Consistent Ethics

1876:

Most people think that we can only be effective if we have specialist knowledge, but what expertise is needed to know that something is as wrong as the animal business is wrong, and to steer clear of it? When something isn’t right we know it in our gut. It comes from intuition and inborn values. A familiar comment from new vegans is, “Why didn’t I see it before?”

         

From my own experience, as soon as I tap into instinct, things become clearer, and then I’m more likely to gravitate towards ‘the greater good’, if only because it seems so obvious.

What counts, I think, is optimism and faith. And you can’t sustain much of that if you are hanging around the gates of the abattoir, figuratively speaking. Following convention, without questioning it, eating food which we haven’t examined ethically, doesn’t bode well for the future.

         

When any of us choose to NOT buy something that we want, stopping ourselves for ethical reasons, we making a statement about self-control - controlling our cravings and desires. We say, for instance with animal food, that we shouldn’t eat what shouldn’t even exist - namely foods associated with enslaved and executed animals.

         

We’re saying that what is obviously wrong has to be off-limits. Even if we are exemplary human beings in what else we do, by setting an example in one field but not in another, equally important field, we lose overall credibility. It’s the same problem we have in any of our personal advancements, whether in our career, lifestyle, relationships or spiritual progress. By neglecting any one vital issue, simply because it doesn’t suit our convenience, we introduce an incompleteness into our life, and that surely leads to double standards and self-dissatisfaction.

In the end, if we can’t muster sufficient personal power to change any faulty parts of our own daily existence, then we come across as someone without personal authority, without which we can’t fight corruption or hope to change the system we live in.