The power of one idea

Vegan principle, simply stated, is that vegans don’t use animals. We avoid thousands of products which most others use without thinking and which most people from childhood are accustomed to using. Vegans avoid, boycott, do-without or replace, and it’s not always easy to do that, but it’s as nothing compared to the hardship animals face - the suffering forced upon them makes any difficulties we might have pale into insignificance. Whatever we encounter, it’s hardly worth a mention when put up against the urgent need for us to change our eating patterns. It’s really the only idea that can solve the mess we’ve created in the breakdown of our relations with animals. We can only overcome the damage we’ve caused by accepting the "idea of repair".
Everything the human race has so far achieved has grown out of "ideas". They occur to us, explode in our imagination and we develop and implemented them to see if they will work. Sometimes they really do work and we benefit from them always. Many of us believe that living on plant-based foods is one such timeless idea. 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 that have power are capable of taking over old systems - we get enthusiastic about them but if we don’t examine them deeply we let them get out of control, which in turn makes us feel afraid and pessimistic. Perhaps that’s what happened with the idea that we could ‘use’ animals. It seemed like a good idea at the time: corral them, fatten them then kill them. Until, with our increasing ill health, our addiction to animal products became scary. A seemingly good idea turned sour. It has begun to make our future look grim. We are, as a species, in the grip of a simple addiction which is bringing us down. As individuals we are still cranking up the machine by our own daily habits, too obstinate to change. Or are we now too impotent to change? Certainly the idea of radically altering our food regime reminds us that we don’t want to make our living conditions any more uncomfortable than they already are. We know we’re being selfish here (addicts are always selfish!) but we prefer to maintain our present lifestyle and wait for others to do the changing first … after which we intend to follow suit! (Addicts are plagued by their own cowardice too!). We follow fashions, we don’t lead them, and that has become a dangerous habit in itself. Surely the only way out of all this is to drop the habit, which drops the addiction, which stops the damage. It’s up to each of us to set our own example and initiate the ‘idea’ that vegan principles are a perfect way to guide our choices.