Optimism and The Future

1880:

Edited by CJ Tointon

 As a species, we need stable emotions to plan for a sustainable future. Emotional stability is dependent upon some level of optimism. As our optimism and stability increase, there comes a sense of permanence. People who have made the changes necessary to "Go Vegan" soon realise that their decision won't weaken or reverse. What they thought they'd miss is no longer on their minds and is fading away in importance. It's as if this one change signifies a maturing, a moving past the temptation of slipping back into old ways. 

When we feel content being vegan, we don't mind so much being at odds with almost every person we know. We live in a society where most people have never given veganism a serious thought. Their meat and dairy foods, their woollen jumpers and leather shoes are so much a part of their everyday life that boycotting them would seem like an unnecessary self-punishment. They wouldn't be able to grasp the fact that animal-based foods and commodities need not play a major part of daily life and that someone who chooses to live as a herbivore does not have some sort of mental health issue. So fixed are these ideas in the minds of omnivores, that they go through life never touching on their true inner compassion and therefore miss out on their best chance for self-development along with many other interesting aspects of life.

Having established new food and clothing regimes, vegans are free to look into these other 'interesting aspects', all of which are quite out of the question for anyone still using abattoir products. Omnivores would find it impossible, for example, to explore the principle of harmlessness. Harmlessness is central to a vegan lifestyle and essential to our species if we are to move away from violence.

Vegans understand that a lot of the negativity which omnivores feel towards us is really the subconscious self-dissatisfaction feeling of being so closely connected to the violence of animal cruelty and abuse. It leaves them with a level of pessimism; for theirs is a world without a future. What chance for recovery has a human world that is so soaked in violence? What hope do we have when most humans are completely dependent on the routine mass killing of innocent sentient beings for maintaining their 'normal' daily life? If a person allows this bleak outlook for the world to dominate their reality, they'll be feeding the self-fulfilling prophecy of 'The Coming Catastrophe'. 

Vegan principle opens the door to optimism; if only by establishing a sound basis for fundamental reform. Our 'going vegan' might seem hardly noticeable to those who ignore it; but when it enters our own lives, it establishes itself deeply, like a breath of fresh air to one who has been suffocating. Veganism is so profound that most people don't recognise it for what it is. They see it as an easily dismissed, unpopular philosophical view on life. But, in essence, veganism offers a 'root and branch' change to the way we view life, the way we eat, the way we treat people and the way we respect the miracle of Nature. 

Non-vegans will say: "It's already too late. Why bother?" or "I don't give a stuff about the future anyway." These are merely expressions of pessimism and selfishness, neither of which will impress future generations when it's their turn to analyse the history of the early part of this century. We will be seen as showing a shocking lack of faith in what will have proved to be (by then) the essential lifestyle for human health and self-development and for taking on responsibility for the health of this already 'human damaged' planet.