Engaging in conversation

When we suggest to people that they should stop eating animals it is no small thing. We’re proposing a major change in lifestyle and eating habits, implying that animal slavery is morally wrong and animal food is crap food. That’s one powerful statement which non-vegans, on the defensive, would NOT want to hear or talk about. But that’s what vegans do want to talk about.
So, that’s what we are doing, stimulating debate, encouraging others to discuss these issues. Which means we have to be doubly careful that our motives are genuine. If any discussion gets going, we shouldn’t be in it for any self aggrandisement or to get a few clever sound bites across. We should be trying to engage people on this subject for their benefit alone.
It’s not a win-win game. We aren’t trying to get the first punch in. We don’t want to force a submission. Quite the opposite, we’re trying to listen to people’s genuine concerns and beyond that, to establish how to talk matters through without the use of high emotion. In that way there can be a free flow of ideas and opinions, each one developing out of the other (which is how a stimulating conversation develops whatever subject we’re discussing). So, if we’re ‘discussing’ animal rights we are all learning. Which means we’re all benefiting from each other on different levels, helping to understand one another’s way of thinking, refining our own thought processes as we go along. Importantly we’re learning how to listen.
Since it’s not a win-win game it’s not about watching for mistakes, or getting to that point where we can prove the other person is wrong. And it’s not about pretending to listen just waiting for openings where we can jump in again with what we want to say. Even if we are feeling a bit marginalised, as minority vegans in a sea of omnivores, even when we’re feeling out-gunned by the majority, we still shouldn’t want to crush the opposition view. If we try they will fly. It means not being too pushy even when we are given a golden opportunity to say something irrefutable. It’s so subtle, especially when we’re talking to a friend who might already have a pretty good idea where we’re coming from.
Our normal everyday conversations are usually largely unselfconscious, in as much as we are merely speaking spontaneously. In ‘serious’ conversations we’re much more likely to have our own agenda, and if we have opposing views (which act as the stamp of our identity), by expressing them too hard we can easily put a strain on friendships. And it works in the opposite way too. If we’re afraid to offend friends it might inhibit our freedom of expression, and then we find ourselves walking on egg shells, and nothing useful is achieved. Which is a bit like parents of adult children having to hold their tongues to minimise any strain on relations with their over-confident offspring, who are now all grown up and over confident. If an argument arises and the younger person’s defence barriers go up too quickly, the parent ‘smells’ danger so they feel obliged to back off. It’s rather the same with talking to the uninitiated about animal rights or vegan diets - vegans are likely to find themselves in a delicate position, and we need to know how to defuse a situation before it flares up. I’m only mentioning all this because things can seem to get dangerous when discussing animal rights.