Getting ourselves informed

903: 

It’s an evening event - there’s a discussion organised on Animal Rights. I’ve rented a hall for the evening, chairs, refreshments, all advertised. And yet you might think to yourself, “Avoid, avoid”.

The event gets a poor ‘turn-out’, much the same as the street demonstration, with a few people with placards. What should we be doing? Do we try to inform, do we make a public protest? Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that ‘the event is dead’. We might have to conclude that we are not part of a large rebellious family of other similarly-minded activists. We appear more like a brave but small group, huddling together for mutual comfort.

We go through with the event more for our own sake than for others’ benefit; it makes us feel as though we are ‘doing’ something, anything. The lion roars but no one seems to pay any attention.

The one event that is well attended is a food fair – it promotes cruelty-free products and offers vegan food and maybe some entertainment, and there’s far less emphasis on disseminating information or promoting deeper ideology. I suppose that’s because the vegan movement is so needy for support, so the emphasis is on refreshment rather than inspiration.

But I don’t think it will always be like this. There’ll surely come a time when food is downplayed and ideas become more important. And this fits in with the present greater accessibility of information and the worsening of the mind manipulations of corporate advertising. Eventually people must see the danger of being  non-discriminating, and they’ll want to know the facts, in order to make up their own minds on these issues.

In this ‘information age’, facts being so readily available, it’s possible for any of us to be our own judge and jury. We can come to our own conclusions. No need for us to be preached at or protected from misinformation. We no longer have to wade through a whole library of books to find out what we need to know. What we need is on our home computers, helping us to fill the gaps and unravel our own tangled attitudes.

Instead of the printed pamphlet handed out at the street protest, we go to a website to learn what (and how much) there is to know. In this case, we can find out for ourselves what is really going on.