Consolidating our advantages

860: 

I think the art of talking about this subject is in looking a bit vulnerable. I don’t mean deceptively so, just as long as we don’t try to speak from the pulpit. Even though we can’t stand the idea of murdering animals for meat, we have to accept that there are different points of view about this, and we ought to know what those views are before trying to present counter arguments. Otherwise what we say will go in one ear and out the other

            I think the omnivore that it might take a very long time for cruelty to food animals to mean very much, when it’s weighed against food sensation and its instant gratification. The taste-sensation, the stomach-filling, the crunch and bite and ooze, the salt, the blood-taste, the sugar-hit – they’re all connected with a familiar oral pleasure that has been developing all our lives.. It’s perhaps the most powerful external-internal interface we know. It’s not only associated with satisfying hunger and therefore easing the fear of starvation, but it’s also associated with rich living which eases the fear of feeling poor and worthless (as if we are not even worth feeding). Loving what we love to eat is not a casual time-passing activity, it’s what stays pretty much at the forefront of the mind all the time. Just one little twinge of feeling peckish and there’s a need to satisfy that slightly empty feeling, and indulge all the choices of taste sensation. One small setback in our day and we compensate with a snack, a favourite savoury or sweet treat. The omnivore will not discriminate along ethical lines, if it’s animal or non-animal doesn’t matter. The only important factor is that taste buds need appeasing and the body and mind need calming.

So giving up any of this instant pleasure would seem like unnecessary self-punishment. Why would anyone choose to do without what is so available, for the sake of animals? One would have to be crazy or masochistic. Apart from becoming healthier, (and most young people feel themselves to be immune to ill health) why would anyone give a plant-based diet even a moment of serious consideration? 

Bearing all this in mind, I’d suggest that, for the activist vegan, emotion should give way to determination, and urgency to patience, if only because the omnivore is nowhere near ready to be led to our views yet. Our frustration is a difficulty for us, and it’s hard for us to not expect to se much progress. But it’s important that we hang in there and develop an optimistic patience. And withal, we might need to get used to the absence of positive feedback.

It shouldn’t surprise us that the average omnivore probably thinks we are either crazy or masochistic. We need to be like the parent who provides interesting meals for the family but who doesn’t expect the kids to compliment them on their cooking. That they grow up well fed is all that can be expected; and it’s the same with our efforts to enlighten people about animals. It might sink in on a subtle level without the need for direct agreement or approval.

As activists and advocates we might need a better understanding of the scale of the change we want to see. To bring people across to our view, that animals shouldn’t be exploited, we have to realise it’s a more radical attitude change than anything attempted before.

            To recap: animals are slaves and our aim is to bring that to an end. Angry we might be, but determined activists have to be in it for the long haul. We don’t need to fly any flags or keep hitting people with ‘the truth’. Our job isn’t to bore them or lecture them. We mustn’t go on about being vegan if that just gets people’s back up, and inhibit them. We want them to hear what we say and then go home to consider things we’ve said. We mustn’t make them feel so uncomfortable that they’ll go home and open the fridge for some crap-food to make them feel better,  to help them forget us.

When omnivores do agree with us they’ll often do it in the hope of shutting us up. The more praise they shower on us (saying how much they admire us for the ‘stand’ we’re making) the more they hope to calm us down, in order t be rid of us (before we ‘go too far’).

Whether for a good cause or a selfish one, the more we want admiration from others the less we’ll get it. When we seem to impress people by shocking them with the facts, we may not be impressing them at all. Their seemingly positive feed-back may just be politeness, to please us. People won’t become vegan out of politeness.