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.