Escape

Sunday 14th November 2010
Are vegans up to being useful, practical agents of assistance? If so, focussing on omnivores is a must, sans judgement.
First, we vegans should see our own ‘vegan-ism’ more broadly. It isn’t only about selfish concerns or about health or salving the conscience, it’s about seeing the connection between our food choices and escaping the ‘pit’.
The pit is escapable but most people don’t believe it is. And certainly it hasn’t occurred to them that by merely changing something as mundane as our food regime that anything good will happen, in that direction. Instead they believe what they see - all about them there is such a vast breakdown of values that all is hopeless.
What’s this got to do with food?
The pit, our human condition, seems dangerous and inescapable. This, vegans say, it’s all tied up with our addiction to things and their connection to the weakening of certain important values. Not being able to imagine life without animal products means animals will be exploited to provide what we think we can’t do without. This ties omnivores to one of society’s main systems of exploitation.
As advocates of animal rights it’s difficult to get that one across, because most people haven’t yet seriously considered thinking-about-animals’-feelings. They haven’t got past the supposition that veganism is a church of horrible disciplines. They can’t contemplate the prospect of a plant-based food regime. They’re influenced by our image as ‘lettuce-eaters’. They dig their heels in. “No way. Vegan, never!”
If they looked a bit closer they might see that veganism is our ticket to escaping ‘the pit’. Veganism may be pointing towards a spectacular future. But to entertain that possibility one would first have to overturn one’s present mind-sets.
Today we all have a fuzzy image of how things could be. Perhaps the ‘bigger picture’ is a lens through which we see how much life-doubt we have. Our own idea of the bigger picture might be one thing or the other, involving either a blurred image or a clear one - of how humans could be.
From one simple idea (the principle on which veganism is based) comes a picture of a world without a dominant and destructive human race causing havoc. This is a world embodied by the principle of innocence, not the naive childish sort but the innocence enjoyed by the not-guilty or the less guilty.
Those who value their own innate innocence have a better chance to balance the two driving forces of life, the pushing-forward and the holding-back. In slushy terms we might call this ‘the power of love’. More objectively we might see it as the balancing of energy and innocence. But however we think of it, these two forces in tandem seems to run the whole show, here on Earth. They fuel everything (and apparently, according to veteran space travellers, everything throughout the entire universe). They fuel ‘life’ by way of that unique, self-perpetuating impulse - the phenomenon of energy which is produced without any particular discipline or practice or stimulus other than spending-it-to-get-it-back. It’s forged in attitude. In just that, coloured by respect and gratitude for what we have, we have some semblance of contentment, a veritable furnace of energy. And with that, so it seems, we can hold back any inundation of wanting. It’s all in the state of mind. We would neither be wanting more nor contemplating using a heavy hand to grab at it. If this un-wanting is the “great force” on which the universe runs, then surely we’d want to be part of it. Any clue to it (outside the slushy and sentimental love-based philosophies), anything that could relieve the mayhem of our human society, might be worth following?
If omnivores can ever take veganism seriously, they’ll first have to question their own attitude to “self denial” (that’s what it feels like, giving up all sorts of familiar animal stuff). That self-denial has to be weighed against whether it’s worth going without things.
Let’s see what we have - we have lots of stuff and a passport to use violence to get it. This is the pit and dropping all of that is the act of escaping the pit.
Whether we’re vegan or not, we’re all still in prison, albeit an escapable one. Vegans need to remind themselves, and others, that escape is only a possibility if we are prepared to work hard on unravelling our attitudes. Are we prepared to see escaping as a major-major project in our lives?
There are other great projects, like raising children and contributing a sense of security to others, but if we aren’t escaping the pit it’s just an improvement of prison conditions. If escaping can become a significant focus, then there’s a whole new happiness in store for us. By adding this dimension to our life, we escape prison life.