Oafs

1998:

What is it, when people behave badly, that lets them NOT think ill of themselves? Perhaps it’s a slow, almost imperceptible process, almost as slow as evolution itself, moulding normality into the shape of how things have always been done - I’m okay because I’m normal, doing no worse than others.

What arrogance that is, and yet probably no more arrogant than someone with a sense of being special, privileged or the ultimate saviour of humanity. The messianic and the barbaric aren’t that dissimilar to each other.

Are humans meant to be the dominant species, have a role to play in taking primitive life forms and transforming them into more sophisticated beings? It’s as if humans have swallowed a sci-fi fantasy, leading them to not-question their dominator role. It’s as if we believe we are the way we are.

If we put it this way it makes us sound like real oafs. But that’s more or less what we are, according to what we do. And alongside that, we achieve some really wonderful things. We have become mesmerised by our own achievements but have conveniently forgotten how we’ve paid for them. Our oafishness, arrogance and insecurity have been inherited from our culture, our parents, etc, and if we don’t spot it soon enough it sticks to us. It stays with us. It comforts the lonely and emboldens ‘me-first’. It says “I must succeed. I have about seventy or eighty years of life in which to do it, preferably sooner, so I can enjoy my success. If I fail I will be unhappy”.

Only when we come to question this closely do other things start to fall into place. We see why we need to start changing but, for this, we need breathing space. Slowness-of-purpose doesn’t always mean indecision, it sometimes shows patience and a sense of long-term purpose.

Vegan Animal Rights, the movement, has embarked on a long struggle which could end overnight if the collective attitude changed, but maybe it will endure for quite a bit longer yet, as if the time to change hasn’t yet arrived. During the intervening years, people who are part of the Movement, are exploring. We’re testing different ways of communicating the idea, that all animals are royal. That idea will take time to sink in, if only because most people still think of animals in the very opposite way.