Quakers' Rules

1260: 

If killing animals to eat them is condoned by the majority, then I want to be upfront about boycotting all animal-derived products.  This will indicate that I don’t condone violence and specifically violently-extracted foods and commodities.  I hope that my boycott will deliver one less customer to the Animal Industry, and as an example to others, I hope it will encourage others to join the boycott.

It’s a very different way I see my world, where human-the-dominator is no longer valid, where being of equal importance with other species is the goal.  That’s the rule I choose to stick with.

Anyone who is part of a particular discipline, whether in sport, religion or personal relationship, abides by agreed-to rules.  No-rules means no-structure means chaos.  When it comes to the vegan discipline, we adopt the no-use rule not just to be different or to make life more difficult for ourselves, but because they provide a structure which works for us.  And it also proves to be beneficial to others (I'm referring to domesticated animals, of course).  So a ‘discipline’ is a show of strength, a proof that something can be done if we deem it necessary.

Take the example of Quakers - they avoid war and don’t let themselves be conscripted.  They believe disagreements can best be handled by dialogue rather than confrontation.  For many years in the eighteenth century, in Pennsylvania, they maintained friendly relations with the indigenous Americans and governed a whole state on the basis of non-violence.  Their government eventually collapsed, because their way became unfashionable, and the use of violence and force grew in popularity.  But maybe the Quakers were doomed by their own inconsistency.  It wasn’t that they’d gone too far but that they hadn’t gone far enough.  They didn’t embrace the idea of being non-violent towards animals.  One rule for humans, another for non-humans - they condoned violence towards animals because they chose to kill and eat them.  But they still represent today a precept of acting non-violently, and perhaps also non-judgementally, and we can all take something from that and appreciate its value and perhaps apply the best of that rule in a more comprehensive way.

It would be great if the Quakers took up the vegan principle because it would accord with their valuable groundwork (applied to humans as being on an equal footing with each other).  Perhaps Vegans are the new Quakers.  We have taken one discipline from one group and applied it to both humans and non-humans.  In return, we might hope they would take ours on board, to fulfil their non-violence principle.  One group could perhaps benefit the other group, in a sort of principle-exchange.