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Some will argue that people should see what happens to
animals for themselves. If they can’t visit a factory farm or can’t gain
admission to an animal research laboratory, then even by watching video footage
or seeing still-pictorial evidence, there should be enough there to galvanise
intention to act. They need to see the ‘horrors’ for themself to know them. But
if seeing is believing it isn’t necessarily the gateway to intention-to-act;
deaf ears and blind eyes are just as persuasive. Which is why most people see
but do nothing.
Under my arm I have a swag of
pictorial evidence, but if you don’t want to see it, I won’t have permission to
show you. So, when someone like a vegan fronts up with facts and pictures we
are about to damage your sensibilities, even damage our friendship.
You can imagine the reaction. A
fortress mentality develops to protect ones right to know and therefore one’s
right to choose what food one eats.
As a vegan I might not realise
the damage I can do whenever I heavy people over their food. The omnivore is
not questioning food, not even entering this sphere, because they’re already
doing their best on other fronts, keeping pace with other good causes they want
to support. The only trouble with this is that whatever good they may be doing
for another cause, if they’re still ‘fouling their nest’ by using animals for
food, it rather cancels out what they’re doing elsewhere.
If they’re still supporting the
abuse of animals, condoning cruelty, etc. It’s likely they’ve been lulled into
a false sense of security about the food they eat and the acceptability of
farming animals. And that ‘security’ is shared by almost every other person on
the planet, and throughout history. If this is so, then why should anyone
listen to what vegans are saying?
The odds against our views are
overwhelming. And it seems the only way to get our point across is to shout
ever louder, since nothing else seems to work. But we underestimate how long
social change of this order will take, we underestimate how huge a truth
conventional foods represent. This is a very early stage in Animal Rights
consciousness (the concept was largely unheard of thirty years ago). The way it
works now is that vegan animal rightists seem to be making such small progress
that we become impatient. We get pushy over all this. And for that we are
disliked.
We are a mere minor irritation to
be brushed away like a fly. And that means we may not be able to reach people
directly, head on. Apart from being regarded by most people as weird, even if
we could get people to take us seriously it wouldn’t get us very far, since we’ve
been effectively silenced by the media. And these days if you don’t frequently
read about an issue or hear about it, it fades in importance.
Vegans have never had the freedom
to disseminate ideas. Since we’ve never had a stage to speak from it is all the
more galling to see how the Animal Industries have monopolised the media. They
are the friend and the client of the Animal Industry, who in turn use the media
to continually pound home their point, that their products are, satisfying,
acceptable and not unhealthy. The potential customer is daily reminded, in
books, papers, TV and radio, that animal products are both very available and
nutritious. They don’t have to go into too much detail, because their message
is what people want to hear anyway. People become convinced that they can’t do
without it … and so business continues uninterrupted.
You’d think that the level of
lies and nonsense couldn’t possibly last for much longer, but for the present,
things don’t look too good for either the human or the animal. The Animal
Industry’s message is constantly being freshened up with expensive promotions.
Our message, on the other hand, gets no coverage at all, and is therefore
easily forgotten. They have all the
advantages, we have almost none. To
help them secure their advantage, they pay actors big money to promote their
products (often glamorous and articulate celebrities). And this is successful,
up to a point, since they are selling to people who want to believe in what
they’re being sold. It’s all very comforting to consumers.
Do I find that depressing or
what?, especially since I know that most of my most kind-hearted and
intelligent and educated friends have been so easily manipulated.
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