Serious Differences

1891:  

If we have serious words, spoken by serious people, about serious matters, the ‘serious look’ can sometimes look hysterical, our serious words flip over into the ‘not to be taken too seriously’ category. How easily the intelligent animal activist is called whacko. Probably, most people today live in their own well-constructed ‘reality’ camp. They feel it’s best to accept Reality, as it presents, especially when it presents our own interests.

The unavoidable fact, for all who care to think, is that just about everyone in the community is involved in killing. The abattoir crushes the sensitivity of thinking-people who are customers of the companies who do the killing. Their food involves animals, and for that reason alone, few of them can be expected to see things our way. They won’t listen. But if that’s hard enough for us, we have a more serious communication problem.

Imagine bumping into someone you haven’t seen for years and going for a coffee together, and you discuss your lives since you last met. And inevitably this subject appears. And you’re reminded of other occasions in the past, finding how easily eyes glaze over at any hint of ‘animal-lib’ talk. Which is why the bored feelings, the discomfort, the statistics. Which is why old-style animal liberation talk doesn’t work, especially when the story is dry or stale. Which is why my friend now thinks I’m boring, because I haven’t stopped talking about animals since we sat down.

A vegan’s perspective influences a huge number of activities, like food and clothes, shopping, dining, discussing serious matters. And that’s what happens here, with me and my friend. We t touch on serious discussion and within seconds I know if he’s an omnivore, and likely he soon enough picks up I’m not. We are already in disagreement. The details don’t matter because now it comes down to a raw emotion, less conscious for him than me. So, quite directly, this is where vegans MUST take a lead. It’s a matter of liking people who disagree with us. A vegan is often very strongly opinionated. And that’s okay if you’re with someone who unconditionally loves you, who find it admirable to hold strong views. They personally aren’t threatened by the fact that there’s a difference of opinion here. But with the many people we talk to, who aren’t our unconditional lovers, one big difference (politics, sex and religion, etc) can get personal.

If that happens, if we come across as cold and unaccepting of someone (because they are omnivores) that will be the predominant thing that’s remembered, and in future avoided. It’s hardly ever they who initiate coldness or rejection of us, because vegans are whacko and even cuddly and cute, but they’re no threat lifestyle-wise. But for us, that’s not the case. It’s not so for us, about them. To vegans, the meathead is the threat, not to us personally but to our ‘clients’. We feel obliged to be serious about our food, our relationships and the Cause. Well, you get my drift. We aren’t, all of us vegans, altogether peaceful peaceniks. People often think it’s not safe to disagree with a vegan.

But this genuine and not altogether unfounded fear is made dangerous for all concerned when it becomes a dislike of vegans. When people find them disagreeable, and therefore, along with their information, disregard-able. This particular attitude, towards animal activists in general, develops in the privacy of one’s own mind, becoming an almost subconscious distaste for certain types of people, types of views, and types of aggression. Whether founded on an individual encounter or a generalised view of all vegans, it’s one’s own private attitude, perhaps fuelled by others, that finalises an important judgement. Of course, our generalised view of meatheads is that perhaps with extreme carnivores, they have to swear a private oath to never cave-in to vegan rhetoric.