Bring on the debate not the quarrel

1318: 

If there were a debate on Animal Rights I imagine there’d be two opposite positions, and all very ordered.  But in the real world outside the debating chamber, stereotypes, prejudices, half truths and misinformation abound.  I struggle to get even one decent point across without being interrupted.  I’m handicapped by what’s gone before.  So, to turn things around, I establish that I’m an okay-person, fair-minded, not aggressive and respect both human issues and animal issues.  I realise it’s an up-hill job, to draw the majority towards our minority view, and because I’m the one wanting to debate animal issues, not the other way round, I’ll be the one taking the initiative to be civilised about the way we speak.

Before I get anywhere near the business end of discussing animals, I'd be setting the standard for non-violent interaction, logical argument, and never going on the defensive.  Animal Rights has a powerful argument so there’s no need for us to lose our advantage by demanding our right to speak.  We have to get others to want to take us on, and if they seem aggressive it’s often a cover for their weaker position.

So, how much do we dare to provoke and how much do we try to sweeten people into taking us on?  Why try to pick a fight when we can instead bring out people’s sense of their own truth?  We shouldn’t force them to respond to us or try to emotionally blackmail them.  This wish to talk about the issues must come from them and, at first, the issues they choose to discuss might not be the really big issues.  It will likely be food and health and animal welfare.  It’s up to us, then, to carefully introduce cruelty and slavery and all the really heavy stuff, but with an eye on the impact we’ll be making.

However hard they try to defend animal use, however hard they try to argue that it isn’t cruel, however adamant they are about meat being strengthening, their arguments weaken on account of the unethical violence and violation involved in all stages of animal farming. 

As soon as there’s a willingness to talk, we can say what we have to say, simply and without too many words.  We don’t need to labour the point.  Things can be left hanging since these weighty issues need time to be thought through.  When we've all had our say, we must show every genuine attempt to part company with each other as friends, not as quarrelling enemies.  If we’ve ‘had words’, then that is what will stick.  And it’s likely that everything that has been discussed about ethics and health will be swept away in the emotional discomfort of having quarrelled about it.