Early approach, later superseded

1304: 

Once upon a time, my approach to animal abuse was to confront it directly.  It was the only way I knew that might have a chance of working.  I was protesting with all the outrage I could muster, against violence to animals.  And not surprisingly, no one seemed to want to talk about it. It was very frustrating.  I could be quite aggressive towards non-vegans. I was almost proud to act without restraint, in order to get my point across.  I thought it was okay to be pushy, since it was for a good cause.  I had a duty to be forceful. I didn’t realise at the time how close that was to ‘fighting violence with violence’.

         

Animal rights activists believe we have won significant welfare reforms for animals by being non-compromising and sometimes acting outrageously.  By using this approach we’ve brought issues to public attention and ended many of the worst abuses of animals.  But it hasn’t convinced the majority of consumers to change their eating habits; their spending and Animal Industry-sponsoring habits.  They may have caught our dirty looks but they haven’t got any from anyone else, so they haven’t felt the urge or the responsibility to change their daily habits.  In other words, the collective conscience hasn’t been tweaked.

         

This is what I think has happened – the Omnivore has experienced an animal activist talking passionately about animal cruelty but, because of the personal tone in the voice, hasn't been able to listen appreciatively or identify with them.  On an emotional level people don’t want to know the sort of person who can be ‘that angry’, so we activists virtually force them to want to disagree with our arguments.  It’s like listening to great music on a radio that's picking up a lot of static interference - it’s an uncomfortable experience, it jars the nerves, and you just want it to stop.

         

Over the past thirty odd years, since the birth of Animal Liberation, we’ve built an aggro, ‘in-yer-face’ image.  I speak for myself when I say that I’ve handed people a golden opportunity to dislike me and therefore dislike what I’m saying.  I’ve lessened my chances of being able to discuss important issues, concerning animals.  I’ve been unapproachable, giving them no chance to have a low key, informative chat with me.  I’ve seemed like a person who is only interested in others when they agree with me.  When this sort of animal advocate is around there’s little chance for you to consider things, let alone form your own opinion.

         

In the Animal Rights Movement there’s such a strong wish to convert that there’s not enough attention given to plain old education.  As a spokesperson-for-the-cause, I could look like exactly the wrong person to be speaking, especially when my arguments were at their most powerful.  Perhaps I needed to believe that the story-of-animals would, of its own accord, touch the hearts of people.  Perhaps I didn’t have enough faith in the attractive advantages of becoming vegan, nor that Animal Rights was an exciting enough prospect in itself.  My message might have sounded hard and uncompromising, and have been off-putting enough for you to consign it to the back burner or the too-hard-basket.

         

These days my passion is for promoting non-violence alongside a concern for animals (mainly those that are eaten).  I think I’m attempting to look ahead, to the fortunes of these animals and we humans being inextricably linked - we simply being the protectors of them.

         

Humans have always been violent and exploitative towards animals and now the time has come for us to atone for that, and to become their protectors.  They need our laws to make them safe, and we need to learn from them how to restore our own sensitivity.  It’s a two way road.

The need for human liberation is even more urgent than animal liberation, if only because this is where it all has to start.  Humans are the violators, and it's humans who need to break out of their imprisoned attitudes-of-mind. We need to change not the animals.  It's up to us to try to help them gain liberation.  And for that we first have to prove we are worthy to be their representatives.

         

My feeling is that if things don’t work out well for the animals things won’t progress for any of us.  Humans, having such a long tradition of treating animals barbarically, seem like true barbarians.  But this isn’t the way most of us want to see ourselves.  We surely want to see the humanitarian side of us shine.  But, in order for that to happen, we first need to revise our attitude towards animals.  We may start that process by not using them, or keeping them, or killing them, or eating them.

Until at least 50% of the human population of the planet realises there’s an animal problem, the animal problem will remain.  And that will lock us into remaining a barbaric species.  We may eventually get the worst abuses fixed, we may swing over to becoming vegetarians but that will still be a long way from true liberation, either for animals or for us.

         

Ultimately, this is what makes many of us feel so afraid – the no-progress thing.  All the time the animals are not safe from us, we remain dangerous beings.  On a personal level I want to save my own soul, for until I can be sure of that, I’ll always be held back by my own species’ reputation for violence.

         

Fifty billion domesticated farm animals, who are alive today, are presently on death row.  None of them have any quality of life.  None have a reason to live.  None have any contact with the natural world.  It makes sense to me that our own happiness is linked to wanting others to be happy too, whether they be humans or animals.