Seduced by second rate pleasures

1274: 

When it comes to food and keeping up our lifestyle, almost all of us are controlled by the carrot and stick factor.  The ‘carrot’ is in the form of the pleasures of our preferred lifestyle, which include the sorts of foods we eat that bring us the most satisfaction.  These foods mostly comprise animal products.  The ‘stick’ is in the cost of things, reducing disposable income, and very much needed for the buying of our accustomed animal products.

The good things in life are abundant for those who can afford them and who will conform to ‘normal habits’, but they’re much fewer for poorer people who can’t conform.  It seems conformity and affordability go hand in hand.  It’s a neat system.

Everything which comes from the Animal-food Industries is meant to be pleasurable enough to make us toe the line, in order to acquire them.  To get what they want, most people are only too willing to toe the line.  But these favourite foods are not always very satisfying, especially when soured by what we know about the animals’ lives, down on the farm.  Usually it doesn’t take much to sour that picture anyway; the foods are often very second rate.  They provide nothing more than a few stomach-fillers and unsubtle taste sensations, anything from ice cream, chocolate, cakes, meat and all the little food luxuries we think we couldn’t do without.  It’s a sort of ‘seconds world’ of cheap and cheerful commodities.  But for lack of anything better, we continue to 'need' them.

Our wanting and acquiring them, keeps us endlessly working and earning and consuming.  And conforming.  We don’t want to miss-out, so the thought of voluntarily boycotting a whole heap of delicious food products isn’t an attractive idea.  So there’s little reason to give any thought to the animals producing the stuff we want.

Lifestyle is everything, whereas ethics or the development of consciousness is less important.  Most people will settle for any old ‘pleasure experience’ where food is concerned.  Instead of individually thinking things out for ourselves, we follow others’ leads - “Everybody does it so why shouldn’t I?”

With safety-in-numbers and going with the crowd, we buy whatever we want.  Vegans, on the other hand, opt for a lifestyle governed by the ethic of no-animal-use.  In a very major way, vegans disassociate from the crowd.  We might not know all the answers but at least we think for ourselves.

Understandably, this could be a worry for the Animal Industries, since they probably realise that the world is beginning to change in strange and unpredictable ways.  They may foresee a ‘vegan-inspired’ world, with ethical principles governing behaviour (and spending habits).  To them, it might all look dangerously close to practising non-violence.  And that’s hardly good for business!  But they also know that it’s still a long way off yet.  They are comforted by the fact that the majority of people are still happy to be poisoning themselves with animal foods.  Thankfully, for the Industry, their customers are addicted to their products and reluctant to give them up, even though their products so obviously makes people overweight and push them towards diabetes and heart disease.  

Vegan food doesn’t protect us from this entirely, and we are notoriously complacent about certain deficiencies in the standard plant-based diet, but it helps dissolve the addictions to these specific foods.  Our ethics keep us away from many harmful foods and strengthens our liking for plant-based foods.

As soon as I got used to a plant food diet, I realised it was good for energy but even more importantly it was good for making me feel more alert, and consequently more suspicious of traditional food regimes.  As soon as I realised how cruel and unthinking traditional diets were, it awoke the rebel in me.

The rebel asks tricky questions in public.  The rebel challenges the so called ‘food authorities’.  What I most wanted to do was to help sap their strength, by boycotting every Animal Industry commodity I’d ever used.  I was realising that once you open up your purse or wallet to them, you automatically turn a blind eye to your own involvement in what they are doing.  And whichever way you look at it, what they’re doing is not very nice at all!