Traps for the Vegan Activist

Please Note: At the conclusion to some longer blogs (this the first) - if a blog has undergone editing (by my friend CJ) it will have “Ed: CJ” at the end. I’ll put this note out again next week, in case you miss it the first time round.

936: 

For those who DO eat animals,  a clear,  guilt free conscience would be desirable. But for the compassionate person,  this is impossible.  Guilt concerning eating habits gnaws away at both conscience and health.  There’s nothing else you can do to alleviate feelings of guilt,  but to ABSTAIN.

Abstainers have a world of things they can do. Plant-based eating regimes are particularly good for conscience clearing.  If  'conchies' then become 'animal advocates',  the first noticeable change they see (besides weight loss) is creativity.  It’s essential to be creative,  to keep one step ahead of the opposition.   Necessity being the mother of invention, our creativity is sharpened by the huge challenges we face.  Being creative,  as well  as compassionate,  brings out the best in us.  Meaning and passion rolled into one!  Because we’re addressing one of the most important and difficult questions facing humanity - human dependency on animals!   Most bear the stigma of cruelty by proxy.  At the very least, vegans are spared this.

But there’s something else.  Something for your own overall wellbeing. It comes from the satisfaction of being  involved in social justice issues and discovering something meaningful to devote a whole life to, something beyond self-interest.   It's important to

DO IT!  Become Vegan!   Vegans live longer, are noticeably healthier and more energy-filled. We need all of that. For the job of advocating for the animals means we need to focus on the ANIMALS and their problems, not ours. We do what we have to, for them, in the complete knowledge that animals can’t reciprocate. (Oh?). This opens doors to altruism – to having a reason to inconvenience ourself for the ‘greater-good’.  But is this easy?  No, because there are traps - four main "Traps for Vegans".

I’m sure these following traps may also apply to omnivores, but for the sake of argument, let's say these traps are peculiar to vegans.  At some stage vegans decide on what sort of activist they’re going to be.  All vegans want results. We want to be taken seriously and not be ignored.  For some of us, it’s our raison détre.

TRAP NUMBER ONE:   Altruism says it’s a good idea to stand up for the animals, but we can’t help them if we’ve still got ego or aggro problems.  We can’t wage war on everyone.  We can’t attack non-vegans.  Maybe all we can do is keep our cool.

TRAP NUMBER TWO:  Altruism says don’t queer your pitch.  Don’t give up on people who don’t agree initially.  I attack!  I let them know my views and it makes me feel GOOD!  But maybe there were other vegans before me who were making ground with these non-vegans in a non-argumentative way.  If I blow the peace-loving-non-violent reputation other vegans have built up, I effectively undo what others have done before me.

TRAP NUMBER THREE:   My altruistic instinct says "Don’t Persuade".  We’ve had a gutful of "Persuaders ".  If we do the same;   if vegans lay moral pressure on people, it will feel to them like more "persuading" and maybe even "persuasive VIOLENCE".

TRAP NUMBER FOUR:   Altruism suggests we sacrifice precious time and energy, write, demonstrate, make public protest.  But if I do this, I hit the brickwall of padded perceptions –  I’m seen as 'pushy'.  Non-vegans perceive us (the vegans) as potentially violent because we usually end up 'persuading' by  moral force.  If the perception strays this far, it might go further until they decide to dislike me. Then it’s personal!   On a broader scale, by getting noticed in public, one can even become the centre of a story. As media fodder, Trap 4 snaps shut.  If vegans are ever coming across as hard (opposite to the compassionate image) they’ve got us. The media can present us to their advantage. They’ll ‘blacken’ us if they can and great fun will be had by all. Then, with enough repetition,  soon just the very mention of the word ‘VEGAN’ will be linked in the public mind with ‘pushy’.   We’ve done the job for them. When ‘Violence and Vegan’ becomes a story, it goes down rather well with readers and viewers.  It fits in nicely to a dislike of what we’re saying, giving them an excuse to dislike us as people.  So Trap 4 is about the self-defeating ‘angry image’.

Despite all that, taking each of these Traps into consideration, the PROTEST is important.   It should be inspiring.  It can sow the seeds of truth in peoples' minds. But we  need patience.   Yes, yes …. The animals are suffering terrible things as we speak, but we still have to be patient.   Sometimes we forget how long Society has been developing the habit of corralling and eating animals – years and centuries and millenniums of animal-abuse. To turn that around overnight is unlikely. “But”, you say, “It may take too long. We want to speed things up. We want to DO something about animal cruelty NOW.  We must stop it NOW!”.  But what if our words fail?   Some activists get into direct-action, say on a night time ‘raid’ of a factory farm,  taking video footage of conditions there, providing visual proof to strengthen an already powerful argument.

The video footage is shown to students at school.  They learn the truth.  All good.  But at home they don’t (yet) call the shots.  School kids don’t usually pay for their own food, so they don’t usually get to choose it, or prepare it.  But mainly, they just don't  know about food.  They know no more than their ignorant parents about nutrition.  Adults deal with the food and adults weigh the pros and cons.  Kids have to sift through what they're told and what they see on TV. But wait!   They’ve seen the "factory farm footage" !  “How can I deny I’ve seen them”?   For anyone who is sensitive, those images can never be forgotten.

The fact is that Mr and Ms and Mrs General Public can no longer say, “But I didn’t know”. They can only try to forget, so they can get back to eating their favourite foods (from the very animals, they’ve just seen on TV!!).

This brings us back to approach and how we come across.  We are ‘persuaders’ perhaps, but we must be patient AND non-violent AND non-judgemental AND still find time to be effective!

You might say that peaceful protest wins nothing for animals.  The anti-vivisectionists have been fighting peacefully for a hundred and fifty years, but animal experimentation is thriving.  One could think that nothing is gained by being reasonable.

But what if it wasn’t 'reasonableness' but the perceived 'double standards ' of The Protester that annoyed the non-vegan general public.  What if the ‘gullible’ public is more sophisticated than we think?   Was it this that caused the Anti-Vivs to be so ineffective?  Was there something overlooked, souring the message?

We (vegans) can only emphasise - CONSISTENCY!   Whatever the message, this must be first.  We can learn from the mistakes of the past.  The Anti-Vivs provide us with a good example of mistaken direction (not in their work but in their effectiveness).  Sounds a bit formal, I grant you.  And here I go again,  almost attacking the very colleagues for whom I feel the greatest loyalty.  But still, I choose to use them as the example, to plainly illustrate a fundamental mistake.  It’s a mistake of some proportions, shared by omnivores and omnivorous ant-vivisectionists alike.

I think inconsistency has been a killer for animal groups.  It’s why none of them make complete sense. They never speak of fundamentals, namely the denial of rights to the very animals they defend.  The protesters of the past have been almost hilariously inconsistent. An uncharitable person might call it 'double standards'.  They’ll say of them “…….. undoubtedly well-intentioned, peaceful people, but they still support the animal industry”.  The obvious inconsistency. Forcing them to remain mild. Consequently no one took them seriously.  It is only serious when you "put your money where your mouth is".

Today, we have a more sophisticated protester.  He/she is better informed and is probably moving towards totally not abusing animals.  It’s a stunning triangle of logic, health and compassion.  If we ever have to prove that we’re serious, first things first, we must obviously be living according to the principles we’re espousing.

Today we have non-violent protesters who are unwilling to fire poisoned judgements at people, or try to shame people.  They glow compassion.  No disapproval of them is possible!

It’s a hard logic to follow for impatient protesters.  They want to show disapproval without causing injury.  They know that nothing is gained by hurting peoples' feelings.  Nor by causing embarrassment.

Beyond the grinding of our enemies into submission, each of us has to work out for him or herself  how to approach the enquirer or the adversary who suddenly pops up.

(Ed: CJ)