Obstinate to the core

1520: 

A vegan’s conscience is outraged at the very idea of slavery and particularly the obstinacy of thinking that we can’t survive unless we enslave animals.  It’s reminiscent of the ending of human slavery in USA, when they predicted inevitable collapse of the cotton and sugar industries if slavery were abolished – but the industries survived and went on to thrive.  Soon enough, the idea of enslaving humans became repugnant and then illegal.

It could be the same with animal slavery.  We can survive and thrive without eating animals or using their by-products, or co-products like leather.  We can also be happy and healthy without being clothed or entertained or medicated at the expense of animals.  But that isn’t something that's believed by most people.  It isn’t even taken seriously.  And that’s our great challenge.  Once we humans drop our animal dependency, we can address the other major problems still facing the world, such as war, disease, pollution and hunger.

As humans, we have the ability to learn from our mistakes, but we don’t. And it stems from our obstinacy.  We have inherited, from earlier generations, some very easily solvable problems, the most damaging of which is our use and abuse of animals.  We are held back by a collective reluctance to deal with the matter of animal slavery.  Instead of challenging ourselves to work with Nature, we seem to be content to remain the slave masters of animals, and that seems to have worked out to our advantage.  We seem to have got away with it so far.  But that might mean that the thief has been identified but hasn’t been caught yet.  We are still enjoying a tentative freedom, but for how long?  And what quality is such a ‘freedom’?

         

A compassionate society can’t grow whilst any sort of widespread slavery exists, and none is more widespread than animal slavery.  Stepping further, the only chance humanity has of surviving, let alone progressing, is by giving up bacon on the breakfast table and leather on our feet and aquariums full of captured sea creatures.  The lot must go if we want to move on.