Conforming

1279: 

The animal exploiters know their customers can be relied upon to not-want-to-know what’s going on down of the farm or in the abattoir.  Most importantly, they know most people are conformists; they’re part of a system which is tightly controlled.

As a kid, when I first noticed how little choice I had, how many restrictions there were, I accepted it, as from people who I considered were lovingly protecting me.  I learnt what ‘normal behaviour’ meant. I learnt how to conform.  My habits formed, guided by my parents and Society, especially concerning my choice of food (no one I knew had ever heard of vegetarian food, let alone vegan).  Once I was beyond parental care and control I was able to decide for myself, but my habits were already set.  Undoing any of my food habits promised a lot of hard work.  And yet there were exciting new trends involving whole foods and eating regimes that used no processed foods.  It made me look at food afresh, and I started to make decisions based on discrimination and disapproval.  And it wasn’t long before animal issues were being looked at, in relation to my food.

Soon enough I realised I’d have to be involved in some sort of boycott, because there was no doubt that I disapproved of animal exploitation and therefore meat products.  Later, as I thought more about it, it had to include all animal by-products.

         

If young adults today reassess the foods they’ve been brought up with, they’d probably follow a similar path of logic and eventually arrive at the same vegan principle I arrived at.  And if they do, they’ll associate the two most important forms of liberation - the freeing of the conformist human mind and the liberating of animals.  They’ll weigh savagery against non-violence, slavery against freedom, and they’ll choose one over the other.

By chance, as a teenager, I took up athletics, and in particular running.  And the only teacher who showed any interest in my training was my history teacher so, in return, I showed an interest in his subject.  I went further with studying history.  And part of that study brought me to read up about the human struggle to escape slavery and win freedom.  And emancipation affected both slave and slave master, marking a major turning point in human self development.  We were then able to look more clearly at what slavery signified.  And that led, in the latter decades of the last century, to consider enslaved animals.  For me, history provided the essential context for examining all forms of enslavement. And animal enslavement took on a great significance, showing how humans are almost hard wired to always fall back on taking advantage of the weak and undefendable, in this case the animals.

But unlike their human counterparts, they’ve never been able to organise resistance for themselves.  The only chance they have, to be released from slave status, is with human advocates working on their behalf.

My present freedom allows me to be an animal advocate but that privilege comes at a price.  By uncovering certain truths and speaking about it in public, I find myself getting off-side with all sorts of people.  I decide to tread carefully. I see a woman in the supermarket with a carton of "caged eggs" in her trolley. My instinct is to point out how unethical it is to buy them, and as politely as possible to mention the cruelty of the cage-system.  But I'm ashamed to say that I don't, because if I did she would probably call Security and tells them I have assaulted her, by interfering with her freedom to buy a product, and I'd end up being chucked out of my local supermarket.  Animal advocacy upsets almost everyone.

But no worries (I think to myself), it won’t always be that way. There are obvious chinks of good sense in what we stand for, that will become apparent, eventually.  I hold onto that, especially when I’m on the brink of despairing of our fellow humans.

Vegan principle and anti-slavery make sense, if only in terms of human health.  We, as vegans, wish to weaken the influence of the ‘exploiter’ on Society.  Our aim would be to keep people away from animal foods and therefore help to keep them out of hospital, and safe from premature death.  We encourage people to stop poisoning their bodies and minds and of course to no longer be part of the present obscenity, that amounts to 150,000 animals throughout the world being executed every minute.  Until we move away from so much gratuitous self-harm and away from this daily animal holocaust, nothing can possibly go well for us personally or collectively.