Diverting Away from the Ideal of Harmlessness

1765: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

In the best of all possible worlds, we would work for the greater good rather than for our own good. The conscience is spiritually motivated, so a strong conscience is good for the soul. But 'spiritual' goals often seem unreachable if they run counter to our 'wanting' natures. We can't pacify our yearning selves until we attend to our consciences. There are many far worse off than ourselves; many whose 'needs' outweigh our wants. As we approach adulthood, we realise that there are times when we need to address the greater good, put ourselves second and lay aside our fears because whatever fears we may have, they are nothing compared to the torments of those we may be deciding to help.

Ideally, the problems facing us should be seen within the context of others' greater problems, particularly when there's great suffering. Some suffering is part of Nature, but there's the other sort, the entirely unnecessary human initiated suffering and none is worse than that inflicted on those innocent animals that we humans like to eat. For vegans, it comes down to straight out empathy with these exploited animals. Be deflecting the focus away from our individual problems, we get a clear impression of the harsh reality of the animals' tormented world of imprisonment behind closed doors where they spend their entire lives locked up. This is where a great wrong happens, where none of us are allowed to look into or enter through. This is where animals suffer - badly - and where the suffering that's inflicted is considered quite 'legal' and condoned by the animal eating/animal using public. However passionately we want to help these beautiful, sentient beings, we can't rescue them without risking prosecution!

So our power is in protest. Vegans protest and boycott all animal products. But there is no power if no one takes any notice, if people don't want to know. It brings us back to the low level of priority most people place on the suffering of farm animals and the high priority they place on their own self interests. Self interest is the dead weight here. Life has only so much to offer and it seems that one's acts of kindness which might make us proud to be part of our own species, are reserved for close to home problems. As important as these problems appear to be, they also act as diversions. We'd like to get them fixed first before we take a clear run at 'The Greater Good'. But we usually don't get that far. We never quite clean up our own act to our satisfaction. We find plenty of reasons and good causes to be involved with to prevent us facing the causes we don't want to get too close to. This diversionary practice is part of the narrowing of our decision making process. We never finish cleaning up our personal issues before getting around to broader issues, principles and ideals which might be confronting us.

At the other extreme, we have vegans who have addressed the very important principle of the ideal of harmlessness. But it's likely we have our own diversions keeping us away from this ideal. Obviously vegans aren't involved in any way with the harming of animals. But we don't always apply that principle universally and comprehensively. We shouldn't do anything, either physically or mentally, to harm animals or humans. We might be angry with the farmers and the proxy farmers (the consumers). But if we truly aspire to our ideal, then we must nevertheless be active in trying to help the consumer too.

What help can vegans be to non-vegans? It isn't only to win them over to our way of thinking, but to help them see our ideal by not aiming harmful thoughts at them. This is a tricky path we follow since we have to be watchful to not inadvertently feel harmful or be seduced by our own good deeds. Sometimes we engage in ineffective action in order to feel better about our commitment to the cause. If this is the case, others will pick up on it, suspect our motives and not be inspired by our 'words'. They might agree with what we say, yet feel uneasy about the way we say it and not be convinced that we are as we want to appear to be - advocates of harmlessness.