Their eyes glaze over

Vegans are familiar with that look. Often too polite to tell us, but to themselves it’s “I don’t have to listen to this crap”. Most people are alert to the lead-up vegans use to get to a point across. Subtle means whereby we edge round to talking animal stuff, but to the listener it’s not difficult to spot – when someone mentions something that will establish the difference between one viewpoint and another. “…but should we be eating animals?” That question in its many guises is often weedled into a conversation, sometimes thrust at unsuspecting listeners, rather like a Jehovah’s Witness introducing themselves as representitives of ‘The Lord Jesus Christ’. One knows what’s coming. We suss them, ignore them, shut the door and forget they ever knocked.
Certain things we learn to ignore. My grandparents lived on a train line, and when I was young I sometimes stayed with them and the noise of steam engines passing the window was deafening, but after a while I could sleep at night as they roared past. This switch-off ability is the same one that’s used to avoid hearing what we don’t want to hear, in this case what a vegan might be saying.
So, for us, trying to get our message across, is infuriating. All we see is a blank look, a resistance. We try to get through it but often fail … and what happens next is understandable but may be the reason why we are having so little impact on people, because we are not as battle-hardened as we could be.
It’s so frustrating that so many people simply tune out …so, we become exasperated … we try to barge past their defences …go for the jugular … dig right into people’s guilt or fear, in the hope we’ll bring them around by force. If only!
Health talk and fear of personal illness works on some level, but it doesn’t magically lead to a respect for vegan principles or an enthusiasm for animal liberation. Trying to change people’s attitudes by making them feel guilty or afraid is a sure fire way to make them run. It’s a tactic that might have worked a hundred years ago (if there had been vegans around then, which there weren’t) but it won’t work today … because there is such an overwhelming number of omnivores, amongst whom, especially the young, few seem to be suffering from the foods they’re eating. Nor are there many who seem to be consumed by guilt. No fun living with guilt! For them, things seem to be working and …if it works why fix it? People identify with their peers and people with attractive personalities, and with what they do. It’s easy NOT to identify with animal activists, who sometimes seem ‘frustrated’, ‘exasperated’ and the ‘aggressive type’. Amongst any group of people, of any age, the norm is still meat eating, with no particular problem with animal food or in switching off compassion when food’s on. What they do have a problem with is confrontation, especially over moral issues, where their own ethical values and self-discipline are being questioned. Free-willed people don’t take kindly to being told what to do or what to eat.