude.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Force

Experimenting with the use of force – we’ve all done it - experimenting with advantage-taking. But once we take out the ‘force factor’ in what we do, what are we left with? Perhaps we’re nicer for it if only because we’ve decided to try to free ourselves from the grip of violence-based habits.
As humans we’re capable of wonderful things, not the least of which is our ability to ‘act on principle’ rather than from ‘me-first’. One such principle is non-violence. We can weigh the pros and cons and decide: the weighing process looks at the obvious disadvantages and benefits. And it sees, as one of the most attractive aspects of non-violence, that people who are seem to be more tolerant and more accepting, without being too passive. Within non-violence is a provocateur spirit.
This element of rebellion or provoking or questioning is needs to use no violence other than gently taking the piss out of omnivores for being … well, omnivore. Surely this approach must be about the healthiest element in Society, “keeping the bastards honest”. Vegans are most effective, I think, when they are being simultaneously passive and pro-active, just as they are when they boycott.
The boycott is a withdrawal from a world-that-need-not-be. Our pressure as vegans brings this world into focus. It looks seditious, rebellious and almost outrageous. The vegan act of rebellion needs no other energy than in the fun of being rebellious.
So, morality to one side for a moment, this active acceptance attitude that many vegans consciously try to practise, is basically proving to the world that force is ugly and compassion is the new fashion; you can live very happily being a boycotter of violence. Omnivores believe it’s probably too hard to do, to become vegan, but then that has been planted as part of the conspiracy of misinformation put out by The Animal Industries.

Standing upright in a me-first world

Saturday 26th June 2010


When we look into the “me-first” world, obviously food features. When it comes to food we are controlled largely by it. Our food habits haven’t been changed , maybe since childhood, because it might never have occurred to us to change them. Maybe it has occurred to us and we’ve turned away. Or maybe we did change, but not enough. Or maybe you’re vegan. The vital changes were made. You’re currently on track. In terms of food maybe you have sacrificed some of your me-first world to become vegan.
For vegans things do move on quickly. Once the food is established, you’re happy with it, feeling good, etc then maybe it’s time to move on. The cross roads are where veganism remains food-oriented or it branches off into activism. And then, if we actively advocate for animals, is our activism driven by the no-force principle?
Maybe, to take this matter up, is offensive not only to animal eaters but to many vegans as well. Because if our food is non-violent so should the thoughts our food helps to generate.
So, if we are NOT advocating non-violence how can vegans be useful to non-violent animals. It might sound bizzar but are the animals not in a superior state of mind and itn’t it our job to aspire to their incredible levels of peace and harmlessness?
So, if our veganism doesn’t aspire to non-violence then the question is why not?
To routinely practise non-violence in this violent world is quite a challenge. If we don’t attempt to be non-violent our bank balance might improve but our self-esteem won’t.
Probably most vegans feel on the outer sometimes, but they do have power in the form of a powerful feeling that comes from daring to defy authority. Vegans risk the danger of making a stand, on principle, even though it could be the hardest principle to stand up for.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Hoodlum omnivores

Imagine the embarrassment in years to come, when we remember how we stood by for so long, participating in enslavement. This is no casual, accidentally picked up habit, this is daily repetition of the guilt and shame and loss we feel, not only in complicity to murder but, for heavens sake, in the eating of the poor creatures we have so sadly abused.
Today, when plant-based foods are known to be so perfect for us, the whole thing of farming and killing animals seems so obviously crazy. Vegans probably feel that the worst trouble for us is in reminding ourselves we live as fearlessly as we do amongst such a big bunch of hoodlums. These ‘hoodlum’, weird-habited humans comprise around 99% of all humans on the planet. They are locked into the ‘me-first’ attitude in so many important ways, the most dangerous of which is in their inability to see things from any other vantage point than their own.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Breeding controls

Existing animals should have their lives restored by us. But certainly, we can’t allow the billions alive today to breed indiscriminately, since we need to have their numbers (whole populations in fact) drastically reduced and as quickly as possible. If we keep large numbers of animals alive and then let them breed without fertility control the cost would be enormous and ever increasing … and we know what happens … the more the number of ‘useful animals’ increases the more their dollar-earning potential will tempt the unscrupulous human. It’s always going to be a temptation for meat addicts to go back to animal farming, at a later date – most humans are not to be trusted around ‘useful’-animals any more than paedophiles can be trusted around ‘useful’ kids.
Without fertility control the animal-liberation-solution is absurd or at least untenable. Even as it is, the cost of caring for the present-existing, remaining animals could be an intolerable drain on society. But retiring the animals still alive today is probably a relatively minor problem in the greater scheme of things, since people do love being around animals. Any government would find many ‘potential animal refuge workers’ ready and willing (and probably for low wages) to volunteer to work at these animal retirement centres. The whereabouts of sanctuaries would fit in where animal farms left off, on land no longer used to farm animals.
The details, however, concerning reproduction, must include the possibility of denying the animals reproduction rights or in some way controlling birth rates. This is probably a difficult issue.
Free them we must. Our energy can’t be better used than in the work of dis-enslaving these presently farmed animals.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Animal Rights by law

Animals, especially when they’re around humans, certainly need their rights to be legislated. The story of domesticated animals and their offspring is all about loss, loss of dignity and loss of life. The only change they need is to win the right to live outside slavery. Needless to say, out of respect for them, we should atone, or at least leave them alone … but, as it happens we’ve done so much damage to them over the generations that we can’t simply liberate them. Now we also need to protect them. Domesticated animals wouldn’t be able to survive on their own. Importantly we owe them ‘safe passage’, to live out their lives in a sanctuary or refuge … retired in other words. At the very least they are entitled to an unmolested life.
Since we know that neither animal muscle tissue or animal by products are essential for a healthy life, there are no arguments left to support non-vegan living.

Loss

Tuesday 22nd June 2010
However loss feels we’ve got to get used to losing if it’s a matter of losing something-to-get-something-else. Whichever way it feels to us, we somehow have to take on the world of loss.
For instance, what does it mean to lose friends? Or lose friends’ acceptance? (Two particularly difficult losses for people who are moving toward becoming vegan). Perhaps on the up-side is loss of addiction, even loss of weight (if one is overweight). Whatever we lose, in order to make changes, at whatever level or cost or discomfort, the loss and consequent change might be worth it. Anything’s better than inaction or doing something that lowers self respect. If we aren’t doing what needs to be done, perhaps involving some loss or some change, life won’t seem so lively!.
There’s a lot of ‘good cause’ out there, to get involved with, and this particular cause of Animal Rights needs as many of us as possible since it’s going to be a major job, liberating animals.
Vegans want to get domesticated enslaved animals out of gaol. To rehabilitate them. We want them to have a life free of their slave masters. We believe they have a right to a life and that right needs to be written down so we don’t forget it or ignore it. Just as with the issue of human slavery it must be written into law for future generations. Some people will lose out, by no longer being able to exploit animals to make a living. But their loss is really their gain, since they won’t have to ignore their compassionate feelings in order to make essential money.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Reason to change ‘me-first’

In the process of change, if we can feel safe about changing, it might help. If we feel confident not to land ourselves in serious trouble, then we’ll change. Coincidentally, aside from the benefits accrued to ourselves from change it may also have been made for all the best reasons too.
Changes may be being motivated by self-interest but they can also serve as examples of ‘sustainability’ and ‘universality’. In their effect. But don’t we want more? More than doing the world some good? More than just doing ourselves some good? Surely we can be progressive, model citizens but attitudinally regressive simply by continuing our allegiance to the ‘me-first’ club. Attitude can be a million miles from respecting non-violent principles. (In the end, this is surely one of the main overall aims for humanity, to study the nexus between violence and non-violence, and come to a proper respect for each.)
The ‘me-first’ is in all of us. But it’s prevalent in certain activities, eating in particular. We eat for pleasure and comfort. “Don’t touch my food”, says the omnivore, to someone like a vegan. But vegans don’t ‘touch-on’ the subject of food for idle reason. We are suggesting that the most ‘me’-centred activities, like eating delicious but harmful animal foods, are so ripe for change that our very potential is being wasted like rotting fruit fallen from the tree. We are, most of us, victims of self-perpetuating, harmful habits. (These are seductive habits with ugly provenance, and I’m thinking of those connected with the brutality of ‘things’ being ripped out of bodies of fellow, sentient beings).
‘Me-first’ doesn’t mean ‘me-last’. More like ‘me-second’. (I won’t mention here the need humans have to atone for sins past!!). We need to step back from the dominator species while contemplating other tiny matters affecting us which incidentally probably don’t afflict non-human animals, matters of addiction, material insecurity and being vulnerable to peer pressure. Me-second lets us address habit change as a vital everyday process of life. It’s our growing-up tool.
Specifically, the habit changes we’re talking about here should come about not only because they’re causing us harm but because they harm animals. A habit change from omnivore to herbivore starts with boycotting. All the time animals are being enslaved and we’re buying their ‘goods’ we’re party to it ALL. We encourage their incarceration to support our own habits. Only by boycotting can we make a sufficiently strong statement - enough both to save our own souls and eventually the whole world. But just for now it’s the boycott, on a daily basis, that lets us be taken seriously. We don’t need people to see what’s in our shopping baskets but we do need people to pay attention to what we have to tell them. But we’ve got a couple of things to do before we earn the ‘privilege of speech’. Before we are, in their heart of hearts, taken seriously.
How do we achieve this? Yeh, yeh, we shift the emphasis from ‘me’ to ‘the other’. Nice idea: impossible dream?
But if it is a dream, what exactly is it a dream of ? Is it a dream about ‘me’, us humans, our kids’ futures, or is it a dream of freed animals no longer caged? What sort of world is it that we want?

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Thinking about ‘going vegan’

As vegans we pass on information to help people delve deeper into some of the more interesting matters of life. In this information dissemination process vegans are looking for keys to communication. We know what we want to say but we probably don’t yet understand how to say it.
The aim surely is to stir, to question, to make others a little troubled and then persuade them to go for broke. And the aim surely is to have a good time stirring and interacting with people and being sometimes on the very edge of risk. But the overall aim is to get the balance just right.
For omnivores, something happens in their contemplation zone when we speak ‘vegan’. They’re hearing things, noticing things, computing “What would it mean for ‘me’, to change, to be in line with ‘this idea’ ”? Specifically, “What would it feel like?”
Contemplating going vegan ranges from revulsion to positive inspiration. If it’s somewhere in the middle and we’ve gotten to that point - of considering it, facing it, finding out what this whole business is going on about, then what?
Perhaps that’s the critical point where we decide to go on and move back. That’s when a bit of instinct comes in handy, when we decide to ‘instinctivise’, to de-intellectualise our situation, to let go of our brains for just long enough to hear the almost-hidden reasoning behind our decision. It might be like quietening the din on the brain for long enough to hear a gentle roar in the background, coming from the heart region, strongly advising us to make ‘that particular change’.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

The fluidity of change

Vegans have made one or two really quite dramatic changes in their lives. For a start, they’ve replaced the items in their fridge. They’ve changed their whole lifestyle from the one they’ve always known. (Now, today of course, there are ‘lifers’, vegan from birth).
Vegans may have made certain changes but the need is still there, to change. I mean the whole continuing process of change itself breathes life into life. Change is like cycling. You curse the hills but love running down the other side.
As vegans we need change to keep on our toes. We have an ‘opposition’ out there, amongst them some ferociously determined, clever, vocal people with opinions. We need to put them in their place, no, that sounds arrogant, we need to gently put them right about a couple of important things, but how? Gently?
Since we may not know how to be ‘gentle with the opposition’ all this is idle speculation to be saved up for another day. One day we’ll be speaking boldly … but back to today. Back to change. We, as vegans, need to change lots of things about ourselves, beyond the fridge door. But if change is the freeing process why wouldn’t we want to change? Each day is an opportunity for change.
Importantly though, vegans need to show we’re still changing, evaluating and discriminating, according to ‘fair’. To be fair is to be entertaining even those thoughts eschewed before, to show no fear of being fair. We must know of ourselves that we are ‘fair-evaluaters’ (just in case previously we’ve formed an opinion unfairly and just got stuck with that opinion ever since). If we humans have intellectual advantages over other life forms we too can weigh things ‘fairly’. If that’s in place nothing can go wrong. Change tests the differences … and isn’t that what vegans are trying to do? To find out what exactly are the differences between omnivore-mentality and vegan-mentality. That’s all that stands in the way of human development, surely?
Change is the key here, not dramatic change but a bubbling sense of change going on all the time. An opening up of the receptors to whateer is coming in. Our effort is surely to keep our attitudes fluid and growing and on the move. We need to be constantly readjusting things, underlining things. Ethics is like a shopping list. It’s like keeping a well stocked kitchen. We change things around for variety and new experiences. So too should we, with our deep and meaningfuls, our ‘views and attitudes’
Vegan animal advocates (almost) have the responsibility not only to promote plant-based products but to advocate change. There’s a deep rooted fear of change in us all. But there’s a healthiness in change, in getting used to it and ‘getting over’ it ... getting to where it becomes de rigeur. I’m thinking about doing some things without thinking, almost. An auto-piloted yet fluid sort of human!
Everything benefits from a little heat-of-change but it’s not an easy sell. Change is so frightening to us that nothing will shift attitude. Opinions might have been rehearsed all our life and are now stuck. It often takes a dramatic illness or near death experiences to jolt us into change … and then it’s done reluctantly.
Since change is almost the same as fresh air, we can enjoy it and then, so help me, we can go on to see why we need it in our lives.

Habit trouble

Friday 18th June 2010
Habits are like friends - we rely on them, we’re familiar with them but they can be trouble. Try changing a habit and a little voice says “oh no you don’t”. If we try changing a habit there’s almost a suggestion that we’re tinkering with our own internal balance. We’ve become so identified with our habits that we hardly notice that they, under cover of our ‘personality’, control our behaviour. Fiddle with a habit and you reveal a dangerous intention TO CHANGE … and “change” always means trouble.
There are two types of trouble: the noticeable trouble that springs up immediately when we intend to change and the sort of trouble that come later, when the changes are set in and they start affecting everything about us. “Trouble” is something we try to avoid, and yet what are vegans doing? They give up heaps of favourite foods (troubling at first) and then set out to confront people and persuade them to change - if you want trouble, there’s no better way to bring it on! But by causing trouble and then making change (for ourselves at least) it’s a freeing process and eventually becomes an attractive process, especially when habits become more fluid.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Change with a touch of pizazz

If there’s something we want to change, something big we’d like to see changing in our self and by extension in our society, we’d have to focus on what change gets us into.
Change can mean having to go the long way round, being patient, thinking along the lines of “better to prevent than cure”. Ideally change would be motivated by a sense of great-improvements-to-come, and it would be something we’d enjoy it. We’ll enjoy changing all the more if it’s done with some pizzazz. It all comes down to style. If the way we change is optimistic, creative and enthusiastic, what can possibly stand in its way or discourage others to change?
Often though we change out of fearing-worse-to-come. We might feel a compulsion to ‘do’ it, with grit and determination. The potential enjoyment of change is spoiled by the grumbling and the reluctance. Changing certain types of habits is as daunting as changing certain types of friends - they don’t like it. Habits feel unchangeable, and even the intention-to-change depends on mood - if we feel up-beat we’ll accept the challenge and take on change in the spirit of taking on the world … but it isn’t always like that! In another sort of mood we might only consider changing habits to save our own skin. (Like giving up red meat after suffering a heart attack)
Whatever our mood or motivation we should ask our self if we think change is attractive or a turn-off? It depends on what it is that we’re changing, but say it’s one of the classic habits, the addictive habit or rigid attitude. Changing these habits is hard despite the promise of good returns for our future.
In the vegan drive towards ‘humanising humans’ we have to sell the importance of change, but more importantly we need to be absolutely clear about what we’re saying, of course, but behind that is a person talking to another person. Anyone can understand the message we are putting out but it’s the ‘how’ of saying it that tips the balance. If it can be done firmly but gently it will impact, if only because it is in contrast to the usual finger-wagging, evangelical, make-‘em-afraid approach.
The prospect of becoming a more humane human should make change seem attractive – specifically, enjoying a vegan-principled life contrasting with the rut most people are in.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Enjoying change

I suggested to a friend he might consider changing some of his habits. “It’s a bit late now” … and I heard this from a 25 year old!
At whatever age change happens it can improve everything for us but often it’s too little, too late. Or we change-go-mad and do something so radical that we don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping it up.
Competition with other humans plays a big part here – if change isn’t going to help us win status it won’t seem like such a good idea. Because we regard self development as a competitive sport, success becomes more important than the actual enjoyment of it. We don’t enjoy the process of change which gets us success. We race one another to be more special, more rich, more well known, revered, liked and so on. Change is supposed to be enjoyable, the very process, risk, uncertainty, that’s the essence of it. It isn’t to be confused with teeth grindingly hard self discipline. Change is a teacher keeping us creative, keeping us on our toes and giving life an edge. It draws us into a less judgemental attitude. Change is ever forgiving because the best change must involves mistakes and misjudgements. If Change were our teacher it would be patient enough to appreciate even a little movement in the human.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Radical change

How can radical change work for us? The thought of making big changes in our life, especially when they may not be understood by others, frightens us. Ethical principles seems to rule out behaviours we’ve grown accustomed to. Over the years we’ve acquired habits that make life easier but on closer inspection many are unethical. They need to be dropped, ugghh!, and we know it and everyone knows it, and everyone still does it.
To radically alter a habit, especially a habit concerning three-times-a-day food, isn’t so easy; If we feel like a failure in life, and probably most of us do, going vegan will probably turn out to be yet another failure. Can we afford to take that risk.
Going vegan -‘fail’ - me fail bigtime, me trying to ‘go vegan’.
For a start, I don’t think I can kick my favourite habits. Truth to tell, I don’t want to kick them. I prefer to continue being as I am until one day when things start to go wrong, then I’ll change. I will change but all in good time.
As our body fails and we see, for instance, that our eating habits are making us ill. We’re even then still reluctant to change. It’s the pleasure association we can’t let go of … but the body fails nonetheless and we wonder what I’ facing for the rest of my life? Not only can I not ignore symptoms (of the ageing body’s failings) but I can’t face the upheaval of “change”.

Cleaning up our act

Monday 14th June 2010

We are modern and untouched by old fashioned ways of dealing with problems. We laugh at the stupidity of using war to settle differences. But we still use the same principle, force, to get what we want today. We still quarrel and deny respect. We still grab what we can and become destructive. It doesn’t seem like real war, there’s no blood spilt (none that we can see anyway) but much harm still done in the hardening of our approach to solving problems and dealing with others. Whatever we do that uses force and violence is at least as stupid as war.
We need to see those situations where humanity could work, how the gentle touch can overcome difficulties and where the aggro element can be dropped. Our intention to clean up our act might need to start very close to home, with routine matters (in the way we speak to each other, in the boycotting of violent foods) and moves on towards what might seem an ‘impossibly clean’ attitude. If we avoid all temptation to go hard, to ignore the background brutality in what we do, life becomes incredibly simple and before we know it we’ve cleaned up our act.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Empire

The human empire has one special weapon, the intellect; we have the ability to review the situation and design our own life style. We had to discover how exploiting resources always ends in tears. Now that that particular penny has dropped we don’t do ‘exploitation’ and hopefully we can move on to build respect. So far we’ve crapped in our own nest and that needs to be reversed. Our attitude needs to shift from the grab-what-you-can, bargain basement mentality to respect. Up to now most ventures didn’t operate on respecting the resource. In the grabbing came the damage. But the element of delusion was always strong, that we were making progress, and now that bubble has burst. The exploited-world is blowing up in our face.
If we are going to change, surely any change must include respecting each other more (as well as respecting the rights of non humans). Once that ‘attitude’ is set in place the really interesting work of redesigning our world can start - designing a more sustainable way of feeding, sheltering and warming ourselves without rape, pillage, exploitation or empire-building.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Too late, too late”

In comedy and comics, the adventures of humans are ridiculed and we all laugh. But they teach us less than we think since we continue to perpetuate the same mistakes, over and over again. We won’t get serious, we must keep laughing to show we’re happy (when we’re not!). We won’t apply history’s lessons to help govern our society. What happened in the past doesn’t seem to relate to today’s problems. We ask, “what has history to teach us about today? We’re do dazzled by technology that we ignore any matter if it’s not interesting enough. But here we are in 2010, overwhelmed and feeling as though we are standing on the brink of an abyss, without a hand to hold onto. We feel abandoned so what do we do? We wait for things to change, we don’t initiate them. It feels safer to stay as we are, with no change. We continue to believe that human-domination is the only way to go, sort of … maybe … and we act as the kids did in Lord of the Flies, giving in to the savage in us. We refuse to let history shake us up. We are determinedly modern and to prove it we destroy our relationship with Nature and often with one another too. We are still determined to be the dominant ones … but the clock tick on. We face an up-coming challenge to our ‘empire’ mentality and most of us would like to think we could rise to that challenge when it comes.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Eventualities

The people responsible for the great empires of the world have always thought they were God’s chosen people. I come from such a group of conceited oafs. The knowledge of being superior people gave us our sense of dominance, almost as a right to be superior, a right to rule. We never thought about it. We thought it was something that would last forever. Up grew pride, hubris and megalomania.
Each empire fails and it’s central weakness shows up in the endgame when they collapse. Even when they fail horribly, the people of the empire can’t for long remember why. They career downwards, pretending nothing has happened.
Humans who’ve ‘made it’ don’t learn from past mistakes recorded by history. In this way the empire-people are very stupid, always having to make the same mistakes in order to find out first hand what should be obvious without creating the pain in order to ‘see’ the mistake. The story in the ‘history’ is a cycle of forgetting and then remembering-too-late. Our lives, so they say, are awash with delusion and false justification for what we do. We think we can only learn by re-experiencing the whole cycle of ‘succeeding then failing’. We go through the same lessons, lifetime after lifetime, until eventually we learn. But only eventually.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Mad for plenty

We probably all dream of having plenty, indeed that there should be plenty for all. We dream that eventually humans will fix things up for the planet and all our oafishness will dissolve like Scotch mist. Violence and greed will no longer be needed. Eventually.
This is more or less the justification for today’s bad behaviour. By becoming truly dominant over lesser life forms, including lesser human life forms, we see ourselves as the ‘benevolent despots of Planet Earth’. Call it evil, call it wicked, it matters not a jot since dominators always self justify according to their end-aim (i.e. to save the world / to save our souls).
We know from reading history that this end-aim is a furphy, because too much happens along the way that we don’t bargain for. We are seduced by the advantages of big brains. We learn to cut corners by outsmarting the opposition. We practise violence. Violence brings us a certain type of power. We win. We get what we want. At the time the world seems ripe for the picking with no adverse outcomes. We lose sight of the aim of saving souls and saving ‘the world’ and instead enjoy being on a roll. It’s only later that the awful consequences become apparent, and then it’s almost too late!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Mad for it

A chicken farmer has to be cruel (destructive) and must do unspeakable things to hens or go out of business. And short of living in the city, going out of business means death. There are many rural suicides connected with farmers going bust.
Like many other highly destructive pursuits, like deforesting by foresters or denuding the country by miners, animals farmers must destroy to live. We the consumer can’t mine copper or cut down timber or make food. We are dependent. We feel we have to support those people who can bring us the products we want. This is the rich world where many superfluous items are “needed” by us. Without them we believe we’d go mad.

Life in the country today

Tuesday 8th June 2010
Animal farming is just about the only reliable source of income for people who live in the countryside. They use the ‘resources at hand’. They farm animals, sometimes because the profits are better than from plant-growing and sometimes because the land can only support animal grazing. The more marginal the land the more cattle and then the more sheep will be ‘run’. Using the land, converting its energy for our use, is the name of the game. When the ‘converter’ is an animal it is regarded merely as a machine for ‘using the land’. The cruelty factor has exponentially increased over the past 60 years owing to competition for valuable markets. There has been a vast explosion of (hungry) populations in urban concentrations. The ever-present threat of someone else exploiting the market has made intensive farming inevitable.

The end is profit

Monday 7th June 2010

Ending animal farming. It won’t come about over night but it will happen. But before it happens the farmer is going to feel fairly safe, with steady market demand along with promises of protection from prosecution for cruelty to animals. That’s what most farmers want.
There’s nothing more satisfying than knowing ‘what you do’ is safe. When there’s safety from prosecution and safety of profit it helps people do things they shouldn’t. It helps them exploit animals for a living. Animal farming has now, more than ever before, become a cruel practice. It’s always been cruel and yet pragmatically it’s been accepted but now it’s so obviously wrong it’s that much harder to wriggle out of the guilt of it. And animal business has gotten bigger and grubbier, but it’s still here, feeding the population. Its husbandry practices are overlooked by people out of ignorance or they’ve been excused as being ‘part of tradition’. The blind spot people still have about cruelty is that the cruelty itself is not wanton or sadistic but calculated to fend off competition. That’s the justification for cruel practices anyway. In the end it all comes down to the fact that money can be made out of animals. And there are a lot of interests riding this particular wagon.

Making them mad

Sunday 6th June 2010

It’s not as simple as it seems, to turn the minds of the chief killers in our community, who make up the ‘animal industries’.
There are a lot of determined people who, within the law, conduct businesses dependent on animals. Maybe they won’t willingly give up their rights to use them. However a consumer boycott of their produce will deny them a means of making money from animals. That will make them mad in both senses of the word.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Un-oafing ourselves

It would help activists if they could at least consider the need to work hard for other generations. It makes it feel all uphill. It doesn’t yet look promising, that people are going to turn en masse towards vegan principle, so the slowness may require a shift of perception. Vegans: transmigration of souls, other lifetimes, reincarnation, all that sort of thinking certainly gives me a sense of optimism, not that the world will be repaired but that over the lifetimes I have lived and will live, along with vast numbers of fellow transmigrators, we may need to feel the essence of that before we really get to work on repair.
We may see our ‘lives’ as considerably longer than ‘three score and ten’. We might have only ever considered our life stretching into lifetimes. This, whether it’s true or not, does allow us to at least see through the ‘dream of personal success’. It allows us to dive into the warm waters of altruism with a nice mix of both selfish and unselfish motivation. Wherever we’re at on this spectrum, advanced and self developed or untouched completely, any stage that we are at relates to two sides, one of which is always the inner oaf. We’ve all behaved badly and still continue to do. Unless we consciously move away from bad behaviour and encourage others to do so too, nothing will happen. But as soon as the ball starts to roll, as we’ve seen with some environmental matters involving most of us in new habits, it can grow exponentially ... whoich may happen a little later than we hope. It’s as if most of us aren’t yet near the starting line. We’ve already come out of our burrows and noticed the mess humans have caused. As we are rubbing the sleep out of our eyes, perhaps a determination forms to move away from the old attitudes. Instead of feeling entitled to do whatever we feel like doing we start to move towards a feeling that we none of us have an entitlement to be destructive. If we are destructive then is that simply because we can’t see any other way to achieve our aims?
Imagination and courage are the watch words of the future age. To survive, we need to be unaffected by competition. If we’re locked into the old ways we’ll simply be up against competition and a never ending struggle to outdo other advantage-takers.

Oafs

Blog Friday 4th June 2010
What is it, when people behave badly, that then lets them NOT think ill of themselves? Perhaps it’s a slow process, almost as slowly as evolution itself, moulding normality into the way it is done. I’m okay because I’m normal, doing no worse than others. Who is this humans who has an arrogant sense of being special, privileged and the ultimate saviour of the planet. Are humans meant to be the dominant species, have a role to play in taking primitive lifeforms and transforming them into sophisticated beings? It’s as if humans have swallowed a sci-fi fantasy leading them to not question the dominator role … the human prerogative to be the way we are.
If we put it this way it makes us sound like oafs, but that’s more or less what we are by what we do. And alongside that we do some really wonderful things. We have become mesmerised by our own achievements and conveniently forgotten how we’ve paid for them. Our oafishness, arrogance and insecurity we inherit from our culture, parents, etc, and if we don’t spot it soon enough it all stays with us. It comforts the lonely and emboldens the value of ‘me-first’. It says “I must succeed within about seventy or eighty years of life”. If I fail I will be unhappy.
Only when we come to question this do other things fall into place and we se why we must start to change. Talk about a breathing space, this is one big space, not that there isn’t urgency but no reason to be hasty. Slowness of purpose doesn’t always indicate indecision, it sometimes shows patience and long term purpose.
Vegan Animal Rights, the movement, has embarked on a long struggle which could end overnight if the collective attitude changed, but maybe we have to endure this awful world as iut is for quite a bit longer yet, as if the time it changes hasn’t yet arrived and during these intervening years people who are part of the Movement are exploring ways of communicating the idea that all animals are royal.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Long term peace

If we have no system of personal restraint it’s likely we don’t care about behaving badly. If we see no REASON to be restrained it may be because we don’t expect to be confronted. If we can get away with it, if it’s done discretely so that we don’t draw attention to ourselves unnecessarily, we can behave badly, with the minimum of judgement from others. Religion tells us that God notices and that may be superstition but it is a form of restraint. Superstition itself is much more up-front - it tells us it’s all down to luck and that’s ‘luck’ that we sow.
Of course none of this matters if we already have a system that prevents us making a fool of ourselves in the long term. A philosophy?

Slavery

Wednesday 2nd June 2010

We’re each trying to ease our load in life. That seems to lead to me-first and benefiting from slavery. We make full use of the weak to gain advantage. Humans have enough brain power to take advantage of any resource. Why wouldn’t we have a slave to clean our house if you could own one. Why wouldn’t we own a car if we could and needed to travel? From where comes restraint?

Tempting towards exploiting

Tuesday 1st June 2010

If we are a mixture of good and evil then most of us who are sensible enough and kind enough to be in favour of ‘good’ can smell the ugliness of bad – we try to tune our ‘vibration’ away from it. We resist temptations when they are insidious and harmful. At the opposite end we have the “to hell with it” attitude. Temptation is too great – we risk the dangers. And that brings us to exploitation.

People behaving badly

Monday 30th May 2010

We set up an attitude along the lines of “what we sow, we reap”. We create our own reality absolutely, according to one wisdom. We bring down upon our heads either disaster or bliss or variations of each, We want to come down on the ‘bliss’ side but we ignore the warning signs and land up in a mess. I like to think superstition moderates our behaviour more than good sense. And on this matter of taking advantage, if we are careless of the ethics of what we do, we risk things unnecessarily. Superstition sees the pitfalls and lets us respond in the best way, therefore you could say it keep us honest. If we’re careless of an idea which makes us a profit but doesn’t feel right, superstition taps us on the shoulder. Perhaps superstition is merely instinct, but with a warning bell fitted to it. A nasty attitude brings bad luck, we all know that! Superstitiously ‘good luck’ flows towards people who are trying to clean up their act. Sense doesn’t necessarily come into it. Superstition helps us to feel badly about behaving badly.

The mental block

Sunday 29th May 2010

Prioritising is an advantage. We see what’s most important, the issues which needs special effort from us, but there’s a danger of putting off dealing with other important issues. Omnivores who are environmentalists and working for social justice may decide to put ‘animals’ on the everlasting backburner.
The process of assessing and reassessing priorities may be tedious but it forces us to look deeper. The deeper we look the more obvious is ‘the conspiracy’ (it’s handy to call it a ‘conspiracy’ since issues not in the ‘public interest’ are down graded quite actively by the vested interests. Denigrating the ‘bleeding hearts’ and ‘lettuce leaf eaters’ is as much part of the promotion game as pushing chicken nuggets. Put it any way you like: the wicked 1%’ers crushing the rights of the proletariat, it doesn’t help much but the idea of conspiracy helps make important links - health issues link to food, to the animals, to the environment, to the unfair food distribution around the world. The links are obvious enough once you dare to look and each of us are drawn to a particular ‘worst issue’ but it’s wise to keep a weather eye on all the rest. Is this too overwhelming?
If it is too much to take on board we must address our own comfort in living amongst so many worrying issues. Having a direction through it all (for instance, the vegan might have an angle on almost all issues by seeing them as manifestations of the violence within society), seeing the thread that links so many specific abuses helps us to develop habits that are NOT destructive and yet which we hardly notice being changed. New habits settle in and become as comfortable as the old ones. We have an autopilot for this. We must get using it to help us move along, to get essential work done, to help us avoid getting side-tracked.
I think the way it starts is that we set up a train of habits we know we can more or less handle. They’re aimed at our having minimal negative impact on the planet. Eventually we heal our own reputation – the human race aiming collectively to atone, especially in the eyes of the animals who’re the MOST abused of all our resources, the most damaged part of Nature.