Up against a wall

159:

The reason I get angry with the world is because people are so reluctant to change. But why expect fellow humans to be more than they actually are? The disappointment and cringe I feel makes me want to fall out of love with people, not just because they’re oblivious to the suffering-of-animals but for continually missing the opportunity to change. They continue to eat rubbish foods, continue to get ill, continue to hold violent attitudes … and it seems such a waste of personal potential. That’s what makes me so exasperated ... and exasperated with myself too, for my inability to understand the workings of the minds of my fellow human beings.
Vegans who are active in Animal Rights invest their free time to fight for a great cause. It’s a big investment. So, when I think I’m getting somewhere and hit another disappointment … I never seem to get used to it. I never see it coming. Overall, the most depressing thing I experience is that no one is taking a blind bit of notice of what my colleagues and I are saying. Is it deafness? No. It’s reluctance. Reluctance to talk or discuss things like this - for why would good friends want to risk blowing it, by speaking their minds (notably, about my vegan views)?
Beyond all else, everyone values affection and friendship as well as the group-bond between any set of friends. Intimacy allows good friends to talk freely about anything … unless it’s ‘animals’. Other that the cute-and-cuddly animals are not a topic of converstaion. This is a subject known for bringing up deep issues, and because our arguments are so razor sharp people know there’s a risk of blowing a whole friendship ... over too much loose ‘animal talk’. All it takes is one comment … which is why I prefer NOT to try converting friends – they know I won’t be able to resist a dig ... and if my timing is out or I don’t round things off properly it goes down badly, particularly badly with close friends who’re already super-sensitive to my interest in ‘the animal-thing’.
Friends - I personally don’t have enough of them to go around losing them. A.R. is especially dangerous for that, in an ‘if-you’re-not-with-me-you’re-against-me’ sort of way … so, I prefer to talk outside. Any public arena will do. I can speak more freely there, knowing that it’s okay for me to get knocked down by people who aren’t close friends, or to be made to sound like a fool. My ego doesn’t bruise as badly ‘out there’ - so, it’s good for getting hardened-up.
Everything vegans stand for (the principle of plant-based diets, animal rights, non-violence) is purposely down-played by Society. It is given minimal press coverage. If we try to bring issues to public attention we’re prevented. We have to stand by, in silence, allowing blatant misinformation to mould even the minds of our best friends. After forty years of substantial exposure to Animal Rights, I can’t see much momentum building. I don’t see any real sign of people questioning or challenging what they’ve been taught. I get nervous about that. It seems zombie-ish to me. It makes me especially nervous seeing sadists near animals and the animals’ minds in a state of terror. For domesticated animals there’s nothing and no hope ... unless from those who want to save them. “Good luck!”, I say ... for luck might prove more reliable than people’s good nature … and good though it might be it is asleep on these issues ... which is why Animal Rights has to speak up so insistently about slavery, captivity, killing and in some cases animal torture. We shouldn’t have to. But it’s all happening so routinely by almost everyone that it has become accepted. It’s thought to be pragmatic reality - the Animal Industries do the deed then, at one stage removed, the compliant consumer supports it. It only gets worse, but affecting fewer total animals, at the vivisection laboratory, where animals are being used for experimentation. Again, a blind-eyed compact exists where the tick of approval is given by the consumer.
It makes me wonder why I’m saying such things. Am I being deliberately spiteful? Am I expecting more of people than they’re capable of? Without wishing to sound unnecessarily patronising or demeaning, I think it’s likely people are so weighed down with food junk and so groggy with tiredness from eating too much of it, that they can’t any longer face-up to a major shift of consciousness, however beneficial it might seem to them.
Having said that, I realise that beyond the 99% of whacked-out consumers is the other 1% - the human monsters, the most outrageous of whom profit from harming creatures, as if they couldn’t feel the harm. For example, someone who takes an immobilised and terrified rabbit and squirts corrosive chemicals into its eye, to test shampoos for eye safety. This animal doesn’t stand a chance. They can’t do anything to protect themselves from this sort of torture.
Whether the suffering takes place on a vivisector’s slab or on a farm or in the abattoirs, the coldness with which animals are treated is a frightening reflection on human nature. What routinely happens to billions of them is something no sentient creature should have to experience, and no human should be capable of doing. The perpetrator is not only insane to do it but dangerously insane for trying to influence ordinary people to think that what they do is acceptable.