Chicken Nuggets and Compassionate Communication

1991:

Vegan principle needs to be spelt out, if only to stop the rot amongst omnivores. If we can overlook something as obviously wrong as factory farming (immobilising animals to make them work more like machines) then this needs a bit of deconstructing. It’s too horrible to ignore.

Vegans might seem like people snatching the chicken nugget out of the hands of children, so we need to turn that around. We need to show how the alternative can be more fulfilling, breaking the attachment to the ubiquitous chicken nugget.

‘Not-wanting’ is a long step away from ‘addictive-wanting’, especially when guilt is so heavily associated with the wanting of, say, chicken nuggets. The omnivore will want to keep quiet about the wrong of it, and will do almost anything not to have to face facts. If we consider the damage we do, in the light of what everybody else is also doing, it might not matter if we think we can or can’t get away with it.

Vegans themselves might avoid certain truths too - that our vegetables and fruits come from a monoculture which destroys the land, and yet we buy these products because they’re cheap. These vegetables, produced by ‘intensive means’, are grown by farmers who want to stay in business. Competition is the main reason intensive methods are used so, whether it’s animal farming or arable farming, these operations provide us with our food, which gives us our very energy and life. If we move away from our own standard food product (whatever it might be), aspiring to do something better, we enter a world of ideal conditions and high prices. At some time, we’ll have to deal with the ‘wrong’ of it. That might mean vegans themselves might have to eat less so that they can eat better, which means we’ll have to change some of our habits and deny ourselves what we want because of the price.

This is a bit of a dilemma perhaps, but all these difficulties we vegans face helps us to understand omnivores better. If we can experience what they are facing, we’re in a better position to help. And that involves a compassionate communication of vegan principle when resistance is already high. All we can do, in the end is set a good example, with food, especially food, and with our vibrations. If we really do want to communicate, nothing much else matters.