Seduced by second class pleasures

1579: 

When it comes to food and keeping up our lifestyle, almost all of us are controlled by the carrot and stick. The ‘carrot’, our preferred-lifestyle including the many animal-derived foods we love to eat. The ‘stick’, our fear of losing out - perhaps we're threatened by the thought of a reduction in our disposable income, and that will directly affect our ability to buy our favourite animal products. The 'good' things in life are abundant for those who can afford them but meagre for poorer people. It’s all controlled. It’s all part of a neat system.

         

Everything which comes from the Animal (food) Industries is meant to be pleasurable enough to make us toe the line, but usually it’s second rate stuff – nothing more than a few taste thrills at restaurants, or a pleasure-booster when eating such things as ice cream, chocolate, cakes, meat and all the food luxuries we think we couldn’t do without. It’s a sort of ‘seconds world’ of cheap and cheerful commodities, and our wanting them keeps us working and consuming and conforming. We fear missing-out so we give very little thought for the animals producing the stuff.

         

Lifestyle is everything, and when you get used to one style of life you don't want to lose it. Giving consideration to ethics or developing our consciousness is not considered so important. Most people will settle for any old ‘pleasure experience’, especially where food is concerned. Instead of individual thinking and the opening of consciousness, we opt for group-think - “Everybody does it so why shouldn’t I?”

         

With safety-in-numbers, going along with the crowd, buying whatever one wants, we become agents of 'the popular way'. But vegans go against the popular, opting for a life governed by a strict no-animal-use principle. In a very major way, vegans by disassociating from the crowd start to think for themselves.

         

Understandably, this is something which could worry the Animal Industries. They probably realise that the world is coming into a more expansive age, and that could include many of their customers being ‘vegan-inspired’ or 'non-violence-inspired'. This wouldn't be so good for the future prospects of the Animal Industries. But they also know that it’s still a million miles away, and that today the majority of people are still happy to be poisoning themselves with animal foods. Thankfully for the Industry, their customers are addicted to their products and reluctant to give them up, even though the stuff makes people overweight and pushes them towards diabetes and heart disease.

         

Vegan food, being so much more nutritionally sound, might not protect us from this entirely, but it does help dissolve the addictions to these harmful foods and at the same time strengthens our liking for plant-based foods. The big plus for plant-food eaters it that our diet relieves us of the grumbling fear of these deadly health conditions.