The most attractive feature of non-violence is that it is only interested in the bigger picture. That’s why it has no sense of timing. It can pop up at the most inconvenient times, like in the middle of a heated argument which is verging on a quarrel – someone outside breaks in to suggest that we “calm down”. We push them aside because we are convinced that our ‘good idea’ and the importance of it outweighs any need for calm. But as time passes, if things escalate into a personal slanging match, it’s only that call for calm which might have averted disaster. Only by applying the brakes in time, by going into repair and rescue mode, can we let the calming factor do its work. If we exclude it, violence ups the ante until an explosion is inevitable. After that it’s a long up-hill struggle to restore things. The calming element brings high emotions under control. It’s a sort of count-to-ten principle which is not meant to spoil our fun but to keep our dynamic urges under some sort of control. So, how dynamic should our non-violence be? Certainly we must never let it act as a dampener nor be afraid of robust interaction.
Take the violent world. In it, we always try to get what we want. We bend the rules and hope we can do the repairs later. But there’s another violent world in nature, where forceful events like storms, epidemics and earthquakes happen and destruction occurs on a massive scale. But this sort of violence isn’t the same as the human variety. Ours is damaging because it’s so coldly administered - driven by our sense of insecurity and therefore our own private ambitions. Only by implementing the principles of non-violence can we keep our own violence in check, whether it’s our own or that of our children, our partner’s or the collective consciousness itself. By checking ourselves for this and by observing our closest relationships, we can keep non-violent principles in touch with reality. Then we can watch them grow, probably at home first, within strong and loving relationships. Home should provide a relatively safe environment to test and trial non-violence before taking it into the outside world. Between our-most-familiar selves, anything goes. If the violence bug can be held back (with our partners and families at home) we can learn everything via praise, mockery and criticism, and the impact on our ego is softened by our intimacy with loved ones. Then we can get through our differences, perhaps more slowly than we’d like but more thoroughly. Hopefully, in this way we can design a creative life with those we love to be with, by watching out for each other and by intending never to leave these other people behind. That experience at home can give us enough confidence to communicate in the outside world with strangers and even with the much-vilified public figures whom we love to hate. If only we could simply observe what they do without automatically aborting on them or bringing out the hate bugs to hurt them? Good old reliably judgmental humans!!
Today, we are so conscious of violence (largely through stories reported in the media) that we think most humans are violent, which of course they aren’t! These media stories bring what passes for interest into our dreary lives, giving us something to talk about. So we discuss violence and say how we dislike it, but as we become more interested in it, it sucks us in. Then we become disgusted by our own attraction to it and swing right over to the opposite side, into the sentimentality of non-violence, attracted by it’s passivity. We start to use it to escape when things get tough. It’s hard to tell what is really so attractive about non-violence because it requires a deal of altruism to lubricate it. Perhaps we are tempted to use it to deny reality. In legend, this is what happened to the Lemurian civilisation. They abhorred violence. They were incapable of dealing with it. They eventually died out. The moral of the story is that perhaps they tried to deny the very existence of violence without having a realistic alternative to it. Perhaps the Lemurians hadn’t thought deeply enough about the co-dependence of the two elements. Perhaps they hadn’t thought enough about the dynamic side of non-violence, which might have lifted them out of their passivity into the challenging activity of outwitting violence.
We have strategies today for the dynamic pacifist. We can implement a more sophisticated philosophy by boycotting violent activity wherever it is found. We can avoid using violent goods. We can encourage the use of things that are cruelty-free and environmentally friendly. It now comes to a matter of practising what we preach, building a non-violent society, commodity by commodity. Non-violence must percolate into everything we do, from thinking and talking to actively supporting cruelty-free goods. As this fashions takes off, violence and coercion will literally fade away. And no one need ever notice the transition or identify what it was that fundamentally changed our society. As long as those with a strong interest in non-violence set the example today for the habits of the future, we need only go about the business of installing these habits. And do it by tomorrow at the latest!
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Article 34. A Non-Violent World
Is the fantastic dream of a no-weapon world, where we trust our neighbour, all just pie in the sky? Certainly, we don’t really know how to get there. We can’t get to first base. It’s as if we’re nowhere near figuring out how non-violence can get us to where we want to go. We’re into beliefs where evidence of truth gives over to the trusting of instincts. Most of us aren’t impressed by the immorality of science, so we’ve dumped it and are dabbling with intuition. And that mightn’t be such a bad thing for a while - to take much more on faith, if only to stop us hurrying things along too much as we’ve been guilty of doing in the past.
It could be suggested that we need less security than we think. The sooner we seek less protection the sooner we’ll realise there’s nothing to be protected from. If we trust life to be safe there’s no need to ensure (or insure) anything. It’s all rather down to trust. Unless we tread the virgin ground of dynamic non-violence, we’ll never see how impressive it is. It is a very different way of looking at things. Non-violence is never ambiguous. There are no get-out clauses and it serves as a perfect shopping guide. As we spend time looking for ethical goods (sometimes needing to spend a bit more money on them because of the smaller market - shame about that) we hopefully try to make it second nature to buy cruelty-free and environmentally-friendly products. Only when it becomes a habit do we realise just how non-violently we can shop. Thereby we send a powerful message of encouragement to the c.f. & e.f people.
As we draw such things as non-violence into daily life, we have to be prepared to be scrutinised by others who would love nothing better than to put us down. We have to be squeaky clean. And that standard, once set, must be kept up, because as we improve our game so our inconsistencies will show up all the more vividly. Even worse, if we begin to evangelise about doing the right thing, soon enough we will hoist ourself with our own self righteous petard, letting our adversaries have a field day with us.
A good comedian always knows how to keep the audience sweet and on side, whilst balancing everything with a heap of self deprecation. Similarly, when we do the talking, when we start to go on about animals, what we say about animal rights has got to be gauged carefully. Subjects like veganism or non-violent action are sensitive enough to require great imagination to keep them as "light" as possible. At all costs, whatever we say must be kept strictly non-personal. We must never be accused of aggression or of using our subject as an excuse to make a speech. A good comedian educates by way of entertainment. Preachers on the other hand, miss out the entertainment bit.
Non-violence is no new kid on the block. It’s as old as the hills and the very bedrock of all wise philosophy. But it always steps back and allows violence to pass by - remembering that we exist in a world where violence still rules. As activists, we won’t get our views across by gate crashing – we may only suggest that there’s another way - no more. How careful is that? Perhaps it’s careful enough to prevent any routine pushiness. By checking that impulse, we let non-violence grow in friendlier soil. It lets us harvest a bumper crop when it’s fine and ripe, when it can be most effective. It doesn’t need a supporting act to make it more valid. It doesn’t need selling. It can stand on its own feet, as a symbol for the future.
It could be suggested that we need less security than we think. The sooner we seek less protection the sooner we’ll realise there’s nothing to be protected from. If we trust life to be safe there’s no need to ensure (or insure) anything. It’s all rather down to trust. Unless we tread the virgin ground of dynamic non-violence, we’ll never see how impressive it is. It is a very different way of looking at things. Non-violence is never ambiguous. There are no get-out clauses and it serves as a perfect shopping guide. As we spend time looking for ethical goods (sometimes needing to spend a bit more money on them because of the smaller market - shame about that) we hopefully try to make it second nature to buy cruelty-free and environmentally-friendly products. Only when it becomes a habit do we realise just how non-violently we can shop. Thereby we send a powerful message of encouragement to the c.f. & e.f people.
As we draw such things as non-violence into daily life, we have to be prepared to be scrutinised by others who would love nothing better than to put us down. We have to be squeaky clean. And that standard, once set, must be kept up, because as we improve our game so our inconsistencies will show up all the more vividly. Even worse, if we begin to evangelise about doing the right thing, soon enough we will hoist ourself with our own self righteous petard, letting our adversaries have a field day with us.
A good comedian always knows how to keep the audience sweet and on side, whilst balancing everything with a heap of self deprecation. Similarly, when we do the talking, when we start to go on about animals, what we say about animal rights has got to be gauged carefully. Subjects like veganism or non-violent action are sensitive enough to require great imagination to keep them as "light" as possible. At all costs, whatever we say must be kept strictly non-personal. We must never be accused of aggression or of using our subject as an excuse to make a speech. A good comedian educates by way of entertainment. Preachers on the other hand, miss out the entertainment bit.
Non-violence is no new kid on the block. It’s as old as the hills and the very bedrock of all wise philosophy. But it always steps back and allows violence to pass by - remembering that we exist in a world where violence still rules. As activists, we won’t get our views across by gate crashing – we may only suggest that there’s another way - no more. How careful is that? Perhaps it’s careful enough to prevent any routine pushiness. By checking that impulse, we let non-violence grow in friendlier soil. It lets us harvest a bumper crop when it’s fine and ripe, when it can be most effective. It doesn’t need a supporting act to make it more valid. It doesn’t need selling. It can stand on its own feet, as a symbol for the future.
Article 33. Violence and Non-Violence
Confidence should be non-violence based in all our eating, shopping and talking regimes so that when relating to somebody, we aren’t even thinking about using violence or force of any kind. That’s the theory! In reality, we need to be full of direction and decision making drive. We don’t want to be seen as indecisive, especially when engaged in the serious matter of shopping.
Our confidence as consumers is shown in what we buy. To buy, we must to some extent comply with certain institutionalised practices so that we can take advantage of them. Although we curse the TV ads, we accept them all the same, because they tell us what’s out there to buy. We secretly support the promoting of commodities because we use them. We even come to enjoy the bright chirpy sales pitch that goes with something we want. We can identify with the promotion and admire the confidence of the advertiser, often in marked contrast to our own confused level of confidence.
The upshot: we may say we hate violence but we allow a lot of it into our lives. Often unnoticed. It doesn’t help matters if we doubt non-violence itself. In our society it isn’t taken seriously. It’s a bit whimpish. It seems ineffective even though we know violence is ugly and eventually always fails. We need to be sure that non-violence will bring us success, so if we go for it (become vegan) we need to feel it in our hearts not just our heads. I’ve often asked myself how I can check if I’m really becoming more violence-free, in that boastful ‘proud-to-be-vegan’ sense.
Perhaps we ultimately get to know what we’ve become by consulting animals. Animals know things! They smell things a thousand times better than humans and see things clearer than we do. They often have an uncanny knowledge about us and show it if they happen to be in a relationship with us. I’m mainly speaking about our cats and dogs at home. They show us things which we often find most illuminating. We see it in the way they approach us. They aren’t pre-set. They haven’t worked everything out before they do it. Importantly, unlike we humans, they are not judgmental.
When they know us, they have things to tell us. Things that we can’t rely on humans to tell us. The truth about ourselves. An accurate appraisal of how we are doing (on our progress towards non-violence). This is when we consult animals. They are masters when it comes to discerning a peaceful person, being drawn towards them and attracted to our affectionate nature because it denotes trust. To cats and dogs and many other animals we can be close to, this is value number one. Having suffered so badly from human violence throughout the ages, animals, wild or domestic, have become arbiters of good taste in the matter of harmlessness.
Needless to say, animals are different to us. No hubris, no superiority and (mainly amongst wild animals) no doubt about how dangerous humans can be. Their senses are impeccable. But they can’t judge everything about us because we are so very different from them. Unlike animals, we are aware of a future and we project it. We try to improve things. But with that comes the violence of maintaining our position of dominance over animals and that above all things, has led to humans becoming unstuck. The damage we’ve done has come from trying to improve things the hard-nose way. We’ve never learnt to ‘be content with our lot’. We realise at the eleventh hour that manipulation and bullying have fulfilled us in the short term but brought us to the brink of catastrophe. Now, some of us want to turn in a completely different direction. But it’s like steering a massive ocean going liner 180 degrees. It has so much momentum that to swing it round may have to be a much slower process than we’d like. So we have to see far ahead, beyond our own lifetime, to future generations of responsibility-takers, warriors of non-violence. For us here today, our job is to set the ground work and try to solve the eternal conundrum – when is dynamic too aggressive and when is non-violence too ineffective?
Non-violence has always seemed a bit passive, as if not effective enough to eliminate violence. But perhaps that’s the point – we shouldn’t want to kill off anything and that includes violence itself. Instead we should accept that one lives alongside the other. It’s the nature of the planet. Living alongside disease is a healthy battle-worn immune system. The disease is the attacker, the other the defender. In the violence of nature, we experience a blowing gale and see a stalk of wheat bending but not breaking in the wind. It’s in the tension between opposites. It’s the nature of life on earth, but it’s also the push-me-pull-you of our own mental processes. Only our native intelligence can prevent violence creeping in unnoticed or our non-violence becoming too cocky. As observers, we should notice the nature of these two elements; that non-violence confronts and then withdraws; that violence confronts and gets out of control.
Non-violence dances with violence. It lets the violence-based world make its impact (as it’s done so spectacularly so far) then burn itself out, whereupon it steps in to take its place and makes a different sort of impact. At this point in time, post-violent twentieth century, the time has come to consider human-devised violence as passé. If we are still clinging onto violence in any way, it’s because it was passed-down to us, as a way of getting things done. Violence became routine and as we emerge from a dark century, we step into another in urgent need of non-violence. Today, the ways of solving our problems by way of non-violence remain largely untested. They’re still raw and unknown. So patience is needed to come to terms with non-violence and if it attracts us as the panacea of our age, then we mustn’t run with it before we can walk with it.
Our confidence as consumers is shown in what we buy. To buy, we must to some extent comply with certain institutionalised practices so that we can take advantage of them. Although we curse the TV ads, we accept them all the same, because they tell us what’s out there to buy. We secretly support the promoting of commodities because we use them. We even come to enjoy the bright chirpy sales pitch that goes with something we want. We can identify with the promotion and admire the confidence of the advertiser, often in marked contrast to our own confused level of confidence.
The upshot: we may say we hate violence but we allow a lot of it into our lives. Often unnoticed. It doesn’t help matters if we doubt non-violence itself. In our society it isn’t taken seriously. It’s a bit whimpish. It seems ineffective even though we know violence is ugly and eventually always fails. We need to be sure that non-violence will bring us success, so if we go for it (become vegan) we need to feel it in our hearts not just our heads. I’ve often asked myself how I can check if I’m really becoming more violence-free, in that boastful ‘proud-to-be-vegan’ sense.
Perhaps we ultimately get to know what we’ve become by consulting animals. Animals know things! They smell things a thousand times better than humans and see things clearer than we do. They often have an uncanny knowledge about us and show it if they happen to be in a relationship with us. I’m mainly speaking about our cats and dogs at home. They show us things which we often find most illuminating. We see it in the way they approach us. They aren’t pre-set. They haven’t worked everything out before they do it. Importantly, unlike we humans, they are not judgmental.
When they know us, they have things to tell us. Things that we can’t rely on humans to tell us. The truth about ourselves. An accurate appraisal of how we are doing (on our progress towards non-violence). This is when we consult animals. They are masters when it comes to discerning a peaceful person, being drawn towards them and attracted to our affectionate nature because it denotes trust. To cats and dogs and many other animals we can be close to, this is value number one. Having suffered so badly from human violence throughout the ages, animals, wild or domestic, have become arbiters of good taste in the matter of harmlessness.
Needless to say, animals are different to us. No hubris, no superiority and (mainly amongst wild animals) no doubt about how dangerous humans can be. Their senses are impeccable. But they can’t judge everything about us because we are so very different from them. Unlike animals, we are aware of a future and we project it. We try to improve things. But with that comes the violence of maintaining our position of dominance over animals and that above all things, has led to humans becoming unstuck. The damage we’ve done has come from trying to improve things the hard-nose way. We’ve never learnt to ‘be content with our lot’. We realise at the eleventh hour that manipulation and bullying have fulfilled us in the short term but brought us to the brink of catastrophe. Now, some of us want to turn in a completely different direction. But it’s like steering a massive ocean going liner 180 degrees. It has so much momentum that to swing it round may have to be a much slower process than we’d like. So we have to see far ahead, beyond our own lifetime, to future generations of responsibility-takers, warriors of non-violence. For us here today, our job is to set the ground work and try to solve the eternal conundrum – when is dynamic too aggressive and when is non-violence too ineffective?
Non-violence has always seemed a bit passive, as if not effective enough to eliminate violence. But perhaps that’s the point – we shouldn’t want to kill off anything and that includes violence itself. Instead we should accept that one lives alongside the other. It’s the nature of the planet. Living alongside disease is a healthy battle-worn immune system. The disease is the attacker, the other the defender. In the violence of nature, we experience a blowing gale and see a stalk of wheat bending but not breaking in the wind. It’s in the tension between opposites. It’s the nature of life on earth, but it’s also the push-me-pull-you of our own mental processes. Only our native intelligence can prevent violence creeping in unnoticed or our non-violence becoming too cocky. As observers, we should notice the nature of these two elements; that non-violence confronts and then withdraws; that violence confronts and gets out of control.
Non-violence dances with violence. It lets the violence-based world make its impact (as it’s done so spectacularly so far) then burn itself out, whereupon it steps in to take its place and makes a different sort of impact. At this point in time, post-violent twentieth century, the time has come to consider human-devised violence as passé. If we are still clinging onto violence in any way, it’s because it was passed-down to us, as a way of getting things done. Violence became routine and as we emerge from a dark century, we step into another in urgent need of non-violence. Today, the ways of solving our problems by way of non-violence remain largely untested. They’re still raw and unknown. So patience is needed to come to terms with non-violence and if it attracts us as the panacea of our age, then we mustn’t run with it before we can walk with it.
Article 32. Acting Out
We try to maintain genuineness whilst giving our opinion. If we do make mistakes it may be because we overestimate the extent to which we can pull the wool over peoples’ eyes. We may think we are protected by ‘having the truth’ and so pay less attention to how we say things, but given the potential for this subject to ignite passions and stir up confrontations, we must be super-conscious when speaking.
It’s likely that some of us amateur communicators don’t see ourselves as others see us. Adults rarely feel comfortable talking about their feelings when there’s a difference of opinion or a moral principle at stake. We’d like to say what’s really on our mind, but issues of animal torture are delicate matters and all we can do is come across sincerely and take special care to observe non-violence principles.
Personal sincerity is at the very heart of going vegan, not only because we need people to believe in us, but because we’re in the business of communicating veganism in public. We cannot afford to be cynical. If we seem fake in sensitive conversations about animal rights, things may turn nasty. In our dealings with others, as soon as we start speaking about beautiful things, it’s best not to look ugly! We’re all guilty of hardness and value-judgments, so we all know the hubris of heated disagreements and their ability to lose us our friends and wreck our energy supply. But we insist on talking unguardedly none the less.
In the absence of conversations and debates about vegan issues, they can quickly become forgotten. Then the same old behaviour continues unquestioned. When something attractive comes along, we can’t resist it. We forget non-violence and decide to take the easier way, which is often the hard-nosed way. We might be aware that another way is possible, but it’s just an idea. It can be shuffled off. We know we feel more confident with the old tried and tested ways - “Hang it, I’ll do what I’ve always done”!
It’s likely that some of us amateur communicators don’t see ourselves as others see us. Adults rarely feel comfortable talking about their feelings when there’s a difference of opinion or a moral principle at stake. We’d like to say what’s really on our mind, but issues of animal torture are delicate matters and all we can do is come across sincerely and take special care to observe non-violence principles.
Personal sincerity is at the very heart of going vegan, not only because we need people to believe in us, but because we’re in the business of communicating veganism in public. We cannot afford to be cynical. If we seem fake in sensitive conversations about animal rights, things may turn nasty. In our dealings with others, as soon as we start speaking about beautiful things, it’s best not to look ugly! We’re all guilty of hardness and value-judgments, so we all know the hubris of heated disagreements and their ability to lose us our friends and wreck our energy supply. But we insist on talking unguardedly none the less.
In the absence of conversations and debates about vegan issues, they can quickly become forgotten. Then the same old behaviour continues unquestioned. When something attractive comes along, we can’t resist it. We forget non-violence and decide to take the easier way, which is often the hard-nosed way. We might be aware that another way is possible, but it’s just an idea. It can be shuffled off. We know we feel more confident with the old tried and tested ways - “Hang it, I’ll do what I’ve always done”!
Article 31 . Communicating Veganism
[From a set of articles from ‘The Place of Non-Violence and Altruism in Animal Rights’ from 2007.]
Why are we so keen to talk about all this discovery we are making – taking up ideas, changing habit patterns, etc.? Perhaps not for chattering reasons, but to implant a sense of optimism in others. "Optimistic veganism" shines a light on the future. If we can see the potential of an idea, it’s likely we’ll be busting to talk about it. It’s as if we’ve discovered a fine jewel. But instead of it being admired, something unexpected happens. BANG. We hit a hurdle. A feeling-barrier drops and we don’t understand why. Maybe this is our first taste of rejection over a point of principle, the first time we’ve felt cold-shouldered. This rejection and value-judgment on us becomes more real the more energy it sucks out of us. It hurts and is intended to hurt or at least bring us up with a jolt. Almost everything will be thrown at us, not only in words but in unspoken feelings of disapproval, in order to bring us back into the fold (“we’ll do anything to bring you home”). At bottom, it’s a suspicion that majority people often hold about minority types - that they are less sincere than they seem. And animal rightists who speak about kindness to animals, are often seen as being not really kind people at all. They are seen as people who can only show love towards "creatures" and not to their fellow human beings. Whether this is true or not, the rejection vegans often feel makes them try the harder to come across as sincere people.
Why are we so keen to talk about all this discovery we are making – taking up ideas, changing habit patterns, etc.? Perhaps not for chattering reasons, but to implant a sense of optimism in others. "Optimistic veganism" shines a light on the future. If we can see the potential of an idea, it’s likely we’ll be busting to talk about it. It’s as if we’ve discovered a fine jewel. But instead of it being admired, something unexpected happens. BANG. We hit a hurdle. A feeling-barrier drops and we don’t understand why. Maybe this is our first taste of rejection over a point of principle, the first time we’ve felt cold-shouldered. This rejection and value-judgment on us becomes more real the more energy it sucks out of us. It hurts and is intended to hurt or at least bring us up with a jolt. Almost everything will be thrown at us, not only in words but in unspoken feelings of disapproval, in order to bring us back into the fold (“we’ll do anything to bring you home”). At bottom, it’s a suspicion that majority people often hold about minority types - that they are less sincere than they seem. And animal rightists who speak about kindness to animals, are often seen as being not really kind people at all. They are seen as people who can only show love towards "creatures" and not to their fellow human beings. Whether this is true or not, the rejection vegans often feel makes them try the harder to come across as sincere people.
Article 30. Going Vegan
Does switching from one attitude to another, one diet to another, mean a long and painful transition or something more painless, even enjoyable? Could it be like falling in love? The ‘good idea’ going from the bliss of idealistic theory to a habit that becomes part of our comfort zone. Switching attitudes may take some time - but hopefully not too much time.
With veganism, it starts out as a very conscious attitude change, then hopefully moves on to something we just ‘do’, unselfconsciously. Perhaps it does need time to develop this one idea, for people en masse to come around to it, but if this one idea can transform our species, then any amount of hard work and patience is worth considering.
Say I were you. Would I start my day by doing certain new things and not doing certain old things? It might just come down to remembering to do it each day. Forming new habits might have to be a slower process than I want. To make slow, deliberate, assured change might be what I want for myself on the private side and when all that is in place, then maybe I’ll want to get political. Then I get a bit urgent and need to speed things up. I want to break down barriers. I don’t want to lose my advantage. And yet we’re not talking about having a tough reputation in the bear pit, but talking about issues with potentially soft and sensitive free-willed beings, who will decide things for themselves. Once we get actively advocating animal rights, it’s hard not to be pushy and we forget how easy it is for people to simply walk away from us, in their feelings anyway. However good we think an idea is, it shouldn’t be forced onto others. Any uninvited intrusions into other peoples’ private space, any violence, pushiness or even chutzpah, needs either to be handled with respect or eliminated altogether. As soon as our good idea is ‘fired’ at people (aiming at their values) they sense something uncomfortable and it puts them off completely, even swearing off both the good idea and us - for ever.
With veganism, it starts out as a very conscious attitude change, then hopefully moves on to something we just ‘do’, unselfconsciously. Perhaps it does need time to develop this one idea, for people en masse to come around to it, but if this one idea can transform our species, then any amount of hard work and patience is worth considering.
Say I were you. Would I start my day by doing certain new things and not doing certain old things? It might just come down to remembering to do it each day. Forming new habits might have to be a slower process than I want. To make slow, deliberate, assured change might be what I want for myself on the private side and when all that is in place, then maybe I’ll want to get political. Then I get a bit urgent and need to speed things up. I want to break down barriers. I don’t want to lose my advantage. And yet we’re not talking about having a tough reputation in the bear pit, but talking about issues with potentially soft and sensitive free-willed beings, who will decide things for themselves. Once we get actively advocating animal rights, it’s hard not to be pushy and we forget how easy it is for people to simply walk away from us, in their feelings anyway. However good we think an idea is, it shouldn’t be forced onto others. Any uninvited intrusions into other peoples’ private space, any violence, pushiness or even chutzpah, needs either to be handled with respect or eliminated altogether. As soon as our good idea is ‘fired’ at people (aiming at their values) they sense something uncomfortable and it puts them off completely, even swearing off both the good idea and us - for ever.
Article 29. It’s a Great Idea, but I Need a Kick-start . . .
My good idea is like a car with its engine cold.
I start the process of change. I latch onto this good idea and head directly into being vegan, non-violent, animal friendly, green, world transforming, ideal and everything else indisputable! But I know that once started, I must continue with it.
Definitely I want to leave violence behind me. I want to become a peaceful person. But how do I deal with the "feelings" of violence, woven so tightly into my personal experience and social culture? I’m overwhelmed by the difficulty of dropping it entirely. But I try. I aim to be no less than celibate with regard to animal abuse. I take on a vegan diet. I chuck out my leathers, and so on. The idea continues to inspire me. But what about my "feelings"? It may be a good idea in theory, but is it going to make me "feel" better?
We have doubts. Not about the principle, but about the practice. And that’s where sensitivity is a boon and a burden. We want to kick the idea of veganism about, let it settle into our lives, live with it, let it be known in our social groups without our worrying about what others may say. Then we can feel comfortable with it.
So, I decide to give up eating unethical stuff and that makes me think well of myself. I get ready to change. But it’s hard, slow work because I can’t see any wheels turning or any momentum building. I’m impatient waiting for things to happen. I want everyone to become mutual supports. Since that is unrealistic, I see my life as one where I am wading through treacle, in a state of ever-increasing social isolation. On the plus side, I get a surprise in finding the change of diet isn’t such a big a problem after all. By most accounts, this diet switch is found to be surprisingly easy. With some new products in the cupboard and a few new recipes, we can soon come to like the different food and not miss the animal-based foods we once enjoyed eating. But there are other difficulties that need to be mentioned that sometimes aren’t foreseen. We worry that our initial resolve might fade before the new lifestyle is established. So we go carefully and maybe decide to change incrementally. Trouble is, we probably know a few people who have gone half way and never progressed much beyond that. That is a sad position to find yourself in, neither betwixt nor between.
In heading towards being vegan, we might decide to go in full bore, using will-power, anything to get to the ‘other side’. But whichever ever works best for us food and diet-wise, there are other substantial issues still to face. We notice when certain things seem to be missing. It’s as if we’ve lost some things that we’d come to rely on in the past, like the acceptance of people who now think we are a bit weird and the habits that we enjoyed but which we’ve now purged! Our comfort foods, gone! Judgments we might have enjoyed making once, gone! Vegans experience changes on various levels when they start this boycott. They face the tension that exists between passion and patience and whilst veganism seems a good idea, it still needs to be strengthened to withstand all that drag-down inertia of the conventional world.
know where I want to go with it, my direction is clear, but there’s not enough forward motion. I need a kick start and so I look to those ideals out of which the good idea emerged. But the ideals themselves seem fuzzy and I wonder if I’ve put too much emphasis on change. Here I am, trying to change into a non-violent person (‘Go Vegan’ the slogan says). But I need more than fearlessness. I need to uphold ideals and ignore how others might see me. I’m inspired by a good idea even if I don’t fully understand it. Like when we fall in love and then have to learn to live together. We grasp the idea well enough but how do we get our brain around it, to put it into practice?
When we ‘go vegan’ - we talk about it. And because of what we’ve said, we have to make it work. Perhaps we squeeze it a little too hard and let it take on too much importance, all at once. We ignore how others might feel about it. We pursue the idea, no matter what. We don’t want our good idea turning sour on us, because that means going back to square one. Our image would never live it down. And besides, I want to understand the idea better, get into it with others so they, too, can be company for me. I want this idea to be everywhere … and then I stress about it.
This mixture of concerns can turn to despair, because veganism has yet so little social momentum of its own. It is up to the individual to bravely keep issues in the public eye whilst dealing with any problems quietly, at least until the ‘good idea’ is established in our own private life.
It may be that no one is fooled by this brave act. If contradictions show up in the new way we behave, then everything about us can seem a bit dodgy. Getting hold of this (vegan) idea, developing it and then practising it, isn’t quite the same as proving its merits. Many vegans live private vegan lives with no one else being adversely affected. But others are out there under the noses of everyone, acting as public vegans, advocating veganism to anyone they meet. Then there are those others of us who like to see ourselves as dynamic activists, who have a dream, but aren’t necessarily effective at communicating it. We might like to know why we fail. So for those of us who aren’t stunningly successful, we probably have to be extra careful to look after our own image as well as the image of the idea itself. To be effective, we must make our ‘good idea’ attractive enough to be habit forming if taken up. The more we can show that each one of us is going through the same process, simultaneously, for better or for worse, the better we can understand each other. And while some might have been at veganism longer than others, no one knows the definitive way to live or sell this idea because everyone thinks differently. The only reliable thing is that the closer we are when talking, the clearer the communication. The more at ease we are with our subject and the people we are with, the more effectively we can get something across that is dear to our heart. Apart from all the information we’d like to impart, we should spare a moment to explain the most central truth. That we are all undergoing the same journey, a less judgmental one.
I start the process of change. I latch onto this good idea and head directly into being vegan, non-violent, animal friendly, green, world transforming, ideal and everything else indisputable! But I know that once started, I must continue with it.
Definitely I want to leave violence behind me. I want to become a peaceful person. But how do I deal with the "feelings" of violence, woven so tightly into my personal experience and social culture? I’m overwhelmed by the difficulty of dropping it entirely. But I try. I aim to be no less than celibate with regard to animal abuse. I take on a vegan diet. I chuck out my leathers, and so on. The idea continues to inspire me. But what about my "feelings"? It may be a good idea in theory, but is it going to make me "feel" better?
We have doubts. Not about the principle, but about the practice. And that’s where sensitivity is a boon and a burden. We want to kick the idea of veganism about, let it settle into our lives, live with it, let it be known in our social groups without our worrying about what others may say. Then we can feel comfortable with it.
So, I decide to give up eating unethical stuff and that makes me think well of myself. I get ready to change. But it’s hard, slow work because I can’t see any wheels turning or any momentum building. I’m impatient waiting for things to happen. I want everyone to become mutual supports. Since that is unrealistic, I see my life as one where I am wading through treacle, in a state of ever-increasing social isolation. On the plus side, I get a surprise in finding the change of diet isn’t such a big a problem after all. By most accounts, this diet switch is found to be surprisingly easy. With some new products in the cupboard and a few new recipes, we can soon come to like the different food and not miss the animal-based foods we once enjoyed eating. But there are other difficulties that need to be mentioned that sometimes aren’t foreseen. We worry that our initial resolve might fade before the new lifestyle is established. So we go carefully and maybe decide to change incrementally. Trouble is, we probably know a few people who have gone half way and never progressed much beyond that. That is a sad position to find yourself in, neither betwixt nor between.
In heading towards being vegan, we might decide to go in full bore, using will-power, anything to get to the ‘other side’. But whichever ever works best for us food and diet-wise, there are other substantial issues still to face. We notice when certain things seem to be missing. It’s as if we’ve lost some things that we’d come to rely on in the past, like the acceptance of people who now think we are a bit weird and the habits that we enjoyed but which we’ve now purged! Our comfort foods, gone! Judgments we might have enjoyed making once, gone! Vegans experience changes on various levels when they start this boycott. They face the tension that exists between passion and patience and whilst veganism seems a good idea, it still needs to be strengthened to withstand all that drag-down inertia of the conventional world.
know where I want to go with it, my direction is clear, but there’s not enough forward motion. I need a kick start and so I look to those ideals out of which the good idea emerged. But the ideals themselves seem fuzzy and I wonder if I’ve put too much emphasis on change. Here I am, trying to change into a non-violent person (‘Go Vegan’ the slogan says). But I need more than fearlessness. I need to uphold ideals and ignore how others might see me. I’m inspired by a good idea even if I don’t fully understand it. Like when we fall in love and then have to learn to live together. We grasp the idea well enough but how do we get our brain around it, to put it into practice?
When we ‘go vegan’ - we talk about it. And because of what we’ve said, we have to make it work. Perhaps we squeeze it a little too hard and let it take on too much importance, all at once. We ignore how others might feel about it. We pursue the idea, no matter what. We don’t want our good idea turning sour on us, because that means going back to square one. Our image would never live it down. And besides, I want to understand the idea better, get into it with others so they, too, can be company for me. I want this idea to be everywhere … and then I stress about it.
This mixture of concerns can turn to despair, because veganism has yet so little social momentum of its own. It is up to the individual to bravely keep issues in the public eye whilst dealing with any problems quietly, at least until the ‘good idea’ is established in our own private life.
It may be that no one is fooled by this brave act. If contradictions show up in the new way we behave, then everything about us can seem a bit dodgy. Getting hold of this (vegan) idea, developing it and then practising it, isn’t quite the same as proving its merits. Many vegans live private vegan lives with no one else being adversely affected. But others are out there under the noses of everyone, acting as public vegans, advocating veganism to anyone they meet. Then there are those others of us who like to see ourselves as dynamic activists, who have a dream, but aren’t necessarily effective at communicating it. We might like to know why we fail. So for those of us who aren’t stunningly successful, we probably have to be extra careful to look after our own image as well as the image of the idea itself. To be effective, we must make our ‘good idea’ attractive enough to be habit forming if taken up. The more we can show that each one of us is going through the same process, simultaneously, for better or for worse, the better we can understand each other. And while some might have been at veganism longer than others, no one knows the definitive way to live or sell this idea because everyone thinks differently. The only reliable thing is that the closer we are when talking, the clearer the communication. The more at ease we are with our subject and the people we are with, the more effectively we can get something across that is dear to our heart. Apart from all the information we’d like to impart, we should spare a moment to explain the most central truth. That we are all undergoing the same journey, a less judgmental one.
Article 28. Non-Violence Becoming a Habit
On the face of it, dynamic non-violence calls for right-thinking which in turn depends upon our ability to discriminate right from wrong. But this leads us into the moral quagmire of making value judgments. Vegans, for instance, secure their position in the ‘right-thinking’ camp. But they often go on to compare themselves with others. With the ones who aren’t as ‘right-thinking’ as they should be. Vegans often become judgmental and this can make them look dangerous.
We’d be on safer ground if we left aside good and bad values and concentrated more on good and bad energy. By becoming non-violent, vegans tap into a highly efficient energy production machine. Energy used for non-violent activity contrasts with the energy-drain associated with violence. As such, violence is never directly advocated. It’s more like a fall back position. It scoops us up when we get lost. It appeals to our vulnerable or weak willed side. It’s a temptation but not because it is wicked, because it sucks energy out of us. One of the worst energy losses comes when we force things and then hope to get away with it. That is probably how most informed but obstinate meat eaters think. They hope they can "get away" with their meat diet without too much damage. The less obstinate eventually become vegan. They won’t take such a risk with their lives. So they start to consider making a major personal change.
We’d be on safer ground if we left aside good and bad values and concentrated more on good and bad energy. By becoming non-violent, vegans tap into a highly efficient energy production machine. Energy used for non-violent activity contrasts with the energy-drain associated with violence. As such, violence is never directly advocated. It’s more like a fall back position. It scoops us up when we get lost. It appeals to our vulnerable or weak willed side. It’s a temptation but not because it is wicked, because it sucks energy out of us. One of the worst energy losses comes when we force things and then hope to get away with it. That is probably how most informed but obstinate meat eaters think. They hope they can "get away" with their meat diet without too much damage. The less obstinate eventually become vegan. They won’t take such a risk with their lives. So they start to consider making a major personal change.
Article 27. Customer-Friendly Ethics
For animal eaters who won’t take the animals’ side, they must contrive ignorance. If this ignorance is widespread there isn’t a need to know what happens on farms and at abattoirs. They say that if farms and slaughter houses had glass walls, no one would be omnivores or carnivores. More importantly, if we did know what was going on and yet still chose to buy unethical items, it would mean that we are capable of being deliberately cold, and no one wants to think of themselves like that.
Today it is difficult to not know. It’s difficult to escape the obvious fact, that whatever we buy has to be replaced from a product pool (and in the case of animal products that means a slave-pool). Not only do we buy from it but we also help promote the acceptable face of it.
From their point of view, for public relations purposes, the animal death camps must not be seen as "death camps". The euphemism is "farm" and "processing plant". These places have to seem to be “efficient and humane facilities which are servicing the public with the best in food provision”. That must coincide with the image customers want. Meat-eaters prefer to hold an unbelievable picture in their head other than think about images of animals being tortured and executed. The consumer prefers to maintain a false illusion in order to continue enjoying what they enjoy - mainly pleasure foods. But this comes with a price. One has to be content to let go of the actual truth of things, even enjoyments like wearing fashionable shoes or visiting zoos. By performing some nifty mental gymnastics, we can double think our way past all these tricky situations.
Double think is especially useful in tricky conversations where we find ourselves defending an ‘impossible’ argument. With the aid of double-think, unconvincing though it may be, we can run a standard line of argument that eliminates the need to talk about certain things. We say: “It’s pointless to discuss this”. Meaning we don’t want to go there (or go anywhere near the subject of animal farming) and are observing our right to avoid both the issue and those people who want to talk about it.
Being part of The Vast Majority allows people to get away with things like downgrading the importance of subjects even when they are obviously important ones. We dismiss an issue as if we’re brushing a fly off our sleeve. But behind every rebuff meat-eaters make, they know the golden rule: whoever brings up the subject mustn’t get a foothold. This can never be made the subject of polite dinner table conversation. To put off any socially unaware person from shouting their mouth off, they must be sprayed with a little social ostracisation, just as we would spray the annoying fly. It can be done by belittling, ignoring or avoiding. Each hostile response gives the impression that it is almost immoral to waste time listening or participating in this kind of talk. Meat consumers (who represent at least 95% of all the people on the planet) reckon they have the right not to be bothered and certainly not to be intimidated. They have the right to ignore ethics if they clash with the majority, whose attitudes are rationalised in terms of bare survival – “essential to eat meat”. It’s something we learn when we’re young and it gains strength from safety in numbers. “As long as most people do it, I can do it”. The norm overrules ethics.
We often hear “It’s just human nature”, implying that it would be futile to try to change certain behaviour . . . implying that anyone going against the norm (who is in the minority) will inevitably find themselves between a rock and a hard place. In this case, between the normality of meat eating and the difficulty of being unethical. This is where the confusion is and where it hits us hardest. Young people especially. They pick up ethics by observing their elders, using them as a basis for their own self discovery. But they begin to wonder why ethical behaviour is inconsistent at certain times. Why do adults preach morals but behave unethically. Kids want to respect their elders but can’t help disrespecting some of the things they do. Thus, there is an all round confusion about what are good values.
As adults we prize values. They are the yardstick by which we assess and are assessed. These values are connected with how we want others to see us. It’s likely we do things ethically because we want approval. For instance, by developing a good sense of humour and by being kind and generous, we show how well we have learned our finest values. We’re judged favourably for them and if we can keep it up, if we display them consistently, we get a reputation. Adults want to be seen for their soft and their hard sides, so they try to be angels-cum-warriors. To achieve this image we have to learn, by way of ethical ground rules, not just the nuts and bolts of acquiring image, but how to be genuinely of benefit to others over a prolonged period. We need rules that are feel-good rules, that we revere as if passed down through the generations. We need guidelines that have worked throughout history and which today feel right, as if they have sprung straight from instinct. But today, with so many confusing diversions about, we have to be more conscious and clear about what our ethics are. In this modern age, instincts aren’t always enough to assess the complexities of human behaviour. We have to formulate ethics, consciously. Even if we don’t need to write them down, we at least need to discuss them. In the relaxed and friendly atmosphere of conversation.
Big decisions are made based on ethics and even though we experiment with them, they nevertheless represent safety - the safe way to do new things. For instance building relationships, building houses, building the very future itself. Ethics help us to emphasise what is important. Ethics expand consciousness. And if we use our brains enough (and if our ethics are comprehensive enough) we’ll let a new consciousness influence our everyday thinking process.
Other animals are limited in this way. They can’t necessarily ‘get out of the rain’ as we can. Our sophisticated thought processes have allowed us to feather our own nests. But we’ve neglected our role as guardians. Our intellect has conspired with morality to green light what we shouldn’t be doing. We’ve focused on our own benefit and consequently wreaked havoc, and we now need to make amends. We need to put ourselves second for a change. Materially and spiritually. We owe it to our victims to show gratitude for what we’ve taken and contribute something wholesome to the futures of our children. And to the future of Gaia.
Our planet is our sacred responsibility. We are up against the super-spoilers, mega-polluters and profit makers, and amongst them are the animal cagers and vivisectionists who simply regard ethics as obstacles to profit. They intend to continue until they are stopped! But recently there’s been a change in public awareness about the damage we humans have done and now, to some extent, there is a level of environmental responsibility. The environment gets good press after decades of neglect. But animal exploitation gets virtually no publicity at all; because it threatens the huge food and clothing supply chains.
So it seems that today our human passion and outrage is reserved for environmental issues not for animal farming. Sad enough that the beautiful planet is being damaged, and sad too that rapid species loss is taking place, but more insidious is our turning a blind eye to mass animal exploitation. Here we see a mindless perverting of Nature with no end in sight. And for what?
No animal product is essential, for any reason whatsoever. Sure, leather is strong and waterproof but life’s not threatened without it. Sure, cheese and eggs make yummy products but they’re not difficult to replace. Nothing from animals is so essential that we’d have to compromise our principles to get them and yet creature-killing has become a daily ritual in every human community on the planet. Humanity is hooked, and we can’t see past these products to where they could be replaced with plant-based equivalents. As with kicking any bad habit, it’s all in the mind. The big surprise is how easy it is to kick the whole animal product habit.
The mind, helped along by institutionalised misinformation, wants us to believe that plant-based diets are not safe. But evidence proves otherwise. If we read up on the subject (and there’s not exactly a shortage of literature on vegan nutrition) we’ll soon be assured. Much has been written not only about the safety of a plant-based diet (supplemented only by regular minute doses of Vitamin B12) but the health and energy of that diet.
Once the physical and psychological safety factors have been satisfactorily dealt with, there is no other reason to be using meat, milk or eggs … or zoos! In fact the absence of animal stuff is a great weight lifted from us. You can see it in the many happy and healthy vegans living in the world today, who are themselves evolving and helping other species to evolve. As each irreplaceable individual animal has a chance to move past the terror and suffering we’ve imposed on them, they will have the opportunity (as humans have had for so long) to come to know who they are.
Vegan principles make a start to unlocking the violence humans have done to animals, but more so, veganism shows the utter waste of energy in producing food from animals. Once the plant-based food regime is up and running in our life, it then becomes clear that we’ve been poisoning ourselves. The full extent of the toxicity of animal food itself is only now coming to light in terms of its effect on peoples’ health. Epidemiological studies show that ill health is closely linked to diets of whole populations, showing the links between high animal protein and high incidence of deadly disease. But still there is silence on the dangers of using animal foods, not to mention the silence about the demise of our ethics in general!
We’re led to see ethics as a rather threadbare garment unlikely to keep us warm enough, so we’ve substituted ethics with other moral codes that allow us to do whatever we want to animals. This is sad enough, but it has put us to sleep. We’ve lost our sense of outrage. We allow ourselves to comply. We no longer fight to protect the innocent. Animal Rights is urgent. Their protection from us is essential. We humans can no more be trusted with animals than paedophiles with kids. And yet it seems we still care little about this subject or for the ethics of non-violence. As we continue to drive animals insane for our own advantage, our only fear is that we become a minority ourselves, marginalised by a vegan world in which there is a total ban on unethical products, including foods and clothing using animals.
In a vegan world, our fundamental nature would have been consciously changed, individual to individual. If we want to become peaceful people, we must stop using animals because all animals are eventually barbarically killed. If we don’t step away from all this, our attempts at peacemaking will be to no avail. Peacemakers and planet-savers have to start spending their money on cruelty-free products thereby persuading unethical businesses to pursue a more ethical direction. The money in our pockets is the one power we have that can change things.
Today it is difficult to not know. It’s difficult to escape the obvious fact, that whatever we buy has to be replaced from a product pool (and in the case of animal products that means a slave-pool). Not only do we buy from it but we also help promote the acceptable face of it.
From their point of view, for public relations purposes, the animal death camps must not be seen as "death camps". The euphemism is "farm" and "processing plant". These places have to seem to be “efficient and humane facilities which are servicing the public with the best in food provision”. That must coincide with the image customers want. Meat-eaters prefer to hold an unbelievable picture in their head other than think about images of animals being tortured and executed. The consumer prefers to maintain a false illusion in order to continue enjoying what they enjoy - mainly pleasure foods. But this comes with a price. One has to be content to let go of the actual truth of things, even enjoyments like wearing fashionable shoes or visiting zoos. By performing some nifty mental gymnastics, we can double think our way past all these tricky situations.
Double think is especially useful in tricky conversations where we find ourselves defending an ‘impossible’ argument. With the aid of double-think, unconvincing though it may be, we can run a standard line of argument that eliminates the need to talk about certain things. We say: “It’s pointless to discuss this”. Meaning we don’t want to go there (or go anywhere near the subject of animal farming) and are observing our right to avoid both the issue and those people who want to talk about it.
Being part of The Vast Majority allows people to get away with things like downgrading the importance of subjects even when they are obviously important ones. We dismiss an issue as if we’re brushing a fly off our sleeve. But behind every rebuff meat-eaters make, they know the golden rule: whoever brings up the subject mustn’t get a foothold. This can never be made the subject of polite dinner table conversation. To put off any socially unaware person from shouting their mouth off, they must be sprayed with a little social ostracisation, just as we would spray the annoying fly. It can be done by belittling, ignoring or avoiding. Each hostile response gives the impression that it is almost immoral to waste time listening or participating in this kind of talk. Meat consumers (who represent at least 95% of all the people on the planet) reckon they have the right not to be bothered and certainly not to be intimidated. They have the right to ignore ethics if they clash with the majority, whose attitudes are rationalised in terms of bare survival – “essential to eat meat”. It’s something we learn when we’re young and it gains strength from safety in numbers. “As long as most people do it, I can do it”. The norm overrules ethics.
We often hear “It’s just human nature”, implying that it would be futile to try to change certain behaviour . . . implying that anyone going against the norm (who is in the minority) will inevitably find themselves between a rock and a hard place. In this case, between the normality of meat eating and the difficulty of being unethical. This is where the confusion is and where it hits us hardest. Young people especially. They pick up ethics by observing their elders, using them as a basis for their own self discovery. But they begin to wonder why ethical behaviour is inconsistent at certain times. Why do adults preach morals but behave unethically. Kids want to respect their elders but can’t help disrespecting some of the things they do. Thus, there is an all round confusion about what are good values.
As adults we prize values. They are the yardstick by which we assess and are assessed. These values are connected with how we want others to see us. It’s likely we do things ethically because we want approval. For instance, by developing a good sense of humour and by being kind and generous, we show how well we have learned our finest values. We’re judged favourably for them and if we can keep it up, if we display them consistently, we get a reputation. Adults want to be seen for their soft and their hard sides, so they try to be angels-cum-warriors. To achieve this image we have to learn, by way of ethical ground rules, not just the nuts and bolts of acquiring image, but how to be genuinely of benefit to others over a prolonged period. We need rules that are feel-good rules, that we revere as if passed down through the generations. We need guidelines that have worked throughout history and which today feel right, as if they have sprung straight from instinct. But today, with so many confusing diversions about, we have to be more conscious and clear about what our ethics are. In this modern age, instincts aren’t always enough to assess the complexities of human behaviour. We have to formulate ethics, consciously. Even if we don’t need to write them down, we at least need to discuss them. In the relaxed and friendly atmosphere of conversation.
Big decisions are made based on ethics and even though we experiment with them, they nevertheless represent safety - the safe way to do new things. For instance building relationships, building houses, building the very future itself. Ethics help us to emphasise what is important. Ethics expand consciousness. And if we use our brains enough (and if our ethics are comprehensive enough) we’ll let a new consciousness influence our everyday thinking process.
Other animals are limited in this way. They can’t necessarily ‘get out of the rain’ as we can. Our sophisticated thought processes have allowed us to feather our own nests. But we’ve neglected our role as guardians. Our intellect has conspired with morality to green light what we shouldn’t be doing. We’ve focused on our own benefit and consequently wreaked havoc, and we now need to make amends. We need to put ourselves second for a change. Materially and spiritually. We owe it to our victims to show gratitude for what we’ve taken and contribute something wholesome to the futures of our children. And to the future of Gaia.
Our planet is our sacred responsibility. We are up against the super-spoilers, mega-polluters and profit makers, and amongst them are the animal cagers and vivisectionists who simply regard ethics as obstacles to profit. They intend to continue until they are stopped! But recently there’s been a change in public awareness about the damage we humans have done and now, to some extent, there is a level of environmental responsibility. The environment gets good press after decades of neglect. But animal exploitation gets virtually no publicity at all; because it threatens the huge food and clothing supply chains.
So it seems that today our human passion and outrage is reserved for environmental issues not for animal farming. Sad enough that the beautiful planet is being damaged, and sad too that rapid species loss is taking place, but more insidious is our turning a blind eye to mass animal exploitation. Here we see a mindless perverting of Nature with no end in sight. And for what?
No animal product is essential, for any reason whatsoever. Sure, leather is strong and waterproof but life’s not threatened without it. Sure, cheese and eggs make yummy products but they’re not difficult to replace. Nothing from animals is so essential that we’d have to compromise our principles to get them and yet creature-killing has become a daily ritual in every human community on the planet. Humanity is hooked, and we can’t see past these products to where they could be replaced with plant-based equivalents. As with kicking any bad habit, it’s all in the mind. The big surprise is how easy it is to kick the whole animal product habit.
The mind, helped along by institutionalised misinformation, wants us to believe that plant-based diets are not safe. But evidence proves otherwise. If we read up on the subject (and there’s not exactly a shortage of literature on vegan nutrition) we’ll soon be assured. Much has been written not only about the safety of a plant-based diet (supplemented only by regular minute doses of Vitamin B12) but the health and energy of that diet.
Once the physical and psychological safety factors have been satisfactorily dealt with, there is no other reason to be using meat, milk or eggs … or zoos! In fact the absence of animal stuff is a great weight lifted from us. You can see it in the many happy and healthy vegans living in the world today, who are themselves evolving and helping other species to evolve. As each irreplaceable individual animal has a chance to move past the terror and suffering we’ve imposed on them, they will have the opportunity (as humans have had for so long) to come to know who they are.
Vegan principles make a start to unlocking the violence humans have done to animals, but more so, veganism shows the utter waste of energy in producing food from animals. Once the plant-based food regime is up and running in our life, it then becomes clear that we’ve been poisoning ourselves. The full extent of the toxicity of animal food itself is only now coming to light in terms of its effect on peoples’ health. Epidemiological studies show that ill health is closely linked to diets of whole populations, showing the links between high animal protein and high incidence of deadly disease. But still there is silence on the dangers of using animal foods, not to mention the silence about the demise of our ethics in general!
We’re led to see ethics as a rather threadbare garment unlikely to keep us warm enough, so we’ve substituted ethics with other moral codes that allow us to do whatever we want to animals. This is sad enough, but it has put us to sleep. We’ve lost our sense of outrage. We allow ourselves to comply. We no longer fight to protect the innocent. Animal Rights is urgent. Their protection from us is essential. We humans can no more be trusted with animals than paedophiles with kids. And yet it seems we still care little about this subject or for the ethics of non-violence. As we continue to drive animals insane for our own advantage, our only fear is that we become a minority ourselves, marginalised by a vegan world in which there is a total ban on unethical products, including foods and clothing using animals.
In a vegan world, our fundamental nature would have been consciously changed, individual to individual. If we want to become peaceful people, we must stop using animals because all animals are eventually barbarically killed. If we don’t step away from all this, our attempts at peacemaking will be to no avail. Peacemakers and planet-savers have to start spending their money on cruelty-free products thereby persuading unethical businesses to pursue a more ethical direction. The money in our pockets is the one power we have that can change things.
Article 26. What are Ethics all about?
Ethics are fresh air. They are our instinctive ‘knowing’. They let us decide which direction to take, which routes and they also warn us of dangers. Instincts, linked to our senses, let us detect ugly, noisy or foul smelling things, telling us when they are to be avoided. This is why animal farms these days are closed to the public (as are vivisection laboratories). They are not attractive to look at, nor peaceful, nor sweet smelling. They have all the charm of concentration camps. These are places people avoid. Today’s farms are so obviously hotbeds of unethical animal treatment that only those people who work on them (or the very few animal activists or environmentalists who’ve made it their business to see what goes on there) would visit them out of interest. In fact, the general public is decidedly uninterested in ‘that sort of farm’. Enthusiastic consumers of meat and milk products almost certainly still hold in their heads a picture of a happy farmyard. They prefer to know very little about modern husbandry methods, preferring to travel, cocooned on the morality train, happy not to be able to see through where the windows should be, at the industrial processes being applied to rearing and killing animals. It would spoil their journey towards becoming a better person. And spoil their dinner too!
By seeing farms as animal prisons solely geared up for death, we must discover if indeed our interests are ours or not.
Not knowing, not making it our business to know, not wanting to know: all these states of mind are dangerous and when it comes to animal farming, the powers that be are obviously trying to conceal something. It seems as though some real denial of truth is going on (by the way, those are revolving blades that meet the birds on the conveyer!). By knowing even a little of this unprintable horror, puts animal-eaters in a terrible ethical bind. Although not socially embarrassing (because everybody else is, more or less, locked into it too) it is troubling to us on a personal esteem level. We like to think of ourselves as ethical people. But as soon as animal rights is brought up, we wonder if we can redeem ourselves. We know that animals are in death camps and that our dollars, spent on animal products, keep them there.
By seeing farms as animal prisons solely geared up for death, we must discover if indeed our interests are ours or not.
Not knowing, not making it our business to know, not wanting to know: all these states of mind are dangerous and when it comes to animal farming, the powers that be are obviously trying to conceal something. It seems as though some real denial of truth is going on (by the way, those are revolving blades that meet the birds on the conveyer!). By knowing even a little of this unprintable horror, puts animal-eaters in a terrible ethical bind. Although not socially embarrassing (because everybody else is, more or less, locked into it too) it is troubling to us on a personal esteem level. We like to think of ourselves as ethical people. But as soon as animal rights is brought up, we wonder if we can redeem ourselves. We know that animals are in death camps and that our dollars, spent on animal products, keep them there.
Article 25. What is Immorality?
Behaviour that isn’t obviously harmful, is different to behaviour that is. Sex outside marriage or homosexuality may be considered immoral in some societies but hardly unethical. Rape and murder, however, are immoral and unethical. It’s the authorisation of certain things as being morally okay when they’re obviously wrong, that makes us lose our confidence in authority and in society’s standards of morality. Watching chickens hanging upside down shackled to a conveyer which is taking them into the cutting blades is so obviously immoral, that for a society not to outlaw it makes people lose faith in its whole take on morality. Vested interests lay the rules it seems. People must eat chicken! In order to get people to cooperate, authorities convince them that what might seem unethical is in fact quite moral. For most people that’s the green light because it’s been morally okayed. Similarly when a society says that polluting the atmosphere or spoiling the environment is necessary to modern society, it becomes the norm and eventually it is no longer questioned. This is why thinking, caring people are beginning to turn their backs on their own society. Vegans, for instance, boycott all animal products. They reckon drastic action is called for in these circumstances. This has happened for many of us because of society’s treatment of animals. Animal Rights is a wake up call on an ethic, on a natural instinct gone awry. In the beginning, we may have hunted animals on foot, waving sticks about and shouting at them. It wasn’t very efficient but it worked to some extent. All animals, humans included, lived together that way. Then as time passed, humans overstepped the mark. We stopped being predators and became monsters. It’s this monsterising of our human nature that vegans are up in arms about. The violence has gone berserk.
We started to take advantage when we took to horses and chased the animals with guns. Now we’ve made it even easier for ourselves by herding them, capturing and breeding them in captivity in order to kill them and eat them. It’s brutal but at minimum inconvenience to ourselves. It is a long way from the original fair fight or equal chase! In the age of factory farming, we’ve done a global warming job on our ethics. Even though it may merely be a slip in the brain function of the human, it is nevertheless a crucial one. We see our own vain image reflected back to us in various ways. We see it reflected in the panic we feel over the current ‘climate-change’ threat. In terms of our treatment of captive animals there should be a similar panic and a consequent massive reduction in our cruelty emissions. For that to happen the liberation of animals must be the first step, where we can start the practical implementation of rescuing animals from the dangerous clutches of their users. Some humans are convinced we should stick with convention and a traditional Western diet and lifestyle. Others say no, because we can no longer rely on society’s codes of morality to keep us ethical.
From the point of view of vested interests, morality has served a useful purpose. It has mobilised consumers into spending their money on goods - such as animal products. The animal industries have put their products out there, everywhere. The consumer uses them without a second thought.
On this train of plenty, people ride in complete confidence with the promise of a better times ahead. As consumers, we’re not usually educated about food. We are lulled into a false sense of security by people who do what most of us would never do (for a job). They misinform, they spin and they sell. They make sure we are never morally challenged by using animal products but by using them we each buy a ticket to ride. And so we all (nearly all) ride the same train as everybody else and know it will carry us all the way to our destination. The train driver seems to know where the train is going and for that reason alone it wouldn’t occur to most of us to get off and walk the tracks instead. If we keep our seat on this train, we believe we’ll be shown the way through, even though we don’t fully understand it. By accepting its authority, we agree with its version of right and wrong. Most people accept the given morality of their society, of their parents, of the majority to which they identify. People follow morality as spoken by priests, politicians and teachers, even though it has been weakened by double standards and we suspect the driver has lost his way.
Some, however, don’t accept the terms of carriage. We don’t trust the ‘carrier’. We choose not to travel on this train despite the fact there are virtually no other trains running. Society makes it difficult to jump off the train and they don’t allow us to change the route it takes, so we have to accept the given. Shape up or ship out. We have to accept the whole journey without question. We either commit to the moral norm or we abandon the whole thing altogether. If we leave, we then have to reappraise each moral code individually according to ethical instinct.
Ethics are like the rail network or rather the hills and valleys which determine the routes of the network. They may lead us towards the same end, but the difference is that we allow ourselves the opportunity to make our own choices - to take the fast route, a more scenic route, a low energy-consuming way or a less exploiting way. Each ethic is probably quite logical, otherwise it wouldn’t have survived for so long as a way to get to where we want to go to. Ethics are our compasses.
There are several ethical routes to choose from. The choice has to do with exercising free will. Morality deprives us of this element of choice. We are not meant to make judgments on nasty stuff we see. On the contrary, we should show our obedience by smiling as we go about our business. Even when chewing the body parts of our beautiful brothers and sisters of the animal world. Morality demands obedience. It imprisons us, as it does the animals, on a one way, windowless, slow-moving train.
We started to take advantage when we took to horses and chased the animals with guns. Now we’ve made it even easier for ourselves by herding them, capturing and breeding them in captivity in order to kill them and eat them. It’s brutal but at minimum inconvenience to ourselves. It is a long way from the original fair fight or equal chase! In the age of factory farming, we’ve done a global warming job on our ethics. Even though it may merely be a slip in the brain function of the human, it is nevertheless a crucial one. We see our own vain image reflected back to us in various ways. We see it reflected in the panic we feel over the current ‘climate-change’ threat. In terms of our treatment of captive animals there should be a similar panic and a consequent massive reduction in our cruelty emissions. For that to happen the liberation of animals must be the first step, where we can start the practical implementation of rescuing animals from the dangerous clutches of their users. Some humans are convinced we should stick with convention and a traditional Western diet and lifestyle. Others say no, because we can no longer rely on society’s codes of morality to keep us ethical.
From the point of view of vested interests, morality has served a useful purpose. It has mobilised consumers into spending their money on goods - such as animal products. The animal industries have put their products out there, everywhere. The consumer uses them without a second thought.
On this train of plenty, people ride in complete confidence with the promise of a better times ahead. As consumers, we’re not usually educated about food. We are lulled into a false sense of security by people who do what most of us would never do (for a job). They misinform, they spin and they sell. They make sure we are never morally challenged by using animal products but by using them we each buy a ticket to ride. And so we all (nearly all) ride the same train as everybody else and know it will carry us all the way to our destination. The train driver seems to know where the train is going and for that reason alone it wouldn’t occur to most of us to get off and walk the tracks instead. If we keep our seat on this train, we believe we’ll be shown the way through, even though we don’t fully understand it. By accepting its authority, we agree with its version of right and wrong. Most people accept the given morality of their society, of their parents, of the majority to which they identify. People follow morality as spoken by priests, politicians and teachers, even though it has been weakened by double standards and we suspect the driver has lost his way.
Some, however, don’t accept the terms of carriage. We don’t trust the ‘carrier’. We choose not to travel on this train despite the fact there are virtually no other trains running. Society makes it difficult to jump off the train and they don’t allow us to change the route it takes, so we have to accept the given. Shape up or ship out. We have to accept the whole journey without question. We either commit to the moral norm or we abandon the whole thing altogether. If we leave, we then have to reappraise each moral code individually according to ethical instinct.
Ethics are like the rail network or rather the hills and valleys which determine the routes of the network. They may lead us towards the same end, but the difference is that we allow ourselves the opportunity to make our own choices - to take the fast route, a more scenic route, a low energy-consuming way or a less exploiting way. Each ethic is probably quite logical, otherwise it wouldn’t have survived for so long as a way to get to where we want to go to. Ethics are our compasses.
There are several ethical routes to choose from. The choice has to do with exercising free will. Morality deprives us of this element of choice. We are not meant to make judgments on nasty stuff we see. On the contrary, we should show our obedience by smiling as we go about our business. Even when chewing the body parts of our beautiful brothers and sisters of the animal world. Morality demands obedience. It imprisons us, as it does the animals, on a one way, windowless, slow-moving train.
Article 24. Ethics starts with Non-Violence
Apart from veganism being a great diet, it is also an ethical diet and has a double bonus in its non-violence principle. If we accuse someone of being violent because they eat meat, that accusation may be construed as a "violence" and for that reason alone we should avoid doing so. Any hint of confrontation, aggression or violence loses us the valuable opportunity to discuss things rationally. Once someone feels they’re being attacked, they’ll counter attack, and so on. The discussion will go round in circles and central arguments are lost. If we end up ‘shouting’ at people who disagree with us, they will simply walk away and their hostile attitude to animal rights will become even more entrenched. If we hurl abuse at meat eaters, we will always seem like ‘animal rightist nutters’, and they’ll always be suspicious of our hidden agenda. Maybe we want to subvert society by liberating all the animals???
There’s an enormous difference of opinion between the protectors of animals and the users of animals. Many of us who are animal (or environmental) activists have been involved for so long, that it’s possible we’ve forgotten how it felt when we accepted things the way they were, living as an integrated part of the mainstream community. All we know is how it feels to be part of a minority and to be shut out of discussing these matters so dear to our heart. We also know that ‘our subject’ is unlike any other subject. Our interest isn’t like a hobby or something we are casual about. It’s a matter of life and death for us, of righting perhaps the most terrible wrong ever known to our society. This is not an attitude with which we can agree to disagree. It’s a view that many of us feel must be argued strongly over, so that we can drive our central point home - that animal slavery has got to end.
If we are abolitionists who think no animals should ever be used by humans, if we propose a total animal food ban, we might seem unbelievably radical and confronting. But that position isn’t violent, it is simply a matter of passionate promotion. It’s just as if we were selling soap powder, only unlike soap what we are selling is pivotal to future human development. In our eyes it is essential. However, we only need to hold that view, not necessarily force it down peoples’ throats every time we talk to them, or every time animals are mentioned. There is an appropriate time and place for our vegan voice.
This great gulf of perception between animal users and vegans does have a middle ground but it looks weak, compromised, convenient and hypocritical. The meat eater gives a bit. They might eat free range eggs or only drink organically fed cow’s milk, but essentially continue being indifferent towards animals. A non meat-eater might dabble with vegetarianism but still take care to avoid going too far, for fear of becoming too radicalised, or being too different from friends. For them leather shoes are okay, the same as wearing silk and wool or eating butter and eggs – “boycott them and you’ll go crazy”, they say. So, it’s the middle of the roaders, as distinct from the uninformed, who know enough but who are still unwilling to act and who (from our point of view) are ethically most at risk. We urgently need to make contact with them.
If vegans want to entice middle-ground people to disassociate from animal slavery altogether, they must act as guides rather than inquisitors, educators rather than judges. Vegans need to be informers of details. From what happens to animals down on the farm to the practicalities of applying vegan principles. It’s our job to allow anyone who wants to change, to take the initiative of changing themselves without their being shoved from behind by us.
In our society, we are encouraged not to know about animal issues. Factory farms, abattoirs and animal laboratories are closed to the public. But it’s unlikely the public are keen to visit them anyway because they are such ugly places. More importantly, it’s frightening to see how easily we kid ourselves. We reckon we can’t object to what we haven’t seen with our own eyes. We also reckon that if our educators thought we should know about all this, they’d have taught it at school. If we aren’t taught something then we reckon it’s probably not worth knowing about anyway. And if any of this warped logic doesn’t sway us, we can be sure that our own backup defence shield will swing into action, to act in our best interests. We know all too well that if we take on board issues concerning animals, we’ll be inconvenienced. One realisation would lead to another. For example, as soon as dairy products were implicated in the cruelty argument, everything made with milk would be ethically infected and our conscience would pressure us into avoiding dairy products altogether. That spells inconvenience big time. If vegans are left to say why they boycott dairy products, they will threaten our whole existence. If we let them show up our ethics we’ll feel compromised.
Imagine then what happens when the same arguments are applied to our wardrobes. Health arguments obviously don’t apply here. Leather shoes, for instance, are not "bad" for you, but they are hardly ethical items since they come from slaughterhouses just as meat does. Our most fashionable attire is often associated with the ugliness of abattoirs. Even vegetarians who still wear leather can’t justify it and that puts them in a difficult position. If we are compromised, we can’t hold (let alone promote) an animal rights position. And that is a problem for many people seeking liberation for animals.
Even though most of us would like to be known as a compassionate person, as soon as we consciously decide to buy something that is unethical, the game is up for us. It’s the same when we buy a ‘pet’ from a pet shop. It means another ‘pet’ will be bred to replace the sold one, so the cage is never empty. Whether first or second hand, whenever we buy an item made from animals, we create a vacuum for another item to be produced to take its place. To offset this is impossible. There are no carbon credits for animal use! Even when we think we’re being generous, in thinning out our shoe rack, we fall into the same trap. We give away a pair of shoes to someone who needs them: we leave a space on the rack which gives us an excuse to ‘go shopping’ for more.
The idea of "justified robbery", stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, may be considered ethical. Stealing from the poor to make the rich even richer, is never justifiable. In this way then, nor is stealing the life of a voiceless animal! This magnitude of thieving is no different to the exploitation of children or the desecration of a forest. It’s just that same old human habit - using our advantage to harm the harmless.
There’s an enormous difference of opinion between the protectors of animals and the users of animals. Many of us who are animal (or environmental) activists have been involved for so long, that it’s possible we’ve forgotten how it felt when we accepted things the way they were, living as an integrated part of the mainstream community. All we know is how it feels to be part of a minority and to be shut out of discussing these matters so dear to our heart. We also know that ‘our subject’ is unlike any other subject. Our interest isn’t like a hobby or something we are casual about. It’s a matter of life and death for us, of righting perhaps the most terrible wrong ever known to our society. This is not an attitude with which we can agree to disagree. It’s a view that many of us feel must be argued strongly over, so that we can drive our central point home - that animal slavery has got to end.
If we are abolitionists who think no animals should ever be used by humans, if we propose a total animal food ban, we might seem unbelievably radical and confronting. But that position isn’t violent, it is simply a matter of passionate promotion. It’s just as if we were selling soap powder, only unlike soap what we are selling is pivotal to future human development. In our eyes it is essential. However, we only need to hold that view, not necessarily force it down peoples’ throats every time we talk to them, or every time animals are mentioned. There is an appropriate time and place for our vegan voice.
This great gulf of perception between animal users and vegans does have a middle ground but it looks weak, compromised, convenient and hypocritical. The meat eater gives a bit. They might eat free range eggs or only drink organically fed cow’s milk, but essentially continue being indifferent towards animals. A non meat-eater might dabble with vegetarianism but still take care to avoid going too far, for fear of becoming too radicalised, or being too different from friends. For them leather shoes are okay, the same as wearing silk and wool or eating butter and eggs – “boycott them and you’ll go crazy”, they say. So, it’s the middle of the roaders, as distinct from the uninformed, who know enough but who are still unwilling to act and who (from our point of view) are ethically most at risk. We urgently need to make contact with them.
If vegans want to entice middle-ground people to disassociate from animal slavery altogether, they must act as guides rather than inquisitors, educators rather than judges. Vegans need to be informers of details. From what happens to animals down on the farm to the practicalities of applying vegan principles. It’s our job to allow anyone who wants to change, to take the initiative of changing themselves without their being shoved from behind by us.
In our society, we are encouraged not to know about animal issues. Factory farms, abattoirs and animal laboratories are closed to the public. But it’s unlikely the public are keen to visit them anyway because they are such ugly places. More importantly, it’s frightening to see how easily we kid ourselves. We reckon we can’t object to what we haven’t seen with our own eyes. We also reckon that if our educators thought we should know about all this, they’d have taught it at school. If we aren’t taught something then we reckon it’s probably not worth knowing about anyway. And if any of this warped logic doesn’t sway us, we can be sure that our own backup defence shield will swing into action, to act in our best interests. We know all too well that if we take on board issues concerning animals, we’ll be inconvenienced. One realisation would lead to another. For example, as soon as dairy products were implicated in the cruelty argument, everything made with milk would be ethically infected and our conscience would pressure us into avoiding dairy products altogether. That spells inconvenience big time. If vegans are left to say why they boycott dairy products, they will threaten our whole existence. If we let them show up our ethics we’ll feel compromised.
Imagine then what happens when the same arguments are applied to our wardrobes. Health arguments obviously don’t apply here. Leather shoes, for instance, are not "bad" for you, but they are hardly ethical items since they come from slaughterhouses just as meat does. Our most fashionable attire is often associated with the ugliness of abattoirs. Even vegetarians who still wear leather can’t justify it and that puts them in a difficult position. If we are compromised, we can’t hold (let alone promote) an animal rights position. And that is a problem for many people seeking liberation for animals.
Even though most of us would like to be known as a compassionate person, as soon as we consciously decide to buy something that is unethical, the game is up for us. It’s the same when we buy a ‘pet’ from a pet shop. It means another ‘pet’ will be bred to replace the sold one, so the cage is never empty. Whether first or second hand, whenever we buy an item made from animals, we create a vacuum for another item to be produced to take its place. To offset this is impossible. There are no carbon credits for animal use! Even when we think we’re being generous, in thinning out our shoe rack, we fall into the same trap. We give away a pair of shoes to someone who needs them: we leave a space on the rack which gives us an excuse to ‘go shopping’ for more.
The idea of "justified robbery", stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, may be considered ethical. Stealing from the poor to make the rich even richer, is never justifiable. In this way then, nor is stealing the life of a voiceless animal! This magnitude of thieving is no different to the exploitation of children or the desecration of a forest. It’s just that same old human habit - using our advantage to harm the harmless.
Article 23. Ethics starts with Non-Violence
Apart from veganism being a great diet, it is also an ethical diet and has a double bonus in its non-violence principle. If we accuse someone of being violent because they eat meat, that accusation may be construed as a "violence" and for that reason alone we should avoid doing so. Any hint of confrontation, aggression or violence loses us the valuable opportunity to discuss things rationally. Once someone feels they’re being attacked, they’ll counter attack, and so on. The discussion will go round in circles and central arguments are lost. If we end up ‘shouting’ at people who disagree with us, they will simply walk away and their hostile attitude to animal rights will become even more entrenched. If we hurl abuse at meat eaters, we will always seem like ‘animal rightist nutters’, and they’ll always be suspicious of our hidden agenda. Maybe we want to subvert society by liberating all the animals???
There’s an enormous difference of opinion between the protectors of animals and the users of animals. Many of us who are animal (or environmental) activists have been involved for so long, that it’s possible we’ve forgotten how it felt when we accepted things the way they were, living as an integrated part of the mainstream community. All we know is how it feels to be part of a minority and to be shut out of discussing these matters so dear to our heart. We also know that ‘our subject’ is unlike any other subject. Our interest isn’t like a hobby or something we are casual about. It’s a matter of life and death for us, of righting perhaps the most terrible wrong ever known to our society. This is not an attitude with which we can agree to disagree. It’s a view that many of us feel must be argued strongly over, so that we can drive our central point home - that animal slavery has got to end.
If we are abolitionists who think no animals should ever be used by humans, if we propose a total animal food ban, we might seem unbelievably radical and confronting. But that position isn’t violent, it is simply a matter of passionate promotion. It’s just as if we were selling soap powder, only unlike soap what we are selling is pivotal to future human development. In our eyes it is essential. However, we only need to hold that view, not necessarily force it down peoples’ throats every time we talk to them, or every time animals are mentioned. There is an appropriate time and place for our vegan voice.
This great gulf of perception between animal users and vegans does have a middle ground but it looks weak, compromised, convenient and hypocritical. The meat eater gives a bit. They might eat free range eggs or only drink organically fed cow’s milk, but essentially continue being indifferent towards animals. A non meat-eater might dabble with vegetarianism but still take care to avoid going too far, for fear of becoming too radicalised, or being too different from friends. For them leather shoes are okay, the same as wearing silk and wool or eating butter and eggs – “boycott them and you’ll go crazy”, they say. So, it’s the middle of the roaders, as distinct from the uninformed, who know enough but who are still unwilling to act and who (from our point of view) are ethically most at risk. We urgently need to make contact with them.
If vegans want to entice middle-ground people to disassociate from animal slavery altogether, they must act as guides rather than inquisitors, educators rather than judges. Vegans need to be informers of details. From what happens to animals down on the farm to the practicalities of applying vegan principles. It’s our job to allow anyone who wants to change, to take the initiative of changing themselves without their being shoved from behind by us.
In our society, we are encouraged not to know about animal issues. Factory farms, abattoirs and animal laboratories are closed to the public. But it’s unlikely the public are keen to visit them anyway because they are such ugly places. More importantly, it’s frightening to see how easily we kid ourselves. We reckon we can’t object to what we haven’t seen with our own eyes. We also reckon that if our educators thought we should know about all this, they’d have taught it at school. If we aren’t taught something then we reckon it’s probably not worth knowing about anyway. And if any of this warped logic doesn’t sway us, we can be sure that our own backup defence shield will swing into action, to act in our best interests. We know all too well that if we take on board issues concerning animals, we’ll be inconvenienced. One realisation would lead to another. For example, as soon as dairy products were implicated in the cruelty argument, everything made with milk would be ethically infected and our conscience would pressure us into avoiding dairy products altogether. That spells inconvenience big time. If vegans are left to say why they boycott dairy products, they will threaten our whole existence. If we let them show up our ethics we’ll feel compromised.
Imagine then what happens when the same arguments are applied to our wardrobes. Health arguments obviously don’t apply here. Leather shoes, for instance, are not "bad" for you, but they are hardly ethical items since they come from slaughterhouses just as meat does. Our most fashionable attire is often associated with the ugliness of abattoirs. Even vegetarians who still wear leather can’t justify it and that puts them in a difficult position. If we are compromised, we can’t hold (let alone promote) an animal rights position. And that is a problem for many people seeking liberation for animals.
Even though most of us would like to be known as a compassionate person, as soon as we consciously decide to buy something that is unethical, the game is up for us. It’s the same when we buy a ‘pet’ from a pet shop. It means another ‘pet’ will be bred to replace the sold one, so the cage is never empty. Whether first or second hand, whenever we buy an item made from animals, we create a vacuum for another item to be produced to take its place. To offset this is impossible. There are no carbon credits for animal use! Even when we think we’re being generous, in thinning out our shoe rack, we fall into the same trap. We give away a pair of shoes to someone who needs them: we leave a space on the rack which gives us an excuse to ‘go shopping’ for more.
The idea of "justified robbery", stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, may be considered ethical. Stealing from the poor to make the rich even richer, is never justifiable. In this way then, nor is stealing the life of a voiceless animal! This magnitude of thieving is no different to the exploitation of children or the desecration of a forest. It’s just that same old human habit - using our advantage to harm the harmless.
There’s an enormous difference of opinion between the protectors of animals and the users of animals. Many of us who are animal (or environmental) activists have been involved for so long, that it’s possible we’ve forgotten how it felt when we accepted things the way they were, living as an integrated part of the mainstream community. All we know is how it feels to be part of a minority and to be shut out of discussing these matters so dear to our heart. We also know that ‘our subject’ is unlike any other subject. Our interest isn’t like a hobby or something we are casual about. It’s a matter of life and death for us, of righting perhaps the most terrible wrong ever known to our society. This is not an attitude with which we can agree to disagree. It’s a view that many of us feel must be argued strongly over, so that we can drive our central point home - that animal slavery has got to end.
If we are abolitionists who think no animals should ever be used by humans, if we propose a total animal food ban, we might seem unbelievably radical and confronting. But that position isn’t violent, it is simply a matter of passionate promotion. It’s just as if we were selling soap powder, only unlike soap what we are selling is pivotal to future human development. In our eyes it is essential. However, we only need to hold that view, not necessarily force it down peoples’ throats every time we talk to them, or every time animals are mentioned. There is an appropriate time and place for our vegan voice.
This great gulf of perception between animal users and vegans does have a middle ground but it looks weak, compromised, convenient and hypocritical. The meat eater gives a bit. They might eat free range eggs or only drink organically fed cow’s milk, but essentially continue being indifferent towards animals. A non meat-eater might dabble with vegetarianism but still take care to avoid going too far, for fear of becoming too radicalised, or being too different from friends. For them leather shoes are okay, the same as wearing silk and wool or eating butter and eggs – “boycott them and you’ll go crazy”, they say. So, it’s the middle of the roaders, as distinct from the uninformed, who know enough but who are still unwilling to act and who (from our point of view) are ethically most at risk. We urgently need to make contact with them.
If vegans want to entice middle-ground people to disassociate from animal slavery altogether, they must act as guides rather than inquisitors, educators rather than judges. Vegans need to be informers of details. From what happens to animals down on the farm to the practicalities of applying vegan principles. It’s our job to allow anyone who wants to change, to take the initiative of changing themselves without their being shoved from behind by us.
In our society, we are encouraged not to know about animal issues. Factory farms, abattoirs and animal laboratories are closed to the public. But it’s unlikely the public are keen to visit them anyway because they are such ugly places. More importantly, it’s frightening to see how easily we kid ourselves. We reckon we can’t object to what we haven’t seen with our own eyes. We also reckon that if our educators thought we should know about all this, they’d have taught it at school. If we aren’t taught something then we reckon it’s probably not worth knowing about anyway. And if any of this warped logic doesn’t sway us, we can be sure that our own backup defence shield will swing into action, to act in our best interests. We know all too well that if we take on board issues concerning animals, we’ll be inconvenienced. One realisation would lead to another. For example, as soon as dairy products were implicated in the cruelty argument, everything made with milk would be ethically infected and our conscience would pressure us into avoiding dairy products altogether. That spells inconvenience big time. If vegans are left to say why they boycott dairy products, they will threaten our whole existence. If we let them show up our ethics we’ll feel compromised.
Imagine then what happens when the same arguments are applied to our wardrobes. Health arguments obviously don’t apply here. Leather shoes, for instance, are not "bad" for you, but they are hardly ethical items since they come from slaughterhouses just as meat does. Our most fashionable attire is often associated with the ugliness of abattoirs. Even vegetarians who still wear leather can’t justify it and that puts them in a difficult position. If we are compromised, we can’t hold (let alone promote) an animal rights position. And that is a problem for many people seeking liberation for animals.
Even though most of us would like to be known as a compassionate person, as soon as we consciously decide to buy something that is unethical, the game is up for us. It’s the same when we buy a ‘pet’ from a pet shop. It means another ‘pet’ will be bred to replace the sold one, so the cage is never empty. Whether first or second hand, whenever we buy an item made from animals, we create a vacuum for another item to be produced to take its place. To offset this is impossible. There are no carbon credits for animal use! Even when we think we’re being generous, in thinning out our shoe rack, we fall into the same trap. We give away a pair of shoes to someone who needs them: we leave a space on the rack which gives us an excuse to ‘go shopping’ for more.
The idea of "justified robbery", stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, may be considered ethical. Stealing from the poor to make the rich even richer, is never justifiable. In this way then, nor is stealing the life of a voiceless animal! This magnitude of thieving is no different to the exploitation of children or the desecration of a forest. It’s just that same old human habit - using our advantage to harm the harmless.
Article 22. Nutritious Arguments
In a debate the animal righters have a much bigger problem dealing with matters of vegan nutrition, making a case for the safety and healthiness of a plant-based diet. If, for instance, we say meat is bad for you. Healthy young people may not agree since they’ve eaten meat all their lives and feel okay. They’ll likely hit back with “go talk to a sixty year old. Not me. I’m not interested in ‘the health repercussions’ of my meat diet”. Their fear of illness is a lifetime away.
It’s easy for us to get bogged down in nutritional arguments (although obviously, nothing is lost by each of us learning as much as possible about vegan nutrition).We need to emphasise "ethics" and win people over this way, with one or two directives:
1: that plant-based diets are safe and all nutritional needs are met from plant food.
2: that vegans need to take about ten micrograms of Vitamin B12 every day for the rest of our lives, unless blood tests show otherwise.
It’s easy for us to get bogged down in nutritional arguments (although obviously, nothing is lost by each of us learning as much as possible about vegan nutrition).We need to emphasise "ethics" and win people over this way, with one or two directives:
1: that plant-based diets are safe and all nutritional needs are met from plant food.
2: that vegans need to take about ten micrograms of Vitamin B12 every day for the rest of our lives, unless blood tests show otherwise.
Article 21. Meat Eaters in Conversation with Vegans
[Article: From a set of articles from ‘The Place of Non-Violence and Altruism in Animal Rights’ from 2007]
“There should be no rights for animals” - this is what the non-vegan public believe. Not so the vegan activist. Each believes the other is not right. But in most parts of the world this question is never brought up because the question of rights for non-humans is never discussed.
Here in the West though it is fast emerging as ‘an issue’. Our ‘subject’ is suffering growing pains. Omnivore society doesn’t want this baby to grow up. When anyone raises the subject there’s a mixture of disinterest and disgust, disgust not at what happens to animals but at the whole range of emotions emerging. Emotions we’d rather not experience.
No other subject hots up like this one! The activist tries a bit of moral bludgeoning, the meat eater denigrates the activist ... and it’s been like this for decades. But even today there are still many people, exposed to Western media, who have resisted thinking about all this. If we bring up these ‘issues’, the omnivore is more surprised than anything else, at our even mentioning the subject. For them, using animal-food is as natural as drinking water or sleeping at night time. A meal is never seen as an act of violence. It’s incomprehensible that anyone could see it this way. Animals are as fair game as carrots. “It’s called ‘food’, dah!”. In all innocence an omnivore might stray across the vegan minefield. They may even show enough interest to ask our opinion. Then ‘BANG’ - maybe they hear something that shocks them so badly that their sky falls in. The fear of this brings on prevarication.
For those who are more familiar with the subject and know more about the advocacy of animal rights, our arguments could be quite familiar to them, so much so that they’ve built up a defence line; they have responses which are well rehearsed, which they use to put up maximum resistance. The main aim here, for the omnivore, is not to be persuaded to alter one’s eating habits - and unless omnivores are ready to give way on that one, we must expect to be avoided. They’ll take care to avoid us and our arguments like the plague.
If we were sitting here in a debate, this subject could be as interesting as it is controversial - two adversarial opposites, exploring their differences like two dogs sniffing one another’s bums. It could be as ordered as that. But in the real world, outside the debating chamber, the stereotypes, prejudices, half truths and misinformation abound. Before things can turn around and get more constructive we have to look at perception - theirs of us, ours of them. We know what being an omnivore feels like but omnivores don’t know what being a vegan feels like. We’ve grown from omnivore to vegan. That’s okay. No one’s put out by that. But for the vegan, we can’t help ourselves begrudging the omnivore their cornucopia of foods.
The problem starts because we don’t think much of those we’ve left behind; because they are there and we are here. We almost see them as enemies, which of course literally they very well could be ... enemies certainly to animals and by proxy therefore also to their advocates. But it’s because we don’t think much of them and it shows, that omnivores generally dislike vegans, even more than their more carnivorous friends do. Why? Because vegans are not people one can identify with. If we were ... etc.
Non-vegan people enquire about veganism when they want to emulate a rare attribute - that’s a big boost for vegans. Contributing back to the omnivore, we warm to them if we see their own rare attribute of being a fair-minded person. Obviously there’s got to be equality. Our identification with each other has to be in place on some level, otherwise no progress can be made, either by animal activists persuading omnivores or omnivores sticking to their guns. These two (or more) must know the other still "likes" them. No progress can be made until we stop trying to rub out each other’s arguments ... before getting to really know what they are. Ultimately how we think we radiate so it’s really down to not thinking, labelling others as whacky. Saying someone is mad is a big put down.
Since vegans are the initiators and introducers of this particular subject we’re in the business of raising a particular consciousness. Ours is a responsibility to set standards of behaviour as well as standards of attitude. If we can get our non-violence across at the outset, then we establish the rules of conversation. It puts us on a fair footing. We need to show faith in the power of logical argument and never feel the need to go on the defensive. Vegans have such a powerful argument anyway so there’s no need for us to lose advantage, not clumsily or wantonly anyway. But we might need to be a bit cunning.
We are, after all, coming from a minority viewpoint (hugely minority!), so we need to find the right opening for what we have to say. Demanding our right to speak isn’t going to do the trick. We have to let them want us to speak. We almost have to want to encourage them to take us on.
We can’t pick the fight. We can prod and kid around and fool with people’s sense of their own truth, but we can’t make them respond. It must come from them. This wish to talk about all the issues is a brave wish for any omnivore. We should respect that. (I know from personal experience that one minute with me and I’ll deliver a line they won’t be able to forget. My friends and people who read the slogans on my bike already know what I’m like. One minute is all I need).
We know that they know, that we know ... that for us it always comes back to cruelty. We know that they know, that we know however hard they try to defend animal use, however hard they try to argue that “it isn’t cruel”, that their arguments won’t hold water. We know, they know we know, that ultimately their arguments must fail. In the past they did have one central argument and it was unarguable at the time: humans need to eat animal to survive. Now that we know we don’t need to, their last argument has been exploded. They now rest their case on this one ethically contradictory premise, and it’s just not good enough for any intelligent person to rest arguments in this way. Wanton violence is never ethical. They know we know this, and from our side of the debating chamber nothing much more needs to be said.
“There should be no rights for animals” - this is what the non-vegan public believe. Not so the vegan activist. Each believes the other is not right. But in most parts of the world this question is never brought up because the question of rights for non-humans is never discussed.
Here in the West though it is fast emerging as ‘an issue’. Our ‘subject’ is suffering growing pains. Omnivore society doesn’t want this baby to grow up. When anyone raises the subject there’s a mixture of disinterest and disgust, disgust not at what happens to animals but at the whole range of emotions emerging. Emotions we’d rather not experience.
No other subject hots up like this one! The activist tries a bit of moral bludgeoning, the meat eater denigrates the activist ... and it’s been like this for decades. But even today there are still many people, exposed to Western media, who have resisted thinking about all this. If we bring up these ‘issues’, the omnivore is more surprised than anything else, at our even mentioning the subject. For them, using animal-food is as natural as drinking water or sleeping at night time. A meal is never seen as an act of violence. It’s incomprehensible that anyone could see it this way. Animals are as fair game as carrots. “It’s called ‘food’, dah!”. In all innocence an omnivore might stray across the vegan minefield. They may even show enough interest to ask our opinion. Then ‘BANG’ - maybe they hear something that shocks them so badly that their sky falls in. The fear of this brings on prevarication.
For those who are more familiar with the subject and know more about the advocacy of animal rights, our arguments could be quite familiar to them, so much so that they’ve built up a defence line; they have responses which are well rehearsed, which they use to put up maximum resistance. The main aim here, for the omnivore, is not to be persuaded to alter one’s eating habits - and unless omnivores are ready to give way on that one, we must expect to be avoided. They’ll take care to avoid us and our arguments like the plague.
If we were sitting here in a debate, this subject could be as interesting as it is controversial - two adversarial opposites, exploring their differences like two dogs sniffing one another’s bums. It could be as ordered as that. But in the real world, outside the debating chamber, the stereotypes, prejudices, half truths and misinformation abound. Before things can turn around and get more constructive we have to look at perception - theirs of us, ours of them. We know what being an omnivore feels like but omnivores don’t know what being a vegan feels like. We’ve grown from omnivore to vegan. That’s okay. No one’s put out by that. But for the vegan, we can’t help ourselves begrudging the omnivore their cornucopia of foods.
The problem starts because we don’t think much of those we’ve left behind; because they are there and we are here. We almost see them as enemies, which of course literally they very well could be ... enemies certainly to animals and by proxy therefore also to their advocates. But it’s because we don’t think much of them and it shows, that omnivores generally dislike vegans, even more than their more carnivorous friends do. Why? Because vegans are not people one can identify with. If we were ... etc.
Non-vegan people enquire about veganism when they want to emulate a rare attribute - that’s a big boost for vegans. Contributing back to the omnivore, we warm to them if we see their own rare attribute of being a fair-minded person. Obviously there’s got to be equality. Our identification with each other has to be in place on some level, otherwise no progress can be made, either by animal activists persuading omnivores or omnivores sticking to their guns. These two (or more) must know the other still "likes" them. No progress can be made until we stop trying to rub out each other’s arguments ... before getting to really know what they are. Ultimately how we think we radiate so it’s really down to not thinking, labelling others as whacky. Saying someone is mad is a big put down.
Since vegans are the initiators and introducers of this particular subject we’re in the business of raising a particular consciousness. Ours is a responsibility to set standards of behaviour as well as standards of attitude. If we can get our non-violence across at the outset, then we establish the rules of conversation. It puts us on a fair footing. We need to show faith in the power of logical argument and never feel the need to go on the defensive. Vegans have such a powerful argument anyway so there’s no need for us to lose advantage, not clumsily or wantonly anyway. But we might need to be a bit cunning.
We are, after all, coming from a minority viewpoint (hugely minority!), so we need to find the right opening for what we have to say. Demanding our right to speak isn’t going to do the trick. We have to let them want us to speak. We almost have to want to encourage them to take us on.
We can’t pick the fight. We can prod and kid around and fool with people’s sense of their own truth, but we can’t make them respond. It must come from them. This wish to talk about all the issues is a brave wish for any omnivore. We should respect that. (I know from personal experience that one minute with me and I’ll deliver a line they won’t be able to forget. My friends and people who read the slogans on my bike already know what I’m like. One minute is all I need).
We know that they know, that we know ... that for us it always comes back to cruelty. We know that they know, that we know however hard they try to defend animal use, however hard they try to argue that “it isn’t cruel”, that their arguments won’t hold water. We know, they know we know, that ultimately their arguments must fail. In the past they did have one central argument and it was unarguable at the time: humans need to eat animal to survive. Now that we know we don’t need to, their last argument has been exploded. They now rest their case on this one ethically contradictory premise, and it’s just not good enough for any intelligent person to rest arguments in this way. Wanton violence is never ethical. They know we know this, and from our side of the debating chamber nothing much more needs to be said.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Article 20. Bad Manners
Unless vegans are asked to comment, it’s likely we’ll only reach (be preaching to) the converted. Anything we say uninvited, about animal rights or vegan issues, will set off alarm bells. People don’t mind being morally confronted on any number of issues ... but not when it concerns their meals.
As punishment, for daring to question their food choices, people are prepared to put us in the whacky basket. They feel justified in denigrating anyone who voices their opinions about such private matters. It’s seen as excessive chutzpah. But for some activists that would be okay - they’d say these people deserve to be confronted. But this approach is not new, it’s been done to death and usually it will work against us.
An alternative to this bulldozer approach is to strike a balance between not too soft but not too hard. In relation to talking about Animal Rights, we might sound daring but it’s likely to just look like bad manners.
As punishment, for daring to question their food choices, people are prepared to put us in the whacky basket. They feel justified in denigrating anyone who voices their opinions about such private matters. It’s seen as excessive chutzpah. But for some activists that would be okay - they’d say these people deserve to be confronted. But this approach is not new, it’s been done to death and usually it will work against us.
An alternative to this bulldozer approach is to strike a balance between not too soft but not too hard. In relation to talking about Animal Rights, we might sound daring but it’s likely to just look like bad manners.
Article 19. Violence
Violence would have been dropped long ago if it weren’t for the fact that humans are so quarrelsome. Our thirst for war and our need to practise domination over animals has been our undoing. In particular, this violence would have disappeared if we hadn’t become so hooked on yummy foods and a number of other comforts of life associated with the products of the Animal Industry. The convenience and yumminess of food forces society to keep this subject hidden by taboo. But now we are having to face up to things like climate change, carbon footprints, air pollution and water conservation. We are beginning to reassess which side of the attitude barrier we stand. Climate change is altering our consciousness. We are beginning to see that if we do eventually save the world we also save the human soul. We can go down that road either easily or kicking and screaming
“Coming, ready or not” - attitudes are about to change, forcing us to step outside our comfort zones. Old habits of disliking or disapproving of others seem to be comforting but turn out to be just an energy drain.
“Coming, ready or not” - attitudes are about to change, forcing us to step outside our comfort zones. Old habits of disliking or disapproving of others seem to be comforting but turn out to be just an energy drain.
Article 18. Affection
The affection and intimacy we reserve for our much loved pet is the same that we’d like to have with our fellow humans, neighbours and work colleagues. But we haven’t quite got there yet. We haven’t quite got to that level of intimacy where we can meet a new human and automatically tickle him/her under the chin or stroke his/her hair (as we do to dogs and cats). We are far more reserved. In our human relationships we don’t always act spontaneously. We pre-think action, perhaps because we are afraid of one another. “Shall I be firm with the child or draw out their inner kindness?”. “Shall I trust my neighbour or lay down a few rules to keep them from taking liberties?”
Affection and intimacy take second place to safeguards and being prepared for the appearance of the nasty side in people. It seems that the most dangerous thing we can do is trust whereas a dog is so loyal and guileless that that constraint isn’t present. For a dog, however friendly we are, it’s never enough, they always want more of the same. With humans it could be like that too, but usually it’s not so. If we get too friendly, people think we have ulterior motives. If we are too trusting, we’ll be taken for a ride.
However, the nuts and bolts of the matter is that trust is essential for non-violence to get a foothold. We can make a start by giving other people the benefit of the doubt. Looking for the good points, making what we do satisfying to all concerned. If any sneaky violence creeps in, we should try to overcome the worst of it with affection. But is all this approach idealistic? A luxury? There’s so much work to do and so much need for efficiency ... and we fear wasting energy, we fear losing time. When patience fails we go in hard instead, and with that one decision, to no longer be intimate and affectionate, we start to behave coldly. In that way we step towards violence.
Violence is popular because it is low energy. All it needs is one snide remark or a punch in the face to get maximum effect. When we’re afraid to go the longer way round we resort to violence. It’s a short-cut way to achieve something without using too much energy. We become hard nosed in what we do, just to get a result. We get a ‘sugar hit’ from being judgmental. It’s a habit, comparing ourselves with others when our values always look better than theirs. We draw energy from feeling good about ourselves in comparison to the bad guy, which then makes it easier for us to dislike the bad guy. It feels so much better to have someone to blame when things don’t go right. We use judgment pick-me-ups all the time. But does any of it work? Maybe it doesn’t, because our judgements eat us up. They make us sour and stop us getting down to the main job of the day - looking for the best side of the people we are with. Our daily energy supply comes from our human-relating activities. Our main boost probably comes from emotional uplift. Certainly we get more from seeing the up-side of someone than from the more immediately rewarding value judgment of them.
To become both non-violent and non-judgmental, we need to be both selfish and unselfish at the same time. We need to balance giving-out with what we want to get back in return. It makes us less righteous about ourselves. It makes this flow of energy more balanced as it moves from ourselves and back to ourselves.
We should do as comedians do. They risk everything by laughing at themselves to get their audience on side. They get the human dynamic working for them before doing anything else. As activists, we should try the same - to be self-deprecating, prepared to laugh at ourselves whilst slipping our message in to the mix. In our own hands (as the comedian whose jokes, shall we say, are being aimed at ourselves) we vegans are portrayed as ‘bleeding hearts’, animal lovers, fussy eaters, tree huggers, etc. There’s no reason why vegans shouldn’t be able to laugh at all this and enjoy the joke. In this way, we can show we aren’t afraid of being sent up. We can show we’re confident of our facts and views. It also proves we have a healthy sense of humour (without which animal rights advocacy doesn’t stand a chance). By letting anyone who is at all interested see our naked side, in that way we show trust. And we show we don’t consider ourselves better than anyone else - vegan diet notwithstanding. If we can let others see our clowning mask, we can let them see our serious side too. If we come across as a bit weird - so what? As long as we have a sense of humour plus a clearly non-violent tone to our voice, then our words can fly free. We can’t do too much damage. We appear not as a threat and therefore what we have to say won’t be too dramatically reacted against or too easily dismissed.
Ultimately, we need people to listen to us. We need to give them information about things they’d normally never hear about (Animal Rights). We need to make them want to listen. Gone are the days of making people think our way by showing them a string of ugly pictures of abattoirs. There’s likely to be interest in what we say if we visualise the possible future scene and how we get there. As activists, our only role in all this is to communicate a complete picture of how things could turn out; how we could turn out. If we have to express any value judgments at all then, for the sake of non-violence, let them never be in the form of personal attacks.
If that ‘future picture’ isn’t established by us then, as animal activists, we’ll never be taken seriously. Instead the omnivore will simply see us as anti-pleasure and advocates of inconvenience. If we are passionate about a non-violent world then we have to sell that picture, of how things could be WITHOUT the slave trade in animals or abattoirs or animal farms. If we can move on from the notion of being right and good and “I’m better than you”, then we can start to consider the inevitable outcome of vegan principle. And while altruism may seem like dull daily bread, if one day it becomes normal and natural to be so, then the combination of selfishness and selflessness will naturally allow non-violence to merge with non-judgment, and that will open the way for a more mature human to walk the earth.
Affection and intimacy take second place to safeguards and being prepared for the appearance of the nasty side in people. It seems that the most dangerous thing we can do is trust whereas a dog is so loyal and guileless that that constraint isn’t present. For a dog, however friendly we are, it’s never enough, they always want more of the same. With humans it could be like that too, but usually it’s not so. If we get too friendly, people think we have ulterior motives. If we are too trusting, we’ll be taken for a ride.
However, the nuts and bolts of the matter is that trust is essential for non-violence to get a foothold. We can make a start by giving other people the benefit of the doubt. Looking for the good points, making what we do satisfying to all concerned. If any sneaky violence creeps in, we should try to overcome the worst of it with affection. But is all this approach idealistic? A luxury? There’s so much work to do and so much need for efficiency ... and we fear wasting energy, we fear losing time. When patience fails we go in hard instead, and with that one decision, to no longer be intimate and affectionate, we start to behave coldly. In that way we step towards violence.
Violence is popular because it is low energy. All it needs is one snide remark or a punch in the face to get maximum effect. When we’re afraid to go the longer way round we resort to violence. It’s a short-cut way to achieve something without using too much energy. We become hard nosed in what we do, just to get a result. We get a ‘sugar hit’ from being judgmental. It’s a habit, comparing ourselves with others when our values always look better than theirs. We draw energy from feeling good about ourselves in comparison to the bad guy, which then makes it easier for us to dislike the bad guy. It feels so much better to have someone to blame when things don’t go right. We use judgment pick-me-ups all the time. But does any of it work? Maybe it doesn’t, because our judgements eat us up. They make us sour and stop us getting down to the main job of the day - looking for the best side of the people we are with. Our daily energy supply comes from our human-relating activities. Our main boost probably comes from emotional uplift. Certainly we get more from seeing the up-side of someone than from the more immediately rewarding value judgment of them.
To become both non-violent and non-judgmental, we need to be both selfish and unselfish at the same time. We need to balance giving-out with what we want to get back in return. It makes us less righteous about ourselves. It makes this flow of energy more balanced as it moves from ourselves and back to ourselves.
We should do as comedians do. They risk everything by laughing at themselves to get their audience on side. They get the human dynamic working for them before doing anything else. As activists, we should try the same - to be self-deprecating, prepared to laugh at ourselves whilst slipping our message in to the mix. In our own hands (as the comedian whose jokes, shall we say, are being aimed at ourselves) we vegans are portrayed as ‘bleeding hearts’, animal lovers, fussy eaters, tree huggers, etc. There’s no reason why vegans shouldn’t be able to laugh at all this and enjoy the joke. In this way, we can show we aren’t afraid of being sent up. We can show we’re confident of our facts and views. It also proves we have a healthy sense of humour (without which animal rights advocacy doesn’t stand a chance). By letting anyone who is at all interested see our naked side, in that way we show trust. And we show we don’t consider ourselves better than anyone else - vegan diet notwithstanding. If we can let others see our clowning mask, we can let them see our serious side too. If we come across as a bit weird - so what? As long as we have a sense of humour plus a clearly non-violent tone to our voice, then our words can fly free. We can’t do too much damage. We appear not as a threat and therefore what we have to say won’t be too dramatically reacted against or too easily dismissed.
Ultimately, we need people to listen to us. We need to give them information about things they’d normally never hear about (Animal Rights). We need to make them want to listen. Gone are the days of making people think our way by showing them a string of ugly pictures of abattoirs. There’s likely to be interest in what we say if we visualise the possible future scene and how we get there. As activists, our only role in all this is to communicate a complete picture of how things could turn out; how we could turn out. If we have to express any value judgments at all then, for the sake of non-violence, let them never be in the form of personal attacks.
If that ‘future picture’ isn’t established by us then, as animal activists, we’ll never be taken seriously. Instead the omnivore will simply see us as anti-pleasure and advocates of inconvenience. If we are passionate about a non-violent world then we have to sell that picture, of how things could be WITHOUT the slave trade in animals or abattoirs or animal farms. If we can move on from the notion of being right and good and “I’m better than you”, then we can start to consider the inevitable outcome of vegan principle. And while altruism may seem like dull daily bread, if one day it becomes normal and natural to be so, then the combination of selfishness and selflessness will naturally allow non-violence to merge with non-judgment, and that will open the way for a more mature human to walk the earth.
Article 17. Morals and Ethics
In the morality-driven world we juggle with the absurd notion that, whilst thinking ourselves peace-makers we can still afford to continue with a few violent habits. The moral codes we try to follow are inconsistent. If violence is thought to be morally wrong then surely non-violence must be a whole lot better. But non-violence isn’t promoted because we are forced to accept so much violence in our everyday lives, especially where our food is concerned. It’s difficult for our educational and religious institutions to advocate non-violence when this troublesome issue of animal exploitation (and vegan principle) is lurking in the background. Our leaders know that it would be dangerous to encourage people to alter their food choices or to mess about with the one big resource at our disposal – animals! To advocate that we stop using them, to liberate animals in fact, would threaten the stability of society, so the connection between animal cruelty and violence must always be underplayed. The fact that it’s hidden from the public (especially that kids aren’t taught about what happened to the animals they are eating) makes our society’s moral codes look decidedly dodgy. On top of this, we get double talk from authorities who say certain harmless behaviours (like fornication) are immoral whilst ignoring the immorality of these routine daily attacks being made on animals. The general disillusionment with society’s moral codes has encouraged people to go back to basics, to their own core ethics to assess what is right and wrong.
It seems that most of us want to see ourselves as ethical people. In most respects we may lead our lives ethically and feel pretty good about ourselves but not when it comes to the part we play in the imprisoning, attacking and killing of our fellow animals. If anything we do as a society is written up as being morally acceptable it must first undergo scrutiny, be taken seriously, debated and decided upon. But, on this thorny problem of using animals, that’s what people are reluctant to do. Morally and ethically speaking, our attitudes to animals don’t stand up well and neither does our habit of trying to brush it under the carpet.
A personal ethic reinforces the connection between our principles and the practice of them. It gets us over the hump of where a new habit, like an animal product boycott, is helped along by reminding ourselves of the ethic from which it arose. We like a good ethic because it gels with our instinct; humans usually get excited by anything to do with nurturing and protecting. It’s this core attitude, this core ethic, that shows us how to ‘attitudinalise’ our adult life, to the point where we can work things out for ourselves by letting answers gradually fall into place.
Part of growing up is discovering that we have innate knowledge about what we are and who we are, and from that we develop an attitude that seems to come from inside ourselves. Our self-identification process is used to relate to the outside world. A combination of self-produced and society-produced attitudes provides our guidelines, to let us function at our best. If we’ve lost faith in society-driven ethics maybe we should give our own a try. Our personal ethics should make us feel so good about ourselves that we can carry this over to working co-operatively with others. Ethics exert a constraining force whenever we’re tempted to take the easy way out. The "ethics-behind-the-person-behind-the-action", lets us resolve matters without using violent methods.
Our own ethics have to be constantly upgraded to keep pace with our own increasing levels of violence and vanity. As complicated as it may seem, it really always comes back to the difference between an intelligent way to behave and an unintelligent way. All this would hardly be worth a mention if it wasn’t for morality’s imposing of ridiculous codes of behaviour and making nonconformity to them very unattractive indeed. But in our western world, during the 1960s, a lot of the main moral codes began to fall apart. They were laughed at and to a certain extent the baby was thrown out with the bathwater; we did experience unnerving doubts about who we were, etc. But out of that something else appeared. We began to free our selves from authority and convention. As we lost confidence in authority, so we began to question good, bad, right and wrong. Even though an ethics revolution didn’t exactly catch on (except in the expanded consciousness of hippy revolutionaries) the morality bubble was burst. Now, our choices are no longer automatically made in accordance with given morality, but by applying ethical discrimination to our relationships, to our eating habits and to treading more lightly on the earth.
It seems that most of us want to see ourselves as ethical people. In most respects we may lead our lives ethically and feel pretty good about ourselves but not when it comes to the part we play in the imprisoning, attacking and killing of our fellow animals. If anything we do as a society is written up as being morally acceptable it must first undergo scrutiny, be taken seriously, debated and decided upon. But, on this thorny problem of using animals, that’s what people are reluctant to do. Morally and ethically speaking, our attitudes to animals don’t stand up well and neither does our habit of trying to brush it under the carpet.
A personal ethic reinforces the connection between our principles and the practice of them. It gets us over the hump of where a new habit, like an animal product boycott, is helped along by reminding ourselves of the ethic from which it arose. We like a good ethic because it gels with our instinct; humans usually get excited by anything to do with nurturing and protecting. It’s this core attitude, this core ethic, that shows us how to ‘attitudinalise’ our adult life, to the point where we can work things out for ourselves by letting answers gradually fall into place.
Part of growing up is discovering that we have innate knowledge about what we are and who we are, and from that we develop an attitude that seems to come from inside ourselves. Our self-identification process is used to relate to the outside world. A combination of self-produced and society-produced attitudes provides our guidelines, to let us function at our best. If we’ve lost faith in society-driven ethics maybe we should give our own a try. Our personal ethics should make us feel so good about ourselves that we can carry this over to working co-operatively with others. Ethics exert a constraining force whenever we’re tempted to take the easy way out. The "ethics-behind-the-person-behind-the-action", lets us resolve matters without using violent methods.
Our own ethics have to be constantly upgraded to keep pace with our own increasing levels of violence and vanity. As complicated as it may seem, it really always comes back to the difference between an intelligent way to behave and an unintelligent way. All this would hardly be worth a mention if it wasn’t for morality’s imposing of ridiculous codes of behaviour and making nonconformity to them very unattractive indeed. But in our western world, during the 1960s, a lot of the main moral codes began to fall apart. They were laughed at and to a certain extent the baby was thrown out with the bathwater; we did experience unnerving doubts about who we were, etc. But out of that something else appeared. We began to free our selves from authority and convention. As we lost confidence in authority, so we began to question good, bad, right and wrong. Even though an ethics revolution didn’t exactly catch on (except in the expanded consciousness of hippy revolutionaries) the morality bubble was burst. Now, our choices are no longer automatically made in accordance with given morality, but by applying ethical discrimination to our relationships, to our eating habits and to treading more lightly on the earth.
Article 16. Shopping
Not knowing, not making it our business to know, not wanting to know – they’re all great assets when you’re out shopping. Perhaps a little dangerous, but necessary. Forget anything you’ve seen or heard, about abattoirs & factory farming. They’re not true! Enjoy a clear conscience. Start to shop with confidence. Don’t settle for the ignorance that poorly educated people have, go for outright denial.
Everyone is doing it so, public-wise, you won’t need to feel embarrassed …. but, do it now, and do it boldly. Suspend disbelief. If you knew what was going on behind the scenes, if you shattered the illusion, you’d never enjoy life.
If you’re out shopping and you buy forbidden items, don’t be hesitant. Make a firm decision. Be deliberate. Let your shopping define who you are. Let it help the animal industries grow. By supporting them everyone benefits. If we can all work together it’s twice as good and twice as easy. The animal death camps are not in fact death camps at all but efficient, humane facilities, bringing the public the best food provision service possible.
Don’t waste your time contemplating pictures you might have seen, of animals being tortured and executed. Enjoy what life has to offer you, namely the choice of what to wear and what to eat. We all deserve to wear fashionable shoes and eat exotic cuts of lamb. Don’t get high-jacked by ethics - it won’t help you find the best the market has to offer and you won’t have the quality of life you deserve!
Not knowing, not making it our business to know, not wanting to know – they’re all great assets when you’re out shopping. Perhaps a little dangerous, but necessary. Forget anything you’ve seen or heard, about abattoirs & factory farming. They’re not true! Enjoy a clear conscience. Start to shop with confidence. Don’t settle for the ignorance that poorly educated people have, go for outright denial.
Everyone is doing it so, public-wise, you won’t need to feel embarrassed …. but, do it now, and do it boldly. Suspend disbelief. If you knew what was going on behind the scenes, if you shattered the illusion, you’d never enjoy life.
If you’re out shopping and you buy forbidden items, don’t be hesitant. Make a firm decision. Be deliberate. Let your shopping define who you are. Let it help the animal industries grow. By supporting them everyone benefits. If we can all work together it’s twice as good and twice as easy. The animal death camps are not in fact death camps at all but efficient, humane facilities, bringing the public the best food provision service possible.
Don’t waste your time contemplating pictures you might have seen, of animals being tortured and executed. Enjoy what life has to offer you, namely the choice of what to wear and what to eat. We all deserve to wear fashionable shoes and eat exotic cuts of lamb. Don’t get high-jacked by ethics - it won’t help you find the best the market has to offer and you won’t have the quality of life you deserve!
Article 15. The Violence Inside
We begin to dislike the violence in our self. We resolve to become a truly non-violent person and to deny violence altogether. But good intentions may not be enough to deal with such a deeply ingrained human habit. Most of us have known some violence in our past. In the study of our own habits we might be led towards a truly non-violent personality, if that’s what we really want. But it’s not as simple as shaking off one and taking on the other.
The civilisation known as the Lemurians are supposed to have detested violence. They couldn’t face it. And they died out because they tried to deny it or because they weren’t ‘dynamically’ non-violent? A world that is post holocaust, post atomic bomb, post factory farm and post animal experimentation - are we ready for it? There’s a constant tussle between two personalities within , the hard versus the soft. We have to survive in this harsh world, making money, shopping, making decisions for others .. eventually our ideals give way to pragmatism. We flirt with a little violence ... perhaps a little corporal punishment will keep the kids from running riot, a few harsh words will quieten the neighbour’s noisy music! Our ability to turn to violence is something we show when we’re cornered. Then we search through the mad-box for ways of making violence work for us. Violence is our safety valve and yet we can’t afford to acknowledge it. So this is where we’re finally forced into "double-think". Ah! Relief at last!! It’s like the unloved spouse we get married to and who we’re stuck with. We live alongside us. We have to live with it as best we can so that our personality can justify itself.
The civilisation known as the Lemurians are supposed to have detested violence. They couldn’t face it. And they died out because they tried to deny it or because they weren’t ‘dynamically’ non-violent? A world that is post holocaust, post atomic bomb, post factory farm and post animal experimentation - are we ready for it? There’s a constant tussle between two personalities within , the hard versus the soft. We have to survive in this harsh world, making money, shopping, making decisions for others .. eventually our ideals give way to pragmatism. We flirt with a little violence ... perhaps a little corporal punishment will keep the kids from running riot, a few harsh words will quieten the neighbour’s noisy music! Our ability to turn to violence is something we show when we’re cornered. Then we search through the mad-box for ways of making violence work for us. Violence is our safety valve and yet we can’t afford to acknowledge it. So this is where we’re finally forced into "double-think". Ah! Relief at last!! It’s like the unloved spouse we get married to and who we’re stuck with. We live alongside us. We have to live with it as best we can so that our personality can justify itself.
Article 14. Reputation
The phrase “blessed are the peace-makers” may not mean very much to people who are only interested in winning approval. Being recognised by others could benefit vegans if their recognition had currency, but it might be that because most other people are ethically compromised, their opinions of what we are isn’t so very valid. If they can’t be true leaders or role models, it means that peace-makers must face being alone - to survive and be strong enough to not need others’ approval ... whilst being proactive into the bargain, strengthened by having found this great cause of peace-making. Vegans, simply by knowing our habits, (remoulded for peaceful purposes) make us automatically ethically safe.
By making non-violence work on the habit level, we get used to it and acquire the habit of not faltering, not slipping back into violent ways even when on the defensive. If we can still act violently, it indicates we still have attitudes we haven’t got to the bottom of yet. Habits related to violence show up when we’re least on our guard and often that’s when we’re at home, where we’re so well known that we forget about making an impression. Imagine a vegan in a household of omnivores. When we roll out of bed and take a black mood to the breakfast table, without considering the consequences, we say something. And things fall apart. You feel the vibe, it’s hard. There’s small violence in the air. The damage has been done. “What the hell happened there?” It all happens so quickly. The atmosphere darkens, we can’t take it back once the words are out. We might try to bluff it out, try to justify it, but whatever we say the feeling is left hanging, unresolved.
Once the violent side of us is spotted, others remember. They’ve seen for themselves that we have a nasty side and from then on they avoid stirring us. And so it goes.
By making non-violence work on the habit level, we get used to it and acquire the habit of not faltering, not slipping back into violent ways even when on the defensive. If we can still act violently, it indicates we still have attitudes we haven’t got to the bottom of yet. Habits related to violence show up when we’re least on our guard and often that’s when we’re at home, where we’re so well known that we forget about making an impression. Imagine a vegan in a household of omnivores. When we roll out of bed and take a black mood to the breakfast table, without considering the consequences, we say something. And things fall apart. You feel the vibe, it’s hard. There’s small violence in the air. The damage has been done. “What the hell happened there?” It all happens so quickly. The atmosphere darkens, we can’t take it back once the words are out. We might try to bluff it out, try to justify it, but whatever we say the feeling is left hanging, unresolved.
Once the violent side of us is spotted, others remember. They’ve seen for themselves that we have a nasty side and from then on they avoid stirring us. And so it goes.
Article 13. Dynamic Harmlessness
Our main dynamic doesn’t have to be mischievous (although it could be mistaken as such). It’s more likely to be the confident assurance of a person with a strong case to argue. That sounds mischievous, especially if it’s an omnivore being ‘mischief-ed’ by a vegan.
For the very best reasons that game might not be appropriate. It might need to be modified, sometimes. Sometimes what we say might benefit from NOT being overstated. But whether what we say is dramatic or underplayed, our arguments almost inevitably have the potential to stir juices. As long as our energetic, passionate and dynamic side is based on non-violence, we are safe. An animal activist is as strongly committed to non-violence as to defending the rights of animals. That sort of activist will have a moment-by-moment checking system going - to avoid aggro because we know how sensitive to aggro omnivores can be. This system checks all the time. It should never be not-running, since it guards us from dipping into warfare at the first sign of threat. It tolerates. It observes the violence in others and doesn’t get violent about it. All our communications, including body language home in on others’ interests, so our theme, whatever it is, should always be interesting. If it’s not, no one’s listening.
This subject we want to talk about, if there is interest in what we have to say, we’re in luck! It’s like being invited to sing when you have a good voice and a few songs up your sleeve. If, as vegans, we get an invitation to say what we want to say (to speak freely) that very freedom allows things to rise to the surface naturally. (No pushing, no subtle directing, going with the flow). It’s all an act of faith, that if the subject is meant to arise it will.
Often people pick up a note of interest, from something we do or say, and because it seems unguarded, not devious, even vulnerable then it’s intriguing. Animal Rights and all the world which stems from it is not exactly uninteresting, even if you feel hostile to it. It is not a dull subject. Interest here is mixed with trepidation, disgust, fascination, all mixed up together. If they dare, they might put out a feeler. And that signals to us that we can mention something (on our subject). But here’s the tricky bit - do we literally drop our agenda and appreciate the possibility of something arising? Or deliberately mention “Animal Rights” and see what happens?
What vegans might like to consider is this - that they beware of bringing up the subject of Animal Rights at every conceivable moment. Whilst knowing that we are ever ready to respond appropriately when interest is shown. Appropriate can mena almost anything if the invite is there and we know our own vibration isn’t a confronting or judging one.
All this is possible. However it rather depends on YOU giving ME an invitation to make my point.
Now, you may know me, and you may have resolved never to stray anywhere near this subject for fear of an ear-bashing. But maybe you know me as the sort of vegan who doesn’t want to speak about it.
These vegans just wants to be accepted for their views. They aren’t so interested in proselytising animal issues. It’s enough just to feel as though I was doing something to save the animals (by being vegan). This is the private vegan rather than the public one.
Perhaps I’m the sort of vegan who thinks, “I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t want others to recognise me for what I stand for. Not for others to agree with me or admire me, but just to recognise that this is me as peace-maker. Now that’s reasonable enough isn’t it?”. Our quest for recognition from others is a two edged sword. We need it and in the needing show it and that’s felt as an expectation-to-be-resisted by any omnivore.
To expect recognition from people might be a very hard ask. Usually a person’s reaction to veganism is neither logical nor kind – nor for that matter unkind. There is simply a "non-response". A signal to say: “What might be important to you is not important to me, and therefore not worth talking about or responding to”. So for peace-makers, what is represented by our own ‘veganism’ as ‘wonderful, brave and future-making’ is, to others, not something even worth noticing. Ouch!. That’s hardly very encouraging for us, as vegans!
If there’s no kudos for a peace-maker in this society where’s our encouragement going to come from? I’d suggest - perhaps from within, just where the whole sensitivity-to-animals arose in the first place. Perhaps we need to tap into our sense of caring (in this case for the animals) and tap into anything else that’s non-violent - our imagination, our faith, our creativity - tap into whatever we have and into whatever it takes, to feel okay about being vegan.
It’s not being vegan that’s the problem, it’s the omnivore’s dismissal of it and therefore of us.
We have to replace what we don’t get from others by something we can draw on in our self, from the one true powerhouse of energy seated in our own imagination. And that’s my point here.
Maybe the catastrophe of our age is really only a crisis of "unimaginativeness". We don’t work things out for ourselves. Instead, we’re in the habit of doing what the others do. They eat animals, I eat animals. They don’t question, I don’t question ... but by not questioning or by not using our imagination there’ll be no creativity.
And so we miss out on pursuing our best altruistic aims.
For the very best reasons that game might not be appropriate. It might need to be modified, sometimes. Sometimes what we say might benefit from NOT being overstated. But whether what we say is dramatic or underplayed, our arguments almost inevitably have the potential to stir juices. As long as our energetic, passionate and dynamic side is based on non-violence, we are safe. An animal activist is as strongly committed to non-violence as to defending the rights of animals. That sort of activist will have a moment-by-moment checking system going - to avoid aggro because we know how sensitive to aggro omnivores can be. This system checks all the time. It should never be not-running, since it guards us from dipping into warfare at the first sign of threat. It tolerates. It observes the violence in others and doesn’t get violent about it. All our communications, including body language home in on others’ interests, so our theme, whatever it is, should always be interesting. If it’s not, no one’s listening.
This subject we want to talk about, if there is interest in what we have to say, we’re in luck! It’s like being invited to sing when you have a good voice and a few songs up your sleeve. If, as vegans, we get an invitation to say what we want to say (to speak freely) that very freedom allows things to rise to the surface naturally. (No pushing, no subtle directing, going with the flow). It’s all an act of faith, that if the subject is meant to arise it will.
Often people pick up a note of interest, from something we do or say, and because it seems unguarded, not devious, even vulnerable then it’s intriguing. Animal Rights and all the world which stems from it is not exactly uninteresting, even if you feel hostile to it. It is not a dull subject. Interest here is mixed with trepidation, disgust, fascination, all mixed up together. If they dare, they might put out a feeler. And that signals to us that we can mention something (on our subject). But here’s the tricky bit - do we literally drop our agenda and appreciate the possibility of something arising? Or deliberately mention “Animal Rights” and see what happens?
What vegans might like to consider is this - that they beware of bringing up the subject of Animal Rights at every conceivable moment. Whilst knowing that we are ever ready to respond appropriately when interest is shown. Appropriate can mena almost anything if the invite is there and we know our own vibration isn’t a confronting or judging one.
All this is possible. However it rather depends on YOU giving ME an invitation to make my point.
Now, you may know me, and you may have resolved never to stray anywhere near this subject for fear of an ear-bashing. But maybe you know me as the sort of vegan who doesn’t want to speak about it.
These vegans just wants to be accepted for their views. They aren’t so interested in proselytising animal issues. It’s enough just to feel as though I was doing something to save the animals (by being vegan). This is the private vegan rather than the public one.
Perhaps I’m the sort of vegan who thinks, “I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t want others to recognise me for what I stand for. Not for others to agree with me or admire me, but just to recognise that this is me as peace-maker. Now that’s reasonable enough isn’t it?”. Our quest for recognition from others is a two edged sword. We need it and in the needing show it and that’s felt as an expectation-to-be-resisted by any omnivore.
To expect recognition from people might be a very hard ask. Usually a person’s reaction to veganism is neither logical nor kind – nor for that matter unkind. There is simply a "non-response". A signal to say: “What might be important to you is not important to me, and therefore not worth talking about or responding to”. So for peace-makers, what is represented by our own ‘veganism’ as ‘wonderful, brave and future-making’ is, to others, not something even worth noticing. Ouch!. That’s hardly very encouraging for us, as vegans!
If there’s no kudos for a peace-maker in this society where’s our encouragement going to come from? I’d suggest - perhaps from within, just where the whole sensitivity-to-animals arose in the first place. Perhaps we need to tap into our sense of caring (in this case for the animals) and tap into anything else that’s non-violent - our imagination, our faith, our creativity - tap into whatever we have and into whatever it takes, to feel okay about being vegan.
It’s not being vegan that’s the problem, it’s the omnivore’s dismissal of it and therefore of us.
We have to replace what we don’t get from others by something we can draw on in our self, from the one true powerhouse of energy seated in our own imagination. And that’s my point here.
Maybe the catastrophe of our age is really only a crisis of "unimaginativeness". We don’t work things out for ourselves. Instead, we’re in the habit of doing what the others do. They eat animals, I eat animals. They don’t question, I don’t question ... but by not questioning or by not using our imagination there’ll be no creativity.
And so we miss out on pursuing our best altruistic aims.
Article 12. Making Mischief
Even on such a serious subject as animal rights, there has to be a ridiculous side, the human side, which can always show how humans are behaving absurdly. For us there’s so much scope for making mischief here. there’s even more scope if we are poking fun at ourselves at the same time. If we can show that we value our own vulnerability then we imply seeing the same value in others. If we can show that we are incapable of being spiteful, it makes us seem far less dangerous and what we say just that much more intriguing. There is so much material appropriate for ‘send-up’ in our fellow humans - the meat eater who doesn’t look carefully at his food, who doesn’t think carefully about its origin, who is the ultimate victim of circumstance ... then there’s the activist who focuses so intently on important issues that they forget how to communicate and become misunderstood and labelled ‘weird’. They make excellent targets for parody.
Those without ideals can be made to look foolish while those with ideals and too much zealotry are also good for a laugh! The ultimately shallow guys who follows the crowd, who have plenty of ‘social cool’ but very little else, they’re laugh-at-able too. What we’re talking about here is mischief mixed with harmlessness. If we keep a light-touch to what we’re saying, even when we’re being critical, then we establish ourselves as having a sense of humour. We don’t seem to be taking ourselves too seriously, if only to let what we do have to say about the important issues be taken that much more seriously.
The light touch allows us to go further than sermonising. The combination of dynamic mischief-making and non-violence lets us say almost anything we want to say - and get away with it. Point made: no hurt feelings. Just a few lightly bruised egos and some self-deprecation to release any tension in the air.
Those without ideals can be made to look foolish while those with ideals and too much zealotry are also good for a laugh! The ultimately shallow guys who follows the crowd, who have plenty of ‘social cool’ but very little else, they’re laugh-at-able too. What we’re talking about here is mischief mixed with harmlessness. If we keep a light-touch to what we’re saying, even when we’re being critical, then we establish ourselves as having a sense of humour. We don’t seem to be taking ourselves too seriously, if only to let what we do have to say about the important issues be taken that much more seriously.
The light touch allows us to go further than sermonising. The combination of dynamic mischief-making and non-violence lets us say almost anything we want to say - and get away with it. Point made: no hurt feelings. Just a few lightly bruised egos and some self-deprecation to release any tension in the air.
Article 11. Patience and Non-Violence
[From a set of articles from ‘The Place of Non-Violence and Altruism in Animal Rights’ from 2007.]
Being assertive is close to being aggressive is close to violence. There are other, less energy-consuming ways to be effective. For example - In the world of politics, we only need to practise civil disobedience to effectively make our point. There’s no need for confrontation or swearing or hurling abuse. In the theatre, one gets more impact with satire than with a bitter tirade. At home, a general stir-up is better than a family feud. If violence is always hovering like a bad smell, urging us to make threats or persuade people against their will, then non-violence is just about the only thing which will rescue us. When it’s strongly present it advocates patience and promises great power. We all have access to reasoned argument even though debating opportunities are still rare.
What is the main issue here, for Vegan Animal Activists? Is it about being non-violent or is it about not eating animals? These two issues should go hand in hand but they often don’t, because activists have a sense of urgency that overrides patience and non-violence. Yet non-violence is a more thorough way to bring about Animal Rights. It is achieved by attraction and through fashion. If Animal Rights becomes "fashionable", laws will follow ... but only when people are ‘cool’ enough to want badly enough the outlawing of animal exploitation. Non-violence allows us to take the heat off bad habits and thoughtlessness so we can focus on our own native intelligence. It’s our intelligence that lets us ask what we should do. It’s intelligence that shows us how we can reduce any run-away global problem, eg. global warming. Soon enough it will be our intelligence that’s showing us how to stop ‘animal warming’. And to pose the obvious question - how can I best promote Animal Rights?
This brings us back to non-violence, where no one need be afraid of us (vegans) and therefore not be afraid of what we might have to say, about non-violent food choices. In our conversations we should never go in for the kill for exactly the same reasons our food doesn’t (go in for the kill), however tempting. The cruelty of imprisoning and executing helpless animals is something a non-violent person would never want to be party to. It isn’t a matter of safety or health; it’s a matter of the hardening of our hearts and the blinding in our eyes. A very high price to pay for the dubious pleasure of enjoying eating animal foods.
We probably, by now, know that plant foods are nutritious. We may also know that our food-needs can be completely met by plant products because of the example set by millions of vegetarians and vegans around the world. That realisation undermines any justification for abattoirs and suggests the possibility of being able to lead a totally non-violent life. But because we know this and can apply it to our diet and wardrobe, is that where we stop? Hopefully not. A vegan might not want to go beyond food and clothing for fear of broadening the issues too far and becoming overwhelmed by the hugeness of the task. It may seem that there are too many changes to be made. But this change isn’t a race to see who gets there first. There are many issues to consider and each one relates to all the others. Global warming, animal factories, relationship breakdowns, malnutrition; they seem to be unrelated and yet somewhere down the track they are destined to meet.
If we want to see where the meeting point is, we need look no further than the embracing of non-violence. It’s a revolution in attitude, of which Animal Rights is but a part. Until one important idea meets another important idea, until we become sophisticated in our ideas, we won’t ever be able to understand what all the fuss is about. Non-violence seems to be a catch-all. When animal activists become involved in non-violent action, they see the connection between animals and humans, the environment and third world poverty. They realise that the connection between them all concerns the fostering of ‘peaceful relationship’. Our relationships, like our foods, must become cruelty-free.
Unless we are under age or dependent on others to provide our food and clothing, it is our responsibility to make our own choices. They can’t be left to anyone else. We have to decide either to develop a hard nose or a soft heart. That central choice is relevant to just about everything we do. It’s our choice and it’s a private matter. But however soft hearted we are, say over the matter of animals, at some stage we’ll be asking if we are also soft hearted about people - especially when we’re trying to recruit them. However important we think a matter is, can we discuss things without getting heated? Can we remain friends with people who disagree with us? Can we be sure our non-violence is stable? Can we be effective without wandering into the minefield of proselytising and exhortation?
The reason for being dynamic in the first place, is that life is about creating tension, stirring ourselves into action and bringing issues into focus. We might feel passionately about cruelty to animals and keen on being vegetarian, but as soon as we declare this (or let it be known that we think others should be vegetarians too) we are answerable for what we say and the way we say it. We might think we can tackle anything, including negative reaction, but we can never be sure if others can. If we are taking the initiative (for raising the subject) then we also have responsibility not to load on the shame, because there’s nothing like being accused of unethical behaviour to bring about a negative reaction. This one subject, amongst only a few others, is an extremely sensitive one. We don’t only need to look out for volatile reactions, but also for that particular reaction that associates what we do with who we are. When we criticise behaviour, we are really being critical of the person as well, and from their point of view this always feels threatening. Whatever we might say in public, we should think non-violence before we speak.
We mustn’t try to snare people or try to get them where we want them; in order to more effectively inflict guilt, fear and shame; in order to persuade them to our way of thinking. This approach has a whiff of aggression. When we’re on the receiving end we might have a premonition that cruelty is about to be inflicted upon us. For some animal activists, the handling of subjects, so heavily charged with significant issues, provides us with the excuse to "go over the top". When the subject matter is charged with passion, what follows almost bristles with inevitability, as if the decisive verbal blow has been rehearsed. Most people slam the door on Jehovah’s Witnesses before they’ve said a word. They’ve been premeditated. When animal activists try to use similar preaching-tactics we meet the same fate and unfortunately "queer the pitch" for others, who would never contemplate using such methods.
So is there a less direct way to talk about animal issues without World War Three erupting? ... not so indirect that we don’t say what we mean, or so gentle that we can be easily brushed off? How can we be gentle AND dynamic at the same time? Maybe by the use of mischief? Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little mischief. It always brightens the party, surely?
Being assertive is close to being aggressive is close to violence. There are other, less energy-consuming ways to be effective. For example - In the world of politics, we only need to practise civil disobedience to effectively make our point. There’s no need for confrontation or swearing or hurling abuse. In the theatre, one gets more impact with satire than with a bitter tirade. At home, a general stir-up is better than a family feud. If violence is always hovering like a bad smell, urging us to make threats or persuade people against their will, then non-violence is just about the only thing which will rescue us. When it’s strongly present it advocates patience and promises great power. We all have access to reasoned argument even though debating opportunities are still rare.
What is the main issue here, for Vegan Animal Activists? Is it about being non-violent or is it about not eating animals? These two issues should go hand in hand but they often don’t, because activists have a sense of urgency that overrides patience and non-violence. Yet non-violence is a more thorough way to bring about Animal Rights. It is achieved by attraction and through fashion. If Animal Rights becomes "fashionable", laws will follow ... but only when people are ‘cool’ enough to want badly enough the outlawing of animal exploitation. Non-violence allows us to take the heat off bad habits and thoughtlessness so we can focus on our own native intelligence. It’s our intelligence that lets us ask what we should do. It’s intelligence that shows us how we can reduce any run-away global problem, eg. global warming. Soon enough it will be our intelligence that’s showing us how to stop ‘animal warming’. And to pose the obvious question - how can I best promote Animal Rights?
This brings us back to non-violence, where no one need be afraid of us (vegans) and therefore not be afraid of what we might have to say, about non-violent food choices. In our conversations we should never go in for the kill for exactly the same reasons our food doesn’t (go in for the kill), however tempting. The cruelty of imprisoning and executing helpless animals is something a non-violent person would never want to be party to. It isn’t a matter of safety or health; it’s a matter of the hardening of our hearts and the blinding in our eyes. A very high price to pay for the dubious pleasure of enjoying eating animal foods.
We probably, by now, know that plant foods are nutritious. We may also know that our food-needs can be completely met by plant products because of the example set by millions of vegetarians and vegans around the world. That realisation undermines any justification for abattoirs and suggests the possibility of being able to lead a totally non-violent life. But because we know this and can apply it to our diet and wardrobe, is that where we stop? Hopefully not. A vegan might not want to go beyond food and clothing for fear of broadening the issues too far and becoming overwhelmed by the hugeness of the task. It may seem that there are too many changes to be made. But this change isn’t a race to see who gets there first. There are many issues to consider and each one relates to all the others. Global warming, animal factories, relationship breakdowns, malnutrition; they seem to be unrelated and yet somewhere down the track they are destined to meet.
If we want to see where the meeting point is, we need look no further than the embracing of non-violence. It’s a revolution in attitude, of which Animal Rights is but a part. Until one important idea meets another important idea, until we become sophisticated in our ideas, we won’t ever be able to understand what all the fuss is about. Non-violence seems to be a catch-all. When animal activists become involved in non-violent action, they see the connection between animals and humans, the environment and third world poverty. They realise that the connection between them all concerns the fostering of ‘peaceful relationship’. Our relationships, like our foods, must become cruelty-free.
Unless we are under age or dependent on others to provide our food and clothing, it is our responsibility to make our own choices. They can’t be left to anyone else. We have to decide either to develop a hard nose or a soft heart. That central choice is relevant to just about everything we do. It’s our choice and it’s a private matter. But however soft hearted we are, say over the matter of animals, at some stage we’ll be asking if we are also soft hearted about people - especially when we’re trying to recruit them. However important we think a matter is, can we discuss things without getting heated? Can we remain friends with people who disagree with us? Can we be sure our non-violence is stable? Can we be effective without wandering into the minefield of proselytising and exhortation?
The reason for being dynamic in the first place, is that life is about creating tension, stirring ourselves into action and bringing issues into focus. We might feel passionately about cruelty to animals and keen on being vegetarian, but as soon as we declare this (or let it be known that we think others should be vegetarians too) we are answerable for what we say and the way we say it. We might think we can tackle anything, including negative reaction, but we can never be sure if others can. If we are taking the initiative (for raising the subject) then we also have responsibility not to load on the shame, because there’s nothing like being accused of unethical behaviour to bring about a negative reaction. This one subject, amongst only a few others, is an extremely sensitive one. We don’t only need to look out for volatile reactions, but also for that particular reaction that associates what we do with who we are. When we criticise behaviour, we are really being critical of the person as well, and from their point of view this always feels threatening. Whatever we might say in public, we should think non-violence before we speak.
We mustn’t try to snare people or try to get them where we want them; in order to more effectively inflict guilt, fear and shame; in order to persuade them to our way of thinking. This approach has a whiff of aggression. When we’re on the receiving end we might have a premonition that cruelty is about to be inflicted upon us. For some animal activists, the handling of subjects, so heavily charged with significant issues, provides us with the excuse to "go over the top". When the subject matter is charged with passion, what follows almost bristles with inevitability, as if the decisive verbal blow has been rehearsed. Most people slam the door on Jehovah’s Witnesses before they’ve said a word. They’ve been premeditated. When animal activists try to use similar preaching-tactics we meet the same fate and unfortunately "queer the pitch" for others, who would never contemplate using such methods.
So is there a less direct way to talk about animal issues without World War Three erupting? ... not so indirect that we don’t say what we mean, or so gentle that we can be easily brushed off? How can we be gentle AND dynamic at the same time? Maybe by the use of mischief? Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little mischief. It always brightens the party, surely?
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