Shocking facts

How do animal activists come across? We meet a mate in the street, it’s nice to see them, but how do we seem to them? Maybe we smile, hug, ask how we are and everything is signalled. We do it without thinking. I’m calm, they’re calm, feelings are mutual, and that’s how it starts out. But sometimes we move into dangerous territory, when the subject of animal rights comes up. We might have a lot to say on the subject. It can be said calmly, approachably and strongly, but not so strongly that they want to change the subject.
No sermons, no attacking, no sloganeering, just calm talk - more can be said by understate than by diatribe, and those ‘Animal Rights Shock-Facts’ can sound stale if they’ve been heard before, or similar. If we try to persuade people it won’t necessarily be taken as a friendly gesture, more like attempted conversion. And anyway, it doesn’t usually get people thinking outside the square … or thinking about what they don’t want to think about.
Conscience doesn’t seem to call the shots any more, especially when it interferes with our ‘little comforts’ (like animal food and clothing). We’ve all known about ‘Hens in Cages’ for a long time, it’s a familiar horror story even amongst kids - but it isn’t ‘thought about’ … so it’s not acted upon. Most people are nowhere near boycotting animal products. They buy things they can’t possibly approve of. But if that’s so it isn’t necessarily our job to exploit their guilt to convert them. We might win them by getting them thinking but we achieve nothing by embarrassing them.