'Isms'

1887:

For those who are also attracted to ‘isms’, vegan-ism is a good ‘ism’ to be attracted to. But we have to face both what is tempting and what is daunting about it. It’s no good pretending that ‘going-vegan’ is a bed of roses. The perception of veganism, is that it’s a mixture of satisfaction and difficulty, pleasure and non-pleasure. But only by ‘doing’ it can one find out how much there is of each.

Most of us don’t willingly do unpleasant things, that will bring discomfort to ourselves. We may be motivated by the ideal of ‘going vegan’, but in practice we may not be that strongly motivated. Most people who know what veganism stands for also know what it involves. Particularly in being disciplined about cravings for taste sensations associated with animal-based foods.

There are plenty of ‘isms’ around today and most of them use some level of self-punishment as an all-purpose soul-cleanser! But this ‘ism’ has some unique ‘cleansing’ qualities. It has an attractive consistency and stability about it, because it’s based on such simple yet solid foundations. It makes one feel ultimately optimistic. It gives us hope, and a glimpse into what we could expect a golden future to look like. So, once introduced to such a principle, why would we walk away from it?

In veganism, perhaps we aren’t only looking for a health diet or even just a way to stop the animal killing but looking at an idea that might be powerful enough to break through the most dominant mind-set, shared by almost every human on the planet - that the purpose of certain animals is to serve humans. I don’t want to drift off onto a tangent here, except to say that it’s likely that violence of human approach is the main cause of most of our big problems today. Since veganism symbolises non-violence and a plant-sympatico diet for humans, it seems likely that it is, taken to its logical conclusion, an attitude changer that could alter our species’ focus on violence. But, again according to logic, that just can’t come about until animals are liberated, until enormous numbers of people are prepared to switch away from eating dead animals. The ending of slavery, for non-humans, simply can’t come about unless the majority agrees, which is why there can be no progress without change, and change in the hearts and minds of the majority of humans. Without adhering to vegan principle, any changes that are made will inevitable be superficial. Which is why it’s so important to show up what our conditioning has done to us.

The breaking of our fellow humans’ mind manipulations is urgent. When humans look about them and see what’s happening, only then can the animals be freed, only then can our health be improved, and only then will our planet stands a chance of survival. When enough people respond to today’s grim state of affairs, when the majority have taken to heart the vegan principle of harmlessness, then the future is no less than golden.

If our optimism is to have any traction at all, it will be based on having faith in the ‘awakened human’, who’d be no longer part of the animal killing system. Statistics should be impressive enough to change minds instantaneously, but owing to some pretty neat conditioning, we allow the statistic to be doubted, so that at a certain point they become meaningless. Animal Rights has relied on hard truth and statistics to get the message across, but people have shown un-interest. They’ve been unmoved. The question is why? It might still take a long time to find an answer to that “why?”