The Fluidity of Change

2011:

Vegans have made one or two quite dramatic changes in their lives. For a start, they’ve replaced the items in their fridge. They’ve changed their whole lifestyle from one they’ve always known since childhood. (Although now, of course, there are ‘lifers’, who’ve been vegan from birth).

Vegans may have made certain changes, but some of us are still afraid of doing too much more. However, once started, why not explore. Vegans of today are the freest people on Earth to be exploring.

Change breathes life. It’s like with cycling, where you curse the hills but love the down-slopes. As vegans, we need a buzz of change about us to keep us on our toes. We have the potential to be a determined and vocal ‘opposition’ to all aspects of the appallingly amoral Animal Industries.  Vegans are out there, showing that we are an evaluating and discriminating people. We need to find out what the differences are, between omnivore-mentality and vegan-mentality. And how that pertains to human development.

Change is the key here, not unnecessary change or dramatic change but a bubbling, unplanned, next-moment sense-of-change. For any of us who are drugged and addicted, we must be kept awake, so our receptors are receptive to whatever is coming in.

Vegan animal advocates have the responsibility not only to promote plant-based products but to advocate change, if only because there’s such a deep-rooted fear of it. Everything benefits from the heat of change. Staid solid lives don’t welcome change. So, in our harmlessness drive, we know we don’t have an easy sell on our hands.

The omnivore mind-set is largely based on pleasure. The exquisite sensation of pleasure from certain flavours and foods is indelible. Food opinions have been forming and responses rehearsed for much of our adult lives. Too many get stuck. It often takes a dramatic illness or a near-death experience to jolt us into change. And then perhaps it’s done reluctantly.

Not surprisingly!

But vegans have their deep-rooted fears too. We often take a long time to realise, having made such a dramatic step, that it isn’t all, then, done and dusted; we don’t always recognise our own need to keep moving on. We can be so focussed on food that we think of not other dimension to veganism. Is it for  health, is it for the environment, for animals - each is central to the application of the highest vegan principle of harmlessness, but the big ban is violence. And we, getting a better understanding of why it’s there, and structure one’s own thoughts the other way. Notably, liking and then promoting non-violence.