Monday, August 23, 2010

Vegans shaming omnivores

Between us, omnivores and vegans, this is what I think can happen: the vegan points out a horror fact about animals and that forces a response - in effect it challenges the heart and the mind at the same time. There’s no honourable way to escape the trap tat is “vegan argument” so they attack back.
Once our shock-fact has been delivered, for us it’s ‘mission accomplished’ – we let them draw implications about what they do. We leave them to understand why we’ve brought the subject up, in the first place. You don’t have to be Einstein to work out what’s going on here. The moral raider strikes.
Omnivores dislike this very much. They don’t thank vegans for igniting shame in them, much less for demeaning them in the process, speaking in s-i-m-p-l-e language, like parent to small child. The resentment about us being so sure of ourselves is enough to override logic.
Feeling-wise, vegans seem to dislike omnivores and get into their attack uniform at the first opportunity. Vegans reckon they have to shout to make themselves heard.
This is where we, as vegans, have probably got to ask ourselves – “What is it I want, for myself, from Animal Rights - to be right, to feel superior or to teach?
Another tricky skill taught and learnt is reading. Does an infants’ teacher make illiterate kids feel ashamed because they can’t read? No, she teaches them with skill and patience and understands their specific problems, thus, eventually … they read. In our case, as adult-to-adult, we need patience and all the rest of it, so we can be with omnivores without biting their head off all the time, about how they are living. We must see how deeply deluded they are by their ‘safety in numbers’, that the majority do it so it must be okay. By showing compassion for omnivores in this way we ignite something more constructive than shame. And more lasting.

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