veganwise

The bottom line

2012-01-27T23:17:00.001-08:00

401:

One might consider the idea of veganism as a small raindrop landing on a duck’s back – the idea of it may easily enter the imagination but if it seems impossible, too painful, too daunting, then it’s likely we’ll shake off the raindrop, we’ll ditch the whole idea (despite how obvious the advantages might seem to be). No one opts for pain.

Even if one had to contemplate a vegan lifestyle and had read a couple of books about it, it might still remain beyond the pail ... to do it. Why, for example, would we voluntarily opt for living ‘vegan’ if the pleasure of it still eluded us? You’d surely agree, that if you can’t come at ‘being vegan’ you can never be of much help to the animals because if you’re not vegan it follows that you’re still eating them. How could you ever trust yourself? How could the animals ever trust you to be their spokesperson? You’d be quite the traitor if you were still helping to kill them whilst trying to save them.

Farm animals for 'the eating’

2012-01-24T02:39:00.000-08:00

400:

The most abused animals are the food animals. What if they could speak? What would they say about caged hens and machine-controlled cows? What would they say about denuded forests and the latest frightening changes to the weather? They’d give us such an ear-bashing.
It’s just as well they’re voiceless. But it’s sad. Omnivores are responsible for so much of this sadness. And what’s worse they don’t admit to the part they play in the killing.
That act of animal sabotage happens in the clinical, mechanised surroundings of the modern abattoir or in the backyard at the hands of the farmer. It’s the same terror for the animal in the type of death it suffers. It’s murder, slaughter, execution or torture - call it what you like, it happens to every domesticated animal used for food, weather killed for its carcass or to end its life when its productivity has ended and keeping it alive no longer makes economic sense.
If you care to read the next 600 words you’ll see how an animal being killed is difficult and how it impacts on the more tender hearted person - it’s a depiction of a pig being slaughtered in the nineteenth century, not behind closed doors but out in the open, a familiar process then, yet no easier than it ever was or has become.

A passage from Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy - The killing of the pig

It was thick snow, and the pig-killer was over-due. It seemed he was not coming and the pig had to be killed that day since Jude and Arabella had run out of barleymeal mixture the day before. The pig had been starving since then. Jude says to his wife Arabella, “What - he has been starving?”
“Yes. We always do it the last day or two, to save bother with the innerds. What ignorance, not to know that!”
“That accounts for his crying so. Poor creature!”
“Well - you must do the sticking - there’s no help for it. It must be done”.
He went out to the sty ... and placed the stool in front, with the knives and ropes at hand. A robin peered down at the preparations from the nearest tree, and not liking the sinister look of the scene, flew away ... Jude, rope in hand, got into the sty, and noosed the affrighted animal, who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose to repeated cries of rage. ...they hoisted the victim onto the stool, legs upward, and while Jude held him Arabella bound him down, looping the cord over his legs to keep him from struggling.
The animal’s note changed its quality. It was not now rage, but the cry of despair; long drawn, slow and hopeless.
“Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have had this to do!” said Jude. “A creature I have fed with my own hands.”
“Don’t be such a tender-hearted fool! There’s the sticking-knife - the one with the point. Now whatever you do, don’t stick un too deep.”
“I’ll stick him effectually, so as to make short work of it. That’s the chief thing.”
“You must not!” she cried. “The meat must be well bled, and to do that he must die slow. We shall lose a shilling a score if the meat is red and bloody! Just touch the vein, that’s all. I was brought up to it, and I know. Every good butcher keeps un bleeding long. He ought to be eight or ten minutes dying, at least.”
“He shall not be half a minute if I can help it, however the meat may look,” said Jude determinedly. Scraping the bristles from the pig’s upturned throat, as he had seen the butchers do, he slit the fat; then plunged in the knife with all his might.
“ ‘Od damn it all!” she cried, “That ever I should say it! You’ve over-stuck un! And I telling you all the time - ”
“Do be quiet, Arabella, and have a little pity on the creature.”
... However unworkmanlike the deed, it had been mercifully done. The blood flowed out in a torrent instead of in the trickling stream she had desired. The dying animal’s cry assumed its third and final tone, the shriek of agony; his glazing eyes riveting themselves on Arabella with the eloquently keen reproach of a creature recognizing at last the treachery of those who seemed his only friends.
“Make un stop that!” said Arabella. “Such a noise will bring somebody or other up here, and I don’t want people to know we are doing it ourselves. Picking up the knife from the ground whereupon Jude had flung it, she slipped it into the gash, and slit the windpipe. The pig was instantly silent, his dying breath coming through the hole.
“That’s better,” she said.
“It is a hateful business!” said he.
“Pigs must be killed.”

Altruism and optimism

2012-01-19T01:45:00.001-08:00

396:

Out of optimism comes stability, and if our optimism persists, stability increases, and it brings a sense of permanence. The sort of change that is made by people who ‘go-vegan’, as it stabilises and as habits form and as the practical difficulties are ironed out, brings about a sense of being ‘vegan-for-life’. There’s a sense that we’ve got past the temptation stage where we may slip back into our old ways, and find that even those things we thought we’d definitely miss ... somehow they fade in importance.
No one was more surprised at this than I was.
To achieve this change, to get to the point where I felt entirely at home being vegan, was rather strange in a way, because I knew that I lived in a society where most people have never even given ‘going-vegetarian’ any serious thought. Their meat and dairy foods, and their woollens and their leather shoes, are part of their everyday life - so much so that it might seem impossible to maintain a lifestyle where these foods and commodities don’t play a major part. That’s what I thought but it’s not how I think now, especially because other interesting bits of life open up.
Vegans, once established in their food and clothing regimes, are free to look ahead into other interesting areas, all of which are quite out of the question for anyone still using abattoir products. Those who are still omnivores will find it impossible, for example, to explore the principle of harmlessness, which is central to a vegan lifestyle. Vegans understand that a lot of the negativity which omnivores feel against us, is coming out of a frustration of, daily, being so closely connected with the violence of the Animal Industries ... so for them there’s bound to be some pessimism about the world and its future in general. If any of us allow this pessimism to dominate our reality, we might come to believe in the inevitability of ‘The Coming Catastrophe’.
Pessimism can bring us to believe that change is only made possible by the use of force - “change has to be big and fast, otherwise it won’t work. It will soon fade through lack of momentum”. Something like veganism doesn’t seem dramatic enough to set off the chain reaction major social change needs.
But here is where I think we have it all wrong - veganism establishes the basis for reform. It might seem hardly noticeable to those who can still ignore it but when it enters your life it establishes itself deeply. Veganism is so profound that most people hardly recognise it for what it is. If it suggests any sort of solution it can easily seem unreachable or unrealistic. It represents a fundamental change in the way we view life - it’s an unpopular philosophical view on life which is easily dismissed.
However, popular or not, it is precisely in tune with the character of the 21st century. It’s thoroughness and optimism promotes a root-and-branch change, despite the fact that it might not show any signs of ‘flowering’ during our own lifetime.
Is that long-term prospect off-putting?
The two reactions Society might make - “It’s already too late, so why bother?” and “I don’t give a stuff about the future anyway”, are merely expressions of pessimism and selfishness, neither of which will impress future generations one little bit when it’s their turn to analyse the history of the early part of the century. That particularly negative outlook is certainly not characteristic of ethically driven vegans.

Greater good revisited

2012-01-17T00:57:00.000-08:00

394:

I suppose I’m arguing that to ignore animal issues is dangerous. In body terms it’s like being passive about an illness when a deadly virus is taking us over. We think we can ignore it and carry on as usual, doing what everyone else is doing, getting away with it ... thinking we can grow sufficiently in the comfort of a consumer-istic atmosphere, without any ill effects.
If we want our society to be a strong force for good on the planet then we have to set personal standards. We have to let our enthusiasm for the greater good move freely with the other great forces we recognise in life - altruism and optimism.
Altruism is probably not very much different to optimism since both deal in a combination of good intention and satisfying outcome. When you set out for good results and it works for you, you tend to feel optimistic; perhaps optimism is the result of setting standards for self-pleasure that are directed by an altruistic urge to be unselfishly-useful. When it works (and how can it not work?) we recharge our energy. We experience the pleasure of discharging energy for others’ benefit, and being involved with each other in that way often results in reciprocation and a beneficial mutual exchange.
Optimism shows up like a light. Others can’t help but see it, especially when it isn’t a show-off but simply seen operating our daily habits. And that needn’t be anything special if only because we all enjoy habits which involve some self-discipline. Just as lifeguards love to be on the beach to save lives when people get into difficulties, we all like being useful. We like to be needed. Whole relationships can surely be based on this same pleasure-service principle.
As we develop new and sometimes not-so-easy-to-install habits, for example in setting up a vegan lifestyle, the main driver is usually optimism. We look forward to a better, more pleasure-giving habit, a more useful way of living based on give and take. When we act optimistically, habits fall into place. Maybe, like kids settling in on their first day at school, new habits are a bit shaky at first. It’s optimism that gets us over the hump, in our habit-building. We are, if we did but know it, preparing for the repair-journey ahead. Perhaps we instinctively know that new habits are preparing us for change, for what we will have to get used to soon enough.

Consistent ethics

2012-01-15T01:35:00.001-08:00

393:

Most people think that we can only be effective if we have specialist knowledge, but what expertise is needed to know that the animal business is wrong and to know to keep well clear of it? When something isn’t right we know it in our gut, it comes from intuition and inborn values. A familiar comment from new vegans is, “Why didn’t I see it before?”
From my own experience, as soon as I tap into instinct, things become clearer, and then I’m more likely to gravitate towards ‘the greater good’... only because it seems so obvious. What counts, I think, is optimism and faith and you can’t sustain much of that if you are hanging around the gates of the abattoir, figuratively speaking. Following convention without questioning it, eating food which we haven’t examined ethically, doesn’t bode well for the future.
When any of us choose not to buy something that we may want, and we stop ourselves for ethical reasons, we make an important statement. We say, for instance with animal food, that we can’t eat what shouldn’t even exist - namely foods associated with animals.
By setting an example in one field but not in another equally important field, we lose credibility. It’s the same problem we have in any advancement, whether it’s our career, lifestyle, relationships or spiritual progress. By neglecting any one vital issue, simply because it doesn’t suit our convenience, we introduce too much incompleteness into our life, and that surely leads to double standards.
In the end, if we can’t muster sufficient personal power to change any faulty parts of our own daily existence, then we have less personal authority ... without which we can’t fight corruption or change the system we live in.

An end to pessimism

2012-01-14T00:09:00.000-08:00

391:

For over sixty years vegan activists have been forming teams of animal advocates, each working to stop the juggernaut before it swallows us whole, doing it by boycotting the animal-abuse industry and all the other highly destructive industries. What we do is done in the spirit of optimism, helping each other to drop our ingrained pessimistic belief, that whatever we do we won’t even scratch the surface.
We do what we can do - we change to eco-friendly light globes, recycle newspapers, support organic farming if we can afford to and, most importantly, eat plant-based foods. Everything we do in this way is valuable, but if we think what we do “won’t make a scrap of difference to the world” then we’re doomed before we’ve even started. If we can drop our pessimism we’re more likely to avert Earth’s downfall.
If optimism is to gain strength, to become something more than just a nice idea, it must be substantial enough to carry us over the tough spots. It must be based not on personal success but on the greater good ... with ‘my interests’ put second. Then nothing can possibly go wrong.

Investing in vegan principle

2012-01-13T01:13:00.000-08:00

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If the number one fear for most of us is killer disease and degenerative illness then number two must be fear of energy-loss. The energy that can keep deterioration away is almost horded.
Energy equates with health and any energy spent must be justified and purposeful. It isn’t something we use up for no reason, so for ‘unsupported’ causes like veganism people may not want to invest in it if they don’t think it stands a chance of coming to anything. If we see no ‘me-advantage’ in the vegan deal, perhaps we’re likely to be stingy with our energy.
If we take up any major cause we probably want to believe that it will make a difference, otherwise our efforts will be wasted. And there’s the rub. We’re all afraid of backing the wrong horse (horrible expression) and no one wants to be associated with a bunch of losers.
It’s a gamble going vegan. We gamble with energy, time and money. We gamble on very long-odds.
Taking up veganism as an idea is hard enough but to engage our minds in it, invest in it, expect so much of it, squander energy on promoting it … perhaps we say to our self “What a waste of time”.
Having faith in this one single idea is a big ask.

Reconciliation

2012-01-12T22:58:00.000-08:00

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Playing the ‘blame game’ is popular with some vegans. The Animal Industry and consumers in general make for an easy target. So why not give them some curry?
It helps to release our anger and frustration. But, constructively speaking, there isn’t much to be gained from apportioning blame. What’s done is done and can’t be undone.
After the apartheid era in South Africa there was a need to move on, towards reconciliation, to avoid a blood bath. It showed a deliberate moving away from the idea of revenge. It’s often revenge that lets us enjoy, for a moment, the misfortunes of those who aren’t like us and who deserve ...what?
This is where true compassion shows through. It’s hard to imagine how one can be reconciled to the meat-heads because their species-apartheid is so mean, especially because it’s so safe.
Nevertheless there’s a great need for vegans and non-vegans to make a point of contact, to be talking together about their differences – it’s the only way we’re ever going to deal with the very worst mistakes we’ve each already made.
We all need to turn into compassionate folk - isn’t it as simple as that? First off it’s a personal thing, concerning food choices. Then to the principle of non-violence and being non-judgmental. Then it’s about feeling at peace with our detractors ... not excusing what we each do but being on friendly terms whilst discussions are underway … with the aim of restructuring our habits. Once we see each other making an attempt to accommodate the expectations of the other we’ll automatically move past the accusing stage and be on the road to repair. Once we can feel some movement, albeit small progress, we can experience optimism, perhaps for the first time.
Ultimately (surely!) our overall goal is to focus on increasing the world’s optimism about itself. We can’t do that if we’re pessimistic or if we’re forecasting the end of the world or thinking, “Why should I change” ... “the world is fucked”.
Vegans have certainly got to get over their judgement-based looking-down-their-noses at those who aren’t vegans - yes, we have to realign our attitudes, for sure. But for people in general there are hard times to come when we are all judged by future generations - if we don’t do anything about animal slavery now, history will say we were an uncaring people. Future generations will accuse us, quite rightly, of being too casual about a potentially catastrophic problem ... and there will be no excuses since the records will show that we knew everything we needed to know to make the necessary changes.

Not being too obvious

2012-01-10T01:46:00.000-08:00

383:

It’s understandable, with pessimism being in vogue, that we’re beating-ourselves-up, with shame and guilt about the mess we’re in and our inability to clean it up. Personal shame is all turned inwards. We make ourselves forget about some of the trickier world issues. If we can’t get a clear run at major global problems because we think we are too insignificant and they are too complicated, we give up trying to run at them at all. And since we believe everything is out of our control anyway, why go to all the inconvenience of taking on a vegan lifestyle in the first place?
Animal consumers are practising members of an animal-abusing society. The Kill-Club is everywhere on the planet and most people are umbilically linked to it, so we feed the very problems we’re aiming to solve … because so many world problems trace their origins back to animal exploitation.
Once we can see the part we play in all this and want to do something about it, we may feel as though we’re on the move. But often we decide to pull back by only going half way – eaters of red meat switch to eating chicken and fish, the vegetarians stop at another point. Neither gets close enough to the problem to be an effective advocate for the animals. Vegans, however, can be effective advocates … but when no one notices us or even makes fun of us, we go on the defensive. Or we attempt to pre-empt that by showing off, by telling everyone what we’ve done and why they should too.
Inevitably we get a bad reaction which surprises and disappoints us. Then we get angry (obviously frustrated because no one’s paying attention). Then we go for broke, with anger, invective and disassociation. Still nothing really changes.
Nothing can change if we are focusing on the wrongs of ‘animal-attack’ when we then use another sort of attack on those who disagree with us. Perhaps we shouldn’t be phased at all by disagreement - at least we’ve stimulated opinion.
If we don’t come across as unlikeable, when we’re not agreed with, then it’s more likely something of what we are saying will sink in, be it ever so subliminally.

Cool fashion

2012-01-08T02:18:00.001-08:00

379:
Vegans want people to change attitude towards using animals. We don’t just want a local change amongst family and friends, we want it amongst LOTS of people. So we need to be aiming for change on a grand scale. People will change if they think it’s in their best interests. For example, they’ll be very willing to change to keep abreast of fashion - no one likes being old-fashioned. Neither do they want to be seen as anything but ‘normal’ - normalcy helps us hold down a job and keeps a certain reputation within the group. If we want to seem cool we’ll keep in with hairstyles or clothing, to keep pace with fashion and to be sure we’re never very far from peer acceptance.
So when it comes to a radical change of lifestyle, like going vegan, it might seem like social suicide to voluntarily act in such a different way to all our friends. We’d hope to persuade friends to follow suit, but to go vegan means, at first, we do risk going it alone, the aim obviously being to lead a fashion. It requires some bravery. Ultimately, though, it needs a cool enough head to strike out into the unknown territory of new fashion - leading fashion not following it. Relatively easy with a new hairstyle but with a whole different eating regime, based on ethical principles, it calls for some considerable strength of character ... and a considered approach to others, to attract them to change in the same way.
We know ‘shaming’ won’t inspire people to change, but what might move them is their fear of falling behind the current fashion. Once people feel that there is a trend towards compassionate eating they might want to get in early, to be ahead of the bandwagon.
If we try to use ‘guilt’ to get people to change, they’ll probably oblige us, eventually … but it’s likely not to be a permanent change. It’ll weaken back to nothing over time. If the ‘coming fashion’ is overlaid with ethics it is likely to have a much more powerful effect on habits and a better chance of escaping the gravitational pull of convention.

Manipulation

2012-01-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

378:

I want to let people know how they’re being manipulated into buying “yummy” foods made from animals. Of course, in order to push my point home, I’d love to talk more about people’s ‘addiction’ to these foods but that would touch a very raw nerve.
So, that’s my difficulty. How do I explain my reasons for being optimistic without mentioning my reason for boycotting? It’s almost impossible to do that without offending most people. People make great daily use of all the stuff I’d be suggesting they avoid. I could talk about saving money by not wasting it in buying rubbish. I could talk about the health benefits of eating only from the plant world. But mostly I am drawn to talk about the crimes committed by the Animal Industries and, by implication, the consumer’s crime of supporting them. The very mention of crime would win me no friends. I realise it would distance me from non-vegans. And I don’t want to be seen as shame-merchant - that’s not going to help if I want to change peoples’ attitudes.

Optimism

2012-01-06T00:50:00.000-08:00

375:

Are we generally optimistic about the future? Do we have reason to be? I’d say most people see no future. They’re pessimistic and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy - if enough people see the future in that negative way, our collective consciousness will self-destruct. Maybe we won’t be around to see it happen … but ….
Is this ‘pessimism’ - the reason we don’t care about repairing things properly now? If so, isn’t that spectacularly selfish of us, as well as bad karma? And who wants to be selfish? It’s so unattractive. Is it that we seek pleasure in life (and it seems there’s plenty to be had) above all things ... so “why not make hay while the sun shines?” The thought of tightening our belts and imposing personal disciplines isn’t a pleasant idea.
What we’d prefer to do is simply coast along. But the warnings about systems-collapse are everywhere. Our ecosystems, our economy and our ethics are going downhill rapidly. Most of us realise that something has to be done. To ignore all the warnings would seem crazy and yet if we waste a lot of energy trying to repair the unrepairable, we figure that it won’t be appreciated by people who come after us. And what’s more, they’ll say we didn’t address our problems because we “didn’t care enough” ... and that’s the ultimate put-down.
But how can they ever know what we went through? How can they know why we are no longer optimistic?
Every older generation, out of self pity, asks the succeeding generation that. And every new generation blames the last of being irresponsible. They, in turn, leave the same legacy to the next, and so it goes on, without there being any substantial change in human nature.
And if there’s something one would want to change in our world today, wouldn’t it be ‘human nature’?
So ... we ‘live now, pay later’, preferring the payment’s made after we’re gone from this world. Could it be this which has brought about our infamous irresponsibility - not caring about a world fifty years hence? If so, then that’s surely the ugliest face of pessimism, and the weight of this cynical outlook on life signifies an inability to see how things could be.
How do I envisage what is going to come about, and if I’m a pessimist, does it bear down heavily on me? Is it that I can’t seem to deal with my own personal problems, let alone global problems? Do I ignore the significance of my own obvious shortfalls, simply because they feed on my pessimism - preventing me from seeing beyond my own familiar reality?
And all of us - is it that we’ve given up? Are we mesmerised by one dead-end thought - that in this day and age (of huge, powerful, political corporations who make decisions for us and do so many things we disagree with) that there’s nothing we (the ordinary people) can do to stop them?
If most pessimistic people feel as though they are falling to their doom, is it because we can’t see how anything (big) can be fixed? Could it be that we don’t see the most obvious ‘best switch’ to flip, caught up as we are in a world of destruction, constant day-by-day non-constructivity and pessimism about the world’s future? And what’s worse, we don’t know how to stop the mega destructive people in our society, who do all the big-scale destructive things.
Surely, everything changes when we personally boycott everything we don’t agree with. Others can’t ... yet ... but optimism says they will. And their slowness shouldn’t provide us with an excuse not to get on with our own programme-of-boycotting.

How vegans are perceived

2012-01-04T16:11:00.001-08:00

374a

How is it that some of us are passionate advocates for animals and some people are completely indifferent? How is it that to us vegan principles seem so enlightened and meat-eating so primitive? But then how is it that meat-eaters are so confident and feel so sophisticated for using animal products and don’t feel fazed by a veganism?
There are different, totally different attitudes and lifestyles and yet we all live alongside each other. The fact is that our differences aren’t really that clear - there are so many important things to be different about. Vegans probably aren’t that much brighter or kinder or healthier but we do have more self discipline because we do so much more boycotting. And, creatively speaking, we are busier discovering alternatives to animal foods and products and new ways of meal-making. We’re more used to thinking about ethical issues. We do more questioning and arguing of our case ... and all this gives us a strong point of view and an ability to sustain it. Even as a tiny minority within a predominantly omnivorous population our strength and sense-of-right could intimidate those who hold opposite views. We have a double job, to allay their fears and to guide them towards a whole new lifestyle.

Vegans facing opposition

2012-01-02T01:51:00.001-08:00

374:

I know that my feeling of empathy and compassion for animals is right ... of course it is, because it’s anti-slavery. It feels right in the same way as non-violence feels right. I’ve never heard anyone denounce vegan principle or say that it was in any way wrong.
But the subject agitates people. They show plainly that they don’t want to discuss it. They don’t like me voicing my opinion on animal matters in general. And if I attack their views, if my arguments get at all heated, I know I’ve gone too far and then I prefer to withdraw.
I’m always having to remind myself that, in a free world, each person is entitled to their own opinion and it’s ridiculous to wage war over a puff of smoke ... I don’t need everyone to agree with me, I don’t need to take on every red neck I meet ... I don’t need to parry every joke made at my expense ... and by the same token I mustn’t feel intimidated by what others say, even if they’re powerful political figures or corporations.
Vegans can be confident simply by virtue of the fact that they are vegan. In the end my own example is the most powerful weapon I have. If I start to get aggressive it means I’m afraid of defeat. And I know I needn’t be afraid of anyone since no one has ‘the bottle’ to take any of us on in serious debate.
As far as I know, this is the only subject which non-vegans have never dared to thoroughly talk about in public.

The animal issue

2011-12-31T14:54:00.000-08:00

373:

There’s a great gulf between people’s attitudes to animals. The difference lies between the cute, cuddly ones and the ‘edible’ ones. Until a few decades ago no one thought much about it - farm animals were just different types of animal which we needed to eat to stay alive. Then the myth was exploded - animal protein was NOT essential to good nutrition ... and then the rest of the story came tumbling out, about how animals were being treated on farms and what horrors were happening in abattoirs.
In the 1940s and 50s the idea of a vegan diet was being tested and found to be not only adequate but healthy - plant-based nutrition was coming of age. By the early eighties The Animals Film and the book Animal Liberation were released and together they had a shocking effect. They shocked me, certainly. I realised for the first time how much our food relied on animals and what actually happened to the animals reared for food. Some of us were galvanised at the time. The information seeped into public consciousness and suddenly everyone seemed to be talking about it ... and then, surprisingly, it all came to a standstill. At least it did in Australia. Why?
That has been at the centre of some discussion in Animal Rights publications … but nowhere much else. In the general community there’s been a reluctance to face up to animal issues - probably because people who eat animals feel too uncomfortable to think about it too deeply. In private, if there’s any talk of it at all, it centres on health issues rather than the ethics of imprisoning and killing animals. People like their animal foods too much to discuss the rights and wrongs with any sort of intellectual rigour. In any supermarket there are probably thousands of choices of animal-based edibles. In any one day the meals and snacks we eat probably all contain some animal ingredient, because it adds richness, flavour and bulk to foods. The food industry have worked hard to make us crave the animal content. And since we now want it so badly we’re reluctant to discuss the subject seriously.
Those who are against the ‘eating of animals’ are usually the butt of jokes. Those who are likely to want to talk about animal issues are usually avoided or discouraged from even bringing up the subject in conversation. The subject is generally tabooed.

Starting to pay back

2011-12-21T02:59:00.000-08:00

371:

Once, when we were younger, when the world was less damaged, abundance seemed to be everlasting. Oceans were clean and teemed with fish. It was incomprehensible that whole river systems could ever die. Land was fertile. Our surroundings were attractive. It was unimaginable that the world could be turned into a slum. But over a relatively short period of time, with each person saving their own skin, we’ve nothing left to pass on. The damage is done and we haven’t been able to stop ourselves from continually taking, and taking more and taking faster.
Instead of learning from our mistakes the human race has refined cruelty, increased slavery, wrecked forests, polluted the air and land, and generally become addicted to an increasingly unsustainable lifestyle. Now we’re in all sorts of trouble.
From a state of plenty we’ve built up a debt burden. Our collective debts won’t easily be paid back. But we must try to make a start. It isn’t impossible, surely?
Debt mentality gave us the false impression of being richer than we were and, like any bubble, it had to burst. That realisation dawned on us slowly at first, then we caught up with reality and then it gathered speed as we took more and more for granted. Now, with less clean air, less fresh water, less bird song in the morning, we’re learning the big lesson about debt – that it is benign at first but becomes inevitably toxic. It’s a bit like animal food itself or anything else we’re not entitled to - it kills the best in us.

Blog ends here until after Christmas

Inherited debt

2011-12-20T01:46:00.001-08:00

370:

Debts affect the generation which follows. Young people wake up to the mess left them by their elders. They have no trouble putting two and two together to see what has happened and why. They’re familiar with self interest, they understand how forests are being destroyed, they see how animals are being factory-farmed. They realise why poor nations are being made to starve. And they know we older ones are to blame for perpetuating all this destruction and cruelty and waste.
I imagine the young get quite angry when they think about what they’ve inherited. But to be completely constructive about the mess we older ones have left them, we need to look at human nature ... to see what it is and how it really hasn’t changed much over the centuries.
Unless we want the next generation to do exactly what we’ve done we must stop adding to the collective debt. Unless we want today’s kids to spoil their own health, ethics and environment as we are doing, we can’t afford to sit around passively, twiddling out thumbs. If we do, they will continue stealing as we did, until there is nothing left to take. The first and most constructive step we can take is to become vegan and encourage them to follow suit - it will have a dramatic effect on their health and the legacy of non-violence they leave to their own progeny.

Advantage-taking

2011-12-18T23:58:00.001-08:00

369:

The example set by young people who ‘go vegan’, is noticed by those near them, whether it’s at work or at home. The general effect is that the omnivore can be embarrassed by the self discipline they (often their juniors) show. Their example is perhaps a most powerful influence on the entrenched omnivore who might make their own first step in considering three things, their habits, their attitudes and their capacity for altruism. The impact (of meeting a vegan) on anyone who is still using animal products is to underline their own contribution to the upholding of Society’s animal-exploiting conventions.
Veganism is just one idea that counters the wrongness of stealing from the powerless. Colonial powers steal from poorer nations to enrich themselves, and humans in general steal from animals for much the same reasons. And isn’t it true that our thefts comes back to haunt us? Once-powerless countries grow up and strengthen themselves, and then commercially begin to outstrip their former masters, becoming a danger to their economies. Similarly, powerless animals used for food now become dangerous to their masters, but indirectly, via their impact on human health. There are harsh consequences to stealing and taking advantage of the weak.

Greater good can be self-benefitting too

2011-12-16T16:11:00.001-08:00

368:

The criticism of both young and older people, for their indulgent lifestyle, seems partially true but partially misplaced. Older people might argue that the trouble with the world today is young people’s profligacy. They, in turn, argue that the trouble today is with the older people for causing all the major world problems … and so, whoever we are, we pass the buck.
For me as a cyclist I blame the car driver, for me as a wage slave I blame the rich, and so on. But really it’s a whole complex of issues that rise to the surface to make us cranky. We feel impotent because we are part of the collective mind-set. We drive cars and we fly in planes that pollute our world. What can any individual do to stop it apart from not driving or flying? In today’s world how can we NOT take part without disadvantaging ourselves? I know if I tighten my belt and act responsibly I’ll feel resentment that others aren’t doing likewise.
Perhaps the one way each of us can get started (doing the right thing) is by acting constructively whilst avoiding resentment – that is taking a stand without making a rod for our own backs – that is doing something for the greater good which also happens to benefit ourselves.
Which brings us back to the need to save the environment, our health, the animals, the economy and most importantly save our own sense of meaningfulness … by going vegan. By not exploiting animals, by eating plant-based foods and by wearing non-animal clothing and shoes, we do something to make us and our world feel better. It helps pay back the debt we’ve collectively run up. By boycotting very many of the products on the market (which are unethical) we can affect the collective lifestyle habit. And that might appeal to young people who don’t see how, otherwise, they can be constructive with their own lives. They almost certainly do want to build a future. They most certainly do not have to adopt the ruined pleasure dome they’ve inherited from their elders.
By going vegan, young people can show, by this one major gesture, how individual action can start the ball rolling.

You just can’t win!

2011-12-15T02:06:00.000-08:00

367:

If vanity is the big trap in life, you’d think after some decades of life we’d learn about it and stop ‘doing’ it. All I’m saying here is that for older people, who could be setting an example for the young, if they want to avoid neuroses concerning their lost youth and missed opportunities, they might need to stop running up their ‘vanity debts’. We should get used to paying-back as we go along, doing without some things, exercising a little self-restraint plus a touch of responsibility-taking. If we don’t go that way then we risk not being able to restore balance later in life ... and then it all ending in tears.
I can remember starting out in adult life eager to experience abundance and enjoy effortless, sensory experiences. But as I got older, and taking all this for granted, I tried to recapture some of the pleasure of past years, only to find that that pleasure required more investment. I was losing my capacity for pursuing it.
As age creeps on and our health goes and then our strength we have to measure what we do - we no longer run just for fun. Our body creaks so much we can’t even run for a bus! If you speak with very old people they’ll say how important it is to ‘keep your health’, because once lost it’s very hard to get it back. For them, so they say, there’s pain every day. Whereas younger people don’t get much body pain and whenever they do it isn’t so ominous - health isn’t an issue because they haven’t lost it yet. But they do know that good health and good looks go together, and energy, sexuality and a slim, athletic body also go together, and this somewhat pulls them into line. But up against this there’s a powerful need to extract from life everything possible.
On an everyday basis we try to excite the taste buds and satisfy food cravings. So here, on these familiar battle grounds, we tear ourselves apart, torn between pleasure and good sense, stuffing our faces with good-tasting but body-destroying foods ... and it becomes such an all-consuming occupation that we forget that the rest of the world is going on around us. Many are starving.
Here in the West we are so privileged and have such opportunities to live life NOW … and that’s great! But in the process we forget about the need to pursue ‘the greater good’. It’s a shame about that because something vital is spoiled in us because of that, and it’s likely one deserves to be criticised for living an indulgent lifestyle.
Huh! You just can’t win. But was it ever just about winning?

Animal co-products

2011-12-13T02:33:00.000-08:00

366:
“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ( …that’s any fun at all for humanity)”. Ogden Nash.
We live for pleasure and acceptance, young and old. Appearance is important, for young people especially. Fashion is important and particularly for young women their shoes have to look right ... but for vegan women there’s often not much to choose from. It puts them in a very difficult position, as regards fashionable footwear. And so to the general matter of shoes. When I look around, downwards, I don’t see much on people’s feet other than leather, whether it’s hardy walking boots or part of formal footwear. It doesn’t cross people’s minds to think about this co-product of the abattoir. Animals’ hides are often more valuable to the shoe industry than the carcass is to the meat industry.
So it comes to this - we’re more likely to go for attractive or hard-wearing shoes than consider the ethics of leather. We’ll maybe eat non-animal foods for health reasons but not rule out wearing the skins of animals, because a shoe will not adversely affect our health.
Even with health itself we may consider that the eating of junk food is okay because, especially when we’re young, health isn’t an issue … that is until we put on body weight … and even then we only tinker with foods that fatten us, which is close to vanity and far from good health practice.
Whatever commodity we consider essential to our lifestyle, whether we are young or old, we try to squeeze what we can from what’s available. We spend big, risk debt, ignore warnings and mainly consider our own interests. We want to live for the moment. Above all we try NOT to become like those sad people (usually older people) who don’t live life or seem to have any real fun at all.
A young person’s instinct will be to paint their life with brush strokes from a brightly coloured palette. And to make it all look more exciting than it is, it’s best not to think about things too deeply, so as not to undermine self confidence. At a certain age young people, who’ve been controlled throughout their childhoods, are suddenly free to experience every possible stimulating experience. And why not? “We only live once, so live life while you can” …that is until the shutters come down and we are forced to change (usually in later years) ... by which time we’ve lost all the fun of life and become the victims of our own vanity. And in all that time we’ve maybe never considered the animals whose lives have been sacrificed to make our own colourful life possible.

Indulge to your heart’s content

2011-12-10T13:17:00.000-08:00

365:

Materialism is rampant. Our thirst for the material satisfactions of life is insatiable. To get the things we want, we take trees out of forests, put people in slums and factories and enslave animals. The rich have made fortunes - wherever’s a benefit to them they’ve taken it, without restraint.
Perhaps we’re all complicit since we humans dominate all other species, so that we can do as we please. Apart from a few viruses that we don’t yet control all other life forms are subject to human whim …. anything useable is used and anything in our way is got rid of. If any human population falls out of line we bomb it. If any useful animal, like a kangaroo, can’t be farmed, we hunt it. If any life form becomes an uncontrollable pest, like the rabbit, we spread disease amongst it to eradicate it. Humans will stop at nothing to be in control. And whatever we do is done with violence and without a second thought.
Control through violence is passed on, from generation to generation, and initially this appeals to young people who only see the advantages to themselves. They don’t know any different. Their mantra is “Live now”. They adopt a carefree approach to all things … that is, until they begin to see through it all.
Who is there to guide them? Older people are intimidated by youth, finding young people’s vitality and spontaneity so exciting they hardly dare to criticise them for any lack of responsibility or lack of independent thinking. Conversely, young people don’t usually find their elders inspiring or exciting at all, and turn to their peers for support, which exposes them to peer pressure, group thinking and a lot of unthought-out behaviour. Thus we are as we are, and will remain so, unguided and prone to the quick, violent ways of our elders.
The Animal Rights movement is hopefully brave enough to make a bold stand against one of the great irresponsibilities of our time - the message, concerning the abuse of food animals, may just be enough to reverse today’s indulgent trend and bring back some sanity to our increasingly uncivilised society.

Involvement

2011-12-09T02:31:00.000-08:00

364:

Most people today are involved in a live-now-pay-later culture, believing that debts incurred will never have to be paid back. As with money so with every other material advantage - we accumulate useful stuff and don’t care about the damage caused in getting it or wasting it when we no longer want it. We celebrate the abundance of things because there seems to be so much for the taking. We believe there’s nothing to pay back because it’s all free - the air, the water, the soil, the flora, the fauna - we take it all for granted and throw away what we don’t use. We either live high on the hog or we aspire to it. Our wastefulness and narcissism imprints on each succeeding generation ... until we come to today when we hardly notice that our ‘smash and grab’ attitude is out of control. We no longer pass on to the young a sense of responsibility and frugality, instead we show them that life can be lived almost entirely for pleasure.
Probably the greatest pleasure comes at the expense of exploiting animals. There are rich pickings here. The supply of animal product has become endless, although there’s been a hidden price to pay - animal farmers have had to inflict ever greater cruelty on animals, to keep costs down, to keep prices low in response to fierce competition.
Our society lays-to-waste on a grand scale - throughout the animal-eating world vast numbers of defenceless animals are massacred (at a rate of 1500 deaths per second), and we do it because we can, because they can’t fight back, because the customer wants cheap food and because there are always unethical operators willing to undercut less-unethical operators. It’s a fact that all omnivores are caught up in this ... and vegans aren’t.

Attachment and detachment

2011-12-04T11:32:00.000-08:00

359:

What does it feel like to ‘respect’? When I’m deciding who or what to respect, or when to develop a relationship or when to trash things that are no longer useful, I find it’s easy to like the likeable. Show respect. I can show amazing loyalty and affection for the loveable. Conversely, with the ugly or used-up, I notice how I can move away and eventually come to a no-longer-wanting feeling.
I see how it happens with things I acquire but then get bored with, even friends I make who I’ve lost interest in. I know it even happens with companion animals, who don’t have the same fascination as when they first appear on the scene. But whether it’s possessions, friends, cats or even gardens, they each have the power to benefit us or bring us down, depending on how we treat them.
I’ve found (rather too late in life) that in order to stabilise my relationships with anything or anyone I mustn’t try to maintain respect and guard it. Easy enough with dogs and cats, because they don’t pretend to be other than they are, and that’s so endearing. I’m happy to be around them - they’re always ready to play, and dogs especially are so loyal and affectionate, cats so intimate. They make me aspire to be close and affectionate myself. So, I’d say that animals can bring the best out in me.
The influence of a cat or a dog lets me see my sensitive nature but not necessarily my goodness, because with the less-dear or the less-loveable, human or non-human, I don’t act so honourably. That smelly homeless man, asking me for money, I ignore or that not-so-attractive animal I might have eaten at dinner ... this is where I’m sorely tested. They can easily be forgotten and since they pose no threat I can say, “They can’t possibly hurt me even if I ignore them or hurt them. They have no power or hold over me”.
It’s easy to show my kindness to a cute puppy or a family member, but I don’t have the same inclination towards a stranger and feel even less to an anonymous farm animal that’s going to be turned into food.
But all that is changing. Now, in this age, I’m becoming more conscious of a shift taking place, where the hard-nosed human is starting to look ridiculous and the once reviled soft-hearted (“bleeding heart”), gentler, kinder character is winning favour. I can see the balance point changing here - moving away from dominance and force to a subtler, gentler approach. We’re still in transition, things still blow hot and cold, but something is happening - a move towards the kinder and compassionate is looking like the intelligent way to go. The loyal, mature, sophisticated approach fits better with this ‘age of relationships’ - we’re learning how to relate to things, to people, to the disabled, to minority groups, to farm animals, to forests, etc. I suppose we are beginning to see the advantages of acting more interactively, symbiotically and more altruistically. It’s no longer such a big deal to think in terms of sustainability being a vital necessity.
And before I get carried away with speculation on the ideal present and future, there’s another important binding factor trending its way into my psyche. Doing the right thing? Nah. A new morality? Nah. Perhaps I’m beginning to see that which was once a duty or a strictness or a discipline is now becoming an enjoyment. Perhaps I don’t have to earn merit points and get your approval for what I do. Maybe it comes with the territory, of becoming more sensitive ... and more resilient ... and less in need of outside encouragement. I see possibilities where before I saw obstacles.
If we are about to rescue our species from ignominy it will surely be by way of a willing change, an attractive change, shifting the ‘conceptual framework’ of ‘right action’ ... I see it as a mixture of helping to repair the damage we humans have done as the most fulfilling thing we could ever possibly think about doing ... enjoying doing it in other words. Work as play as work.

Enjoying that extra dimension to life

2011-12-03T18:32:00.001-08:00

355:

If ‘vegan’ means more to us than just food then it might be a new basis for our thinking. If you can ever see yourself as a guardian, as being protective, independence-encouraging and with few over-dependencies, then you’ll be moving towards the ideal.
As a sort of patron-saint of lost causes the vegan animal activist is on the side of the most vulnerable, the ones who no one else thinks about. There are no rewards, no praise, no encouragement, no notice taken of what we do. But if approval doesn’t matter much then we might just make it - to become one of the planet’s natural caretakers.

At ease with equality

2011-11-30T02:36:00.001-08:00

348:

I think the finding of truth isn’t about attempting perfection or seeking enlightenment or taking a ‘spiritual path in life’, it’s about getting used to change when circumstances demand it ... and being at ease with that need to change. Change keeps alive a questioning of those things others aren’t bothered enough to question.
For me, the most bothering thing I can think of is the routine abuse of sensitive and sentient beings. The reason it’s so bothering is that so many are so innocent and are so badly abused. As a vegan I want to expand my sense of responsibility over this matter, to raise my sensibility, to penetrate as deeply as I can the reason why fellow humans can be so careless and cruel, to such as animals. It makes me want to do anything I can to understand something which, on the face of it, is very confusing.
I think I know how to treat my nearest and dearest ... with love and affection. But why would I stop there? I have to ask myself if there’s any reason to stop anywhere, with humans, animals, environment, any of it. Is there anything that doesn’t deserve affection ... as it passes within range?
I see myself leaping to the defence of animals, because they so badly need defending. This is going to involve me in a long to-do list. My un-ease comes from being perpetually overwhelmed by that long list. In my attempt to shorten it I’m forced to prioritise my interests and to keep my goals achievable – I try to ration-out my reserves of ‘care’. And that’s how I end up being more partial than I’d like to be and therefore guilty of inconsistency.
On examining my own inconsistency and finding my to-do list overwhelming, what stops me from becoming drained by it all is that I have lifted the biggest weight of guilt from my shoulders by simply being vegan - what needs most care is cared about. That makes everything much more straight forward for me.
I know I’m a caring being, because I don’t mind how much inconvenience I’m put to, as long as I’m not dodging the issues. Facing the issues takes a lot of energy. There’s a danger that I’ll try to spread myself too thinly and succeed in pleasing nobody, least of all myself. Then there’s the danger of putting issues I know I should deal with onto the ‘back burner’ ... then I’m ashamed, and my guilt cancels out my best ‘brownie points’. I think I’m consistent until I line up my responsibilities ... and then I know I’m not.
I know how inconsistent I can be when I disregard the ‘homeless man’ on the streets at night - I see him and ask myself why should I care about him? I don’t want to take on another ‘responsibility’, so I pretend not to notice him. And in the same way, I pretend NOT to notice what I know I have noticed.
It’s the same with the way most people choose NOT to see the animals behind the food they’re eating. They know that chickens and pigs are just like dogs and cats, yet they treat one as unlovable and the other as loveable. The homeless man is just as deserving of love as my closest friend and yet I can ignore him completely. That’s an absurdity I have to live with. It just means that I haven’t developed enough yet, in much the same way as the collective human race has NOT made an agreement with itself, about regarding all sensitive and sentient creatures as of equal importance.

Doing without

2011-11-29T20:00:00.000-08:00

347:
What a great asset this idea is, veganism, with its empathy-driven approach to day-to-day life. It checks my more violent and selfish instincts by the food it guides me towards ... or rather the food it makes me want to boycott. You can’t argue with the logic of veganism. Apart from avoiding the ‘cruelty-products’, it inspires a greater non-violence in other ways. Since I’m no longer quite so reckless in what I eat I’m less so in the way I think. And taking this to its glorious conclusion, it suggests that there’s logically not much difference between the sentient and the non-sentient, it’s all consciousness after all. It affects the way I drive a car or deal with the kids or handle the cat or respect the cow. When I considered becoming a vegan it was always going to be for reasons bigger than just avoiding animal food (life is more than food and clothes!!).
We are all consumers. We’re all users of resources and all adults should know that, environmentally, we tread heavily on the roses ... and I for one want to tread more lightly. Like many others, I want to value and better appreciate the power of things ... and to do that I have to first know that I have the power to transform myself from clod-hopping brute to sensitive, gentle adult.
I can either grab whatever I crave or be more constructive. It’s my choice. I can exercise some self control or be profligate. And once I’m less attached to ‘my stuff’ I can reduce the stress and dissatisfaction associated with it.
“Life is stressful and the cause of this stress is craving, or thirst”. Many of the things I would crave are simply no longer available to anyone who is vegan, so I have to learn to do without. And once I get used to that, a vegan lifestyle is very possible and very satisfying ... and fulfils my wish to be gentler with things without having to compromise principles.

Good maintenance for the inanimate

2011-11-28T12:24:00.000-08:00

346:

Many of my most treasured objects today are complex structures. Machines. And something special is involved in ‘owning’ one. Owning something suggests ‘caring’ for it – I’m automatically involved with its well-being as soon as I start to make use of it. I ‘care’ for my cat, care for my car. Car maintenance, aircraft maintenance, teeth maintenance, each highlight the risk of not attending to them - like the failure to maintain an aircraft ... and it all ending in catastrophe. But all this caring, maintaining, cleaning, etc. takes time and effort. Each application of care costs me something. The insurance industry encourages me to be parsimonious and indecisive, and profits accordingly (from my wobbling between ‘just-in-case’ & ‘it may never happen’). They offer me two choices: either I spend money and feel safe or I neglect my safety and save my money. That’s a nice dichotomy. Fear wins, scaring me into parting with my ‘hard-earned’ cash.
And so I get up each day, worrying and frowning, carrying a list of things to do, things to be maintained, and I feel ‘overwhelmed’ – all I hear is my groan at not being able to prioritise - a little care here, an insurance policy there … safety, safety, safety … but it’s never ending. I spend my life searching for the best insurance ... which eventually led me to veganism.
At first, this was my first thought. It was my best insurance policy (even though later on it became so much more). The food almost guarantees bodily health and some vegans are extremely health conscious, respecting their bodies as temples. Not me. I follow not-the-most-intelligent vegan diet, but it serves me well enough, physically. It ensures a clear conscience (cruelty-free foods, etc); it’s cheaper to eat this way too and obviously I soon enough realised that it’s less environmentally damaging. Over the years I realised it was building in me (a bit) better-disciplined character and, most importantly, it serves as my rock. It makes me feel safe.
That’s what makes me care so much for it. For that particularly. Like a well maintained bike or aircraft, I feel safe enough using this diet. Coincidentally it opens up my compassion ... for the poor tortured animals. It lets me into the depths of understanding this empathy-centred, vegan-principled-philosophy on whose tracks I can run a good part of my life.

The inanimate

2011-11-27T00:51:00.000-08:00

345:

By dropping the animals-are-useful model, I am stepping into a world of imagination … where there’s an animated soul in things, not just in humans, not just in animals, but in every thing. By imagining that there’s a soul (or whatever you call it) in every thing I conclude that everything is sovereign and worthy of respect … at least, worthy enough for me to grant it some of my attention.
One of the most beautiful objects anyone could aspire to own and use is a flute. A human can be ‘risen up’ by the wonderful flow of sounds produced by the flautist and this musical instrument. I like to think that this is an example of the inanimate becoming animate - flute responding to flautist. The object comes alive, not quite like an animal but in another no-less-convincing way. Objects can be beloved because we’re having what feels like a relationship with them - our car, cat, kids, even a mirror. Take a mirror for example. It responds to me by showing me my face and that makes a mirror a useful item, and seven years bad luck if you break it, ha, ha. Or other things we can get attached to, like my bike. The object speaks to me and if I fail to listen to it, to feel its workings, if I don’t maintain it properly, the brake cable quietly rusts away and snaps at the worst possible moment, and I suffer the consequences.
Our attitude towards our inanimate possessions is a template for how we deal with the sentient beings in our care or in the care of those we commend to the task of providing our food. If I’m careless about the things I own, it’s likely I won’t be too sensitive about the living beings in my care, be they human or non-human.

Multidimensional energy

2011-11-26T13:55:00.001-08:00

343:

That we believe animals (i.e. food animals) are low on our priority list, and that we think their treatment is not very important, reflects rather an alarming attitude in humans. And yet it’s probably coming from a very basic survival instinct, connected to saving energy. We are brought up to think that animal food is the best source of energy, and that in turn is linked to an attitude about energy itself, and where it comes from and how profligate we should be in its use.
I don’t believe that all energy is simply a finite resource like the finite quantity of fuel we may have in the petrol tank of a car. There are surely other sources and qualities of energy, other than food, as there are other energy drainers. But it’s precious stuff this energy. It’s not a good feeling to run out of it ... so many of us are led to believe that it’s essentially a physically-produced substance and that we should resist the begging-bowl pressures, to push ourselves too hard ... for fear of draining this valuable stuff.
I’m led to believe that if I go too far that way I won’t do anything, like taking the initiative or leading a new fashion. If I risk my energy supply and interfere with my long list of nagging responsibilities something will go horribly wrong ... so I think I’d rather keep what energy I have ... and not risk or waste it … but there again, this very energy might be drained by my being guilty about doing nothing. So, I weigh up my options. I think about my responsibilities - looking after things I own, things given to me, ‘things’ I’m in charge of, like table, bike, food, kids, house, friends, knowing that each will take a portion of my energy. And then, after that, will I really have very much energy left for things lower on my priority list? ... like protecting animals’ rights? Working for Animal Rights sounds particularly energy consuming.
If I do choose to act for them, promote their rights, work like a ‘guardian’ for them, what will that involve? Energy. But energy comes from various sources. I think a lot comes from knowing I’m doing what I believe in. I think by serving the interests of those animals in extremis I’m acting from love (a well known source of the highest form of energy) and that will be in sharp contrast to the much cruder energy-manufacture going on in the much harsher world, where animals are made to work for us and are drained of their life to provide some sort of energy for us.
We’re told that the farmer loves his animals, but in truth any care shown to them is given to protect human interests, not the animals’ - attending to their welfare means the animals will respond better and grow faster and, in theory, more will be gotten out of them the less we are abusive towards them.
Is that cynical or what? I don’t think energy is quite that one dimensional.

My bike, my priorities

2011-11-25T18:59:00.000-08:00

342:

I love my bike. We have a good time together. But to be truthful, I have an abusive relationship with it. I don’t look after it. I don’t clean it. I don’t even oil it when it squeaks! But I rely on it every day to get me around. I occasionally pump up the tyres and curse it when I get a puncture. My bike serves me well but I don’t really have feelings for it. It’s just metal and rubber. It isn’t sentient and I’ll probably run it into the ground and when it’s no longer rideable I’ll dump it and get another one. It wasn’t an expensive bike and therefore not worthy of much respect!!
The things I own and how I look after them reflects my attitude to them. Sure, I care about the look of them and the operation of them (if it suits me) but bikes don’t pose any moral question for me. I’m not scared of my bike. I am scared on one level though. I’m scared of abusing something because it might ‘bite back’. Neglect the brakes on my bike and it may fail to stop when I want it to.
Whether it’s a child, a car, a dog or a planet, it’s the same fear I have about them, that if I haven’t done the right thing by them somehow I’ll be made to suffer. My attitude is either one of respect or abuse, and it applies most obviously to my respect or abuse of other humans. But what about animals? Why should there be any difference in my feelings about them? And taking it a step further why can’t I apply similar feelings to objects? Is this going too far? Do I think this ‘attitude’ would take too much effort if applied too liberally? And is this the reason why I might adopt a blanket, easiest-possible attitude? And this is me, single, not many duties and responsibilities so I’ve got more time to be considerate. Most people have less time. Their time is not their own and, as it happens, it may not be animals they feel strongly about. They may not be prepared to contribute their energy that way since, after ‘work’ and home duties, there’s not so much energy left over to splash about on ‘fighting for the animals’. So, in our society animals generally are not given much consideration. Realising this, the Animal Industries know they can get away with almost anything, knowing they’ll not be criticised by their over-extended customers, whose priorities are elsewhere.

Abuse of animals

2011-11-23T00:05:00.000-08:00

341:
Farmers don’t recognise that animals have a life of their own, where human interests play no part at all. To any animal farmer the very thought of animals being anything other than a resource for human convenience is anathema … to build up a relationship with an animal is unthinkable. After all, you do intend to have it murdered.
So, animals are there for profiting-from. That they’re abused is incidental. Any docile animal, any useful thing is up for grabs - it’s a business opportunity, that’s all. To keep up with competition and to keep shareholders happy a few principles must be compromised. At that point the abuse starts.

Objects

2011-11-22T23:40:00.000-08:00

340:

An animal should never be just a dispensable, replaceable property. The difference between various consciousnesses - my table, the living tree, the sentient creature, the human being may be obvious but each level of consciousness deserves respect.
There’s a lot of difference between an abusive relationship and a loving one, between the parasitic and the symbiotic. It seems that we humans haven’t yet learnt how to be symbiotic with those animals which happen to be useful to us. And as for having consideration for other levels of consciousness, forget it.
Valuable resources and useful animals we take. We think - they are ‘there for the taking’ ... it’s all part of the rich bounty to which we’re entitled. And with a mixture of minimal respect, lack of appreciation for what we already have and greed for more, it leads us to never be satisfied. Anything we want we take. We use it up and keep wanting more ... so we graduate towards indifference, then abuse and then alienation.
The deadliest disease amongst humans is dissatisfaction. We open the box on Christmas Day, containing a beautiful puppy dog ... and six months later we’re off on our holidays and taking the puppy (now-dog) to the vets to be put down.
If we tire of something we develop a contempt for it so that we can distance ourselves from it, in this case the no-longer-so-cute dog. Any similarity between human and victims is downgraded so that we can dispose of it or abuse it with better conscience and justification.
As for so called ‘food animals’ we see no similarity at all between ourselves and them – they become so downgraded in our minds that we don’t have any need to consider them as beings at all. In fact they are merely alive in order to make them useful to us dead.
As addicts of animal products, like anyone addicted to anything, we must be assured of supply, so the chain of animal to farmer to animal-industry to shop keeper, is a line of service set up to maintain our lifestyle. One faulty link and it’s catastrophe - imagine, for instance, a shop being out of ice cream. Unthinkable!

Betraying future generations

2011-11-19T19:01:00.000-08:00

340

I’ve just watched a programme on TV predicting two main things, a huge increase in population and a huge decrease in food and water. With the ability to avoid the main childhood killer-diseases there’s no longer any reason for big families. In that programme we saw how educated women (in India) with access to birth control chose to have only two children, indicating that this may be a breakthrough to the problem of world overpopulation. As to keeping people fed, we saw how food technology and water conservation was providing more food with less waste of water. But this is a stop-gap solution. The main problem lies elsewhere and isn’t being addressed at all.
It seems that humans will fiddle at the edges but never face up to the need for each individual to take responsibility for the whole - in this TV programme there was never a mention of the more permanent solution - the promotion and adoption of widespread plant-based diets.
The world of today is made up of omnivores who can’t seem to understand how wasteful it is to use crops and water to feed animals to provide meat and by-products ... when none of it is necessary. And still there‘s no mention of the animals’ part played in producing vast amounts of greenhouse gases.
Future generations will ask why the cruelty, why the waste and mostly why the conspiracy of silence against such an obvious solution to today’s feeding problems ... and they’ll have to conclude that humans of today could only be seen talking about solutions without actually implementing them. It seems we are incapable of facing the truth of cruelty and waste, and only ever concerned with the present and not with the future. And the reason for this - that those alive today will be dead before the world undergoes the worst of the consequences of today’s neglect. We are speaking brave words to the people of the future, but showing them that our care and concern and sophisticated thinking is a sham, and that we are really rather primitive and self-centred.
Even if the planet can maintain a zero increase in population growth, there is no way we can sustain our present seven billion on an omnivorous diet without causing harm to the planet and human health, not to mention animal welfare. The solution is simple but there’s a reluctance to bite the bullet. If there’s obscenity in treating animals like convenient food-producing machines then a worse obscenity is the avoidance of the obvious alternative.
Once you’ve acknowledged the simplest of solutions, concerning the use of a plant-based diet, but have then gone on to ignore it, you’ve adopted an ‘I’m alright Jack’ approach to life. If we shirk responsibility here we doom future generations to starvation.

Self deception

2011-11-16T01:46:00.000-08:00

339:

Even if we don’t actually take part in the grisly act of murdering animals ourselves, we give tacit support to those who do, despite feeling sad for the whole sorry business.
It seems that some humans are able to hurt animals without a second thought, whilst others can’t. However, most of us ‘kind-hearted people’ can stand-by and watch-yet-not-watch - it’s a little like seeing the school bully beat up a small kid in the playground and pretending we’re not looking in that direction. I see an ugly news item on TV and see it as if it’s a fiction. I can’t afford to empathise too closely or I’ll be depressed for the rest of the day just thinking about it. Is it disturbing because of the pain of my empathy or the feeling of guilt in my being passive about it?
I can easily imagine the pig as victim of bullying - the pig at the slaughter house being pushed into a chute, for its life to be terminated, and apart from disgust I feel the nastiest prick of conscience if I try to look away. When I decide to do nothing my mind is saying to me “Stop, don’t go there” - I weigh up the advantages of doing nothing and the disadvantages of intervening.
Eating meat. Who’d have thought it? Such an ordinary event. And now, with a greater consciousness of the immorality of doing just that (because it’s involving animal-cruelty) everything should change, but it doesn’t. The surprise is that we can still eat meat and all the associated products and justify it, to lessen the guilt. But once we’re aware it seems pointless to dumb ourselves down ... when we know it’s insupportable.
When there’s nowhere that’s honourable to go, we have to retreat into self-deception. I wouldn’t be surprised if some horrible mental condition weren’t lurking in the background, ready and waiting like a monster to leap out and crush our spirit.

Essential for life?

2011-11-15T01:31:00.000-08:00

335:

Despite our great gains as humans, with a long list of brilliant discoveries and advances, we’ve nonetheless succumbed to a central piece of misinformation - that animals are essential to our survival. We’ve meekly accepted that we need to eat them to stay healthy. If this isn’t true, and obviously I don’t think it is, then the whole human race has invested heavily in one carefully constructed fiction.
Set against this, vegans are emphasising that plant-foods are perfect for humans to thrive on. Nutrition ‘experts’, in the employ of the Animal Industry and therefore of opposite belief, advise customers to “eat meat or you’ll die”. Few people feel confident enough to risk their own physical well being, let alone the lives of their kids, to find out if this is true or not.
But instinctively there’s something profoundly dodgy about animal food, something about the fact that we never see the animals we eat ... they being always hidden away. We only get to see them dead, as meat. And that would suit most of us if only because it’s the end ‘product’ we’re interested in, not its provenance ... unless its product-quality is involved. We don’t want to be concerned with the animal we’re proposing to eat.
At some stage in our adult life we consciously enter into a Mephistophelian contract - we trade compassion for lifestyle . According to this contract we may enjoy our food just as long as we publically recognise that vegans are wrong about the safety of plant foods, and extend this to suggest that such people as vegans are conspiring to kill us by imposing their plant-based diet on us. It can then be assumed that vegans want to spoil people’s enjoyment of their food because they are spoilers.

The bite-back

2011-11-14T23:20:00.000-08:00

333

Food is sensory not spiritual, so it’s usually just a case of ‘eat, drink and be merry and be careful of your weight’. There isn’t any other dimension to it. But when it comes to animal food, a stomach full of meat is a mind full of murder.
We put our very sensitivity on the line when it comes to indulging in animal-eating. Both compassion and intelligence are compromised by the use of animal foods, specifically by our conniving with the enslaving and killing of animals for food.
We aren’t out there hunting them or risking our safety since they don’t fight back. Everything has been made easy. The wild of Nature has been tamed – ‘food animals’ are docile and we imprison them to make sure they remain so. But the animals do bite back in a subtle and unseen way. The eating of their bodies and secretions is a creeping damage - after eating them continuously we often put on weight and suffer the ill effects of diabetes and heart disease. If we are tied to animal-based cuisine it will slow us down and in a subtle way weaken our affectionate nature, so that we no longer care for the beings for which we’d otherwise feel great affection.
The bottom line here is that we can’t resist eating them. So many delicious foods are animal-based. Why should we deny the enjoyment of them to ourselves?
Because animals represent such rich pickings for humans, it would seem like madness NOT to take advantage of them. But by choosing to use animals we bring out the worst in ourselves. The guilt or shame might be heavy enough, but being addicted to animal products, spending so much money on them, the chronic conditions they bring on, all adds up to a ‘slow-down’ ... our self development is held back by mindlessly consuming what must surely be the most ugly products on the market.
The Animal Industries are happy to do our dirty work for us, rearing and killing and presenting the end product, just so long as we don’t make a fuss about it. The deal is that we do our best to turn a blind eye to the horror while they conceal as much of it from us as they can - we conspire together to objectify the living being.
Over the years we’ve executed billions of animals, none of whom have ever been guilty of any crime. This wash of cruelty and destruction has forced us to pretend to ourselves that what happens to animals doesn’t actually happen ... and to then believe about ourselves that we are not cold blooded killers, when we know that isn’t so.

Do something about it

2011-11-12T14:00:00.000-08:00

332:

Perhaps as consumers we are not only brainwashed by misinformation but bedazzled by the abundance of commodities in our shops. Steaks, rich dairy foods, soft woollen jumpers, elegant leather jackets plus many other affordable items, too numerous to mention. It’s all so attractive. It’s like an Aladdin’s cave which we can’t walk by without going in. We can’t pass up the chance to go in and buy them, these products, these co-products and by-products of animal origin. None of us wants to miss out on the treasure trove, so we don’t look too closely at the fine detail. We let the horror story of animal cruelty go unremarked.
But what goes on in the privacy of the human mind, regarding the wrong of it all? We tell ourselves that we don’t want to see it. And if we do take notice we might admit that “Something has to change ... but let it not start with ‘me’ ... I’ll join you once you’re up and running - I don’t want to start the ball rolling”. But the ball has been rolling for some seventy years and still not many are ‘joining’.
An example: my ‘vehicle’ is lying in a ditch. It has broken down and obviously it isn’t going to repair itself. It will lie there until I do something about it.
If something needs to be done in this world of ours, surely I need to start doing what needs to be done, and what you choose to do is none of my business. It’s a matter between me and my conscience. And I know that the less I take notice of my conscience the weaker my central safety mechanism is ... until I get to a point where I’m no longer effectively in control, where I hand the controls to those who are only too eager to take them up.
As I might mindlessly wander into a shop and spend my money on questionable products, so I might have done something I will regret later. If I keep on doing it there’ll come a time when I’m helpless to put any of it right again. Recently when the full impact of killing cattle was shown on one of our most popular TV current affaires investigation programmes, it didn’t require much of a leap of imagination to see how any beef-eater is implicated. We were shown ugly scenes of how cattle were being killed. I heard a lot of talk about that programme, from meat-eaters, who were perhaps trying in vain to absolve themselves from what they were witnessing ... and by now regretting.

Conscience

2011-11-11T16:08:00.000-08:00

331:

A numbed conscience lets us get away with things. A troubled conscience casts a dark light on what we do. Does conscience prick when we eat a steak? Does it sleep when we want it to NOT notice?
Either sub-consciously or consciously, we presumably suffer ‘conscience pain’ ... unless we can switch it off. But if it can be switched off then the habit might grow until we lose sensitivity altogether, and that means we can only ever be half awake.
It seems that a big part of human development relies on our seeing things very clearly, but another part requires that we should close our eyes, for fear of being blinded by what we’re looking at. When it comes to food we’ve learned how to desensitise. With animal-eating we say, “Everyone does it so why shouldn’t I?” ... and just to help us along we have ads on the TV to help us normalise animal-eating ... and cooking shows always use lots of meat ... and it’s always a big part of travel and holiday programmes.
Promoting animal foods is big business. Animals are always portrayed as being here for our benefit. The messy or cruel side of animal life is never shown, only the ‘end product’ - we never know them as live beings only as dead food products. Even educated people convince themselves that, because they haven’t personally been involved in torturing or murdering animals that they can’t be held accountable for what goes on behind the scenes. Conveniently, we dumb down over all this, pretending we know nothing even though we know enough ... we know, for instance, that we support the Industry with our dollars.
We try not to see ourselves as the cold-hard-bastard. We try to let our untroubled conscience sleep on. And in this climate of acceptance, where meat and animal secretions are ‘just normal’, the only time we might be disturbed is when we meet up with one of those ‘damned vegans’, who ask how we can possibly go on supporting the Animal Industry.

Conscience, today’s attitude problem

2011-11-10T02:21:00.001-08:00

328:

Not caring about what’s happening to all these animals is simply part of the predominant carelessness of humans. The reason we have to alter this attitude is that animals are not inanimate. They feel, move and have many life-functions similar to us. So, why do we give the farmer the nod to enslave them? Perhaps it’s because, for the majority of humankind, there is a belief in the need for animal foods, spurred on by taste addiction for them and an economic attraction for these highly subsidised, ‘bargain’ food products. For that we condone a cruel system of animal husbandry.
Being blasé about animal treatment - why does it matter? Simply because we’re side stepping something we wouldn’t normally be proud to be part of. By supporting cruelty we’ve sold our hard won humanity, which has been largely achieved by way of following our sophisticated conscience. We’re the inheritors of brilliant and beneficial human discoveries. Not only have many of them been useful but mostly they’ve conformed to conscience … but the development of animal husbandry methods and the making of foods based on animal ingredients ... don’t conform to conscience one little bit. We can’t be proud of what we’ve discovered here. The modern farm, where they practice mutilations and confine animals, is the perfect example of what is patently outside the bounds of conscience.

The inanimate

2011-11-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

327:

If I think the animal thing is sad and another person doesn’t, it says a lot about perception. I might know a few more details which makes me closer to the animals involved but today almost every adult knows essentially how bad things are in these gulags they call farms, and in slaughterhouses. And yet it seems that I see things one way and someone else another.
How I see it: animals are not so very different to us, they’re sentient, they feel pain and suffer as we do when their well-being and life are threatened. But as ‘non-sovereign beings’ their treatment, by their owners, is no one else’s business - property is sacrosanct. That’s the law.
However, according to moral law the way we treat them shows us how careless we’ve become. Finding out what’s actually happening to them (care of the Animal Industries) has got to be a huge wake up call ... or so you’d think. But most of us are still swayed by our rights as owners.
One of the most useful things I possess is a table, my desk, a place where I sit and eat and write. I love my table - I made it. I’m proud of ‘my’ table. I chose the wood, paid for it and did the carpentry. I didn’t grow the tree but I feel I have the right to call this table ‘my’ table. It’s my property. I can look after it, abuse it, even chop it up. I don’t have to wonder how the table is feeling, or what it thinks about my ‘owning’ it because, of course, objects can’t ‘feel’ or ‘think’. Does that mean I can treat my car, my bike, my table in any old way I please? Legally I can.
This must be how farmers think about their ‘right’ to treat what’s theirs, in any way they choose, not only their tractors but their ‘stock’ . Essentially it’s carte blanche - we can do what ever we like - because animals are considered property (like my table or my bike) they can be loved and nurtured or they can be exploited and even destroyed. We deal with property as we please, with impunity (and legal immunity). Farm animals are regarded, to all intents and purposes, as inanimate: not without life but without the right to life.

The starting line

2011-11-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

323
Vegans want to be thought of neither as missionaries nor as being too mild mannered to speak up. We want to be taken seriously and have what we say considered constructively.
Whatever I say is said on a ‘suggestion only’ basis because I don’t want to sound dogmatic and do want to show respect for the integrity of the person who is willing to listen to what I have to say. I don’t need them to agree with me, in fact I’d be surprised if they did but more importantly I don’t want them to go home and forget what they’d agreed with and slip straight back into old habits. You may nod at what I’, saying but I don’t need to be humoured, I’d rather have disagreement than polite accord. I’m going to welcome robust debate, encourage devils advocacy and try not to sound high and mighty with the uninformed. I stress that I’m not out to win converts but to get people thinking afresh. The trick, as I see it, is to tread a fine line between informing and maintaining an essential equal footing - never me know-all, you know-nothing. I want to guide information along what I expect will always be a very rocky and resistant road.
But however smart my approach, however slick my arguments, however nice a person I seem to be, I know that I just represent just one side of the debate (which is, of course, to my mind, the right side!!). There’s always something valuable to be learnt from listening to the other side of the argument.
Since all of us want to be right, does that create an obstacle? It’s a bit off-putting to meet and talk with someone who thinks they’re right all the time. Over these animal issues and nutrition issues, I suppose I must admit that I feel very right, about the non-use of animals. But my feeling right doesn’t give me ‘the right’ to earbash anyone, and if I’m given the chance to put my point of view I should, our of respect to a listener, be short and sweet. Initially, there’s no need to go into great detail. I imagine that as much as someone might want to hear something about veganism they also want to know how a vegan behaves - are they fair, unfair, interesting, boring, dogmatic?
My aim would be to show a launch pad with a rocket full of ideas, but latent, un-fired-off. I want to make sure, at first, that one things is understood - that I don’t ‘touch’ animals. This is the start of it all. If it doesn’t start there then it’s just a vegetarian diet with something extras thrown in, but without a strong and broad philosophical basis.

There’s hope yet, but not quite yet

2011-11-04T15:38:00.000-07:00

321:

I, like many other vegans, am trying to inform people whilst taking care of myself at the same time - I know that vegan principles can enlighten anyone and yet this much valued veganism can be isolating. For myself, I know it’s my own source of inner clarity, it shines a revealing light on so many questionable aspects of human life, but at present I often feel alone and effectively silenced.
Vegans are more alone than others since we’ve taken it upon ourselves to upturn the status quo. Plus we encourage others to leap into the void with us … which makes people afraid of what we want them to think about.
I’d like people to be thinking about how truth is being manipulated. And while, on the face of it, the truth of animal exploitation is so obvious, the Animal Industries are pushing in the opposite direction. They encourage less thinking and more spending. Not surprisingly they are winning, since they’ve been building their networks for many decades and indeed thousands of years. They’ve cornered the market, which means they’ve addicted most people to the things they want to sell them. If people were better informed and therefore better united they’d rise up against the general world of crap commodities, food or otherwise ... but we’re each in our own corner. Few of us are willing to take the lead.
Using unscrupulous methods, the Animal Industries get what they want because they know the customers are united in favour of their products ... hooked on a wide variety of animal products which are bought over and over again. But as new information comes to light and the penny drops, sooner or later we’ll come to realise why so many people are becoming so chronically unwell. On a physical level animal foods are a slow poison but on a spiritual level they gnaw at our conscience about the way our animal foods come to us. And whilst that can’t be proved I doubt if anyone is unconcerned at the part they play in animal cruelty.
Vegetarian foods and diets are already being tried and as the ethical dimensions become more obvious, alongside health rationales, more people will move that way and then, logically, step towards veganism … and, once that happens, a change in what people are thinking about will show up.

Consistency

2011-11-03T02:53:00.000-07:00

316:

I’m aware (and maybe you are too) of the scale of animal exploitation in our society. Commercial interests normalise animal abuse by concealing the truth of it.
All through my formative years there was never any suggestion that keeping animals captive and killing them for food was wrong ... and since it was food, and pleasurable food at that, I never questioned it. There was never a strong enough base of compassion from which that sort of questioning could arise. And today, there’s still not a sufficiently strong ethical base to stir people ... so, almost nobody questions ‘the use of animals for human consumption’. So nothing changes. And it will never change unless some people can enlighten others to the truth. And that may come about simply by showing others that life is possible without resorting to using animals for our convenience.
If any of us are going to escape the outrageous brain washing our societies put us through, if we can ever escape a lifetime of normalising animal-eating, then it will start by re-examining what we do - our habits, our attitudes and our addictions ... and with a touch of altruism too. And that means we must do it not only for ourselves but for the sake of the animals. By focusing on them we ignite our own empathy. That’s something we’ve had numbed in us (and we’ve complied with) for the sake of acceptance of meat and dairy in our diets.
When I eventually considered vegan principles and started to see life through more compassionate eyes and then went on to apply boycotts to all sorts of animal-based commodities, my life did change. It got a bit uncomfortable, at first. But soon enough I looked up and saw what I’d been doing. I saw that I was living in a carnivorous, violent society, and the thought of leaving it behind was a very comfortable thought. But if I wanted to help to change my society there’s be a price to pay. I’d have to face the fact that Society might remain as it was, even for a long time ... which would mean, for me, that I’d be on the outer for a long time. As uncomfortable as that thought was I could still hope, and that hope could sustain me ... and empathy could do the rest, to hold me together for ‘that long time’, knowing how bad things are for the true victims in all this. It’s a million times worse for the billions of animals (at this very moment of time) who are on death row, in prisons all around the world, who have no reason to hope.
If I and many other vegans try to ameliorate this discomfort I think we can best do it by being grateful that we don’t have to suffer as much as the poor creatures. We may have been born into a violent and animal-abusing world but we do have some chance, however slender, of escaping it. The animals were born with no chance of escape whatsoever. If we can hold that thought it may help us withstand the degradation we feel, being part of this unholy human species.
What better thing is there for any of us to do than set a new fashion in compassion ... and to let that fashion translate as style. It’s not about being ‘cool’ nor even solely about being ‘vegan’ but about being consistent in our conduct, in all our daily activities. And if we aspire to consistency we do it to set an example, which others may or may not choose to follow. I don’t think we’re here to enjoy the experience of simply living as free beings in a human-dominated world but to offer reasons for radical attitude change which will, down the track, lift humans out of their subservient, violent and weakened state to become the angels of mercy we were meant to be.

The easy approach

2011-11-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

315:

There’s a lot going on in the world ... so, is it any wonder, with the present high awareness of issues, that some of the most uncomfortable problems are pushed aside? We say, “No time to deal with everything” … and so, that’s it. There’s no time for contemplating ideals and as for listening to vegans … get real!!
As animal advocates vegans are supremely ignorable. What we say doesn’t cut it, while conventional attitudes sit more comfortably with people. The world of plenty, promoted by the Animal Industry, is attractive. They seem like admirable people. They don’t preach at us, in fact they seem to have a certain sense of fun about them.
It’s therefore not surprising that veganism is dismissible. We are disliked for our high moral tone. Other urgent issues will always trump animal concerns. Omnivores are happy to use a few ‘naughty products’ and not feel too guilty. They believe that, otherwise, things are fairly okay and so there’s nothing much to worry about.
However, for the thinking person this sort of acceptance of how things are doesn’t wash. It’s because the whole mess of animal abuse is kept secret, behind closed doors, that one should be very suspicious. That we are hoodwinked into believing the conditions under which animals are kept is acceptable, that we are fooled into believing animal foods are healthy - all that concerns one’s brainwashability. I’m constantly amazed that otherwise intelligent people fall for it.

Comfort

2011-10-31T23:52:00.000-07:00

313:

In the West we live comfortably enough but many of us are confined in an attitude prison where human-centred consideration outweighs any other consideration. We trash the planet and we dominate animals ... for our own benefit. We enjoy the fruits of our exploitations. We like what civilisation has given us, but we’re compromised by comfort. We’re too soft to make any principled decisions so we don’t live in harmony with anything especially if it’s outside the human realm.
Being trapped by comfort is rather like being born into the bottom of a pit with steep, slippery sides. There’s no chance we can climb out since we’re weighed down by our addiction to pleasure and the measure of happiness it brings. If we’re happy to stay where we are or we’ve given up trying to escape we know we can still survive in a human-biased bubble in which we don’t have to think too deeply about where we are or what we’re doing, as long as it’s comfortable.
The most trapping habit is our violence-based use of Animal Industry products, mainly for food. I’m sure people would, in theory, like to be free of it, but they don’t realise how trapped they are, especially by their need for comfort food. They choose to stay with what they know.
If I get the opportunity to talk about self-improvement, talk about escape, I might get some people to listen. But for everyone listening far more prefer not to. They don’t want to be told anything which is discomforting and of course if I say anything at all about animals used for food it evokes uncomfortable feelings of guilt and squeamishness. But there’s another factor involved - where, even though some are willing to forgo a little comfort for the sake of self improvement, they don’t want to feel as though they’ve been pushed into change. If they’re going to change they’ll want to do it at their own pace.
Your regular vegan response might be, “What? Leave it to them to decide if and when? Too slow, too slow”. And if any sort of psychological pressure is applied to the reluctant-changer, they’ll dig their heels in and tell us, “There’s nothing worse than being morally blackmailed into 'self-improvement'”.
So ... do people really want to change as much as vegans would want them to change? It’s doubtful. If I start speaking to anyone about intensive farming or abattoirs I see their eyes glaze over and know I’m saying too much. At first they might seem interested but it occurs to me that they simply want to improve their life in the pit, not actually escape from it. Probably they fear landing up in the fringes (like vegans appear to have done) ... so, they don’t want to learn uncomfortable facts or make too many radical changes, especially concerning their comfort foods. They want the best of both worlds, and in the end maybe they want to preserve their free-will most of all, but it’s a no-win situation for most people, they are torn between holding back and moving forward.
Some, however, will be almost ready to move on. They’ll want to find out, but eventually they’ll see that it’s not as quick a fix as they first thought. A dilemma - they’re attracted to the idea of self improvement, even outraged by what they find out about animals and animal foods … but, all things considered, they may not like the idea of having fewer food and clothing choices. They mightn’t like the idea of so much hard work in changing so many things about their lifestyle.
Moving on may not look so attractive. The would-be vegans look about them, their health is okay, their life is okay, they don’t have to confront face-to-face animal torture, so the idea of no-change doesn’t seem so bad after all - the comforts, the social acceptability, the normality. The decision to change is put off or thrown into the too-hard basket.
When the vegan missionary leaves and the horror stories fade, they sink back into their old familiar, cushioned pit.

Boycotting wins no friends

2011-10-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

311:

Animal rights is about introducing values unheard of before. Most omnivores haven’t even considered that animals deserve ‘the right to a life’. Vegans, busy pursuing their own sense of responsibility, leave their friends behind. Their omnivore friends, more self-protective, aren’t as interested in developing a new value system. But, knowing today what they know, they are faced with a moral dilemma. They can’t convince themselves that what vegans are saying is not true.
Some animals are well known to be exploited - the hen, laying battery eggs in a cage; the chimpanzee, going insane in a science lab; the breeding sow, held in an ‘iron maiden’ sow stall; the dairy cow, turned into a milk-making machine. Today we know things about animal cruelty that weren’t widely known about forty years ago, and most people are distressed when they do get to know about it. But how strange, it doesn’t seem to change their eating habits. Perhaps this shows just how strong the impulse is, to not alter our food regime unless it’s to our own advantage, or not to choose a lifestyle which will separate us from others. But the more we learn the harder it is to be comfortable about our choices.
The whole idea that vegans are putting forward highlights this dilemma. We seem to inflict guilt just by bringing up animal issues ... which is why most people want to avoid us.
So we vegans might be lonely because we’re avoided and lonely because we deliberately disassociate from the lifestyle shared by almost everyone else - we not only boycott many products sold in shops (to our own considerable inconvenience) but boycott social events like barbeques, dinner parties and restaurants, and for this we’re likely to be disliked ... which is why we need to find a way of dealing with this loneliness and vilification.
We all suffer (the omnivore from guilt and chronic illnesses, the vegan from alienation) but for us there are special advantages - it’s great that we’re into self-improvement, great that we stand up to the hypocrisy in Society ... but we have to take into account our need for other people. And this comes down to our approach and how we advocate for animals - how do we advocate strenuously whilst not necessarily going on the attack, how we remain friendly with those we’d much rather be in judgement of.
The big question for us is surely how we stay emotionally neutral and not feel depressed when the people we know avoid us or avoid talking about this subject?

Ah, but the loneliness!!

2011-10-25T01:05:00.000-07:00

309:

What’s it like being an animal activist, someone who wants animals to have a life but whose words fall on deaf ears? With almost everyone chomping away on their meat and various animal secretions nobody seems to be listening. No one is interested in anyone who seems to be denying them their pleasures.
As vegans, we know how it feels to be alone but perhaps it’s essential, because it lets us empathise more closely with animals. It helps us not to forget that domesticated animals are not only alone but at the mercy of violent humans. It’s no consolation though, for us personally, when we realise the apathy and silence of most people around us. I can’t help seeing this hardness of outlook, even in dear friends. I can see them desperately trying to shield themselves from taking a ‘soft’ view. They’re harder than I want them to be or even they want to be. They won’t communicate with their soft side for fear of what they might become.
I want to be an advocate for animals but I do want to feel close to my friends. However, at this point in time, it seems one must be sacrificed for the other. The louder I speak up the sooner my friends seem to turn off and walk away.
I don’t underestimate the pain of being marginalised. I know it could be dangerous to feel so alone. It may drive me crazy but I also know that, more dangerously, my need for acceptance might tempt me back to my old idiot-ways.
I have to tell myself that if I’m serious about ‘the greater good’ I have to find ways of NOT feeling alone and not feeling that it’s all pointless. It helps to know other vegans, it helps perhaps to meet up with a whole bunch of animal rights activists on a Tuesday night. But in reality, we all live apart. We’re on our own. This is one big personal challenge for most vegans - not in the changing of our diet but the facing up to a diminished social life and a shortage of simpatico companions.

Style

2011-10-23T00:26:00.001-07:00

307:

My conscience may call on morality, but it’s not its only driving force and I’m not keen on the idea of morality when it has so much ugly association with god botherers and goodness-preachers. I’d like my conscience to take a constructive path and avoid the bad and insincere as one would avoid foul-smelling air, but I’m aware that ‘being good’ is still very much about brownie points, which I haven’t any interest in – ideally, my truth pie has to have ingredients like panache and style.
In a vegan lifestyle I see a smoother operation - the body itself is usually functioning in top form simply because it isn’t being daily poisoned by animal stuff. I feel that my mind too is inspired by the sophisticated idea of it rather than the dull focusing on bald goodness or sensible healthiness. I don’t want to just ‘do right’ but do right things more easily. I’m happier being in a more gentle relationship with my environment. It’s most proved for me when everything that can respond back does so, positively and in a gentler style.
Vegan lifestyle is stepping beyond the tempting world of commodities in order to become free to develop a number of things, not the least of which is style ... and that comes with sensitive thinking and sensitive attitudes. I notice it in myself, when I’m not for ever tripping over guilt and grubby attitudes, especially those which regularly concern favourite foods made by the animal-death-industry. For me personally, as a vegan, this is the really great advantage of my lifestyle - but I admit that it’s frustrating that I can’t say this without sounding ‘up’ myself.
When I’m advocating for animals I’m also hoping to set ‘style’. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not rubbishing a bit of old fashioned morality, it’s just that I like to think morality is a stepping stone to more interesting things. Morality is a good reference point, like having rules when you’re playing a sport. Then it’s a matter of honesty. The honourable sports-player plays a straight game and enjoys playing by the rules. The problem, as I see it, with evangelical preachers preaching unvarnished morality is that they always kill the enjoyment. They have to make pleasure sinful, and in terms of vegan principle if it’s made into a strictness it certainly loses its attractiveness.
Morality, ethical upbringing, values, they’re guides, pointing out the right direction, but we’re heading towards more sophisticated ways of living and decision-making these days . “Thou shalt not eat meat” isn’t inspiring, whereas “Lighten up - be vegan” seems to be worth investigating. It’s more attractive and just as moral.

Experiments in imagination

2011-10-20T03:39:00.001-07:00

305:

Imagine what it would be like to ‘go vegan’, trying to give things up but always finding it to be an effort - if it was like that we’d surely, eventually feel like giving up and going back to easier ways.
But isn’t that the characteristic of any experiment – finding out whether it is worth putting in the effort and going on, in order to eventually reach a time when it’s no longer such an effort? Once over that hurdle then experiments become all-interesting. I suppose all people want to get to that stage. when they start out on any discipline.
I remember when I first contemplated veganism I’d ask myself if expending the initial energy (to get over the inertia) was worth it. But there’s a double hurdle for vegans, because there’s a huge weight of opinion set against us, trying to drag us back to convention. Vegans are in danger of being scuppered not only by a lack of support, not only by others’ inaction but by open hindrance.
In an ideal world we’d be simply pioneering, setting an example and others inevitably following - ‘vegans doing the right thing’, others alongside lightening the load. But that certainly isn’t the case for most of us, not right now anyway.
So, to break this cycle, to turn things around, to be experimenting rather than always watching one’s back, I found it best to approach this great lifestyle change as if I were forging my own philosophy. I was conducting a big experiment in order to feel a more exciting and effective energy flowing through me. I felt as if I were letting imagination play a part in linking self development with self discipline.
By going vegan I discovered my own potential for jumping the hurdles, for ‘making the effort’, without having to first be certain of anything - it was being done in the true spirit of experimenting, by not needing outside help to confirm my decisions or to keep me on track.

Imaginary companions

2011-10-18T23:06:00.001-07:00

301:

The struggle to stand firm in the face of temptation isn’t merely one of disciplined decision-making but in finding a reason to be disciplined. For me, this reasoning is based upon the prioritising of issues in my own mind, where I sort out what is the most urgent thing needing my attention ... concerning the major issues of the day. I’m for ever asking myself “What am I going to do about it?”
Animal Rights figures large. Is it my own claustrophobia or my empathy with innocent little creatures that leads me to want to defend imprisoned animals? Whatever it is, it’s very clear and strong and urgent, leading me to boycott anything to do with cruelty to animals. If I’m going to do anything, I want to be effective and I don’t want to fail at it, so it’s a toss-up between making a big gesture (going vegan) and going in so hard that I risk not being able to continue with it.
When I ‘went vegan’, perhaps I feared it would inevitably drive me crazy, craving all these ‘prohibited’ things and not allowing myself any of them.
People often ask me if I’m “allowed to eat” certain things and I always say, “I can eat what I like. It’s my own choice. There’s no authority watching over me”. I’m sure other vegans get asked that a lot too. But to be able to say that you’re ‘a vegan’ you have to actually be it and stay it.
I know that I stay vegan by tapping into my sense of purpose and vision of a future in harmony with animals. But I stay vegan for other reasons. Now, this might sound a bit weird but it’s the best I can come up with. I like to think I have the ‘little people’ living on my shoulders … whispering in my ear … suggesting great possibilities and telling me things I can do. Now that I’m ‘clean’ (i.e. vegan), I can afford to hear them. I can use my imagination. And I know others can’t, not in the same way, if only because that can’t afford to hear ... most of them being omnivores or worse. They can’t go around condemning an abusive world because they’re condoning it. They’re caught up in it. They haven’t contemplated going vegan. They still think it’s absurd. They couldn’t even allow ‘such absurdity’ to enter their heads. They opt to stay where they’ve always been.
These omnivores love their animal products and tell anyone they know who is vegan “You don’t know what you’re missing”. But we know they can’t hear the ‘little people’ (and would think me quite mad if I were to mention them).
For me, it would be these ‘little people’ who do a lot of the difficult work for me - they suggest I take notice of things I could easily have missed. They alert my conscience when I’m in danger of doing something I don’t need to. I imagine ‘the little people’ as coming from another world, directly accessible through my conscience. Once my conscience is fired up it’s a bit like tuning into a radio station - I find ‘them’ and use ‘them’ and listen to ‘them’.
Whether you acknowledge such things or not, you’d probably agree that the whole matter of ‘the unknown’ interests most people. We’re all attracted to the unknown, ‘the possible-though-seemingly-improbable’. There’s nothing I like better than peering into the unknowable future, and in preparation projecting anything which might benefit our children’s’ generation and their welfare. The unknowable tempts me away from conforming to convention. The rationale here is, I suppose, that since conventional ways have gotten us into today’s mess, the opposite may well get us out of it.
Imagine this if you will: the world is dying from unimaginativeness. So, I like to cultivate imagination. Un-imaginative the ‘little people’ are not, indeed I think they embody imagination and have an overwhelming impulse to guide us by way of it. But they’re rough teachers, their guidance is full of fun and mischief, tripping me up when I get above myself, pushing me beyond my comfort zone, working for my best interests but they’re ever-ready to do ‘mischief’ if I ever drop my guard. I imagine them as elders, tough in order to keep standards high.
As I walk barefoot along a safe, sandy beach feeling rather self-important, I stub my toe on a rock. I’m angry. I’m cursing the bastards who made me do it ... but it’s only the ‘little people’, squatting on my shoulder, reminding me, sometimes painfully, not to get carried away with thoughts of self importance.
Imagining them into existence is similar to imagining ideas into reality. Learning from the ‘little people’ is like watching ideas grow until they’re independent of imagination.
Stubbing my toe on a rock I see the need for change, for growth in myself. Change needs exhilarating bursts of fresh energy. If change is too slow it will whimper along, never building up enough momentum, always held back by mistake after mistake. If I relax too often I’ll be constantly clobbered by the ‘little people’. They’ll scream with mischievous delight whenever I’m being idle or showing no gratitude for what’s on offer. When I’m not looking they’ll lay a rock in front of me, to stub my toe on.

The power of food

2011-10-16T00:28:00.000-07:00

298:

What the Animal Industries may NOT realise is that a strong counter-culture is gaining ground. People are beginning to wake up to the fact that animal products are dangerous as well as immoral. We know food is obviously essential to life … but not this food. If animal-derived foods are anything, they’re toxic and unethical and detrimental to the environment, and yet almost everyone remains an omnivore. They’re seduced by roast dinners, egg and bacon breakfasts or after-dinner ice cream. They can’t walk past a cake shop without paying a visit.
We can’t get past our own tastebuds and food-tastes. We’re hemmed in by our social eating habits. If we go against eating norms then social relationships are affected, whereas if we eat from the same table we’re accepted.
For people like vegans social isolation is a potent punishment, simply because we eat different food. Perhaps people think we are trying to be better than everyone else. Whether that’s fair or not it happens that way ... but it shouldn’t make any vegan feel insecure or depressed, after all we’ve looked carefully at our own habits and decided to make changes which go against majority opinion. We boycott products and condemn the industries who make their business out of animal exploitation ... and most of us are thankful we’ve gone vegan despite the struggle. One might argue that some life-struggle is good for us, since it develops appreciation for what we have, contributing to a strength in our personality with which we’ll have no trouble attracting people towards us … and eventually towards our ideas. We develop a personality that seems unique and sovereign, and which acknowledges others’ sovereign right to a life. We recognise the unique individual in each other, who is worth something in their own right. If that does nothing else for us it should give us self confidence, enough perhaps to combat the social isolation that being vegan brings. It helps us lead the fashion and not follow it. It says to us, “Yes, go ahead, boycott, do what is necessary and right, and don’t back off when things get rough”. And this is the same confidence that says “no” when we’re tempted.
If that strength of character is a bit lacking in our world, and if people do keep giving in to exactly what the brain-washers have programmed us to want, then our biggest problems are ones concerning conformity. If we are giving in to social pressure to be the same as others we have to consciously go against our better judgement, our wanting to stand firm. And that, perhaps more than anything else, erodes self esteem and self-confidence, proving that we haven’t been able to stand up to the power of food.

Hand in hand

2011-10-12T23:55:00.001-07:00

296:

The Animal Rights movement doesn’t have funding or pro bono help from top-level professionals. We can’t compete with the exploiters’ wealth.
They have all the material advantages. They own the media and advertising industries. They can buy whoever they please. They legally sell addictive food substances to the public. Their researchers tell them how far they can push the customer. On this level, veganism can’t win people over. We have to go the longer way around, at least at this stage.
All omnivorous humans in the rich Western world are having such a good time indulging in animal stuff that you can hardly expect they’d want to spoil their fun. They don’t want to think about food, just eat it and enjoy it. They’d rather not know about animal exploitation ... and they’re grateful it’s done behind closed doors.
In this respect our whole society is like a mutual encouragement club – the customer goes along with what the exploiters do, just so long as their favourite animal products are available for purchase. It’s a classic drug dealing system - there’s a co-dependency between dealer and client. We all get what we want and it’s in everyone’s interest not to welsh on the other.
But if our providers give us satisfaction, they also own us. If we continue buying their products we’ll have less and less chance of weaning ourselves off them. How seductive their product is ... but when you look at it more closely, it’s just smoke and mirrors, it’s as unattractive as it is attractive. One’s attachment crumbles as soon as we puff some resistance at it. And that resistance comes from a deeper, more passionate, compassionate inner self - something we can be proud of but something we often find reason to keep locked up.
If we do decide to rouse this sleeping compassion it’s obvious what we have to do - drop the lot, drop everything connected with animals. Once we become vegan a whole new opportunity to educate others arises. Suddenly we find ourselves in a strong position to speak up about something we’ve perhaps suppressed for a long time - the ‘animal problem’. Up to this point we’ve been unable to defend animals because we’ve still been eating them.
By boycotting animal produce we can reduce the impact of the exploiters and effectively help to put them out of business. Surely that’s a noble enough cause ... but food addiction is like a lump of concrete in our gut. The food binds body and mind more than we realise. All of our life we’ve been ‘doing it’ - we salivate at the very thought of something delicious to eat (activating the reward system of the brain, rather like a ‘dopamine reaction’). Shopping isn’t just a chore, food shopping is something else. It becomes part of our day-out, going in to the malls, supermarkets and even the corner shop to get our fix. They provide us with our treats and little food luxuries. It’s here we plan our meals and eat snacks along the way. Our providers display, at eye level, the most popular products they know we want. And the customer knows what (especially the animal foods) they are buying will soon enough be the main ingredient of a meal which will be enjoyed by others too. The foods on display, that we drool over, are guaranteed to act to bring us communal pleasure and social acceptance - ‘eating together to stay together’. It’s a powerful reason to forget about the animals and emphasise the need to feed ourselves and others with what pleases us.

The animals’ revenge

2011-10-11T02:13:00.001-07:00

295:

I’m glad not to be part of the exploiter class, even though I sometimes work for them and see the splendour of their houses, cars, fine clothes and expensive belongings. I’m also glad not to be too closely involved with political corporations, which aren’t too fussy about the ‘natural resources’ they exploit. The corporations and those who run them - for them, rule number one is to succeed or perish. They face fierce competition from each other, and if they don’t succeed they let down their shareholders. In some ways they have many advantages, in other ways their lives are unenviable.
Today’s shareholders in the animal food and clothing industries demand good profits. Business-wise, they attempt to monopolise their market by sending competitors broke if they can. They conserve their assets, expand at every opportunity and play every dirty trick in the book to keep their advantage … in that way they stay afloat and keep their customers happy. They are the producers: we the consumers ... and especially ‘all-consuming’ when it comes to food. We buy items that are, to some extent, addictive. Our addiction to our favourite ‘animal’ foods (or other animal products we ‘can’t live without’) is essential to the welfare of the Industry but there’s another nasty twist, that all this producing and consuming and enjoying is The Animals’ Revenge. It may be so that, by consuming the (stolen) body parts of animals, there’s a creeping deterioration in our metabolism. If we ingest them and get used to them, we pay … in more ways than one. Animal products are excellent health destroyers and therefore good for keeping doctors in business. Perhaps that’s why most of them don’t advise their patients to avoid them or even to follow a vegan diet.
Animal foods are profitable to the exploiters but just as certainly not so good for the humans who consume them. We, along with the hapless animals, are simply victims. But, to some extent, we humans can look after ourselves. We can learn and we can change since we aren’t entirely enslaved, whereas the domesticated animal is helpless. Entirely. Vegans are calling for a stop to it because it’s unhealthy and suicidal but more so because animals can’t defend themselves against human attack. It’s bullying in its worst form. We act as parasites on the animals and for a so called advanced species this is a shameful act - the strong made strong by making the weak weaker. I, for one, am so glad to be shot of it, to disassociate from all that.

Soul food

2011-10-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

291:

Eating animals: “But they have no souls so it’s okay”. “They don’t feel things as we do”. “They can’t reflect on their situation or see up ahead to what’s in store for them”.
Whether any of that’s true or not, does it matter? New information today says that it’s safe to eat solely plant-based foods, so why not simply do just that? In our world of misinformation people concur with what they’ve been told - that animals have no souls and that meat is good for you. Their main fall back position is a powerful one: “We’ve been eating meat for two million years so why stop now?”
But now we’ve moved on in so many ways. We are not Neanderthals. We are reconstructed humans, and perhaps it’s timely to stop this unnecessary ‘carnivorism’, not only because we know we can survive safely without animal food but also because we’ve shown how cruel the human system is towards animals. When the human is making money, beware – especially when they’re profiting from producing certain foods. It’s such easy pickings that everybody’s doing it all round the world and that spells competition and the danger of lowering standards to undercut you competitor. Just look at what hell holes the factory farms are. They aren’t designed as punishment camps they are merely the cheapest way of growing the product to stay in business.
We no longer chase and hunt animals to kill them for food. Instead we keep them captive and treat them like machines. Since the early part of last century the wealthy Animal Industries have been intensifying animal husbandry, and quoting from J.S. Foer’s Animal Eating, he says,
“Modern industrial agriculture has asked what hog farming might look like if one considered only profitability – literally designing multitier farms from multistorey office blocks …”.
The ruthlessness of these designs reflects the worst imaginable outcome for the animals themselves. The customer has ‘just gone along with it’ and doesn’t want to know too much detail. They’ve allowed agribusiness to wield the same powers as, in the past, the lords of the manor once did, weaving their minions into an inescapable maze - we need and they provide; we shop, they profit.
The Animal Industries have been successful at cementing-in our shopping habits, by giving us what we want whilst messing with our minds at the same time. They effectively do our choosing for us, do it by brazen temptation and misinformation. Subtly and subliminally they secure our loyalty to their products – we, the customer, support them (the Animal Industries) in order to serve our own best interests. Apart from vegans, has anyone noticed anyone routinely NOT wearing animal skins somewhere on their body or NOT eating abattoir-derived foods? And you don’t need to look too closely to see that most adults over 40 are already ill from their life-long use of these food products (ever seen The Biggest Loser on television?)
By using misinformation to persuade the spending dollar from peoples’ pockets the Animal Industries also succeed in screwing up the future of the planet at the same time. And we must ask how did they ever get so much power? It might be that they made it their business to know the way their customers think ... and not giving a stuff about being wicked.
They operate on a set of values (to do with the exploitation of resources) which most of us could never accept. We take what they give us (by buying). We don’t fully realise how dangerous our shopping habits are, since we are their playthings - they’ll do whatever it takes to keep their advantage. They’ll always conserve what they have. They’ll always act within the law. They’ll always protect themselves by never seeming to be directly accountable for what’s being done. They won’t usually act openly against the interests of humans … they wouldn’t draw attention to themselves in that way. But for all their stealth and careful image-making, they know their customers don’t really care to know too much. They know they won’t notice, or even care about, what’s being done to ‘non-humans’, as long as the good times keep rolling.

Conforming

2011-10-07T17:02:00.001-07:00

288:

The exploiters, brain focused on self interest, know their customers can be relied upon to not-want-to-know-what’s-going-on. Most importantly, they know most people are subservient to a system which is tightly controlled.
When I first noticed the restrictions, as a kid, I accepted them as from people who I considered were lovingly protecting me. I learnt what ‘normal behaviour’ meant. I learnt how to conform.. My habits were formed, guided by my parents and Society, especially concerning my choice of food (no one had ever heard of vegetarian, let alone vegan food). Once I was beyond parental care and control I was able to decide for myself, and that involved decisions based on discrimination and disapproval ... and it wasn’t long before animal issues had to be looked at. Soon enough I realised I’d have to be involved in some sort of boycott, because there was no doubt that I disapproved of animal exploitation and therefore meat products. Later, as I thought more about it, it had to include all animal by-products.
If young adults today reassess things they were brought up with they could probably follow a similar path of logic and eventually arrive at something like the same vegan principle I arrived at. They’ll associate two forms of liberation - the freeing of the subservient human mind and the liberating of animals. They’ll weigh slavery against freedom and choose one over the other.
By chance, as a teenager, I took up running and the only teacher who showed any interest in my athletics was my history teacher so, in return, I showed an interest in his subject ... which I went further with. In studying history I found that slavery and the human struggle to escape it figured large. Humans had been forever trying to win their freedom and discover more intelligent value systems which would be better aligned with human progress. Now, basking in our freedom these days, we (in the relatively free West) no longer have to struggle on our own account and can now afford to look at what slavery signifies, and do something about it ... become advocates for the enslaved, some of whom are undoubtedly humans. But by far the most and worst enslaved are animals. Unlike their human counterparts they have no chance to organise on their own behalf (having no power to do anything about human oppression). Unless human advocates step in on their behalf they have no chance of being released from slave status.
My present freedom allows me to be an animal advocate but it comes at a price. By uncovering certain truths and speaking about it in public I find myself getting off-side with people. Animal advocacy upsets almost everyone.
But no worries (I think to myself), it won’t always be that way. There are obvious chinks of good sense in what we say, that will become apparent, eventually. I hold onto that, especially when I’m on the brink of despairing of my fellow humans.
Vegan principle and anti-slavery make sense if only in terms of human health. We, as vegans, wish to weaken the ‘exploiter’ influence on Society by keeping people away from animal foods and therefore out of hospital, and safe from premature death. We encourage people to un-poison their bodies and minds and of course to no longer be part of the obscenity that amounts to 150,000 animal executions a minute. Until we move away from so much gratuitous self-harm and this daily holocaust in abattoirs all over the world, nothing can possibly go well for us personally or collectively.

The exploiter class

2011-10-06T02:41:00.001-07:00

287:

My own way of making a start in helping to clean up today’s mess is to home in on the waste of pollution and the cruelty of animal slavery. They’re both dark forces connected with the wealthy exploiters running the animal-exploiting industries. Their grip on things needs to be weakened, and what anyone can do is withdraw support from them by stopping spending money on the goods they produce. Anyone can do this and help make a difference that way. It will, at the same time, support the liberation of animals.
The exploiter is often a kind and loving individual who genuinely cares about their family. The might see themself as a good person, believing that ‘charity starts at home’. They are providing ‘a better world for their grandchildren’. They care far less about the community or about ‘the greater good’, especially if by doing so it affects their profits. They like acquiring money and have little empathy for anything or anyone being used by them to make their money.
I was listening to one of them, a hunter, on the radio. He farmed animals and loved guns. He was trying to justify the pleasure he got from pulling the trigger on a moving animal. He couldn’t say what it was, except that it felt ‘natural’ to him. He’d always done it since he was a boy. He said that it came naturally to him. Animal farming and hunting - it’s how he and his family have always made their living (or got their kicks). It seems they were used to finding opportunities and taking advantage of weakness. They see dollars in everything. Where most people see a forest in terms of beauty, 1%’ers see the trees as lumber. Where most people couldn’t kill an animal the exploiter has no trouble doing so ... or better still, they employ someone who’ll do the messy business for them.
The consumer lets these people thrive. And these people therefore believe themselves to be doing nothing wrong since they have the support of so many dollar-spending customers. Regard the exploiter as the spoilt child, the consumer as the weak parent - the longer the child believes they can get away with bad behaviour they will, and become all the more dangerous the stronger they get.

Seduced by second class pleasures

2011-10-05T04:05:00.001-07:00

283:

When it comes to food and keeping up our lifestyle almost all of us are controlled by the carrot and stick … the ‘carrot’ is in the form of lifestyle-identifiers, the sorts of foods we eat comprising mainly animal product. The ‘stick’ is the threat of reduced disposable income for buying animal product (often owing to loss of employment). The good things in life are abundant for those who can afford them, i.e. those who conform, but meagre for poorer people and those who don’t conform. It’s all controlled. It’s a neat system.
Everything which comes from the Animal (food) Industries is meant to be pleasurable enough to make us toe the line ... but usually it’s second rate stuff – nothing more than a few taste thrills at restaurants, or ice cream, chocolate, cakes, meat and all the little food luxuries we think we couldn’t do without. It’s a sort of ‘seconds world’ of cheap and cheerful commodities and our wanting them keeps us working and consuming and conforming. We fear missing-out so we give very little thought for the animals producing the stuff.
Lifestyle is everything, whereas ethics or the development of consciousness is not so important. Most people will settle for any old ‘pleasure experience’ where food is concerned. Instead of individual thinking and the opening consciousness we opt for group-think - “Everybody does it so why shouldn’t I?”
With safety-in-numbers, going with the crowd, buying whatever one is wanting, we go the popular way. But vegans go against the popular, opting for a life governed by a strict no-animal-use principle. In a very major way vegans disassociate from the crowd and think for themselves.
Understandably this is something which could worry the Animal Industries. They probably realise that the world is coming into a more expansive age. They may foresee a world that is dangerously ‘vegan-inspired’ and non-violence-inspired, and that’s not so good for the future prospects of the Animal Industries. But they also know that it’s still a million miles away, and that today the majority of people are still happy to be poisoning themselves with animal foods. Thankfully, for the Industry, their customers are addicted to their products and reluctant to give them up even though the stuff makes people overweight and pushes them towards diabetes and heart disease.
Vegan food doesn’t protect us from this entirely, but it helps dissolve the addictions to these harmful foods and at the same time strengthens our liking for plant-based foods. The big plus for plant-food eaters it that our diet relieves us of the grumbling fear of these deadly health conditions.
As soon as I got used to a plant food diet, I realised it was good for energy but even more importantly it was good for the brain. It let me feel more alert, and consequently more suspicious of traditional food regimes. By waking up to this conspiracy (the acceptability of animal food) it awoke the rebel in me.
The rebel asks tricky questions in public. The rebel challenges the so called ‘food authorities’ - when I woke up to that, I wanted more than anything to help sap their strength by boycotting every Animal Industry commodity. The more I did that the more I realised how important it was to drop all the crappy stuff they sell or wheedle into products as ‘hidden’ ingredients ... I was realising that once you open your purse or wallet to them, you automatically turn a blind eye to your own involvement in what they are doing. And whichever way you look at it, what they’re doing is not nice.

Comforts

2011-10-03T23:38:00.000-07:00

281:

Those who control the Animal Industries probably do know the consequences for the creatures they abuse but do it all the same. For them, empathy and profits don’t mix, whereas most others do feel empathy for the animals and either suffer from guilt or succumb to a helplessness to change their food habits.
Those who profit from animals have to numb their sensibility - they’ll say “if it works, go for it, whatever it takes”. They don’t have a problem with using animals as a resource. For the rest of us it’s not that simple. There’s a ‘moral’ struggle between what is right for oneself and what is best for others. The struggle may not be conscious, but somewhere there’s probably some awkward feeling about the animals who produce our favourite food products.
Almost all people like the meats and pastries and rich creamy desserts, the cheeses and eggs and milk-made produce. Tucking into them relieves the monotony and stresses of life, and for that reason most people feel that they can’t afford to look too closely at their ‘comfort’ foods. These foods make us feel better, and stronger perhaps ... and so the ugly origins of these foods have to be ignored. If we allowed ourselves, even for a moment, to consider the truth behind our animal-food habits then our sense of morality would be badly shaken; if we dared to take one moment to look at the part we play in the ongoing animal massacre we’d feel ashamed.
It is a massacre whichever way you look at it, even though we have to pretend it isn’t. By pretending we’re NOT engaging in the act of ‘hurting’ (hurting ourselves, hurting animals, hurting the planet, etc) our inner eye is refusing to see what is see-able. It’s laughable to think that we can kid ourselves about this, when we’ve already thought it through in our own minds.
Whether we are an elite 1%’er or amongst the other 99%, we’d probably all be tempted to sell our soul for the chance of making big money. Money cushions fear ... and it isn’t just the wicked who believe this. All over the world humans fear poverty, or fear being forced to ‘live-without’ the things they’re accustomed to. So, we try to get hold of as much of ‘the good stuff’ as we can, to allay this fear. We indulge ourselves in ‘high’ living, rich food, powerful intoxicants. In fact we’ll use anything to relieve the fear of insecurity and the tedium of living as poor people have to.
And where are the animals in all this? Entirely exploited, entirely forgotten, entirely abandoned.

The wicked

2011-10-02T15:20:00.001-07:00

279:

The way the entrepreneurs have made money out of animal farming and the terrible suffering they put upon animals must be said to be truly wicked but the way they’ve manipulated their human customers, embroiling them in their crimes, is possibly worse.
Not too many people will admit playing a part in the tragedy of animal abuse, but they’re involved nonetheless - the customers are buying the stuff and the producers are reaping the profits. No one has clean hands.
The producers have built empires on the backs of animals. With the support of generations of customers they’ve provisioned us both at the survival level and the luxury level. The Animal Industries have taken control of our spending habits. Their influence is everywhere - in clothing industries, in food industries and in shoe companies, providing what seem to be reliable, safe, economic and fashionable products. They give the customers what they want and never let on how the products come to them. They’re allowed to tell lies, especially regarding the nutritional value of the foods they sell, and we suckers can’t believe so much untruth or greed can exist ... so, we believe what we really want to believe, however shonky their assurances seem. The customer doesn’t really know how corrupt the producers are. They can’t believe that they’ll stop at nothing to make profits.
I’d be very surprised if even 1% of humans are truly wicked or so mentally ill or desperate that they’d sell their soul for wealth. But many wealthy people will, because of their desperate fear of being impecunious. It seems they’re willing to abandon all moral constraint to guarantee their own material security. They inhabit the board rooms of agribusiness and allied industries, they force small farmers out of business and establish the intensive farms and processing operations.
For the remaining 99% of us we’re different in as much as we never have the chance to be tempted this way. But if we did have the chance, would we be like them? All of us probably have a few really deep fears – fear of failure, fear of poverty, fear of abandonment, fear of death etc., but most of us don’t have that monster-gene that allows us to destroy things for others, in order to make things safer for ourselves. We might flirt with the devil sometimes, we might be less than fully conscious of what we do, we might deliberately not-know … but most of us are still in touch with our own feelings. We wouldn’t exploit our fellow humans as they do ... but animals? With what we know about animal husbandry today, we have to have a very low empathy threshold to carry on eating the poor creatures and yet feel nothing.
Perhaps most people don’t realise the significance of what is happening behind the scenes. They have no idea how badly farm animals suffer and on what scale they suffer. The customer, wanting to eat what they want to eat, turns a deaf ear to information, they act blindly as if they didn’t know, but in these well informed times that can be a pretty lame excuse.

Brave

2011-10-01T01:05:00.000-07:00

278:

To stand up for animals you have to be vegan, and to be vegan you have to be brave. Not grim, not bitter, not angry, just quietly brave. No tickets on yourself, no sense of being better than anyone else, just calmly brave. But being vegan is not for the faint hearted.
Often vegans have to say “no”. No to meat, no I won’t go with you to the zoo, no to a simple ice cream on a hot day. To us it’s straightforward why we say no. But to others we may seem anti-social, as if we don’t want to join in, as if we’re stand-offish. Being vegan is a bit like shooting yourself in the foot, socially. Soon enough we get a reputation. And if we do get invited round to dinner it’s likely we say “no”, because of the problems it will cause.
Whenever I do mix and my ‘vegan status’ is known it’s apparent that people say things to me they don’t always mean. I hear them tell me they admire what I stand for. “Well done” and “I wish I could do it myself”, but beneath their praise their alarm bells ring – “Avoid this one, he’s a tree-hugger” (or whatever they see me as). After a while I’ve noticed that dinner invitations dry up. Why would anyone want a vegan to come round for dinner? Imagine the problems of cooking special dishes for a vegan who doesn’t appreciate the effort or worse, who tries to discuss with others at the table ‘the principles behind a plant-based diet’. “Booorring”
By standing up for animals, very often I’ll be going it alone. No friends to back me up and I can’t expect cows and chickens to give me much encouragement. It’s all got to come from within myself. I have to be able to withstand people’s lack of sympathy but also the market’s lack of suitable replacement products. Food and clothing depend so heavily on the Animal Industries that alternatives often don’t exist. So I have to search for products and pay more for them too, because there is such a small market demand for them.
On top of all this, I need to support the efforts of other vegans who are trying to raise public awareness. And that’s a problem. The pressures of society are so great that just to be vegan is hard enough without needing to be supportive of other vegans. But it is essential – I may be on top of my diet (and clothing choices) but we all need the sort of help that can only come from fellow vegans. The energy I get from my vegan mates helps me keep up the pressure.
There is little discussion here in Australia about moving away from animal use. Animal activism is generally concentrated on the worst abuses of animals on factory farms and in vivisection laboratories. It doesn’t address the wider problem of fundamental attitude change. And yet if this were established, if it became the fashion to boycott anything coming out of the animal industries, we’d see everything else follow. Once vegan principle is established in the hearts and minds of the consumer the markets would accommodate that - the abattoirs would close and the animals farms would go bust, the animal labs would be defunded and the zoos would be shut down. We’d even be less inclined to acquire pets, become less needy for companion animals and therefore help to dry up the pet trade. But at present we have a very piecemeal approach to the whole problem. There are still too few people willing to rally to the call for a thorough uprooting of animal exploitation. And so, things stay much the same.

Smile easy - you’re being watched

2011-09-30T18:31:00.000-07:00

276:

Vegans are used to people trying to have a go at them. Usually it’s a very half-hearted attempt to make our ‘over sensitivity towards animals’ look foolish. In company an insulting comment is often enjoyed by everyone - all the more reason why I shouldn’t let myself be provoked. I don’t need to show outrage although I have to be sure my arguments can ride out these minor annoyances. At the very least I should be able to say something which sounds competent ... as any animal advocate should.
Meat eaters, from their safe, majority position, always like to put down the righteous. They want to show how easy it is to make us angry - I do the smile-easy to confound them. As it happens, they usually try to wind me up to get an excuse NOT to have to listen to what they don’t want to hear.
If I start to show anger at them it gives them the green light to shut the door in my face. When I do get some sort of a hearing then I suppose I must be prepared to be fair game for attack ... because I’ve dared to question their most private lifestyle habits. Most carnivores don’t care about animal suffering and don’t want to talk about it, and yet there are always those who do want to take us on. So, as vegans, we need to be ready for ‘dinner table attacking’.
When I find myself the butt of a carnivore’s joke I can put up a good fight but I don’t achieve much if it simply makes them more frightened than they already are. (I reckon it’s fear that urges them to make a joke of it in the first place). The aim of a sharp-edged joke is to attract attention and gather support ... and to overwhelm me ... so, if i take umbrage or withdraw in silence then it seems that I can’t come up with a sharp enough retort ... and that often makes them smell blood and go in for the kill.
These are still early days for Animal Rights. We’re building foundations and encouraging new attitudes towards animals. We’re outlining law reform that will illegalise abattoirs and animal farming. And that would include the keeping of birds in cages (whether they’re budgerigars or hens) and fish in bowls (or fish-farming tanks). What I’m proposing annoys people hugely. And I’ll be told so. My point here is that it’s futile to spend too much time fighting with everyone who disagrees with us.
For my part I don’t want to waste my life fighting every local skirmish. Maybe those who laugh at us do need to be ignored - ‘the lamb’ jibe needs to be let through - if only because jokers and ‘people with vested interests’ are still in the ascendancy. Many of them are just busting to put us down if they get the chance. Discretion might be the better part of ‘going in boots and all’.
My compassion for animals is right, of course it is, because it’s the logical outcome of this anti-slavery movement. Obviously it feels right to me. That I should get upset that so many don’t agree is a waste of my emotional energy. Having a sense of humour about it all is the healthiest and most logical response, even if I have to handle a heckle or two. It’s ridiculous for me to wage war over every puff of smoke. I don’t need to take on every red neck I meet, or parry every joke. I don’t even have to be intimidated by political corporations. In fact I don’t have to be afraid of any of them because none of them have ‘the bottle’ to take me or any of us on in serious debate.
The world’s at a funny stage at the moment. So much openness to so many issues and yet, on some matters there are still too many questions un-asked. For instance, how is it that some of us are passionate advocates for animals and others are indifferent or hostile? I’m always asking myself how come vegans are so relatively enlightened and meatheads so backward?
The fact is that our differences are specific and not general. Vegans are probably not that much brighter or kinder or healthier but we do have more self discipline because we are, in some ways, so much more fearless and we do so much more boycotting. We’re constantly investigating and thinking about ethical issues. We’re more used to questioning and arguing our case and that probably makes us somewhat frightening to our opponents. If I’m right about that then it follows that our adversaries might feel just a little nervous. We don’t need to wind them up. It’s their fears we should be trying to allay.

Only jokin’

2011-09-29T01:34:00.000-07:00

275:

When I meet an adversary and discuss my opposite views, concerning the eating of animals, I’m at a disadvantage because I know that I hold such a minority view. It’s almost impossible to win the ‘animal argument’ if my opponent feels supported by the dominant culture.
For me, not blessed with a brilliant wit, if I try making a hasty response I usually blow it. I see the attack coming out of left-field, I see it has a distinctly personal tone and that it seems like a challenge. In other words I don’t see any signs of us heading into a fair-minded debate, quite the opposite in fact.
Maybe I detect a simple comment, couched as a joke, and that it’s meant to give a benign impression, whilst a sharp thrust is made, in and out in a flash ... and no room for any detailed discussion. The sharp comment, fired off at ‘joke- level’, is not meant to be shrugged off ... but it’s difficult to respond without firing back an aggressive reply … and in that split second, as I bite back, I know I’ve been trapped. I’ve been manipulated into the very thing they needed – my aggressive response is the coup de grace of the ‘joke’, and it’s this that ‘turns’ the atmosphere.
I’m made to look bad, as if I took things further than necessary. The joking carnivore is outraged at the thought that their comments could be taken so personally. “It was meant as a joke. Have you no sense of humour?”
By taking umbrage, by being hypersensitive to a bit of light hearted banter, I show how ready I am to quarrel over this issue. It’s proof (to my adversary) that I’m neither cool nor collected nor a compassionate person, nor as non-violent as I’d like to appear to be. I look like a loser who seems to have gentle views about animals but not about people.
They win!!

Defending oneself

2011-09-28T04:46:00.000-07:00

274:

This friend, who is eating lamb, (yesterday’s blog: having a lamb dish at a restaurant) is wanting to justify it and put down anyone who disagrees with her right to eat what she wants. For her, this whole subject provokes a need to put-down-the-righteous (me). She wants to shift my view. She, trying to convince me to take up meat again and me, when I stop laughing, simply saying “NO WAY”. It’s easier to convince a carnivore to move on than a vegan to move back.
For me to persuade someone who’s set in their ways, to consider what I’m saying, isn’t easy, especially when they’re older people. At some point in their lives this whole matter has been settled (about eating animals). They’ve probably promised themselves, family, friends and colleagues, that it won’t happen, and that it isn’t something they want to talk about. That position is held firmly and underscored by making tasteless jokes about it.
To come out against it (or for it) throws up certain difficulties. If against, it shows a level of contempt which becomes stronger as one gets older because there’s more to lose if one changes sides. For those who do consider changing the problem is one of losing friends ... over these ‘issues’ ... and feeling obliges to take sides ... wondering whether to stay out of it or wade in.
To be for it, and saying so, is something most vegans have to face up to. Should I say what I want to say? If I spoke out could I control my language? And what happens if my words don’t flow smoothly, making me look foolish, as though I hadn’t thought things through? I’d be asking myself if I couldn’t put my ‘defence’ into more powerful words.
These situations crop up suddenly, when I find myself being put on the spot. If I respond by defending both myself and the issue at hand I might be tempted to bite back, to draw their fire ... and then there’s no end to it.
My friend ... the ‘lamb’ ... her making light of it - in this instance it was enough for me to decide that it was one of those times for withdrawing.

Attacking me

2011-09-27T02:48:00.000-07:00

272

Recently I was visiting an elderly friend of mine and her youngest and eldest daughters were visiting at the same time. The younger one ‘needed’ to joke with me about her choice of food at her sister’s recent birthday dinner in a restaurant. She wanted me to know that she had had ‘the lamb’. This was her way of saying “up yours” to me, a reminder of how much her views differed from mine.
I’ve known her since she was a child and have followed her views for over 30 years. As a kid she was sensitive to animals and familiar with vegetarianism. In later years she became interested in cuisine and now she’s enthusiastic for eating meat, hence her mischievous joke about ‘having the lamb’. Knowing me and knowing my stand, she was obviously making a point with her throw-away line. She meant to attract attention.
It rather changed the mood of our little tea party. Whatever I said in reply would escalate things between us. I’m always up for a stoush over such things but I don’t want to quarrel just to score a point. Maybe she wanted a fight. I didn’t hang around to find out. I don’t know her well enough, these days, to be sure of her.
I think she meant to make a joke at my expense. For her it was probably mandatory that she should joke to counter my stand on Animal Rights, as if whenever ‘animal-eating’ comes up in a conversation it needs to be joked about ... to show people like me how un-cool it is to get sniffy about traditional eating regimes.
My friend tells me she enjoys eating lamb (probably to provoke outrage in me) and as the ‘joke’ goes along it gets more serious and turns into a challenge. She makes a comment, I make a reply, and it goes on until someone ‘wins’, and that’s okay if there’s mutual respect but if there’s not ...
Perhaps it’s the meat-eater’s revenge, this sort of sniping attack, to bring about a vegan’s de-moralisation. She probably enjoys seeing the outrage on my face and me rising to her bait.
My friend’s daughter, having known me for the past thirty odd years, and knowing I defend animals, regards me as fair game. But for me it depends on who I’m talking to, as to whether I take up the challenge. Sometimes I’ll withdraw, at other times I’ll take them on ... but that’s why I’m writing about this incident, not to put her down and not to justify myself but out of interest to both sides of the debate.
Once, ethically, we tip one way or the other, we seem to be committed to making a stand - carnivores love to win an argument with vegans and vice versa. They usually make a joke about being a meat-eater to wind us up, as a show-off position. They intend to win, but more importantly it’s material for future conversations with friends - by having a real ‘head-on’ argument we can make a good story out of it. It’s something to talk about later. Vegans do it too. We make fun of meat eaters amongst ourselves - “These carnivores, what bastards they are … they’ll even eat a lamb!”

Heavy attitudes

2011-09-26T00:48:00.000-07:00

271:

The two different attitudes surrounding the animal debate - on the one side the anger felt by vegans, towards people who brag about their meat eating and don’t give a damn about animals, on the other side are people who resent being forced to consider animals when they don’t want to. There’s a gulf between people over the subject of animals.
Animals are eaten by the million, the billion, not the cute, cuddly ones of course but the so called ‘edible’ ones. Until a couple of decades ago no one gave much thought to how animals were being treated on farms and abattoirs or that it might be possible to survive without using animals or that it was wrong to kill them for food. Then, in the early eighties, The Animals Film and the book Animal Liberation hit the scene. They shocked a lot of people.
I, for one, realised for the first time how much of our food relied on animals and was horrified by what I saw actually happening to them (and became vegan as a consequence). Slowly these home truths seeped into public consciousness and a momentum started to build ... then, surprisingly, it came to a standstill. At least it did in Australia. The general public were no longer as outraged, the media didn’t take up the stories (of routine animal abuse), and the meat trade continued to flourish. In the general community there was a reluctance to face up to animal issues - probably because people were feeling too guilty to think about it ... and they liked their animal foods too much to want to examine the subject too closely ... and were addicted to them (to thousands of food products on the market) ... and to discuss animal issues might endanger supply or increase their cost.
Public attitude is now set in concrete. Discussion is subdued and the situation for farm animals is even more dire than it was thirty years ago. Taking a heavy hammer to that concrete isn’t the answer, I’m sure of that, but I’m not so sure there is another obvious way to even bring the subject up let alone get people discussing it constructively.

I refuse to become vegan ...

2011-09-24T00:26:00.000-07:00

269:
Meat is symbolic of rich living (despite the fact that most people in the West can afford to buy it) and, along with other rich and exotic animal foods, it is regarded as ‘quality food’. Animal products are attractive to our tastebuds and expensive enough to be associated with good living. They appeal to those who ‘appreciate the good things in life’.
In contrast vegans show how bad these foods are and seem to make people feel guilty for wanting them. Consequently people dislike vegans and the sort of foods they recommend, preferring to stick with what they know.
What stops you becoming vegan? Perhaps missing things you associate with pleasure and which also give you social acceptance. People may realise what they’re eating is not, in the long run, good for them but in the short term it’s what they want. They can’t face missing out on roast dinners and a whole lot more.
Vegans have taken the plunge in many ways (food and clothing especially). They’ve taken a big step and thus earned the cred to promote non-violent food. Some of us have taken it further, promoting non-violence as a modus operandi. We want to interest others in both the food and the ethics whereas, in contrast, non-vegans can’t subscribe to that - they can’t take it seriously (non-violence as a general response to life). Naturally, I for one think that’s pretty sad, that the human race seems to be held back in this way, always having to maintain the ‘hard nose’. Their biggest hurdle is obviously their unwillingness to change their daily food habits and their speciesist attitudes towards animals.
As a part of the ‘vast majority’, most people do what others do. They have lots of reasons why they wouldn’t take up a vegan diet. So I thought it might be useful to outline some of the main reasons why people do NOT go vegan, and then weigh that against all the advantages that a non-violent food regime might bring.
Since most people have never had to restrict themselves in diet, especially if it involves things they enjoy eating and which they’ve taken for granted all their lives, then the idea of taking on a vegan lifestyle would seem, at first sight, outrageously restrictive. And since people get very toey about losing their freedom of choice, especially when it comes to food, then the little things start to take on big proportions. It becomes immensely important NOT to be giving up their snacks, treats and food-favourites. A branch of this is the fear of losing the sophistication associated with ‘cuisine’ - one might like to eat ‘French’ or Chinese or Indian foods. The thought of being inhibited over a particular cuisine, confined to eating only their plant-based dishes, might seem limiting. The thought of not being able to experience the great dishes of certain countries would seem like a great loss.
But it isn’t just food, it’s clothing too. For example, for the fashion conscious there’s not much choice of footwear outside the leather range of shoes. And again, in entertainment ... how kids do love to see animals ... so there’s the zoo visit to think about. Imagine having to explain to kids why the idea of keeping lions in cages is wrong.
For teenagers who need work the difficulties are bad enough without being told that available work selling hamburgers at McDonalds is unethical. For young people wanting to train as a chef in a restaurant, they’ll inevitably need to cook animals, since virtually every popular dish uses them. For a vegan, that career path is out of the question, along with just about every other career associated with preparing food.
Here’s a common problem for the would-be vegan – one would normally associate being invited to eat at someone’s place with pleasure but of course not for us. When we’re invited to dinner or a wedding or meeting at the local cafe, at some stage food becomes a problem. We either don’t eat or have to ask for something ‘special’, and that’s just one big irritation to those providing the food.
There are other problems connected to being vegan. As a vegan, what do I do at Christmas when I’m given a woollen jumper? What do I say when invited to sit on a leather lounge? How far do I take it? (It’s sounding a bit obsessional isn’t it? ) A lover gives you a kiss, and it tastes of the last meal they ate. What do I do if I have to share a kitchen with someone who cooks meat? What’s it like to share a fridge full of bits of dead animal flesh and smelly cheeses ... and what about the stinky fish left-overs in the waste bin and the flies buzzing around in warm weather? And how does it feel to eat my food alongside others who eat things that disgust me?
If you are single and out there looking for a partner, how many suitable vegans are there to choose from? I know I couldn’t live with a carnivore. What about a vegetarian? Could I work with colleagues who make me the butt of their jokes? If you’re a student at school, does your canteen have anything vegetarian to eat, let alone vegan? What if I joined an environmental group or a peace movement dedicated to non-violence and found myself attending a typical, fund-raising sausage-sizzle? I think I’d want to run for my life. The environmentalists would probably excuse themselves with, “Veganism? We’ve got enough issues to handle, concerning forests and pollution and global warming without getting hot under the collar about animal farming”.
Still, you may be thinking of going vegan? But how will you keep your opinions to yourself when all you really feel like doing is expanding the consciousness of your fellows? Maybe you’d like to be involved in charity work – you’re helping to feed starving children ... and then you find out that milk and meat products are being donated, or live animals are being provided for animal farming. As a vegan, this sort of disapproving would seem like you wanting to see kids starve.
These are just some of the problems facing us when we go vegan.
I should let that sink in before regaling the reader of all the advantages of being vegan. I think I’ve pretty much covered that already, anyhow.

Vegan police

2011-09-23T03:05:00.000-07:00

267a:

A friend of mine reckons I try to take over any conversation to put my case for veganism or animal rights, and she reckons I’m being like the ‘thought police’. “Leave me alone”, she says, “I feel okay about what I do, what I eat and what I wear”.
I can’t fight that! In her mind there’s no obvious damage being done - she’s only doing what others do … and it’s legal. More importantly she doesn’t want to discuss any of this. Leave me alone.
I go snooping, opening her fridge, disapproving of what I find inside. She says I’m no better than a peeping tom. I step over the line, or more importantly I show my fundamental misunderstanding of her freedom-of-choice … and understandably she reacts badly. Perhaps she’s too polite to object too strongly to my face but later, privately, she probably gets quite upset about me being a pushy vegan who tries to barge into her private life.
I wonder why she doesn’t invite me round to dinner any more?
For my friend, who is up-front about her omnivorous diet, her being offended by me is her favourite defence. She uses it to justify ‘not listening’. Other friends are listening however. They’re taking what I’m saying seriously, and they seem to have good intentions. They may be considering altering their food-buying habits, but for what reason? Are they trying to humour me? Are they changing because I’ve nudged them into it, or is it a true awakening for them? Compassion? Political correctness? Guilt? Wanting to win approval by doing the right thing?
Does today’s intention lead to a permanent state of things or, if it fails, does it weaken one’s belief in one’s good intention? Food is such a tempting business, like wanting to be thought of as a vegetarian but sneaking a sly hamburger when no one is watching, or, as kids, having a smoke behind the bicycle sheds. Is it just weakness or is it a reaction against someone who is pushing us around? Is there an element of the sweet taste of ‘stolen fruit’? Is there a refusal to give-in to the submissive side of one’s self?
There’s someone telling me all these good reasons why I shouldn’t do something I’m used to. Is that behind my decision to continue eating meat (or whatever). Does one become offended that one’s private space is being invaded?

Thinking harmless

2011-09-22T01:42:00.001-07:00

266:

Vegan’s have rules concerning animals and eating habits but some of us don’t apply it to our relations with each other. I know I don’t always observe the rule ... of comprehensive non-violence. It’s easy to dislike uncaring people ... but then that probably includes almost the whole of the human race. My own moral judgement is a slippery slope, disapproving of customers for spending their money supporting the very people who directly attack animals. So the question is, am I capable of harmlessness (thinking-without-aggression) and being non-judgemental?
If I’m trying to set a standard for non-violence, I surely have to be more generous with my judgements, without being a Polly Anna. It means looking for the best in people, giving them the benefit of the doubt … whilst not necessarily okaying what they actually do.
I have to separate the deed from the person, investigate what makes people tick, ask myself why so many people aren’t concerned about ‘the animal problem’ and why they aren’t impatient to become vegan. I’d like to be putting my fellow humans under the microscope, to find out why they don’t protest at the routine killing of creatures, and why they are, in fact, enthusiastic supporters of it, or rather the end products of the killing. I realise that many people have never given it much thought, I realise many people don’t know what’s really going on, but I also realise that many people do know and won’t budge. Towards these people it’s easy to be judgemental, so they provide the best test for vegans who are trying to do some harmlessness-thinking.

Beneficial structure

2011-09-19T01:07:00.000-07:00

265:

If killing animals to eat them is condoned by the majority, then as vegans we need to be upfront about our boycott - that we don’t condone violence and specifically violently-extracted foods and commodities. In that way it makes us different to almost all other people. Our decisions are coloured differently in so many ways, not just by the food and clothing we use but in the very way we see our world – we don’t relish the role of human-the-dominator but that of being of equal importance with other species.
Anyone who is part of a particular discipline, whether it’s in sport, religion, academic study or personal relationships, abides by their own self-imposed rules. We devise and adopt them not just to BE different or to make life more difficult for ourselves but because they provide a structure which could prove of benefit to others. So a ‘discipline’ is a show of strength, a proof that something can be done if it’s seen to be necessary.
Take the Quakers. They avoid war and don’t let themselves be conscripted. They believe disagreements can best be handled by dialogue rather than confrontation. For many years in the eighteenth century, in Pennsylvania, they maintained friendly relations with the indigenous Americans and governed a whole state on the basis of non-violence. Their government eventually collapsed, because the use of violence and force was more popular for solving problems … but maybe the Quakers were doomed by their own inconsistency. It wasn’t that they’d gone too far but that they hadn’t gone far enough. They didn’t embrace the idea of being non-violent towards animals, since they still killed and ate them. But they still represent today a precept of acting non-violently and perhaps also non-judgementally, and we can all take something from that and appreciate its value. I’d like to see them become vegan because of the valuable groundwork they’ve laid towards the idea of regarding all humans as being on an equal footing.
Vegans and Quakers each offer an important principle to the world. One discipline from one group could perhaps benefit the other group … in a sort of principle-exchange.

Strategy

2011-09-18T00:51:00.001-07:00

264:

Does Animal Rights need a communication upgrade? As a vegan I have my own weakness, judgementalism, and I think it applies to other advocates in the movement. This is a problem I admit I have and I think it needs to be addressed rigorously if only to keep it in check. I’d liken it to a weakness amongst the animal-eating masses, in their habit of condoning the killing and eating of animals, which also needs to be kept in check. It’s a weakness, and that’s all it is. My judgement habit is similarly a weakness, and I see it for that, but ONLY that.
I’d recommend to myself that I show no rancour, no disrespect and no value judgements. I won’t win anyone’s long term commitment by inducing guilt or fear in them. Only by showing I respect them and am interested in their welfare can I ever hope to keep them on side. Apart from my wanting to be warm with people, it’s to our strategic-advantage to do things this way round (i.e. without the finger-wagging).
Let’s say we are talking together, you and I. If you look at my face, you’ll pick up how I’m feeling – either I’m relating to you non-judgementally (I’ll be giving off signals that I like you or I accept you) or I’m being judgemental (I’ll be signalling disapproval and worse). I may not want to BE judgemental but that’s overridden by my insecure ego, or me wanting to show off my high standards. I may be prepared to risk our whole relationship, just for the sake of letting you know how ‘clean’ I am and how ‘dirty’ I think you are. I’ll gamble on this: that you’ll find my honesty trumps any attempt to deceive you about how I really feel.
If I’m being judgemental it’s all about values, mine and yours. It’s about me needing to establish my credentials, showing I have something to say and establishing my right to say it. If I express a moral judgement (aimed at you) it’s quite likely you’ll take offence.
Judgement: what is it? The hot flame touched by the child is judged hot – it’s evidence-based and to the older child self evident. Value-judging is different. When I assess your values, my subjective statement might be saying that my values are better than yours. Maybe I don’t exactly think that but since we’re all very sensitive about such things it’s likely it will come across that way.
My judging of you may not necessarily be fair or carefully researched, but I may feel compelled to show it, in order to make my position clear. In a clumsy way I’m hoping that the shock of showing the strength of my judgement (especially if I appear to be hiding it) will ‘wake you up’.
In the school playground the same thing happens. You insult me and I punch you in the face before I’ve thought it through. It’s a powerful moment. My judgement is quick, clear and almost primeval. I dislike what you did and I’m showing it before I’ve given myself time to make a more considered response ... which I quickly calculate will therefore be a less effective one.
When I’m judging you it might be almost that automatic. Each day we make decisions without taking the trouble to consider them more carefully. Perhaps that’s because we don’t have enough time or patience. I sometimes think and act almost simultaneously, instinctively liking or disliking, to suit the occasion. When it comes to straight-talking it might not be such a bad thing ... if my friends come to know me as a straight-speaker. But if I haven’t thought about it carefully enough, I may still be trying to use the shock-and-attack approach ... even not caring about others’ feelings … setting off a whole train of insensitivity, which adds up to one gigantic, strategic mistake.
So where does that leave me? Perhaps, strategically, needing to be very careful about straying into the mine field of making value judgements.

Being non-judgemental

2011-09-17T00:14:00.000-07:00

263:

When I’m talking Animal Rights it’s impossible NOT to show my inner feelings. Try as I might, if judgement’s in my mind it’s going to be in my voice. My words may be carefully chosen, but if I harbour any negative personal feeling it’ll show up in my tone of voice and anyone listening will be thinking “Avoid, avoid”. So, for vegans talking Animal Rights, it’s almost impossible for us to win people’s hearts if we don’t seem to be on their side, to some extent.
If I wear the badge of the ‘animal liberationist’, owing to my general reputation I’m easily recognisable. How do I win people over in order to get them to stay with me long enough to listen to what I have to say? I would suggest by proving to them, first and foremost, that I’m not judgemental, and if necessary make a direct point of saying so (whether they’re likely to believe it or not).
To do that I first have to BE non-judgemental, truly so ... and be convinced of the futility of making moral judgements, whether it’s about the abuse of animals or about anything else I consider to be wrong. Instead I need to see it in much the same way as a doctor sees a disease, without rancour or disrespect but simply as a fault in the system, which needs fixing up. A good doctor won’t disparage the illness but simply look for a remedy to counter the destructive element, and therefore so should I.
They say there’s cancer in everyone’s body and that we’d be wise to stay healthy and keep our immune systems robust to lessen the chances for cancer to take hold. In much the same way we need to keep a healthy resolve ‘to avoid making judgements’ so as not to fall into all the classic trap of being too right for the taste of ordinary people .

The animals are for cooking?

2011-09-16T01:43:00.000-07:00

262:

There’s little comfort for vegans when we read about animals in media stories and see that they are always the victims of human lifestyle. All we hear about is how conventional foods are being made more attractive, with cuisine making full use of animal foods. Cooking programmes are only ever about new taste experiences. TV cooks are oblivious of the animals whose body parts they use Their exotic dishes are made to look like the extravagance-we-all-deserve. “Don’t be so hard on yourself “, they imply. “Go on, spoil yourself”. There’s never a thought to the harm their new and exciting dishes, heavy with rich ingredients, do to human health … let alone the harm to the animals whose body parts they so liberally use. T.V. cooks may be good at entertaining us, even good for showing us different ways to use food, but they’re agents of indulgence. They’re agents of the Animal Industries too, who do very well out of these TV celebrities.
Our society is careful never to endanger this industry which enjoys all the backing it could ever want - it is entirely legal, acceptable and what it produces is said to be harmless to health. Because this vast animal-based food industry is such a vital part of our economy there’s barely a mention of animals, only the products taken from the animals. We are so used to the names given to the products, pork, veal, lamb, beef, that we’re hardly aware it has any association with a real live creature. The animal falls into the background, unseen, unmentioned and forgotten, and this is why most vegans are so intent on exposing this sly little piece of perfidy. However, there’s not much we can do to force a change of public attitude to these used-animals. We have nothing coercive to fight with.
But that’s to our advantage, as a movement. We have no physical power to stop this whole ghastly business – all we can do is expose it and make suggestions - we can teach but we can’t touch.
We are such a tiny minority against such a vast majority attitude, so confrontation is never going to get us anywhere. The odds are certainly against us ... but it forces us to take up only non-violent forms of persuasion. It might be frustrating for us but it’s good training in being non judgemental, pushing us to try out new attitudes towards those who disagree with us. It gives us an edge that wouldn’t occur to most people, and a strength which gives us some chance of impressing people.

Daggy judgements

2011-09-15T03:55:00.001-07:00

261a:

My attitude to you as a meat eater: when I seem to show antipathy towards you, it’s guaranteed things will go badly wrong between us. As soon as you feel I’m judging your values, you go antithetical. You’ll probably neither like me nor what I’m saying, you probably won’t trust me and you’ll want to catch me out.
When I’m starting out (talking Animal Rights) I should fix up this trust thing before I open my mouth. I need to assess where you stand, and see if this is a volatile subject for you. I need to listen ... and you need to know if I’m an all round listener, a proper listener not just someone pretending to be interested, waiting for my turn to counter attack. It’s at this point where you and I may not know if we will jump down one another’s throats.
Whatever I think about your point of view I’ll try to hide it. But something is sure to give me away and that ends my chances of dialogue with you. I give myself away because I want to make you wrong and to make me right, probably it’s my need for revenge, my need to make you feel guilty. I’ll say to myself “There’s nothing else I can do to stop you doing what you do, but to impose my judgement on you”. But to you that wouldn’t make sense, since what you do is quite legal, “Everyone’s ‘exploiting animals’ in one way or another, so why pick on me?” So these two opposite judgements exist over this subject of ‘the use of animals’.
Perhaps the most extreme judgements are the most justified - here in Australia, a hot and dry land, bushfires are a constant threat especially because many of them are lit deliberately ... and so the arsonists are reviled. They act illegally and immorally ... everyone in the community can ‘come together on this one’, to condemn them. It’s a justified judgement, and because it’s so easily justified it brings out the worst judgements – “the arsonist should be locked up ... and throw away the key”. It shows our need to feel right or even righteous ... and I’d liken that to myself or to other vegans in search of any powerful argument to back up our judgements ... we judge but in doing so lose our compassion. When we hear about the latest coronary heart-disease statistics being associated with consuming large amounts of saturated fats (mainly from meat), we may be happy to hear this … because of the usefulness of these statistics, for backing up our arguments, concerning the need to avoid meat? We fall into the most obvious trap ... if we don’t express concern for those with heart disease we seem callous. Our very motives seem dodgy. We seem untrustworthy. Our judgement looks uglier than the thing we are judging.

Blunt instruments

2011-09-14T03:53:00.001-07:00

260:

The idea of Animal Liberation rescuing and liberating animals is right, and what we’re trying to communicate, about the horrors of the animals’ lives in captivity, is right. And it may seem right to condemn those people who still continue supporting the animal industries ... but does it work? Just about everyone in the community is involved as customers of these industries, and for that reason alone not many of them will feel constrained to take ‘liberation’ too seriously.
We do have an added problem, in that we as a movement aren’t very consistent and I think in the future we will have to be. As I’ve already mentioned, many liberationists are carnivorous-animal owners so they’re visiting the meat counter just as do meat-eaters themselves. But that aside, what we condemn in others for disregarding farm animals we do because, to some extent, it makes us feel good ... for being ‘right’. And, whether we are consistent or not, condemnation and value judgement was never going to work anyway. The meat eating community will not to be bullied into giving up their meat and they might even enjoy the outrage of vegans.
Some vegans are like bullies, and even amongst each another there’s a tendency towards being vegan-police-types, criticising one another’s inconsistencies. Perhaps, at first sight, that’s how I might come across, for seeming to condemn inconsistencies amongst fellow vegans (who buy meat for their cats and dogs). But it’s not the detail of our various judgements but judgement in general which is so unproductive. None of us likes to be judged and most of us respond badly to it. So, overall, the blunt instrument of judgement, real or perceived, works against our best aims. If we make use of judgement we can’t, in my opinion, be effective advocates for animals.
I’ve found over the years that for all my judging and condemning it’s never worked. My point is that any amount of outrage, especially from a small group of people, is ineffective. It’s just too easy for (the big group of) people to ignore it and remain blissfully unscathed by their minority judges.
If we condemn the unethical use of animals, without the support of the law or the majority of ordinary people, our protests and judgements will appear to be simply the ravings of weirdos ... which are therefore ignorable. The best way to be effective is surely to encourage people to think and discuss, without insisting they agree with our views ... and never to become defensive about our views. Yes, we need to state our case clearly but then we need to stand back and see what happens, and try to understand why people are responding the way they do. Our movement needs more dispassionate research into attitude, and then we might be in a better position to realise what we’re up against and what will work in changing Society’s attitude.

Not letting our side down

2011-09-12T04:17:00.001-07:00

258:

All of us are trained from childhood to make judgements of other people - if someone seems bad or stupid or weak our judging of them makes us feel better about ourselves. We like to feel superior. It’s a god-on-my-side sort of feeling. But by being vegan we are also trying to win recognition of an important principle, which should be bigger than the satisfaction of feeling better-than.
It’s the principle that counts. It should never be about me and my progress towards enlightenment but about the abolition of animal enslavement and the realisation of its importance. Therefore I shouldn’t be too quick to judge others, for fear of doing damage to the Animal Rights movement itself. I, as a vegan, represent other vegans and their reputation. By judging those who aren’t thinking like me, it’s guaranteed to turn them away from a particular way of thinking that they might have come round to, in time.
Memory plays tricks on us when we think we’ve always been on the right track. I wasn’t always vegan. I had another viewpoint once. Along the way I changed. It hit me that it was a good idea. Is it possible that I might NOT have become vegan if I’d met up with a judgemental vegan and found them too unattractive to identify with?
Feeling safe as a vegan should cancel out any need to be judgemental. The violence in our society stems from some people being thought of as inferior, and reacting accordingly. If I encourage that, I add to the problem of making others feel inferior, and why would I want to do that? Maybe somewhere in my past I was taught that a little violence kept others in their place or that it would force them to rise to a higher level, assuming of course that they needed to be improved.
Being in the right can, ironically, put us in the wrong when judgement, aggression and a disregard for the non-violent principle contradicts all the good that we believe in.

The judgement trap

2011-09-11T00:51:00.000-07:00

257:

Most people know approximately how vegans see their world but they don’t know if they’ll try to convert others. They don’t know what other values a vegan has that makes be civilised people.
If I think being vegan is pretty much how everyone else should be and that I’m right, morally and health-wise, I might not necessarily see what else I must be if I’m going into the persuasion business. If I’m ‘in the right’ then I have to be extra vigilant about seeing my own faults and watching for traps, especially the judgement trap. Otherwise I can deservedly be accused of being righteous, as if I’m looking down on people ... as if I’m better than others. It’s a classic trap, me feeling entitled to judge others who disagree with me, and perhaps if I can’t get people to agree with me I use value judgement to force them my way - I’m right and therefore entitled to use whatever means are available to get you ‘right’ too.
If I attempt to judge someone’s values it’s a subtle form of violence. Even though on the one hand I’m bravely defending animals from being exploited I can still also be violating people’s space and their freedom of choice. It’s dangerous because free-will and choice are regarded by almost everyone as sacrosanct. Over the ages free-will has been fought for and won. We (here in the West) believe ourselves to be part of the dominant group, the ‘free-willed’ society. We don’t want to lose that.
Along comes a vegan who seems to want to take that away. “You are wrong, I am right, this is what you must do”.
From an outsider’s point of view there’s something threatening in holier-than-thou people. One usually wants to bring them ‘down to size’. Anyone who puts themselves forward and thinks themselves better, cleverer, wealthier, better looking or more righteous automatically appears unattractive. No one likes the self satisfied ... which is why I mustn’t come across that way.
Once you get vegans who aren’t judgemental everything changes. A vegan who doesn’t appear to be pushy or too overly persuasive is assessed on such qualities as being unlikely to be judgemental. Sure, I might run the risk of seeming to be too passive and therefore too easy to be ignored, but the advantage of that is I can’t be aggressively attacked and so I never find myself going onto the defensive. And then, perhaps, I can afford a little old fashioned humility ... and in that approach I can find my self confidence, leastways, to the extent that I never have to become strident.
The theory might go something like this: sit back and enjoy advocating Animal Rights. Who can complain? I give no one an excuse to get heavy with me.
It’s like watching a movie, the movie is speaking its message but passively. It doesn’t leap out and judge its audience. Similarly, books don’t judge us. We learn from them, that’s all. We can chuck them out of the window if needs be. The book won’t be offended. Likewise, as a vegan I might ask questions but no one needs to answer them nor should they feel compelled to by being judged badly if they don’t.
So, I put up my arguments. They go into circulation. Maybe what I say causes a disturbance, and perhaps I attract attention. But in my own mind I’m trying all the time to NOT force the issue.

Exploding myths

2011-09-10T00:05:00.001-07:00

256:

Vegans will always have their work cut out, persuading people to change radically. But for us it’s not just about persuading reluctant people, it’s also about being useful to them. (I hope that doesn’t sound too patronising!)
I like to think I take people as they are, even if they don’t want to listen to what I have to say. These last three blogs might have made me seem angry (one person mentioned “a crabby critique of some flawed fellow animal lovers ...”) and certainly there is anger and frustration ... even perhaps a few aggressive thoughts towards some adversaries, but not many. I’m more interested in breaking down some over-comfortable myths, like it being okay to make use of animals just as long as we love them. All I’d like to do is help others see things as they could be (or perhaps should be) … and go on from there. All I want to do is keep it simple and clear.
Like any nag I like to stress the same things till the penny drops - that some of our favourite ‘home truths’ may not be as true as we’d like them to be. For example, many people still believe meat (and therefore animal farming) is essential for human survival, or that testing drugs on animals is the only way to have safe pharmaceuticals or that having animals in the house prevents our becoming lonely. A respondent to these latest blogs, concerning companion animals, mentioned the “inter-relationship of man to animal is supposed to be special and to light up the amygdala as nothing else can”. But this still puts the welfare of a human’s amygdala above the comfort of the animal, in order to justify our having an animal present in the human life. People are so locked into these sorts of beliefs that I am moved to explode the myth in order to show a different view of human safety and survival. Do we need meat, do we need drugs, do we need pets? If we say ‎’yes’ to any of these we may be right up to a point but each ‎‘yes’ means animals will suffer on our account.
In a nutshell, it’s the reliability of instinct that is our main safety, since it tells us what instinctively we should be doing (right and wrong, within the context of non-violence). But I’m conscious that whatever I do get across should emphasise the value of self-discovery, because everyone is hypersensitive to being criticised or being judged. Whereas if someone can arrive at a conclusion of their own, they can move on at their own pace and not be held back by their resentment of being preached at.

The principle of no-animal-use

2011-09-09T02:53:00.000-07:00

255b

Many years ago if a child came from a poor family that child would be sent to work to help the family eat. Protest groups were set up to protect working children, but they didn’t necessarily argue that no kids should be put to work, because that would mean families would starve. This exact same problem still exists in many parts of the world today, where kids are working as little more than slaves. That’s how it is for domesticated animals. Animals will continue to be slaves until people stand up to their right not to be. It’s reasonable to expect those who say they are ‘fighting for the animals’ to be leading the way, setting the example and respecting them enough to fight for their true liberation and not just for better conditions.
What does ‘no-animal-use’ mean? To most people it means doing without hundreds of commercial products, making ethical choices mainly about the food they eat. The avoidance list is a long one and includes everything from horse racing and zoos to meat and cheese and tins of cat food. That’s one huge shift away from today’s norms, but imagine the suffering we cause with even one decision to exclude anything from that list.
If any group promotes a comprehensive avoidance policy they’d reckon on alienating just about everybody and end up without support from their members or the community in general. So they favour being pragmatic. They target instead the worst abuses and leave ‘the preposterous idea’ of no-use-of-animals well alone. They want to be seen to be doing something worthwhile whilst not being radical abolitionists. How easily we lose sight of ideals when we engage in ‘sensible compromise’.
Our faith in our own abilities to transform Society is low, whilst our need for recognition from one another is high. Whether we are liberationists or not, we don’t really show very much interest in the concept of true animal rights. If indeed animals did have rights, the first ‘right’ would prevent their being used by humans ... in any way whatsoever. Can you imagine humans legislating that we leave animals alone? How many of us could give up using paper to save the forests from being pulped ... and that’s just paper? When it comes to food and clothing it’s a mighty strong principle one would be espousing, one that would deny us so many conveniences.
It really boils down to lifestyle (what we’ve got used to) - it’s so dear to our hearts that it’s always more important than principle. Moving towards liberating animals would be inconvenient, but freeing children from labouring or slaves from their masters is no different from liberating animals from humans. But we have a horror of the former but not of the latter.
Having said that, I acknowledge the danger of our being overrun by animals - we’ve bred vast herds and flocks of creatures, and for our own protection we would have to curtail their breeding until numbers substantially diminished. Then there’s a question of their safety. These mutated creatures would have to be protected from exposure to Nature and predation, against which they’d have no means of protecting themselves - they couldn’t survive in the wild.
But bearing that in mind, Animal Rights is a concept which animal advocates need to vigorously promote. It’s the principle of the thing. If we trim it to make it more acceptable there won’t be nearly enough momentum to achieve any sort of rights for animals ... and the whole horror will only continue or get worse.

All animals are individual and irreplaceable

2011-09-08T01:41:00.001-07:00

255a

There are many issues competing for public attention today - global warming, the environment, world hunger, animal welfare, human ethics - and each is significant and none should be sidelined, but the key issue which impacts on all the others is the routine and unthinking way we make use of animals. If that were fundamentally tackled our most serious problems wouldn’t be so intractable - human health would be transformed, the environment far less damaged and greenhouse gas emissions greatly reduced.
I think animal advocates should have, as their first priority, the goal of changing people’s attitude-to-animal-use. As it stands at present, because we love animals and seem to need to have them close by, many activists become owners of animals ... and so aren’t ready to promote abolition of use ... and when people look to the activist for a lead in this and find none it lets them off the hook, so it’s business as usual. Because activists fiddle at the edges of the animal-use problem, surprise, surprise, no significant change of attitude in the community takes place.
There’s nowhere near enough momentum being created by the Animal Rights / Animal Liberation movement - we fail the animals because we won’t make a loud enough noise about animal-use. Protests are organised, literature printed, web sites created, a few animals are liberated from their hell-hole imprisonment, and it all looks good on the surface. And in fairness, gradually the worst conditions are exposed and some welfare improvements are achieved. But never enough to swing the mass of people around to our way of thinking.
We don’t mean to fail the animals, we try sincerely, we pull out all the stops we can, but there’s so much to do and so few people doing it ... so the considerable energy and talent of activists is being used up with nothing left over for shifting public attitude to animal use.
I think activists face a dilemma. When I joined Animal Liberation in the early eighties we tried to cover many issues, today liberation groups concentrate their efforts on a few main issues only - they don’t want to spread themselves too thinly. They’re heartbroken (as I am) at the conditions on factory farms and they think the public will be deeply moved if they can show them what’s happening. But perhaps the compassion in people and their willingness to think things out for themselves is overestimated. People are much more brain-washed than one likes to think.
The activist wants reform and I admire their radical action and outspokenness, and their daring rescue raids on factory farms in the dead of night ... but I don’t think it’s radical where it counts.
We should be heard more often speaking about animals, about their sovereignty, about never regarding them as our playthings or a source of food and clothing, about each animal being important, individual and irreplaceable. If we are to be seen to be protecting animals’ rights, those rights should apply to all animals, companion animals included.

Companion animals and animal groups

2011-09-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

255:

It’s terrible for me, writing about the issue of ‘not using animals for human convenience’, because it seems I’m attacking almost everyone, not just the meat eaters and the milk-drinking vegetarians but those who themselves eat only a plant-based diet but who buy meat for their companion animals. Just about everybody is an animal-user making it difficult to support the ‘no-use’ principle, if only because they’ll want to justify their own position.
Look at the people who keep animals in their homes. Some animals may have been rescued, but however well loved they are they have no freedom and no natural life. They are the property of a human, owned as ‘pets’, and treated like playthings. They’re often socially isolated, neutered, micro chipped, medicated and fed at the expense of farmed animals. So whether we eat animals ourselves or feed ‘animal’ to dogs and cats, most of us are making use of animals ... which means we aren’t free to promote a ‘non-use’ principle. Some (very few) don’t feed their animals meat and use specially prepared plant-based supplements to provide essential nutrients, but most companion animals are carnivores and to deny them meat ...
By writing this I’ve probably offended you, especially if you have animals at home, and as a member of an animal group maybe you’re doing some really great work to help other animals, and in some ways the equation can be morally balanced. But my whinge goes a bit deeper.
Most animal rights groups are doing brave work on behalf of those animals who are the worst abused - say, factory farmed hens and pigs - but in my opinion they aren’t strongly enough condemning the routine use of animals, and that makes it easier for people to continue their animal-habits. I have to admit that I’m no longer a paid up member of any animal groups, so I’m not assisting their good work and some would say I’m not in any position to voice my opinion. In my heart though I’m a fervent supporter of their work to stop battery farming, to ban live exports, to illegalise mulesing of sheep ... but there are so many other horrors which fall below the radar, and any amount of exposing-of-the-worst-cruelty seems to be having little effect on the millions of customers of the Animal Industries. In my opinion most animal groups don’t seem to be speaking strongly enough against routine animal use. Is that because they fear alienating too many people, even their own supporters?
Most animal rights groups do what they do very well. Activists work hard, voluntarily, attempting to stop the worst abuses, but the groups seem to neglect the bigger picture - the need to persuade the public not to use animals. Even vegan groups concentrate on health and food, and apart from the most radical groups, aren’t addressing the fundamental issue of an animal’s right to live its own life, whether a pig or horse or cat. It’s great, the good work some groups do, rescuing animals, exposing cruelty, promoting vegan food, if only it wasn’t just about that. I’d like to see them doing what they already do for fifty percent of the time and the other fifty percent spent on promoting the idea that animals are not there for human convenience. I think they should come out really strongly on that even though it will, at first, be seen by people as too extreme. One of the main jobs of any animal rights group is surely to set trends for the future. To nudge public attitude.

Stepping out

2011-09-05T01:18:00.000-07:00

254:

I’m always reminded of Alice’s (in Wonderland) surprise when she steps into another world inhabited by strange beings and they don’t respond to her as she expects - it reminds me of the general human obstinacy to obvious answers. It reminds me of people suffering unnecessarily just to preserve the rightness of what they do.
In our world all the obvious answers seem to be staring us in the face but most people refuse to see them because they’re afraid of change. They don’t want to risk something they don’t fully understand, which even seems too ridiculously simple to work. I don’t mean economic problems which governments have to solve or huge global problems that can only be solved when everyone acts together. And I don’t mean standing up to danger and martyring ourselves for a principle. I mean something we can do at home which will transform our own lives and eventually set a global trend.
Vegans, acting at first out of raw outrage, take something from an unfamiliar dimension and install it as a routine in their own lives. The boycott a vegan installs is ridiculed and often causes friction with family and friends, but when the instinct is strong (and, for most vegans, it’s a gut feeling we have), when something is fundamentally wrong, there’s an overwhelming urge to act.
In the great lucky-dip of life, the luckiest one is becoming convinced of the truth of non-violence. By applying that principle (avoiding gratuitous violence) it’s likely we’ll start to get lucky, according to the law of just returns - that what goes around comes around, good karma, etc. I’m superstitious about violence and dishonesty, so I believe that if you give it out you get it back, and if you don’t do it, it can’t touch you. It appeals to my simple view of life, that I can tailor my life so the unnecessary ‘horribles’ aren’t invited in.
To non-vegans, who haven’t looked at things this way, it mightn’t seem significant enough, or not likely to be effective enough. So they blunder on and get rough treatment back - you can invest in a peace-deal or allow chaos to take a hold.
Some say “life is too short to worry about such details”. Why be bothered with the trivial details vegans worry about ... which is why vegans themselves need to explain why vegan principle is so central to the future sustainability of the planet. And it’s why I think that ‘holding firmly to the truth’ (or Ghandi’s idea of the “force which is born of truth and love or non-violence”) is so important. It has certainly transformed many people’s lives for the better, mine included. But the obstinacy ‘out there’, amongst most people who do what they’ve always done, for them nothing like this has happened to them - nothing has been transformed and so no one principle is capable of making a transformative change ... so they stick with what they know and help to perpetuate the very violence which is killing the human spirit.
Vegan arguments emphasise the importance of not being cruel to weak beings or destructive of beautiful things or wasteful of earthly bounties. If vegans are going to influence others we can’t just glow and be beheld, we have to argue our case hard and show by our own behaviour and an anti-bullying, anti-exploitative approach, that we have the tools to convince with.

Afraid of the radical

2011-09-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

253a:

Dr Neal Barnard, President of the US group, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, is advising on how to reverse diabetes. He’s written a book of that title. This is one ambitious plan. It’s seen as radical. But all he’s suggesting is that you can reverse this terrible health condition by way of food.
Now that proposition is almost laughable to most people and especially to diabetics. Perhaps food might alleviate the symptoms but to reverse the whole condition?
He suggests reversing diabetes is as simple as a three week experiment in using vegan food. But because this is such a serious condition, one needs to find vegan foods that are also low in oil and low-down on the glycemic index (see: www.pcrm.org/newsletter/jan07/diabetes). The fact is that he’s had great results, which speak for themselves.
In much the same way, vegans in general have had great results (mainly amongst less ill people) advocating a change to plant-based foods. The vegan diet which vegans ‘practise’ isn’t necessarily so very radical because we aren’t necessarily addressing a remedy for reversing a major health condition, we’re simply suggesting a diet for people who want to stay in reasonable health and who don’t want to exacerbate any ill-health condition they may have.
A radical change in diet, for whatever reason, involves a great leap of faith. This is where, in the considering-stage people usually envision the ‘change’ to be quite radical. Later, once into it, it doesn’t seem radical at all.

Lambs to the slaughter

2011-09-02T01:01:00.001-07:00

252:

A popular victim of the ubiquitous Australian BBQ is the sheep (usually it’s a lamb, executed young for its tender flesh). Nobody thinks twice about this back-to-Nature fire ritual, of roasting a dead lamb on an open flame. Everybody gets excited by the smell of it cooking, and eating it, in spite of the fact that they wouldn’t be capable of taking a knife to that baby lamb’s throat to end its life. That idea would be disgusting.
The example of a lamb being executed, then barbequed, for the pleasure of eating it might not sit well in people’s conscience - it pits conscience against pleasure, denial against temptation. And yet ‘out of sight, out of mind’, the eating and indulging have merged into habit. The crime of the act is forgotten and the experience enjoyed.
The lamb is the symbol of innocence, it’s cute, cuddly and playful. The human symbolises the very opposite. Humans are not only careless and vicious but cowardly too since they employ someone else to take this young animal and slit its throat, so that it can be butchered and made ready for barbequing. Could there be an uglier outcome for this sweet creature’s life than being taken from its mother to the slaughterer, to the butcher and then to the roasting spit?
Humans aren’t used to being denied what they want - if it’s available the human will be tempted, and in this case, giving into temptation showing an incredible lack of self-discipline. There can surely be no excuse for someone who knows what this animal has gone through (on its journey from its home to its extermination) because they’ve connived at a terrible act of cruelty.
But look at it now from the consumer’s point of view - when it comes to self gratification, this favourite meat isn’t easy to give up. It’s like smoking or drinking or any other uncontrolled habit, indulging it is all we’ve ever known. There’s nothing self improving about eating lambs, quite the opposite.
Probably everyone looks for some sort of self-improvement in life ... but not by applying ethics to food. Why waste time on being disciplined in not-eating-animals if it doesn’t make us richer or better thought of? If social success is our main aim, then saving lambs from the slaughter isn’t relevant.
However, to feel successful I must at least have attitudes that are convincing to myself. I might start with personal self-development on ‘my road to enlightenment’ or my ‘quest for happiness’, but surely there’s a further dimension to it – it isn’t just about my journey through life but my place in the lives of others. And that includes my place in the world I live in, otherwise it all becomes just a little too self indulgent.
Perhaps that’s what veganism tries to point out. To be fully rounded, to see beyond self-improvement, to see beyond the enlightened ‘do-gooder’ I need to have a solid dimension of compassion in me. If I can empathise with another person’s situation I can then go beyond self discipline and start ‘thinking about others before thinking about myself’.
Although this might sounds idealistic, most of us do just that, and sometimes often. That’s far from self indulging and giving in to temptation, and of course to practise this vegans are suggesting our empathy ought to include animals, if only because there is so great a need today for us to empathise with them. Which brings us to the terrified lamb at the point where its throat is about to be cut ... which brings us back to vegan principles.
When I decide to be vegan I have to see it not as a restriction but as a liberation, not an abstention but a taking up of something better ... being better for more than just my interests. Food-wise it means healthier food, ethics-wise it means connecting with my compassionate self.
Surely, if I want to improve myself it comes down to simply doing the right thing, and knowing that in doing it I’ll generate enough energy to keep it up. The great advantage of being vegan is that, with good nutrition and clear conscience, I know I can start to make resolutions which will be kept, and I’ll feel all the better for that.

When eyes glaze over

2011-09-01T01:36:00.001-07:00

251:

When I start talking about animals I’m familiar with ‘that look’, when their eyes glaze over, as if to say, “we don’t have to listen to this crap”. The situation where I’m socialising, eating, perhaps offered some food, and the time has come for me to say what I have to say - is this the best time to bring up the subject? There’s no right or wrong answer to this, which is why the approach is so very tricky.
As I edge around to it, often not too subtly, I might say something like, “…But should we be eating animals?” Here I am, about to launch into my spiel and it’s strange how the door isn’t quite shut in my face, because people are often wanting to ‘bring it on’, they’re fascinated to hear what my next line of crap will be, to see if they can match it. Also, they’re trawling for material; they’re interested that what I say might be good for recycling, as a story with mates over a round of drinks: “this ‘vaygn’ came to dinner the other night and do you know what he said? ...”. It’s a story that can be exaggerated for effect (no one being actually interested to hear the serious reason why this screwball is speaking up about eating animal foods).
So if I don’t want to be ignored or be the butt of jokes perhaps I have to take the initiative, get the joke warmed up by being cheeky, light hearted and disparaging of the food ... but never the people themselves. My most effective reaction, when offered something ‘animal’, is a downturned mouth and “I don’t think so”, as if they’ve made a bit of a social blunder, or to mention, “it’s dead animal isn’t it?” ... but with just enough tone in the voice to keep it humorous. I’m not out to start a quarrel just being a little provocative and pre-emptive.
Each situation is different, each is judged as to how far I reckon I can go and still get away with it. I like to be pro-active, never offended ... and always a bit edgy. I like to test the waters to see if I can get a bit of spirited repartee going with people, leaving them with enough room so they can bite back. That’s healthy. And then I’ll have no trouble using their comments as a springboard for one of my favourite nuggets of information.
If I’m given the bum’s rush I know at least I’ve tried to test the waters and done it as well as possible and, for chrissakes, with some HUMOUR.
In reality though, seriously, I have to come to terms with the emotional impact of being rejected. For me, of course, rejection is infuriating. Sometimes all I can see in front of me is a blank look, a resistance, even a maddening smirk. And when there’s no chance to make humour and it’s all deadly serious I get prepared for what happens next. Eyes don’t glaze over they stare blindly. I know I’m having zero impact on people. I can see they’re simply tuning out. And they have every right to slam the door in my face if I’m trying to invade their privacy. If I become exasperated and try to barge past their defences, dig right into their guilts and fears, surely I’ll fail to bring them around. And perhaps lose them entirely.
That’s the trouble with the health-talk approach, the fear-of-personal-illness approach (which often alienates people from taking us seriously and from respecting vegan principle or the principles behind animal liberation) because we’re selling our philosophy short. Here I am, trying to change people’s attitudes by making them feel guilty or afraid, and of course I succeed only in making them run away. I don’t believe this is a tactic that can work unless we’re only trying to flog the health angle.
Today many young people still have the health of youth and aren’t yet so consumed with guilt about animals. They identify with their peers, and especially those with attractive personalities. Wowsers, including vegans, may not be seen to be cool, especially so if the animal activist is in a bad temper ... which is why I don’t want to be seen as frustrated, assertive or preaching gloom. I don’t want to give anyone a chance to avoid me. Then, if I can get up close, drop in a well placed comment, whether there’s flak or no flak, there’s a chance I can say what I want to say and hopefully it sinks in.
However, amongst any group of people, anywhere, any age, meat eating is pretty much the norm. Almost every person who uses animal food is able to switch off their sense of compassion when dinner’s on the table. Animal Rights is tabooed because it deals with ethics and values and self-disciplines … and free-willed people don’t take to discussing this and don’t like being told what to eat. So, although when food’s about it may seem like a good opportunity to make comments it’s also the time when our comments will be most resented.

Testing the waters

2011-08-31T01:43:00.001-07:00

250

When vegans say “change to plant-based food” it’s about the most troubling suggestion anyone could hear because, on the one hand it sounds right but on the other it sounds painful. Veganism touches the most sensitive nerve in our body concerning personal survival and peace of mind. We’d rather live the life we know than risk a journey into the unknown.
However much vegans promise good times ahead, however fit and energetic and calm-minded we may seem, basic survival-instinct is the stronger persuader. It overrides logic, compassion, imagination, the lot. At a crucial point, between considering it and actually doing it, comes a dread of leaving behind a big part of our present life. People do hear what we say to them but they don’t always process it, fearing how it might affect them. When they purposely forget what they hear, it’s like tuning out of the voice on the radio or closing a book we don’t like - we avoid unpleasant information. And it’s not that difficult to tune out of ‘vegan talk’ because most other people are doing just that, knowing they don’t HAVE to listen to us.
When I’m talking to someone about all this, because a lot of the information I’m passing on is to do with animal suffering the whole experience of listening to me is unpleasant. I reckon it’s my job to gauge how much unpleasant stuff I let out and how much uplifting stuff I use to sugar the pill. Veganism isn’t only all about giving things up, it’s a lot to do with feeling better about ourselves, feeling more energetic and conscientious and being bale to feel more mentally alert and agile. Dropping habits we’ve been feeling bad about, perhaps for a long time, is compensated by the new habits which take their place and their many advantages. But you won’t be convinced about this unless you’ve tried it out and found out for yourself. At the edge of the water my toe tests the temperature. My friend, already in, shouts to come in. “It’s really warm”.
Oh yes?

People resisting

2011-08-26T03:29:00.000-07:00

249:

I think there’s support for veganism, in theory but not in practice. Ideally our arguments are attractive but for most omnivores they hate the idea of giving up so many things.
The logic goes something like this: we have, within vegan principles, the inspiration of non-violence, just by the sort of food we eat. At every meal I act ethically and think for myself, whereas other people obviously don’t think that’s important - they eat what they like and do and think much the same as everyone else, in regard to food. For them it isn’t important enough to break with convention.
So I have to keep returning to the drawing board to ask myself what it is I’m really facing. It isn’t just a stubborn mob of meat-heads but a difficulty most people see in front of them if they consider it at all, of taking on such a big personal repair plan. They don’t believe that changing the habits of a lifetime is possible. They do know that much of the food they eat isn’t ethically or nutritionally sound, and at the rate of about a thousand meals a year for every year they’ve lived, it spells big time damage to both body and conscience. But who wants to admit they’ve been wrong for that long?
To restore the balance, to make things right, I wouldn’t be suggesting small token changes to the shopping list since it won’t address the problem. It’s a matter of forgoing one’s favourite foods (as well as other commodities) for the sake of a higher principle. In that way one can move over into new thinking. In this case, move to another world, of plant-based foods and non-animal clothing ... and then to never look back.
Put that way it seems like a massive undertaking. But the principles vegans are suggesting not only make a lot of sense but they overturn addictions to dangerous substances, which we laughingly still call ‘food’.
For any one of us this sort of change is both exciting and daunting. As with any addictive substance, getting ‘clean’ is hard ... so usually people take the easy way out, and stick with what they know. They comply with the media and advertising messages, they go along with the displays in food shops and the nutritional advice from so called experts. Common usage of animal foods and commodities prevents the uptake of any negative information concerning animal foods or farm animal treatment. In fact almost every person with any influence in our society, be they spiritual or educational leaders, always remains silent on these issues, simply because they’re ‘users’ themselves. And they, like everyone else, are aware of the general popularity of commodities with animal origin. For them to speak out against any of this would lose them support, big time. It would ruin their position in Society and make for great personal inconvenience.
So much for those leaders of our society who live by higher principles.

Hurting animals

2011-08-25T01:32:00.000-07:00

245:

By representing Animal Rights I try to steer clear of sounding ‘right’ about animal cruelty and animal food (despite having no doubts about that myself), since there’s something else important to establish ... the need for empathy between each other. It’s this idea of doing unto others what you’d have done to yourself, which in turn ignites people’s empathy for animals. If we can apply that principle to each other then why not to animals too?
By taking the emphasis away from myself (my own interests and self development) what I have left is empathy. By comparing and contrasting the empathy shown to our dog with our lack of empathy for other animals we can see big contradiction. The last thing we’d want to do to our companions at home is hurt them, because we know them as individuals. It’s the same with other people’s dogs - we don’t have to know them, because each dog has its own personality and we can feel that, and empathise with it. We’re all of us proud of ourselves for being able to do that.
Animal Rights emphasises these strong empathetic bonds we have between ourselves and ‘the creatures’ and it’s likely none of us could purposely de-individualise any animal in order to put it in a special category, thence to inflict cruelty on it. For most of us it would be absurd to try. We certainly couldn’t help to end its life. But that’s exactly what animal farmers force themselves to do. That, after all, is how they make their living, just as many others do in the ‘Animal Industries’.
When I was young I was hiking in the country overnight. In the evening I found a pigeon which had eaten poisoned bait. I looked after it overnight but it was in such obvious pain the next day I took a knife to its throat. I often think of that bird. I always hoped that, at the moment when I had to end its life, that it understood why I did it. But for an animal to face the knife without that sort of reason, that’s quite a thought! And yet billions of animals face unreasonable murder each day, with no kindness and no anaesthetic to ease the pain and terror. When they are about to be executed there’s the smell of death all around them, and the machinery of death along with the all too familiar ‘ubiquitous human’, forcing them forward. To think of just one animal suffering like this, let alone billions of them, is unimaginable.
Humans, who love animals (as they do children) have a strong sense of empathy. But even a felled tree is empathised with more than a farm animal. Humans are good at pretending. They pretend they can feel empathy because they love their dogs and cats. They’re able to empathise and they feel rightly proud of that ... but then, having won a few points in their favour, afford themselves ‘special circumstances’ to be applied to farm animals ... for the sake of ‘essential food’. So, by providing a market for animals they connive in their terrible treatment and their even more terrible death.

Ambassadors for animals

2011-08-24T13:34:00.000-07:00

241:

For me, being vegan and going public is a bit like the advocate representing a client. I like to think I’m following the instructions of the animals themselves, acting with their approval. As animals themselves aren’t gratuitously violent I imagine they wouldn’t encourage me to be hostile with my adversaries. I like to think animals know the human better than humans know themselves, since they’ve seen the very worst of human behaviour and learnt how to survive it. I like to think they’d advise me to work on my fellow humans in a slow and steady way.
I learn a lot from animals. They don’t draw attention to themselves so neither should I, especially when I’m dealing with hard-rump meat-eaters. I wait, as animals do. I prefer to encourage dialogue by letting others have their say first, if only because I need to earn their go-ahead to have my say ... which might, just might persuade.
Why be so indulgent with the rump? I’d say, because they constitute 99% of our population, most of whom need to be brought on-side. Most of them still love their animal foods, and their leather shoes and much more. Omnivores aren’t going to roll over easily, and are even less likely to if they’re made to feel like cornered rats.
It’s easy to forget just how aggressive otherwise-peaceful people can be when it comes to this subject. But it’s understandable. None of us likes being placed ‘in the wrong’, which is precisely what I find myself doing when talking to non-vegans about using animals. I feel I have no other option … but to be fair, putting people right is also partly me showing off, proving that in this one way I’m superior.
Even though I’m sure I have watertight arguments, I put peoples’ backs up when I start talking about this subject. It’s likely they’ve never heard of ‘abolition-ism’ before and it makes them uneasy, and they negatively react, as a first line of defence. I have to get past the shock of this, by understanding why it comes about in the first place.
They feel insulted by having what has been, up to now, an accepted part of their life made into something wrong. Their aggressive reaction (or pretend naivety) is often a cover-up, because there’s nowhere else for them to go. They can’t get past the ugly facts and there’s pretty much no good arguments for them to use to defend their position. They feel uncomfortable. They feel cornered. They take umbrage. They storm off. And we might think we’ve won the day, but in truth the greater damage has been done ... in that we might have lost them altogether.

Being well informed

2011-08-23T01:29:00.000-07:00

240:

This is one broad subject to learn about. It touches on so many things, including ethics, nutrition, environmental concerns and modern husbandry. Animal advocates are expected to be knowledgeable about all of this if they want to speak intelligently about Animal Rights, well, to have a working knowledge anyway. It isn’t enough to cite cruelty to animals as the one reason to be vegan, although that’s my own primary reason. There are in fact so many other reasons and it’s good to be able to speak about each of them.
But I mustn’t kid myself. How ever many arguments I put up and how ever many details I can offer, I’ll always have a difficulty overcoming the initial shock of, “What, no more animal products at all, food, clothes, shoes, zoos?”.
The long list of ‘don’ts’ makes boycotting all things with animal content sound too much to take on, it’s one huge decision and not to be taken lightly. To understand this helps me not get too righteous. On the one hand, for me, it’s simple - I don’t use anything with animal connections but to others it’s daunting. For me, when I’m encountering opposition I have to be confident about what I’m saying, not get too easily rattled. I have to be able to deal with being put on the spot.
Whatever we feel inside, passionate, angry, well-informed, we don’t need to show it, especially if we’re talking with red necked, vegan-haters. Whatever we think about the person we’re with, if we can maintain a neutral exterior and listen without reacting, and keep our own talk calm, we’ll maybe win some grudging respect … enough to be given the go-ahead to speak more fully. And then, once we’re allowed to voice our opinion and flesh out our arguments, we’ll have a better chance to reach people.

Being friendly, not too pushy

2011-08-22T00:47:00.000-07:00

238:

The Animal Rights vegan position is a subject people discuss amongst themselves in order to disparage it, and work out resistant arguments to it. The stock response is that vegan activists are ‘dangerous extremists’.
We are bagged. Doors are closed to us.
But not everyone is closed minded - mainly younger people, having made fewer independent food choices, aren’t as likely to be defensive. But can they rely on information about plant-based diets?
First and foremost we must come across as well informed and concerned about people’s safety, plus have high personal standards, plus a friendly sensitivity. If we are affable enough, some chutzpah can work … as long as we maintain a sense of humour and some familiarity. I don’t try to be best buddy but I do try to be open to any views, ready to ‘take it’ as well as dish it out. People are often wanting to know what I eat, what a vegan diet is, and they’ll put up with a bit of cheek, even to the point where I can send them up for eating ‘dead animals’, but . . . there’s a hairsbreadth between friendly chat and me hitting them with a value-judgement.
I sometimes feel, out of loyalty to the animals, that I should be deadly serious and confront people where ever I can, to show how deeply I feel. But I notice that as soon as I start getting heavy they stop identifying with me. They lose interest and go on the defensive.
Passing on information laden with judgement (and statistics) is dull, and it’s confronting. The connection gets broken. Even in high disagreement I’m trying to maintain a position of equality, showing respect for all views (even wrong ones!). However far apart our views may be our feelings for each other shouldn’t be compromised, so that the human-to-human connections are kept open. We’re never anything else but two individuals chatting about the possibility of reassessing our attitudes (regarding the use of animals in our society) .
If I’m speaking to a room full of strangers, as long as some level of affection is maintained there’s a good chance for constructive, lively interaction. Once I forget the good name of the cause I’m representing communication goes dead.
The best teachers I had at school never lost sight of their students. They had an eye for trouble, they saw everything, they stood no nonsense but never withdrew their affection, and I think that’s how we should be; don’t let anyone get away with the unsustainable or rude but at the same time NO zealotry. And no cowardly tactics either - if I’m asked to explain something and I hide my lack of knowledge behind an emotional rave about animal cruelty I lose credibility. On one level people are very well informed – most adults know more or less what’s going on - but don’t know details. Presumably we do, otherwise we wouldn’t be so keen to talk about this tricky subject. Our strength is in having useful information to impart. If we can’t answer a question and we have the guts to admit it that’s impressive too. We shouldn’t be afraid to lose a skirmish or two. It’s the long term battle we’ve got ahead of us, and that’s mainly a psychological battle anyway, to come out at the end as a person other people can identify with.

Persuasion

2011-08-19T02:50:00.001-07:00

236:

I’m in a tricky position as a self-appointed advocate for animals, because I’m assuming I have the right to talk about them on account of no longer eating them. Maybe I’m in a strong position but it doesn’t give me the right to advise people what to eat or the right to expect them to agree with me. I need to be invited to speak on this subject and for that I need to earn the listener’s respect and interest (from a starting position of being a likely bore on the subject). I have to be convincing whilst going easy on the moralising.
Sure, I want to be an activist, a communicator and an educator but I also want to be sensitive to people’s problems regarding their food addictions. I can’t assume a role just because I want to.
Some practising vegans don’t want to be activists at all. Animal Rights isn’t a realistic cause for them to promote, because it seems a ‘hopeless case’. They’d rather speak about it only with people they know well.
Others decide to go further and attempt to persuade people to protest, demonstrate or get into direct action. For that you have to believe the cause is worth promoting, despite the seeming lack of interest amongst people. I know that I need to be optimistic that people’s attitudes will eventually change. However, keeping my feet on the ground, realising how unaware 99% of people still are about the level of animal cruelty and the dangers in eating animal foods, I have to cop negative reactions.
Here’s the range, from negative to positive:
“The sun is hot, the water’s cool, the beach is inviting ... who gives a stuff about … what did you say? Animals? You want me to think about what?”
With an attitude like that it’s probably not a good time to be talking about Animal Rights.
Or:
“I don’t agree but I admit it’s a serious issue. I’m listening. I’m ready to consider ... I’ll hear you out”.
Or:
“I agree in theory, I’ll give it a go. I’ll try a plant-based diet”
Or:
“I’m happy eating vegan food, I consider myself a vegan and I’m moving towards political activism”.
At first people have to break down their mistrust and the dislike that precedes us. If I can show an interest in them, trust grows and dislike diminishes, and if there’s a spark of interest or even a question, then we’re in business. (Unless they’re just being polite). An unguarded, intelligent question makes it no longer necessary for us to walk on eggshells - if they take the initiative of asking it makes our job so much less frustrating. However, if I’m the one who takes the initiative, as if putting my foot in the door, it’s likely to be closed in my face. And ‘once bitten twice shy’ - the door’s closed on me for ever.

Going Public

2011-08-18T01:40:00.001-07:00

234:

When I start hurling abuse in public it works wonders … in the short term. It unifies my fellow protesters, it makes us all feel good, and sometimes it’s brave of me - if I look scary enough it might strike fear into people’s hearts. But unless I’m willing to continually escalate that approach it loses its power and eventually fizzles out. My big talk and threats are impossible to follow through.
The aim of any Animal Rights protest should be to win people over. It should start with me setting a good example, the same as I’m expecting of others. If I want to ‘go public’ I have to be prepared to get cold shouldered. No surprises if everyone ignores what I say … any excuse will do in order to avoid a ‘spoiler’ like me. It’s possible I might just push through, keep talking ...but perhaps that’s not the point ... gone are the days when we casually bump into people on the street corner and converse with them on serious matters. Today there are no passers-by to talk to. New ideas don’t circulate - we only find new ideas in the media which is tightly controlled when it comes to this subject, with perhaps the Internet being the exception (which is where this blog is found). But anyway, people no longer go searching for new or radical ideas because no one wants the extra aggravation in their life - if it’s Animal Rights or veganism it would mean discovering something highly inconveniencing. So, for us it’s always going to be a long haul, needing a patient, step by step process.
My own first step is to make connection, showing I’m genuine, ready to answer questions and, when there are differences of opinion, bridging the gulf in a non-threatening way. These are my first steps ... to convince others that I only want to help improve their lives and that I’ve got no other agenda.
Sure, I’d like to stand with microphone in hand, in front of a crowd of eager listeners but the days of the soap box are dead. I need to communicate in a more intimate way, in one-to-one conversation about a whole range of related issues. So, when talking casually-almost, when this subject of animal-use comes up (not introduced by me) my first words will probably set the tone of the whole conversation.
It’s obvious that vegans do significant things that others don’t do. That might provoke an interest. I’m in luck if it does.
“You’re a vegan then?”
“Yes”
“Why?”
“It’s something I feel passionately about”
If ever I get this far I’m usually tempted to go into too much detail, but that isn’t necessarily what anyone wants to hear, especially if it sounds like I’m bragging ... as if I’m setting myself apart with superior ethics, etc. As soon as ‘passion’ is mentioned I look like ‘one of those’ (animal-liberationists). They’ll regret asking. Maybe they’ll try to change the subject ... and that’s my reason for not showing my hand too soon.
Usually I meet some provocation:
“You’re what?” ... mock surprise, signs they think I’m mad. It’s meant to make me go on the defensive.
Sometimes it’s a show of guarded interest:
“y….e .. s, go on …”. They hope to pounce on my first foolish statement, then go in for the kill.
So I try to coax them that way - seem vulnerable and a bit innocent. If I don’t seem too eager it’s not hard to lure almost anyone into asking me to explain myself. And that’s really where I want to get to.
I know they want to justify themselves. I know they want to explode my righteous position, but it’s just as likely they’re curious anyway. You can never tell how curious people might be, so tactics aside, I need to be ready for that. It would be such a wasted opportunity if I weren’t.
I need to be prepared to say what I stand for and why, saying it confidently yet casually, informingly yet non-confrontationally – answering in such a way that leaves the other person interested and now better informed, but not put off ... although maybe feeling just a little out-manoeuvred.

Awake

2011-08-17T01:22:00.000-07:00

232:

As a vegan I sometimes feel like an alarm clock, resented at first for waking you up but later appreciated for jolting you into the new day, a new way of seeing things ... (or not, as the case may be).
I often feel as if I’ve been thrown against the wall, so my bell no longer works and my timer’s stopped, and that’s because I haven’t learnt how NOT to make myself unpopular. Am I trying to wake people or alarm them?
As a persuader I’m sometimes heavy booted. But surely you understand I’ve got good intentions? I can be a bit pushy, like an old time preacher but that’s because I like talking up Animal Rights and I forget I have to be subtler.
I sit here scratching my head, asking how to get hardened omnivores to like eating vegan food or like animals enough to make a few personal sacrifices. I know I won’t get far by finger wagging or disapproving or making value judgements, nor by “look-at-me-look-at-my-health-aren’t-I-the-clever-one”. But there again I need to be energetic, sure of my arguments and at ease withal.
I can start by killing off the strict, clean-living image of an eater of dull-but-nutritious food. If it has to be about food then I’ll get further by letting my friends taste what I eat, and get them to want to eat that way themselves (and I’m talking here about delicious food that isn’t expensive or exotic). Let them see an attractive lifestyle and hear me enjoy my strong arguments, as if it’s a breeze, as if it’s ridiculous for me to think any other way. Let them be ‘wowed’ at my plan for the Earth’s brilliant future and see why I want to leave behind all those trashy, go-nowhere conventions that others follow.
For that I don’t need to push or seem desperate when I argue my case. I’m already there, safe and sure, and in a different culture with a different sensitivity. I don’t need to draw attention to it by seeming better than anybody else but by coming across as an experimenter. I’m probably showing off a bit (I can’t help it!), but only to present some life-saving ideas as part of a grand plan - and if it seems whacky (this preposterous idea of not using animals for anything) my aim would be to allow the penny to drop, to let the idea do the work for itself. It’s not my job to rush anyone. I’ve no need to prove I’m different or give anyone an excuse to stamp me ‘crazy’. Instead I can simply act like a radio station that can be tuned into at will, with me presenting good ideas for improving the quality of life. If I’m telling a good story it should be able to link issues of social justice with those of living harmlessly. Then I can let people draw their own conclusions.
As an advocate for animals and for human welfare my message should be approximately the same as every vegan throughout the world, a simple, subtle and soft promotion for non-violent progress. For me that’s the great challenge - to find subtler and more persuasive ways of reaching others without using sledge-hammer tactics or the ugliness of such slogans as ‘meat is murder’.

Broken silence

2011-08-13T16:31:00.000-07:00

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Today information doesn’t have to be restricted, there just needs to be a silence in the media where stories are kept unreported, and in that way people are ‘protected’ from knowing, in this case, that animals are being routinely attacked on a massive scale. With a spineless media, held captive by its advertisers, there’s no way ordinary people can be kept informed - the effect of this silence gives people the impression that nothing bad is actually happening because whatever is happening isn’t worth reporting on.
It might seem incredible that educated and otherwise well informed people know so little about cruelty to farm animals, but it isn’t that surprising when you think of how much conflicting information there is. How can anyone sort out what is true and what isn’t? Most people give up trying to find out and revert to habit.
What we so badly need is one high profile and brave journalist who’ll reveal not only the scale of animal cruelty but the cover-up which, in itself, would be the bigger and more shocking story ... because it involves the duping of the public.
There have been stories published about specific atrocities such as the live export of animals, and there are many organisations who have outed factory farming but none have had the courage to expose the much bigger problem of the entire animal trade. None ever attempts to comprehensively expose the cruelties and combine it with warnings of the widespread health risks associated with consuming animal protein because it’s too big; it’s been considered too ambitious to take on such a broad condemnation since it would not have enough support from the community who make so much use of so many animals. This is why, perhaps, the time is not yet ripe for a writer to surface. If and when the story is told, it might start out with the disastrous health consequences of animal food with the added cruelty factor thrown in for good measure. But the real impact of the story would concern the scale of the cover-up. And I think it’s that which could ultimately outrage people - that they’d been kept in the dark for so long and had been meant to be kept so for many generations to come.
For our kids to be ‘information protected’ like this is bad enough but in a world where so many are dying from lack of food, the cost of wastefully producing vast amounts of food to feed to animals (so they can be eaten) is an obscene waste on a massive scale - it being such an inefficient way to feed people.
The silence, the cover-up and the duping of people seems to be essential for lining the pockets of the Animal Industries. Eventually they must know that the truth will come out ... but I suppose they hope to make their money and then, presumably, just cut and run.
Once exposed, the story of how they’ve diced with the quality of people’s lives for the sake of profit will tell us one thing in particular, that humans are not to be trusted around animals. Both consumers and producers alike contribute to the widespread exploitation of animals, and once that is fully understood then I’m sure the system will fail. And as it fails to provide the animal products people are used to, so the transition to plant-based lifestyles will take place.
It occurs to me that, at this point, vegans would be in a position to provide valuable practical assistance ... but so many things have to happen before that - we first have to learn the truth from a major exposé from one well respected and talented journalist. And before he or she writes that essential story the ground must be laid by ordinary animal advocates, to catch the eye of the public (including that one talented writer who would obviously have to already be vegan).

Move to Activism

2011-08-10T14:23:00.001-07:00

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Animal activists make it their business to look where others don’t look. When I looked everything changed for me. What I saw turned me vegan, and I knew others would be like me. They’d be outraged enough to change their eating habits and attitudes to ‘food’-animals, enough to boycott the Industry’s products. But I was wrong. What a shock I got when I saw NO surge of compassion. It made me wonder about people, particularly about parents, politicians, preachers and teachers. Why hadn’t they told me? Then I got angry. Then sad.
Now some decades later I’m wondering why they aren’t telling the kids of today. It’s all common knowledge now, it’s not as if they don’t know. It’s just that they don’t want to know. They don’t want the kids to know either because it would reflect badly on them.
As I moved into adulthood, or at least into a state of independence (cooking my own meals), I began to focus on the job in hand. The shock was gone and I was moving on from blaming ‘those who didn’t tell us’. Activism isn’t about blame. I realise we’ve all got blood on our hands, so bugger blame! Move on. Be pro-active ... no time to waste. Look where others don’t look. Don’t procrastinate - see how the pig is forced to live, drop pork; see the battery system operating, drop eggs; see an abattoir, drop everything that has a face.
As adults with free choice we may look ... look at the face of an animal! If you’ve ever seen an animal at the abattoir, being led into the execution chamber, it’s unforgettable. The noise from her, her despair, the machinery groaning alongside her. It’s one diabolical scene, gut wrenching.
When I first saw it, it was enough to stop me in my tracks, make me check my habits, make me boycott, make me plant-base all my food and move on ... to activism.
And what is activism?
For some time for me it was a huge enough project in itself, changing my food habits but later, when diet was resolved and shoes and clothes sorted out, I looked further and saw something sadder than even the animal cruelty. It was my own loss of faith in human nature, and that, not anger, has fuelled my activism ever since. Giving up on human nature, not seeing the potential in people, is ultimately sad.

How we routinely hurt animals

2011-08-09T04:40:00.001-07:00

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Whether predated or a predator, an animal is a free-spirited creature. It’s a self-feeding, social being. It isn’t interested in concrete and steel structures or in helping humans to lead a more comfortable life. But to many humans a free animal is an animal wasted, a waste of good money … and for those who make their money out of farming them it means nothing to have them incarcerated - they’re just a resource. Every customer of every animal product helps to support that way of seeing animals.
Some humans do love animals but most humans also connive at hurting them, by supporting those who take away their freedom of movement, by putting them in pens and cages.
In a way, what we do to animals we do to ourselves. We sell our souls to keep ourselves fed, or more particularly over-fed, and all the rich food we eat ends up killing us. Our addiction to it makes us demand that it should be cheap. In response to customer demand, if the farmer wants to stay in business, he cuts every corner he can - he lets his animals suffer. If it means cutting off animals’ tails, horns, beaks and testicles for easier management of them, then that’s what is done. They are enclosed behind fences, put behind bars, encased in glass boxes as exhibits at zoos, caged, tethered, immobilised and generally treated like machines, and yet it’s strange how we also romanticise them. The farm animal is part of the rural idyll, we see them contentedly grazing the pastures and never get to see indoors, at the darker side, where they are subjected to torture. We never see the equipment used for mutilating them, for cutting bits out of their bodies. We never hear the sizzle of skin under red-hot branding irons. Perhaps we see the double tiered trucks on the highway filled with animals being transported to the abattoir but we’re largely no more aware of their fate than the animals are themselves.
On the farms and especially the factory farms, the psychological torment suffered by the animals is unarguable. But people in general know almost nothing about this – they are ignorant or they pretend to be. We most of us live in towns and cities. We hardly ever go to the country and when we do, we see the pretty farm buildings nestling amongst trees surrounded by green paddocks. We never see the interiors … nor want to. If we get to know, from pictures or TV footage, that the animals are kept in slum conditions (and therefore realise that our food comes from these places) we still don’t react. We aren’t aroused by the possibility that there’s anything wrong going on, let alone anything diabolical. We aren’t encouraged or even allowed to check out conditions on farms.
If you go down to the farm today you’re in for a big surprise - if you ever get to see inside one it would be a case of ‘once seen never forgotten’.

Getting ethical

2011-08-06T23:11:00.001-07:00

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When we’re young, who authorises what we do and how we think and what we eat? Kids follow adults, and they give the same advice they were given as youngsters, based on the principle of ‘Mum knows best’ and ‘Doctor knows best’.
Youth rebels, but the pleasure instinct is so predominant that over food choices there isn’t likely to be many changes made ... unless tradition is rejected on philosophical grounds. If that trumps pleasure then there’s a basis from which our own more ethical decisions can be made.
I think the philosophy behind veganism comes out of a deep enough instinct to rule out animal foods. It won’t tell us what to eat but it will tell us what NOT to.
From a plant-based platform, underscored by a non-violent approach to everything else we do, food choices become more straight forward. By outlining what NOT to eat vegans don’t usually become obese or develop ill health from their diet - rubbish food and fast food is filtered out. By avoiding rich snacks, cakes and confections, along with meat itself, the body isn’t exposed to the saturated fats, cholesterol, high salt and sugar contents so characteristic of animal foods.
Although we might miss out on fashion gear such as leather goods, wool, silk and fur, we aren’t lured by so much expensive merchandise. Our feet might get wet from wearing fabric shoes or in the cold weather we may have to wear a few more layers of cotton, and that might be inconvenient, but when you think of the suffering we save the animals - the loss of the sheep’s own woollen coat or the cow’s own skin.
For omnivores life is made messy from taking part in the business of the Animal Industry. If you feel ashamed of abattoirs and cages and barbed wire you can break free of it all by becoming vegan. Our own instinctive compassion is the best ethical guide here - if what we buy hurts animals we have no justification for buying it in the first place?

An egg starter to numb the conscience

2011-08-05T23:40:00.000-07:00

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So here’s the state of things at present. We have billions of humans eating foods produced by animals, unwilling to consider the feelings of those animals. Perhaps they’re pushing animal rights onto the back burner, because they’re more concerned with money worries, family matters, job insecurity, global warming, ill health, etc ... there’s so much to think about, and with no relief in sight ... so people open the fridge and choose their favourite food as a pick-me-up.
We eat for pleasure and diversion, despite the negative health pay-back or sting-in-the-tail, conscience-killing knowledge that things aren’t quite right. We know what happens down the road, at the abattoir. They have to happen so our fridges can be stocked with yummy stuff.
After sunrise at the abattoir the killing begins. Can we hear it when we’re eating our breakfast, cracking the shell of our breakfast egg? Can we imagine what’s going on, or remember the egg we saw on TV last night, dropping from a live caged animal in a squalid battery farm? Despite all that we eat that very egg.
There are no eggs left in the carton - I must a new carton. The cycle continues.
Less obviously, in our cupboard, there are products with eggy ingredients, appetising products ... so here’s the state of things ... we see the cruelty (on TV) and forget it, because it’s inconvenient to bring it to mind - we want our eggs, we’ll soon be buying more eggs. And as we slip into the habits of daily life we think less and less about what we’re doing.
Small children are good at thinking - they often express horror at the way animals are treated. They often want to say something, but at each meal their resistance is slowly worn down. But for a while there may be empathy and it may re-emerge later, when their conscience wakes from a long sleep.
Young people have a much cleaner slate than adults. They’ve got more excuse since they’ve never had any real freedom to choose their own food. Their conscience is clearer. Guilt hasn’t bitten so deeply. And it follows that as their independence develops they’re freer to experiment with new foods, and move away from the habits of their parents’ generation ... even to try out a vegan diet.

If an adult doesn’t consult their conscience over eating animals the senses will call all the shots. We’ll allow our senses to betray our body until our health goes down the tube. Simply by not making our own decisions, eating what our mothers fed us without questioning it, what chance do we have later in life? It’s easier to follow the crowd.

Wanting

2011-07-31T00:59:00.001-07:00

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Because people are focused on wanting they won’t listen to what we have to say - vegans can scream all they like, but we know we’re looking at a deep seated fear, often unexpressed, that illness awaits them. Yet they still prefer to live dangerously rather than give up anything. Take a person with heart disease who has to face surgery. They might have avoided the damage by not clogging up their arteries with fat-saturated food, but they didn’t. They continued as if nothing was happening, letting hospitalisation deal with the problems later.
So vegans have two jobs: to make plant foods attractive enough to live on without needing animal products, and to convince food addicts that prevention is better than cure. We need to inspire on the one hand and warn on the other.
Those people who are most obstinate are the most food-seduced, who’re unable to be without animal food. It’s not just a matter of nutrition, it’s the problem of getting out of the habit of it. It’s easier said than done.
For two whole decades, before reaching adulthood, most of us have been powerlessness to change our eating habits. In this respect most parents are guilty of feeding their children addictive, harmful and unethical foods. When kids grow up and start feeding themselves they soon get hooked on the fast-food version of what Mum used to cook for them. Weight creeps up and a ‘live-now-pay-later’ mentality sets in. Kids aren’t warned about the dangers of addiction, so usually Mum and Dad turn out to be the kids’ drug dealers.
Like the use of narcotics (or anything else that’s stimulating but difficult to give up), animal foods are in our daily lives from the word go. And with such a great variety of mildly addictive products on the market, many of them are as difficult to shake off as any of the classic abuse-substances. Once we’re in the grip of these products there seems to be no way out.
If animal foods are addictive, not in quite the same way as narcotics but addictive all the same, then these foods, the taste of them, the thought of them, the low cost of them, make people determined to get them. It may be a burger or chocolate or quiche, but every day that ‘hunger’ leaves its mark. For the wealthy Westerner there’s no thought of doing without these foods. The very idea of giving up a favourite food because of the link with animal suffering or ill health consequences is unthinkable. In fact even animal welfare, let alone animal rights, is something most people never give a thought to. It wouldn’t even be on their radar.
If it is … they’re probably already on their way to becoming vegan.