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If killing animals to eat them is condoned by the majority, then as vegans we need to step away from all that. And be upfront about it in as much as we don’t try to hide our boycott. In our own mind we know that we live in society but are, in some important ways, not part of it – because we don’t condone violence and specifically violently extracted foods and commodities. In that way it makes us very different to almost all other people. Our decisions are coloured differently in so many ways, not just with food and clothing but in the very way we see our world – we don’t take on the role of dominator but that of equal participator with other species.
The way that we’re particularly different though is that we have rules about food. Anyone who is part of a particular discipline, whether it be in sport, religion, academic study or personal relationships, has self-imposed rules. We devise and adopt them not just to make our life more difficult but because they provide a structure which is generally beneficial. So those who practice a ‘discipline’ (as it may be called) are very familiar with their own rules.
Take the Quakers. They avoid war and don’t let themselves be conscripted. They believe disagreements can be best 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 – they hadn’t embraced 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 appreciate the value of that. I’d like to see them become vegan because of the valuable groundwork they’ve done 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 benefit the other group in a sort of principle-exchange.