The silence

Are we concerned about the way people are being kept quiet? Today information doesn’t have to be prohibited or censored, there just has to be a silence surrounding the scandal. Indeed the silence is so complete about animal exploitation that even the most outrageous aspects go unreported. People are ‘protected’ from knowing the truth - that animals are being attacked on a massive scale, everyday and everywhere. And because the media is weak, there are no channels of communication, to keep ordinary people informed. The impression given is that nothing bad is actually happening. It might seem incredible that educated and otherwise well informed people think this way, but how is anyone supposed to be sure who to believe? I suspect it’s the ordinary people, informed or otherwise, who’ll be most outraged when they eventually learn what’s going on. Once they realise they’ve been ‘protected from information’ they will almost certainly look around for a brave journalist, who can reveal the scale of animal cruelty and report what’s going on. And from the report a scandal could appear.
Here are some possibilities, some ‘coulds’.
A scandal could stimulate an enquiry, which could take on a momentum of its own. A cover up of facts is something, once rolling, the media could lap up. Although animal cruelty might constitute the scandal, it’s more likely that the scale of the cover up could be the bigger story. It might start with uncovering the disastrous health consequences of animal food, but because of the added cruelty factor, it could prove too much to sweep under the carpet, and out of this could come a determination to clean up the mess, once and for all. To keep us all in the dark over our food and the sorts of places our foods come from, is something people would not want to pass on to future generations. For their kids to be ‘information protected’ would be as frightening as the animal cruelty – people would have to come to the conclusion that humans can’t be trusted around animals. On realising this we could see the animal industries go bust quite quickly, and then alternative approaches would be taken up. And that’s where vegans would have to ‘be available’ with some useful information to help with practical transitions. At this point the last thing vegans would need to be was angry.
Instead of feeling angry at people’s behaviour now, vegans need to look ahead, to be in the best position to alert people. Inform them, answer their questions and provide practical assistance. Vegans might want it all to happen now, but in reality it will come to a head later. So, many things have to happen before our brave and talented journalist could sell the story. We can’t hurry the process too much just as we can’t go up to people and shake them, much as we’d like to. So, how do we set the approach roads so that those who are interested will feel safe? And other people, who might be hostile, given the best chance to understand what is happening? If we seem helpful we’ll be listened to. If we appear angry we’ll frighten people away.