How vegans are bringing things to the public’s attention

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We try to act as advocates and ambassadors for animals who can’t represent themselves, we’re activists up against many adversaries. However friendly we are or they are to us, we are few and they are many. So, our first job is to better understand what we’re up against, and then find a subtler approach than haranguing them. A fairer, less judgemental approach is by attempting to engage them in dialogue. A few rules might include that we speak calmly (no threat of any emotional exploding), that we drop the slogans and clichés (which bore people) and get information across in an undramatised way (ideally, unselfconsciously). The risk is, that speaking about animals with omnivores is always going to put them on the back foot, and they know that immediately we start down that path.

            So here we are. You and I are having a little chat. I’m being super-aware of where we’re at in our conversation. I’m avoiding being too smart or too right, and not eager to hit you with my coup de grace answer. I’m not trying to corner my opponent because, one way or another, that will close down the dialogue.

We have strong moral arguments, and no one likes being confronted over their morals, so if we apply too much moral pressure, it’s likely things will destabilise and our chat will turn ugly. We have other arguments too. But lately, the previously widely accepted health dangers of animal-based foods has been called into question. People will rejoice at this and be all too ready to say animal food is okay. Always there have been solid arguments in praise of eating meat which have served to divert emphasis on the ethical. Environmentally too, we have strong arguments to suggest that animal farming pollutes and encourages deforestation, but again, discussion centred on this diverts us away from the main issue, that of the unethical treatment of ‘food’ animals. The moral angle is sensitive, and for good reason. The cruelty, the lack of empathy for animals, should be, we argue, second nature to all humans. And it so obviously isn’t.

A friend has come up with another important point here: He says that we should confine our arguments to a single track. If we have a two track argument (Ethics and Health, and we could add to this ‘Environment’) it's possible that that one ‘track’ might be perceived by the listener to be wrong (For example: the latest scientific questioning of the dangers of cholesterol). Then, even if the other (Ethics) track is right, or something of which the listener could be persuaded, the wrongness of the other half of The Message will have caused the listener to stop listening.

Which is all the more reason why listening, you to me, me to you, is what this is all about. I need to show that by conversing with you, that I’ll give you signals all the time that I am listening-with-respect. Not necessarily agreeing but while you are talking I am considering. This is about my fairness. How utterly prime fairness is in the art of listening, of never letting one’s own agenda hurry or worry the listener in their aim to be attracting OUR attention.

My aim would be to bring up issues without necessarily resolving them. It would be to encourage the conversation to range as broadly as possible, letting it go where it will, letting ourselves be unselfconscious. I’d be reminding myself not to keep showing my hand (which immediately confronts).

Dialogue is discussion-about, not fight-over. Because this subject is so emotionally charged, as soon as the matter of animal rights arises, I expect you to feel alarm and caution. Dialogue, being a two way road, means that my creative-approach involves listening and only some (not too much) passing of information across. If our adversaries either have an opportunity to speak or are assured of equal space for speaking, then whatever I have to say won’t just be a moral statement, but part of a much larger exercise, made up of a few self-challenging statements, self deprecations, along with some interesting ideas and some mention of the part ethics plays in developing empathy.

Whatever it is, conversion it is not. Nor is it any form of recruiting-for-the-cause. No hint of that. If this delicate balance-of-communication is to be achieved, then it’s down to our own personal technique - practise makes perfect. Ultimately, we talk as unselfconsciously as possible, without making one’s ‘adversary’ go onto the defensive.

Once on the defensive they will have no further interest in talking. We aren’t begging people to listen to what we have to say. We want them to come half way, to want to know. I think if you’re vegan you should allow yourself to hold back, not just in what is said, but to hold back on predictability; if we are perceived (and I think we are already) as potentially boring people, then a little inscrutability makes a lot of difference.