Shocking Facts

2082:

How do animal activists come across? We meet some mates in the street, and it’s nice to see them, but how do we seem to them? Maybe we smile, hug, ask each other how we are. I’m calm, they’re calm, feelings are mutual, and that’s how it starts out. But sometimes conversation moves into dangerous territory, when the subject of Animal Rights comes up. We might have a lot to say on the subject and it can be said calmly, approachably and strongly, but not so strongly that they want to change the subject or so calmly that they can ignore the importance of what we’re saying.

It seems the best way to consider talking about this subject is for no sermons, no attacking, no sloganeering, but just calm talk - more can be said by understatement than by diatribe.

Those ‘Animal Rights Shock-Facts’ can sound stale if they’ve been heard before. If we try to persuade people it won’t necessarily be taken as a friendly gesture, more like an attempted conversion. And anyway, it doesn’t usually get people thinking about what they don’t want to think about.

Conscience doesn’t seem to call the shots any more, especially when it interferes with our ‘little comforts’ (like animal food and clothing).

We’ve all known about ‘Hens in Cages’ for a long time, it’s a familiar horror story even amongst kids - but it isn’t ‘thought about’. So, it’s not acted upon. Most people are nowhere near to boycotting animal products. They regularly buy things they can’t possibly approve of if they thought about it.

But if that is so, it isn’t necessarily our job to exploit their guilt or try to convert them. We might be able to get them thinking but we achieve nothing by embarrassing them, attacking their values, or giving up on them.