The power of food

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What the Animal Industries may NOT realise is that a strong counter-culture is gaining ground.  People are beginning to wake up to the fact that animal products are dangerous as well as immoral.  We know food is obviously essential to life.  But not this food. If animal-derived foods are anything, they’re toxic and unethical and detrimental to the environment, and yet almost everyone, even when they know this to be true, remains an omnivore.  They’re seduced by roast dinners, egg and bacon breakfasts or their after-dinner ice cream.  And they can’t walk past a cake shop without paying a visit.

It seems that we can’t get past our own tastebuds and food-tastes.  We’re hemmed in by our social eating habits.  If we go against eating norms, then our social relationships will suffer.  Whereas if we eat from the same table we know we’ll be accepted.

For people like vegans, social isolation is a potent punishment, simply because we eat different food.  Perhaps people think we are trying to appear to be better than everyone else.  Whether that’s fair or not, it seems that way.  But however we are perceived, it shouldn’t make any vegan feel insecure or depressed. After all, we’ve looked carefully at our own habits and decided to make changes which go against majority opinion.  That’s a substantially brave thing to do.  We boycott products and condemn the industries who make their business out of animal exploitation.  It should at the very least be seen as brave action, and we should be thankful we’ve become vegan, despite the struggle.  One might argue that some life-struggle is good for us, since it develops appreciation for what we have, contributing to a strength of character, with which we’ll eventually be able to attract others towards our ideas.

As vegans, we develop a respect for sovereignty.  We learn to acknowledge others, and especially their sovereign right to a life.  We recognise the unique individual who is worth something in their own right.  If that does nothing else for us, it should give us enough self confidence to combat the social isolation that being vegan might bring.  It helps us lead the fashion and not simply follow it.  It says to us, “Yes, go ahead, boycott, do what is necessary and right, and don’t back off when things get rough”.  And this is the same confidence that says “no” when we happen to be tempted to forsake principle.

If that strength of character is lacking in our world, and if people do keep giving-in to exactly what the brain-washers have in mind for us, then our biggest problems are ones concerning conformity.  If we are giving-in to social pressures, in order to be the same as others, we have to consciously go against that, if we want to stand firm.  If we feel this way but don’t act, then our sitting on the fence erodes self esteem and self-confidence.  It can only serve to prove that we haven’t been able to stand up to the power of food.