1373:
Being associated with the
Animal Rights movement or the Vegan movement requires a big commitment. There’s so much ground work to be done by so
few people.
To keep up our drive, we need
to have a high frustration threshold, because almost everyone is opposed to
what we are saying. And people don’t
tell you so. Instead, they ignore us and
hope we’ll go away.
Of course we don’t go away,
even though we’re suffocating under an avalanche of indifference. It’s debilitating, maybe because no other
activists, in minority groups, put themselves up against such a brick wall. Vegans are up against the ‘convention of
animal eating’. Almost everyone is
implicated. If it’s not eating them it’s
wearing them or using them in some other exploitative way.
What happens to animals is
ugly. We know it and we don’t want to be
reminded of it. Vegan animal advocates
are a thorn in the side of almost everyone (maybe not yet consciously so) and,
for that reason, we are not liked. And
because we are scorned, we get lonely. We get lonelier still because, within
this small grouping of people, there are so many different approaches, and lots
of disagreement. Each one of us believes,
“my way of ‘breaking through to resistant people’ is the best way”.
Inevitably antipathy exists
between individual activists. We’re not
unlike any other political grouping in that way. But it’s perhaps worse for vegans, who are
working for Animal Rights, because we’re such a tiny percentage of the overall
population, especially here in Australia. The realities of ‘animal activism’ are hard
enough on a personal level, so what I’m suggesting here is that we don’t need
to add to our considerable present-day difficulties, by distancing ourselves
from the omnivore.
The aim, after all, is to
connect, NOT to draw apart. If we even
feel slightly superior to others, whether they’re fellow activists or red-neck
meat-eaters, we head into separation. By
separating, we make ourselves look morally superior, and that’s not a good
look.
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