878:
+It’s Sunday, here in Sydney, but still Saturday when and where
this blog is posted
I watched a memorable TV programme yesterday. Did you see
it? Catalyst, ABCTV. A reputable science programme announces the latest
research, blowing the cholesterol thing out of the water. It was ALL a big
mistake.
There were
flaws in the initial research, showing the causator, of coronary heart disease,
was cholesterol. Now cholesterol is given a clean bill of health, and saturated
fats are now okay. Eggs, cheese and butter have the green light. Meat too. So,
let’s feel free to get into the animals, big time.
Our talk of
omnivores being “doomed to heart attacks while vegans are protected by their
no-cholesterol diet” might then be flawed too. And so what of this? This
‘too-goo-to-be-true’ nutritional argument to be taken down a notch? Perhaps
that’s not such a bad thing, since vegan animal rights has long been highjacked
by vegan diet healthiness. Now, at least, we might stop wagging our fear-finger
at people, and instead focus on the ethical dangers we face.
By
condoning suffering (by what we eat) we block something important in us. Maybe
not as straightforward as cholesterol blocking arteries, if it did in fact do
that. The block is in the conscience, like an erstewhile-demonised
cholesterol-lump. The stress of it disturbs such delicate machinery as the
circulatory and coronary systems, and a lot else besides; stress is IN the very
food we eat, if it’s animal-based
Continuing from yesterday’s blog
The thinking behind veganism hasn’t been faulted up to now.
If there’d been any flaws they’d have shown up over the past 70 years, since
its inception. It seems that the vegan diet is entirely robust. So, too, the
compassion that lies behind it. Ethics and diet are each unarguable, which
means that vegans can be largely fearless, the big things having been dealt
with - we have fewer tummy-troubles and fewer conscience-troubles. If that is
so, then vegans should be able to tough it out when things get rough, as in
fielding hostility, when issues are raised concerning the ‘use of animals’.
Fear of being wrong, and
defending one’s ‘wrong’ position, is something vegans don’t have to do. We
don’t have to be right and don’t have to look for a fight. Whereas non-vegans,
more nervous about exposing their views, have to adopt a more ‘hit-out’ way of
defending their attitudes. They’re faced with a strong moral position, which
is their problem, whereas my problem is different. My biggest mistake has
always been to set Morality up against an omnivore’s fear of ‘being wrong’ or
being dispassionate. My mistake was to use the unproductive Moral Brigade,
which is like enforcing cannon law to stop teenagers wanting sex. The very weight
of collective consciousness (aka normal behaviour) simply ignores it all; all
the vegan words and moralities about ‘chickens in cages’ lets them get away
with highly disputable comments, like “There are more important things to think
about”, how many times I’ve heard that! In
other words, the vast majority (the populous), will not be moralised-to.
Because it’s pointless, to force a
taboo, bludgeoning people with ‘shocking-facts’ might make a person sit up and
listen, but it won’t turn them vegan. Moral awareness doesn’t allow us to exert
moral pressure. Persuasion is off limits as far as I’m concerned, since that
approach has outlived its usefulness. In its place we must search for a fuller
understanding of our adversaries and take a subtler approach towards them. Then
we might finds ways to talk together. This is much more long-lasting way of explaining
‘vegan’. It requires patience and we have to go by the longer route.
Do we have time for all this? The
freeing of pigs from their pens seems very urgent. Surely, we need a short,
sharp and urgent fix-up. But what realistically can we achieve so quickly?
Probably nothing long-lasting for the animals or their liberation.
No comments:
Post a Comment