Kicking and Screaming

2050:

All of us hate being imposed upon, whether by illness or authority or fear. For omnivores, there’d be no worse torture than having to live the life of a ‘lettuce-eater’ – that’s the way they choose to see our ‘restricted diet’. For us though, we don’t want reluctant vegans. We don’t need converts who come over ‘kicking and screaming’. And that relieves us of the need to apply pressure.

Vegans have a good case to make and don’t need to fuel up the guilt people already have about their food habits. By coming on too strong, too soon or by saying too much, we waste our best advantage. If we sell veganism with threats we reinforce the worst stereotype.

It might be exciting to get through to a potential convert but, in our concern not to imprint what we tell them, it’s easy for us to get carried away, to over-sell. And to think we might get away with being OTT, since they’ll see we’re doing it for their own good; we’re preparing them with the essential ‘hard facts of life’. Then we reckon, if we speak loudly enough they will have to listen. None of this is true.

‘They’ don’t have to listen to anything, least of all us. They are in such a vast majority (everywhere on the planet) there’s no pressure on them from anywhere. They don’t need to take any notice, in fact they can afford to condemn us for being judgemental (or pushy, or whatever). And damn it, there’s some truth (not much but some) in what they say.

To vegans it seems unfair that omnivores will find any old excuse to ‘cut us off’. Their main aim might be to stop us saying what we want to say and, since they’re in-fashion, they are able to avoid discussing any part of the animal issue if they want to.

To be effective in getting our message across we simply have to offer people an idea that is too good to refuse.