When deciding to go vegan

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Let’s say I consider the possibility of going vegan. My first question is probably going to be why? Why go to all this trouble? Why open this Pandora’s Box? Wouldn’t it better to deliberately NOT consider issues concerning domesticated animals? To leave it on the backburner? There are plenty of other important causes to get involved with.

            We might reason, amongst all the other important and urgent issues facing humanity, that there’s no room for ‘animal issues’. So, we take this one off our ‘to-do’ list. But, knowing the extent of human cruelty in regard to farm animals, we know it’s too important to ignore. All the time humans can do this to the innocent and the undefended, there’s good reason to leap to their defence. That, more than anything else, made me consider moving towards a vegan lifestyle.

Here’s what I think happens - a plant-based eating regime opens up certain possibilities, the most important of which is a total lifestyle change. And that underwrites an attitude change towards the social injustice of exploiting animals. And that means setting up opposition to the way most others think, which might not be easy to maintain. You realise that, once you become vegan there’s no going back. You also realise that almost everybody else is not thinking the same way, and that the world is geared up for living on the back of the animal. The world, the majority, will make things very difficult for anyone (vegan) who falls out of line with the conventional way of living.

All of us are all hard-wired to NOT step out of line in this way. There’s a temptation to remain within the fold, but equally strongly one feels that the majority are badly mistaken, and that however marginalised we may feel, NOTHING must put us off. We warn ourselves, “Don’t retreat at the first hiccup, push through, don’t give up”.

Once past that hurdle, we might find our ideas taking on their own momentum. The principle of non-violence may become a wave we decide to ride, and then, once aloft this wave, we can either stay with it or get off it. If we do decide to jump off it we must do it quickly, before it picks up speed. Because, after that, it will be harder to get back on again the next time we are moved to try. That’s what I mean by the feeling of ‘no-turning-back’.

Going vegan is not a one-day wonder, it’s a life-long project; eventually we have to be relaxed about it. It’s a matter of not being afraid of going against traditional, conventional lifestyle; questioning our learnt template for living. We must go ahead at any cost. Yes, it’s a risk, to go against everything we’ve learnt about ‘our right to exploit animals’ and to contradict everyone else’s attitude towards the using-of-animals.

As with the development of speed travel, with aeroplanes for example, veganism starts in one place and moves quickly under it’s own impetus; it changes us so quickly because it suggests a way out of the ‘great human impasse’ of having to remain a violent species. A way of life based on non-violence is a life that, before, would have been unrecognisable.

A tiny biplane using propellers was once thought improbable, and yet within a few years it had transformed into an accepted possibility – a huge metal cylinder, seating many people, travelling comfortably at unimaginable speeds, at unimaginable heights, through the air. If the aim was simply to fly we’d have stayed with all the romance of biplanes, but if we want speed-travel then the mighty jet plane was to be the answer. This is human ingenuity overcoming, what must have seemed at the time to be, impossible odds.

Vegan consciousness is really just the same; it’s a sped-up version of the old lumbering consciousness.

Where energy and health and compassion are concerned, the omnivore has chosen to stay put. They are slow, unhealthy and uncaring. They content themselves with the old slow, biplane-thinking. They don’t think innovatively, indeed they’ve given away their greatest asset of independent thinking. They’ve left themselves defenceless against what we (vegans) are saying, namely that humans have settled on second-best (poor food, conscience), and in doing so have become monsters.

The average human is in denial of the fact that terrible things are being done in their name; in fact, they are sponsoring terrible acts of cruelty and waste every time they buy their beloved animal products. By conforming to the status quo, imprisoning sentient animals in cages and pens to extract food from them, the omnivore can’t help committing the crime of inhumanity. What the ‘meat-eater’ does, by supporting the animal-trade, is just about the most cold, calculated and cruel thing they could be doing.

The reason we become vegan is to disassociate ourselves from this. And further, if we become vegan, then it’s our duty to speak up about our reasons, however uncomfortable it may be for us to explain or however uncomfortable it may be for others to listen.

Of course, it’s easy enough to write about all this, but it’s much more difficult to succeed in getting them to discuss things, to get them to trust us and convince them we aren’t just omnivore-bashing.

We have to keep in mind why we became vegan in the first place, to free animals from prison. That reason has to be, for us, more important than any other consideration. And, of course, there are certain valuable bonuses for us, in terms of good health and clear conscience. In fact, there are plenty of other reasons why it’s a good idea to become vegan.