the power of one idea

If, right at this minute, we aren’t yet vegan, then much of what follows will be an introduction to vegan principle. So for the record it needs to be simply stated that: vegans don’t use animals. This means vegans avoid thousands of products which society has become accustomed to using. We have to avoid, boycott, do-without and replace. It isn’t always easy and the replacing-products aren’t always available, but any difficulty we encounter is nothing compared to what the animals are going through. The suffering they endure makes any lifestyle difficulties we have pale into insignificance. Whatever we encounter, it’s hardly worth a mention if we are focusing on the grandeur of an eventually repaired system. Our difficulties might be overcome by using the power of the "idea of repair".
Everything the human race has so far achieved has grown out of "ideas". They fall into our heads, they explode, they feed our imagination and only after we’ve developed and implemented them do we see if they work. Only time will tell if they have been of any benefit. Sometimes they really do work and we benefit from them always. But sometimes ideas seem to work only for a time and then end up doing more harm than good. Like the internal combustion engine, which was such an asset at first but, a century down the track, is now heavily contributing to the death of our planet.
But good or bad, ideas have power and they can run out of control. A combination of these "out-of-control" problems makes us afraid and pessimistic. The future looks grim. It is all the more depressing to know that we, individually, are still cranking up the machine by our own daily habits. We are still too obstinate or too impotent to change, to listen to the warnings and to then act accordingly. We don’t want to make our living conditions any more uncomfortable than they already are … and we know this is all very selfish of course … but we keep the same lifestyle going and wait for others to do the changing first … after which we intend to follow suit! We follow fashions, we don’t lead them, and that has become a dangerous habit in itself. It’s up to each of us to initiate the ‘idea’ of vegan principle.