What is violent in our communication?

1038: 

          

There are a lot of animals on death row.  There are very few people trying to protect them.  Sure, we need to raise awareness of this. Sure, we need to be effective in what we do and say.  But real communication can be elusive.  Perhaps we need to do the very opposite of how we feel, and not be too closed-off to opposite suggestions, not be unwilling to listen to opposite arguments.  It’s the key to effective communication.

If I hate violence it’s probably because I still have it in my own life.  I still have it because I doubt non-violence itself.  Do I say to myself , “Nice idea but too ineffective”?

By holding onto violence but professing non-violence we move forward too slowly; I might ‘observe’ non-violence in my eating habits but I might not too different to my omnivore friends in other respects.

In our society non-violence isn’t taken seriously.  It’s a bit whimpish and we doubt its effectiveness.  And by doubting it we emasculate it. We lose sight of its usefulness.  We think it’s weak.  We associate it with being cowering, cringing, humble, and too meek.  It lets us be taken advantage of (like the animals themselves).

So, being vegan, should I ignore these epithets and instead address the value of the lessons animals display themselves?  Shouldn’t I simply be learning from their approach?  Animals don’t sense things as intellectually as we do but they have abilities we’ve lost.  When they aren’t domesticated or enslaved in captivity they know how to survive on their own, and have heightened senses to help them.  Many of them can smell things a thousand times better than we can and see things clearer too.  They don’t work everything out before they do it.  And importantly, unlike us, they accept themselves as they are and aren’t judgmental or revengeful.  Another, perhaps their greatest talent, is their ability to discern peaceful intentions.   They’re attracted to affection because it denotes trustworthiness; to cats and dogs, and many other animals humans get close to, this is an important characteristic.

           

Having suffered so badly from human violence throughout the ages, animals, wild or domestic, have become arbiters of good taste in the matter of harmlessness.  And from that, with the example of that, we humans could take a leaf from their book and build a similar non-violence into our own attitudes.  Hopefully we wouldn’t then be subject to the human who might eagerly make us their slaves, as they’ve made so many animals!

Harmlessness

1037: 

If I need confidence, in order to give strength to the things I say, I must operate on the principle of non-violence. This is why vegans come across as being confident, because they have this on their side.

This principle is confirmed all day, every day, until it becomes the symbolic and real basis of our eating, shopping, thinking and talking. Our food makes us strong in so many ways, including the way we stand before others.

All the time a vegan is simply being a vegan, there are no problems, only a strength-of-being-confident about something important. But as soon as we take a political stand and try to convince others to follow suit we find ourselves in much trickier position. There’s a thin line between stating why we are vegan and trying to convert others.  If we consider talking about animal rights and vegan living in the public forum, however enthusiastic we might be, we need to be representatives of harmlessness.  Sure, we need to be assertive and not indecisive, but we need to temper everything we say by our need to achieve a non-violent approach.

Seduced Towards Violence

1036: 

Inspired by the idea of "non-violence", my first introduction to that process could be in my choice of food - "non-violent" food.  We shop and eat every day, so if our food is not connected to violence, it's a good start.  By the same token, we can’t start the process in other areas of our life and expect much progress while we are still engaged with violence-based foods (animal foods).  It's probably our love of meat, cheese, eggs (and the thousand and one other food and clothing items we are attached to) that hinders our progress towards living a violence-free life.  Whether we take a knife to the lamb’s throat ourselves or let someone else do it for us, it’s still violence of the most destructive type.  Whether we cut the skin of the calf to make our fine leather shoes or let someone else do the deed, we are still connecting to the same violence.  Being complicit in the attack on animals means we can’t move on towards our own violence-free thoughts and acts.  We are caught up in a system of violence that all civilisations, whether pagan, theist or atheist, have been locked into all through history.  And humans have been unable to move on because their very survival was specifically linked to the animal-killing world.  Until fairly recently.

Not so long ago, humans experimented with "survival-without-using-animals".  They tried to do the impossible - live animal-free.  And it worked!  It made possible all the rest;  the process of examining every other aspect of human existence to see if it was possible to do it without resorting to violence.

I was watching a TV programme about a connection set up between Canadian and South African grandmothers (in relation to the AIDS virus and the loss of these African women's adult children).  The South African women travelling to the West noticed one thing above all else.  The Canadian women didn’t live in fear of being sexually assaulted!  In South Africa, huge numbers of women and girls are sexually assaulted.  They live in fear of violence in a way that would deeply shock most women in the Western world.

With education comes a reduction in both violence and unwanted pregnancies, but  that’s one small (albeit significant) aspect of the 'violence disease' the human world is suffering at present.  Relationship breakdowns, school bullying, hunting for sport, class separation, wealth disparities, theft, lying, vivisection, rodeos, dog fighting, fishing - the list goes on and on.  Some involve small violence, others very great violence.  It’s the same sly disease affecting all of us.  We can put up with it. We can say it’s too endemic for any possibility of foreseeable change in the future;  or we can establish the opposite.

If you dislike the disease from the past or the prospect of it continuing into the future, you can start doing something differently in your own backyard.  We each have a part to play in altering the emphasis.  We shouldn't expect quick results though.  The current atmosphere is thick with violence.  TV programmes (with those familiar warnings beforehand) are full of violence.  It seems that we like to watch violence.  Murder-detective stories are extremely popular entertainment.  Pornography involving violence and violation of women and children, is extremely popular.  So there’s a long way to go.  We have nothing much to replace "violence" with!  Who wants to embrace a negative like 'non-violence?   How can we replace the attractiveness of violence with something less destructive?

In the food department, meat can be replaced with "cruelty-free" alternatives, e.g. 'plant-based'.  But plants aren’t made up of rich-tasting tissue in the same way that an animal carcass is.  Plants aren’t intrinsically as 'tasty' as animals.  So if it’s not about sensual replacement, what is it about?

How can we replace the excitement of the hunt for the murderer, with the squeaky clean tale of peace, harmony and angelic sweetness?  Violence does have a certain attraction.  It has that element of 'forbidden fruit'.  It’s arousing.  It’s risqué.  Even when it’s subtle, violence sits on the edge of what we might just dare deal with.  For some people it’s almost - sexy!  Righteousness just doesn’t compare.

But like a drug, we need more and more to get the same hit.  So we demand ever more plentiful, richer, tastier foods, with no sense of responsibility for its methods of production or its ill effects on health (let alone the animal cruelty).  The virus of violence thrives on this weakness of self will.   In the end, we must suffer for our decisions on all levels, usually some years later, at a time when we are no longer capable of reversing things.

If we ignore all the seduction of violence and connections with violent industry (like the Animal Industries) and adopt a more disciplined and compassionate lifestyle now, we will come to appreciate that decision later in life.  The significance of our earlier decision will bring us benefit, both for our conscience and by getting our body into far better shape.  

Ed. CJ

Violence is, non-violence isn’t

1035:   

One person, however strongly they feel, however charismatic they are or clever they are, will not change the wrongs of the world single handedly.  But that doesn’t mean everything one person does and believes in will not have an effect on the world they live in.  What we do might be almost invisible, but that shouldn’t affect how we act or think?  Perhaps results are not what this is all about – it might be that any statement, even the smallest, is a marker on a path towards new goals, like our no longer wanting anything to do with violence.  It’s a birth, a standing-apart from the accepted violence and routine violation, and that’s the statement each vegan is making.

By aligning with non-violence, we involve ourselves in a hard ‘birth’ and an even harder ‘upbringing’.  Because what is it?  This new way is NOT violence, but it’s not anything very definable either.  What ‘non-violence’ IS hasn’t been fully enough conceptualised yet, only what it ISN’T; it’s at that early stage of being against something, that’s all.

It’s triage, diagnosing, sorting things out, stopping the bleeding, repairing damage, preventing catastrophe, easing the pain just a little, in many different places all at once.  Like shells exploding on the battlefield, violence is everywhere.  It’s hard to find any aspect of modern day living where it isn’t present or isn’t occurring in some indirect way; the most obvious in sexual assaults and fights, the less obvious in unfriendly disapprovals and harsh tones of voice.

Each act of violence does harm. We all know how each violent gesture feels when directed against us or how it feels when we’re empathising with others who are its victims.  It’s always been here, violence in all its forms. It’s always been running through our dealings with each other, ever since we were kids.  Our parents and ancestors have known it too.  Future generation will know it just as well, unless each of us, in our own small way, starts to treat the wound and begin the slow healing process. 

By treating others, family, friends, strangers with the same level of respect as we show to those we love, we make a start.  And this doesn’t stop with humans.  Vegans are trying to show that that same level of respect can be shown to animals.  There’s no reason to not consider moving towards vegan principle in our dealings with food or people.

The unthinking approach

1034: 

The original principle of non-violence is behind everything Animal Rights stands for.  With that in place one can’t justify hurting animals, notably farm animals, animals used for food.

           

No one wants to hurt anything, hardly anyone would ever hurt let alone end the life of an animal, but we’re not used to resisting things we want.  Humans can overpower animals to get what they want from them.  Most animals aren’t protected by law, so we prey on them.  “Hang it, I’ll do what I’ve always done.  Everyone else does it so why shouldn’t I?”  If we don’t do the actual hurting we certainly connive with those who do.

Perhaps we’d be more involved in non-violence if it seemed to hold any interest or attraction or advantage for us.  But it seems to hold nothing; there’s nothing about non-violence that is immediately exciting or substantial.  It seems to be so much set in the far-flung future as to be not at all relevant to today’s world.

There being no good enough reason to adopt a non-violent approach to life, we continue as we were.  We stick with the violent world.

Straight talking

1033: 

Some of us vegans rely too heavily on speaking with great emotion - we forget how that sounds to others.  This subject ignites passion but it also stirs up confrontation.  So a ‘yes’ for straight talking, as long as we leave space for opposite opinions to be aired.

           

We’re most of us amateur communicators - we aren’t trained to see ourselves as others see us and adjust accordingly.  Our stand might be admired. People often express how much they genuinely admire the stand we make, and they half want to take our side, but mostly they want useful information from us.  What they don’t want is a heavy lecture.

           

Information: if we outline our arguments half of what we say might be ‘handy tips on vegan diet’, the other half is why we are vegan, and is about what is happening to animals.  Which is where we have to be careful with details. We need be strong on verifiable facts and less strong on subjective comments which might be construed as ‘back-door insults’.  If we say that all animal products are unhealthy and cruelly produced, we need examples and references in case we are questioned. And likewise, if we draw an association between animal products and certain ailments (“Meat causes cancer”) we must be able to back that up. It’s much easier to cite cruelty with details of sow stalls, battery cages and the biology behind milk production, or indeed what happens at the abattoir.

           

Animal Rights is always a provocative subject - we’re telling people why we are outraged, implying that they should be too.  We’re commenting on the morals of ordinary consumers. There are a LOT of consumers consuming a lot of animal products; it’s as routine as getting up or going to bed. Most people think that everyone does it, so it can’t be bad. So, from that vantage point, no one feels obliged to listen to straight-talk from vegans. Although the truth is plain enough, perhaps we have to find a way of saying what we need to say without falling back on slogans condemning the public’s compliance with animal torture. 

Debating vegan principle

1032: 

Why are we so keen to talk about Animal Rights, so keen to alter other people’s habits?  Is it  a wish to implant a sense of optimism in others - “Go Vegan and Save the Planet” - or is it something else?  Perhaps we need other people to give us their emotional support?  Perhaps it’s just an out-bursting of something wonderful.

           

When we start to see potential in vegan principle, the idea explodes with possibilities, and it’s likely we’ll be busting to talk about it.  But we discover with some shock, disappointment and even outrage that no one wants to know about all that.  We get cold-shouldered.  It seems that the majority of people are suspicious of ‘minority types’. Everything is thrown at us to either shut us up or bring us back into their fold.  They think we are deluded, or that we are less sincere than we seem.  We speak about kindness to animals but they pick up from us that we don’t feel quite so kindly towards people, especially people who don’t agree with us?

  

Whether this is true or not, the rejection we vegans often experience makes us try all the harder to come across as sincere people.  And ultimately that is not such a bad thing.  Vegans may have to learn the hard way, to work on themselves in order to be utterly sincere, even if it’s true that we are needy for others’ support and encouragement.  We need to be able to show that we have no ulterior motives. And if we feel vulnerable, then we can be open about that too.  How sincere we appear is central to our credibility, and eventually our effectiveness as advocates for animals.

Promoting vegan

1031:

This is what I want to do: establish a vegan lifestyle, and when that’s all in place I want to get political - I’m urgent to speed things up on the Animal Rights front.  I want to start a small revolution in my corner of the world.  I’ve gone from a wannabe-vegan to vegan-warrior.  Now I’m ready to take on the world.  And yet this isn’t reality, is it?  Or is it?

           

However passionate we are, we should bear in mind we aren’t seasoned politicians with a tough exterior, ready to rip into adversaries, we’re just ordinary people talking to other ordinary people about something that’s important to us.  And our ‘adversaries’ - let’s not forget they’re sensitive free-willed beings, who will decide things for themselves, no matter what we say or how forcibly we say it.  Once we start actively advocating Animal Rights, it’s hard for us not to get pushy about it, easy for us to forget that people can simply walk away from us.

           

However good we think our ‘vegan’ idea is, it can’t be forced onto people and any of our uninvited contributions will seem like intrusions, even attacks.  We probably aim to simply inform but end up entering other peoples’ private space without their permission, especially when we let off a mild-sounding but heavily judgemental question like, “You don’t still eat meat, do you?”

           

Once our views are ‘fired’ at people they sense they are in the presence of something uncomfortable. They are put off, by us.  They even swear off the ideas we’re promoting, for ever.  

If you can’t stand the heat ...

1030: 

Becoming vegan is like buying a beautifully engineered car with its engine ready but still cold.  It needs a kick start.  It needs more than fearlessness - it needs understanding, a confident kick-start spark to overcome inertia.  Going vegan is like falling in love and then having to learn how to live together.  We grasp the big idea well enough, but how do we get our brain around it?  How do we spark the great engine into life and keep it running?

           

We all have frailties and fears, so when we ‘go vegan’ we get energy wherever we can find it.  We talk about it, even boast about it, and then we have to make it work.  Perhaps we squeeze it too hard.  We make it take on too much importance, too soon, because we don’t want our good idea to lose momentum.

           

We know this idea deserves our best shot but maybe the food change isn’t the problem; the problem is people’s opinions of us or the problem is about the slowness of people to come around to discussing the subject with us.

           

For all vegans, young or old, when the scales fall from our eyes (seeing that others don’t yet see what we can so clearly see) it’s stressful.  The conventional world which is so reliant on animals is psychologically fixed on animal-use.  We vegans have to learn to live with that - it’s ‘hot’ in this ‘kitchen’, but that must never be a reason to ‘get out the kitchen’.

Part two. ‘Going vegan’ - a very personal change

1029: 

  

Burden or benefit? I might have to deal with some social isolation and some doing-without, but there’s also a plus side to going vegan. As it happens, the change of diet isn’t much of a problem after all. You lose some favourite foods, you replace them with something else and that becomes a favourite now.  With a few new products in the cupboard and a few new recipes, there’s not a lot you miss. The craving for animal-stuff fades sooner than expected. Obviously some people do it hard - they allow their resolve to fade before new lifestyle habits kick in. I know a few people who’ve gone half way and never progressed beyond that. Like vegetarians - great start: sad stop!

The plus-side is simply knowing one has made a great leap forward - thinking of yourself and being able to call yourself “vegan”. Psychologically this means a great deal, it means you have taken up an ideal that most people wouldn’t even consider. It means you’ve been able to defy the brainwashing of Convention and been able to think things through and act for yourself. It means you’ve put others’ interests before your own, namely the animals’ and the eating and enslaving of them. It means you’ve given your own body a chance to regain health by not pumping toxic foods through it, namely the animal protein which is so detrimental to good health.

But, despite the obvious benefits, there are reasons why people don’t rush into becoming vegan. There are fears of not being accepted by people, fears that they’ll think a vegan is weird. And there are fears from within ourselves generated by ourselves, which might not be too easy to overcome. Perhaps our being vegan makes us feel superior and therefore immune to being judged, allowing us to make value judgments of others. 

Part One. ‘Going vegan’ - a very personal change

1028: 

As I start the process of change, I latch onto a number of things all at once, sparked by this one good idea; I’m heading directly into being vegan ... and that suggests being non-violent, animal friendly, green and everything else indisputable! But how will I be able to keep it up, knowing that if I can’t, I’ll hate myself.

           

Certainly I want to leave violence behind me, I want to become a peaceful person. But, to be honest with you, I still have feelings of violence. In our society, it’s not difficult to be at the consumer end of the Animal Industry, where we are never confronted by what’s happening behind the scenes. The violence is largely hidden. My own violent feelings (or my condoning the violence against animals) are woven into me just as they’re woven into the social culture? If I don’t like it and want to separate myself from it I know that I will have to start somewhere. Being linked with any part of the Animal Industry makes me party to animal abuse, so I know I must be ‘celibate’ in that regard. If I’m sure that I want to move away from violence, the first and most obvious starting point must lead me to a vegan diet. And it has to go further. I must end my love affair with my leathers ... and so on.

Having jettisoned these animal-derived items from my life, I am released. No more connections. Being vegan, the idea continues to inspire me. But I now feel a sense of loss. I seem to have lost things, like my favourite breakfast, my favourite leather jacket and plenty more. I’m now wondering if I’ve gone too far, and asking myself if all this ‘giving-up’ is making me feel better.

           

My doubts aren’t over principle but practice - have I made a rod for my own back? I started this process-of-change by eating only ethical stuff, and wearing only what was cruelty-free. And it did make me think well of myself. So far so good. But then I wanted more, I wanted support. I wanted my friends to think well of me for doing all this. And that’s where I found a rather nasty and unexpected trip wire. I had unrealistic expectations. I wanted approval from those who had no sympathy for my ‘process of change’, because they weren’t prepared to consider going so far themselves.

It came back again to my doubts, about whether I could keep it up, this change. Going solo isn’t easy. I wanted just a little encouragement from others. I didn’t want to be wading through treacle. I wasn’t prepared for such social isolation. Was this inspiring idea of ‘going vegan’ beginning to feel like a burden?

Energy

1027: 

On the face of it, dynamic non-violence calls for "right-thinking", which in turn depends upon our ability to discriminate right from wrong.  And this leads us into the quagmire of "value judgment".  We vegans, for instance, who’re secure in our "right-thinking" camp, often compare ourselves to the "wrong-thinkers".  The very fact that we’re then engaging in value judgement takes us away from "right thinking" in an important way.  It makes us look unattractive, even dangerous, and that effectively turns people away from us and therefore from what we’re saying.

We’d be on safer ground if we avoided considering what is good and what is bad and concentrated on strong and weak energy.  By becoming non-violent, vegans tap into a strong energy and if that energy is used for non-violent activity, it generates itself.  Violence, on the other hand, drains this precious energy.

Whilst eating bodies of executed, innocent animals is not usually seen as being 'violent', it’s not exactly an act of non-violence.  It’s seen, at best, as an unfortunate necessity.  It’s part of human habit in much the same way as polluting the planet by driving a car.  Everyone does it!  Everyone can’t be wrong!  It's just part of being human.  Since nobody actually advocates violence per se, it’s more likely to be seen as a fallback position.  We all fear hunger and starvation.  Animal-eating has always been thought to prevent that.  It’s an easy habit that helps to scoop us up when we feel afraid.  It falls into step with our weak-willed side.  It’s part of the attraction of temptation and we yield to it, not because we want to be wicked, but because it provides a quick safety-net,  a quick result.  Animal foods are plentiful, affordable, pleasurable(?) and stomach-filling.  How can eating them possibly suck energy out of us?

But we don’t bargain on the effect of 'ethics-loss'.  Let’s say that our ethical self has a sort of reservoir of energy - call it self-esteem.  The worst energy loss comes when we let that esteem drain away, when we do something we shouldn’t and try to get away with it.   Our energy is then channelled into not getting caught.  In this case, not being identified as an abattoir junky.

Meat eaters think they can "get away with it".  They think their meat diet won’t do too much damage.  But the damage shows up later down the track when it’s too late for rescue.

     

"Dammit" the meat eaters say.   "If only we’d hung onto that self-esteem, hadn’t caved in, hadn’t been so obstinate to advice, listened to our instincts".  Perhaps when things have gone pear-shaped and regrets have set in, meat eaters might wish they'd "Gone Vegan".  They might wish they'd not taken such risks with their lives and the lives of others.  By 'others', I mean the approximately 21,000 animals they would have consigned to death, on their behalf,  throughout their lives.  They might have wished to have had no regrets - like vegans!

Ed: CJ

People power for peace

1026: 

If we lived in a vegan world, it would be noticeable in that our fundamental nature would have changed. We would be peaceful people. We’d have stopped using animals. Peace would reside in the knowledge that no animal would ever again be legally barbarically killed.

Until we reach this collective point in human evolution, any other attempt at peacemaking won’t work. You can’t be peaceful in one way but still condone what is happening to animals at human behest.  Until peacemakers and planet-savers stop spending their money on animal-based ‘cruelty-products’, nothing will substantially improve for the human species. How can it?

The Toxic Human

1025: 

By observing Vegan Principles we can make a start to overcoming our violent natures.  Veganism shows up what humans have done (and are still doing) to animals.  More so, it shows the utter waste of energy used in producing food from animals.

Once a plant-based food regime is up and running in our lives, it quickly becomes obvious just to what extent we’ve been poisoning ourselves and how toxic animal food really is.  Epidemiological studies show that ill health is closely linked to animal-based diets, showing the link between a high intake of animal protein and the high incidence of deadly disease. These studies are generally swept under the carpet. There’s a deafening SILENCE when it comes to the dangers of using animal foods, not to mention the silence of protest at inflicting mass cruelty on a defenceless animal population!!  Ignoring all this just corrodes our ethics.

We’re led to see ethics as a rather threadbare garment unlikely to keep us warm.  So we’ve substituted ethics for 'moral codes'.  This allows us to do whatever we want to animals, just so long as archbishops and imams and rabbis say it’s okay!  This is sad enough, but it puts us to sleep, diminishes our outrage and makes us compliant. We stop wanting to protect the innocent.

       

This is why Animal Rights is so urgent.  The protection of animals from humans is essential. Humans can’t be trusted with animals any more than paedophiles can be trusted around kids.  Do we continue to drive animals insane on a mass scale everyday because we fear ending up "Vegan" if we don’t?

Ed: CJ

Animal material

1024: 

It seems that today our human passion and outrage is reserved for environmental issues and not for issues concerning animal farming or animal experimentation.  It’s sad enough that the beautiful planet is being damaged, and sad too that rapid species loss is taking place, but more insidious is our deliberate and routine attack on animals – those animals ‘designed’ for food, clothing and pharmaceutical production.  This is where there’s not only great damage being done to ourselves and billions of innocent animals, but also a mindless perverting of the beauty of Nature, with no end in sight.

           

No animal product is essential, for any reason whatsoever.  Sure, leather is strong and waterproof but no one’s life is threatened without it.  Sure, cheese and eggs seem useful for making yummy products but again, never essential.  And the fact is that they’re not difficult to replace.  Nothing from animals is so essential that we’d be forced to compromise our principles.  Nothing justifies our ‘need’ for their muscle tissue or their by-products or co-products, and yet creature-killing has become routine in every human community on the planet.  Humanity is hooked on animal stuff.  We can’t see past these animal products, to where they could be replaced with plant-based equivalents.  As with the kicking of any bad habit, it’s all in the mind.

           

What vegans should be communicating is how easy it is to kick.

Ethics and exploitation

1023:

The human animal has the ability to weigh the rights and wrongs of quite complex problems and the language to discuss the details.  Other animals are limited in this way.  They can’t necessarily ‘get out of the rain’ as we can.  Humans are lucky to have such sophisticated brains, but perhaps we’ve taken our mental abilities for granted, and used them to advantage ourselves to the detriment of others, especially other animals.

           

Our sophisticated thought processes have allowed us to feather our own nests, but in so doing we’ve forgotten our primary role as guardians of the vulnerable.  When any being is disadvantaged by the advantaged you would hope that any damage to them would be mitigated by that very guardian spirit within human nature.  But in our eagerness to keep ahead of our fellow human competitors it seems that our intellect has become detached from our conscience.  There’s been a separation between what we see and what we think about what we see; it has given us the green light to do things we know we shouldn’t be doing.  Instead of guarding the vulnerable we’ve wreaked havoc upon them.

One must argue that now we need to make amends.  We need to put ourselves second for a change.  We owe it to our victims.  It’s pay back time.  We have to realise that our planet is sacred and not something to trash, that our fellow sentients need our respect and that there is nothing to fear from becoming a non-violator.

On a personal level we may agree with this but, collectively, we are in league with the super-spoilers, mega-polluters and profit makers.  We’ve supported them in both their profit-making and in their regarding ethics simply as an obstacle to be squashed.   The collective ‘we’ might be guilty of this but the personal ‘I’ doesn’t have to be part of that collective.  Our own individual action might seem ineffective but this is where change starts; change must start from somewhere since the exploiters will continue unless an opposition forms to stop them.

Over the past few decades, public pressure has shown itself effective in starting to protect the environment from the spoilers.  The idea of ‘essential-repair’ is creeping into our consciousness.  These days ‘environment’ gets good press, after decades of neglect, but not so the abuse of farm animals.  People are reluctant to raise this issue, and the  Animal Industries make sure it gets little publicity, because they know that the idea of animals having ‘rights’ is a threat to the food and clothing industry.  It is also seen as a threat by the consumer, who may not yet be ready to see any threat to the supply chain of the foods they love.

If you are thinking of backing animal rights, you should not expect too much support from either industry, government or the consumer. 

Values

1022: 

Anyone who goes against the norm will inevitably find themselves between a rock and a hard place.  But it works both ways.  Those who stick with convention bear the burden of guilt associated with enslaving animals.  This is where confusion hits hardest, for young people especially.  They pick up habits and later start to question the values supporting those habits.  If habits are our personal safety net and insurer of pleasure, they are also connected with how we want others to see us.

           

It’s likely we want to do things ethically because we want to feel good about ourselves.  We develop a good sense of humour or we’re kind and generous, or we try to come across as intelligent - we develop values and expect to be judged favourably by them.  But today, with so many confusions and double standards, we have to question these bedrocks even to the point of talking important issues through with others.  Is it acceptable to be a socialist, a Christian, a capitalist, a vegan – what do my friends think about that?  What we don’t want to find is an explosive reaction because we’ve raised a tricky subject.  Agreeing and disagreeing are all part of the process of assessing values.  We don’t so much need to agree with others’ values as we need to find others willing to talk to us about them and not label us and be turned away from us according to where we stand on certain issues.

The art of indifference

1021: 

Being part of The Vast Majority allows people to downgrade the importance of subjects even when they’re obviously important and controversial.  Many people preface admitting to what they eat by the word ‘still’, as in “I still eat meat”.  There’s guilt and a sense of weakness associated with meat (far less about animal by-products) but mainly from the point of view of the meat being unhealthy rather than unethical.  Discussing any details is generally avoided - animal issues are dismissed as if a fly were being brushed from the sleeve.  And so it has to be, since if this subject ever gets a foothold, who knows but it might become part of polite dinner table conversation.

           

At the other end of the social spectrum are those who never even think about the possibility of ‘not eating meat’.  These are the animal eaters who don’t need to be bothered or intimidated by any ugly information about animals.  They only ‘know’ that it is essential to eat meat, and they’ve known this from when they were young, and if everyone does it, it must be normal and safe.

The art of euphemism & avoidance

1020: 

They say that if farms and slaughter houses had glass walls no one would eat meat.  But perhaps that’s not quite true, for the animal-eater doesn’t need to come within sight, sound or smell of these places.  We can bathe in the belief that we are kind people who are not very well informed and can’t therefore be held to account if we buy product from these places.  If we did know what was going on, and yet still chose to financially support them, we’d surely regard ourselves as cold hearted, and none of us want to see ourselves that way.  

While each person has worked out the best way to avoid the shame of it all, they’ve been helped along by mass acceptance and a whole string of euphemisms which refer to the animal death camps as ‘farms’ and ‘processing plants’ or as ‘efficient and humane facilities which give the public the best in food provision’.  It all fits nicely into a benign picture that the customer wants to believe in.

It comes at a price though.  The truth has to be suspended so the customer can continue enjoying wearing fashionable shoes or visiting zoos or enjoying the finest cuisine.  By way of some nifty mental gymnastics, each person comes to learn how to navigate past the truth.  But at a cost.  There has to be a ban on free speech, for it’s far too uncomfortable to be faced with the truth; one simply has to downgrade the issues and avoid those people who want to talk about it. 

I don’t want to know

1019: 

Ugly, noisy, smelly, and to be avoided at all costs.  We’re told that it’s a health and safety issue, and this is why animal farms and abattoirs these days are closed to the public.  In reality, these places have all the charm of concentration camps, which is why only those people who work in them know what goes on there.  Enthusiastic consumers of meat and milk products have a picture in their heads of a happy farmyard (circa 1930) - they don’t want to know about the industrial processes being applied to the rearing and killing of animals.  If they did it would spoil their dinner.

A slight slip in our brain function

1018: 

The road to ‘monsterdom’ started when we chased animals on horseback with guns, and then made things a whole lot easier for ourselves when we stopped trying to play so fair.  Since the animals themselves haven’t the means to accuse the humans of anything, there was nothing stopping us becoming super-monsters, so we herded them, captured and corralled them, bred them in captivity, and killed them to order, in order to eat them or wear them, and all at minimum inconvenience to our selves.  This came to be known as animal husbandry, such a benign-sounding term.  It was a long way from the fair fight or chase principle!  Factory farming is the logical extension of that.

           

Vested interests persuade consumers to spend much of their money on animal products.  As consumers, we’re not very educated about where our food comes from – the bliss of it comes from our willing ignorance.  Very few have ever entered an abattoir or seen an animal being killed or seen the equipment used for mutilating animals.  Few understand how mechanised the dairy has become or how the cow’s biology is exploited to increase her milk yield.  How many have seen inside a battery egg farm or seen sows encased between the metal bars of the quaintly named ‘sow stall’?  No, we the general public know very little of this and wish to know even less.  We’re lulled into a false sense of ethical security by people whose living depends on selling animal products.  When we are children, we’re given a sanitised picture of animal farming, by teachers and priests and grown ups in general.  Scientists tell us that meat and milk are essential for survival. The politicians and captains of industry assure us it’s all quite clean and humane (thank goodness the animals themselves can’t speak for themselves!), so we are made to feel quite safe all round.  And best of all, we know that we love animals, as proved by our caring devotion to cats and dogs.  We believe what we’re told. We don’t generally think things through for ourselves. We prefer to look through rose-tinted spectacles; we don’t see the double standards of the people who we regard as authority figures in our society. They enjoy the power we give them and they enjoy making dupes of us. The consumer, the poor dumb fool consumer whose brain function has been let slip!!

Enter the monster

1017: 

In a responsible society, you would think that bad behaviour, obviously harmful behaviour, would be punishable.  But in our society it can be authorised, legalised and considered morally okay.  This puts the very stability of a society on shifting sands - it makes us lose our confidence in the authority of our society’s standards of morality.  Here’s an example of what I mean: Watching chickens hanging upside down shackled to a conveyer, having their heads dipped into electrified vats of water to stun them, before exposing their necks to revolving blades, which decapitate them ... this is the legal and routine horror behind the production of chicken meat.  And in our society and almost EVERY society, this is considered okay.  If our human societies can sanction this then they can sanction anything.  Is it any wonder that people lose faith in their society’s moral codes.

           

What seems unethical to you and I can be washed clean by decree, and once something has been morally ‘okayed’, that gives the unthinking consumer the green light to eat chicken.  Similarly when a society says that polluting the atmosphere or spoiling the environment is necessary for the progress of modern society, the gullible public accepts it, and soon enough it becomes the norm.  Eventually it is no longer questioned.

In the beginning we may have hunted animals on foot, using sharpened spears, and it wasn’t very efficient but it worked to some extent on the predator principle.  Many animals live off other animals – predation is how most animals survive.  As the human brain grew bigger it became more devious, and as time passed, we humans overstepped the mark.  We became monsters, never giving the animals a chance to defend themselves or escape.  We shot them with bullets and corralled them, bred them in captivity and enslaved them to our convenience.  We convinced ourselves that we needed to eat animals to survive and be strong.  It wasn’t until the mid twentieth century that that was proved to be untrue.  And that’s when vegans refused to be part of the war on animals.

Justifying the unjustifiable

1016: 

Buying a ‘pet’ from a pet shop means another ‘pet’ will be bred to replace the one sold.  In that pet shop the cage is never empty.  Whenever we buy any ‘animal item’ we create a vacuum into which another item takes its place.  Even when we give away a pair of shoes to someone who needs them, it gives us an excuse to ‘go shopping’ for more.

Stealing life from animals benefits humans.  If I enjoy that benefit I will have to say to myself at some stage, “To hell with the victim”.  It’s the same as exploiting children or desecrating forests for timber - it’s the same human habit of using our advantage to victimise the harmless.

What the eye doesn’t see …

1015

  

In our society, we are encouraged to turn a blind eye to animal issues.  There’s very little media coverage, and factory farms, abattoirs and animal laboratories are closed to the public.

But it’s unlikely the public is keen to visit them anyway because they’re such ugly places – and this works quite well since it’s much more difficult to object to something when we haven’t seen with our own eyes.  We are also encouraged to believe that if teachers at school thought we ought to know about this, they’d have taught it.  If we aren’t taught something then we reckon it’s probably not worth knowing about anyway.

This is a world where the thin end of the wedge is thought to be dangerous, where one thing leads to another and too many awkward questions are asked.  For instance, if we discover that dairy products are cruelly produced then everything made with milk is ethically questionable ... and then there’s a danger that our conscience might force us into great inconvenience.

It’s like opening a Pandora’s Box when you start to apply ‘Rights’ arguments to the wardrobe.  Health arguments obviously don’t apply here.  Leather shoes, for instance, aren’t ‘bad’ for you, but they do come from slaughterhouses just as meat does.  (Leather is not so much a by-product as a co-product, since its production is as economically important as meat production).  A delicate conscience puts two and two together and comes to some difficult conclusions.  For example, vegetarians who still wear leather shoes can’t hold, let alone promote, Animal Rights views.

Middle roaders

1014: 

The middle-of-the-road meat eater may have some ethical concerns.  Perhaps they give a bit by eating free range eggs or drinking organically fed cow’s milk, but essentially they continue being indifferent towards animals.  A (lacto-ovo) vegetarian avoids meat but still takes part in the exploitation of animals, although it’s hard for them to admit that.  They don’t want to go too far (like becoming vegan) for fear of being seen as too different from their friends, so they wear leather, silk and wool and they eat butter, cheese and eggs.  They insist, “If you boycott all animal-based products you’d go crazy”.

So, it’s these middle-roaders, as distinct from the uninformed, who, despite what they know, are still willing to ignore what the know.  They can’t face the vegan argument and see veganism as a threat to their self esteem.

           

If vegans want to encourage those in the middle-ground, they must allow them to take the initiative of changing by themselves without being shoved from behind by us.

Poles apart (from a vegan view)

1013: 

For vegans, we are tormented by thinking about the horror of animal life on the farm.  ‘Our subject’ (Animal Rights) is unlike any other subject.  It isn’t a hobby.  We can’t be casual about. For us it’s a matter of righting perhaps the most terrible wrong ever known to our society – the enslavement and brutal killing of innocent beings, involving billions of them.  If you don’t share our point of view, it’s not something about which we can lightly ‘agree to disagree’.

           

If we are ‘abolitionists’, who think no animals should ever be used, since the record shows that humans are never to be trusted around animals, we come across as being unbelievably radical and confronting.  But, to us, that position is an essential starting point for the development of a non-violence philosophy.

However, if we want to make any headway with the non-vegan majority, if we want to break the common mind-set by appealing to people’s better natures, we must be prepared NOT to succeed, if only because of the sheer numbers of people who subscribe  to the collective mind-set.  Most believe that animals are ‘here for us to use’.

We can make it known where we stand on the matter, we can stick to our own view, but we can’t force that view down peoples’ throats every time we talk to them, or every time animals are mentioned.  Reluctantly, I have to say that we are involved in a waiting game; there isn’t yet enough resolve amongst enough people, to start thinking outside the ‘me’ square.  The hold which animal-based food has on people, to the pleasures of eating them, is so strong that NOTHING, other than personal health concerns, will persuade them away from their favourite foods.  And as for fearing ill health, when people are young and establishing their food routines, they are usually fit enough not to have too many worries concerning food-related health problems.

We are poles apart

1012: 

There’s an enormous difference of opinion between the protectors of animals and the users of animals.  Many of us who are animal (or environmental) activists have been involved for so long, that it’s possible we’ve forgotten how it all felt to us before, when we accepted food norms.  And now, after being vegan for some time, all we know is how it feels to be part of a minority, this minority.

           

For non-vegans, things are very different - they’ve always been part of the majority, eating any food that takes their fancy.

Just to take one example of a routinely used product, cheese. To most people cheese is just cheese.  There’s as much thought given to the origin of it as one would give to the origin of sunlight, it just doesn’t enter into the thought process.  So when we say “no dairy products” (which includes cheese), the cheese eater cannot connect that food with something wrong.  We can talk all we like about animal slavery but to them cheese will just be cheese, and vegans just weirdos.  Because of their liking for cheese and a whole host of other milk-based foods, they will refuse to follow our arguments, and somehow refuse to see dairy farming as cruel in any way.  They know that if they gave way to any of our ‘dairy’ arguments it would mean questioning some of the most delicious foods they know. 

Ethics starts with Non-Violence

1011: 

Talking about ‘diet’ is the peg on which ‘animal’ discussion often hangs its hat, anything to get away from the dark side - the cruelty of farming animals.  But that’s the return-point, where discussion comes back to ‘ethics’.  This is ultimately where we must win people over, otherwise it’s still only about ‘me’ and ‘my health’ and never gets as far as ‘my conscience’ and ‘the other’.  

Apart from veganism being a great diet, it’s also an ethical diet because it’s based on non-violence, meaning that animals don’t ever have to be killed or exploited or violated.  Vegans are at a double advantage in that they have stumbled on a diet which will keep their bodies healthy but, by adopting this diet, they also can live without participating in ‘The Violence’.

           

But now to the next stage: if we accuse someone of being violent because they eat meat or dairy products, that accusation may be construed as a ‘violence’ in itself.  For that reason alone, we should think carefully before making these sorts of accusations.  By pressing our opinion too hard we hint at our own latent aggression, and lose our best chance to discuss things rationally.  Once someone feels they’re being attacked, they’ll counter attack, and then the discussion goes around in circles - the central arguments are forgotten, and their hostile attitude to animal rights will become even more entrenched.  In the future they may only see us as wanting to subvert society by liberating all the animals.  Then it’s only a matter of time before ‘food-denigrating’ becomes illegal, as it is in some parts of USA.  The animal industry, supported by almost all consumers, already has enough political clout to bring this about.

Nutritious arguments

1010: 

My own interest concerning the importance of veganism is in the protection of farm-animals, from being enslaved and treated cruelly and being brutally killed in abattoirs. Not so for most people. They think that, when it comes to animals, the main issue to be debated is about food. So, I’m discussing food here.

Animal rights advocates who deal with matters of vegan nutrition are challenging food traditions which almost everyone accepts as gospel: that animal foods are essential for health. Vegans say the very opposite. When we make a case for the safety and healthiness of a plant-based diet we’re also saying that meat and animal products are actually bad for you. Healthy young people may not agree since they’ve been eating meat all their lives and they feel okay.

“Go tell it to your sixty year old friends, not us. Not me. I’m not interested in your ‘health repercussions’ argument”. Their fear of illness is still a lifetime away.

           

It’s easy to get bogged down in nutritional arguments (although obviously vegans need to learn about nutrition) so we need to start from here: that plant-based diets are safe and all nutritional needs are met from plant food. This needs to be laid out in some detail, to satisfy genuine questions.

Nutrition is based upon the fact that herbivorous eating is healthy and satisfying for all of us. But since humans have become so hygienic and our foods so ‘clean’ we’ve lost a vital element needed to keep us safe - Vitamin B₁₂. We plant-eaters (vegans) need to take an incredibly small amount (ten micrograms - r.d.a) each day, unless blood tests show we manufacture enough of it on our own - some bodies do, some don’t (Google ‘Vitamin B₁₂’ for more information). Otherwise there’s no serious disagreement these days, about vegan food being nutritious and adequate.