Dropping the guilt approach

Now this is just my opinion, but ever since I got involved with the animal rights movement I’ve had a feeling we’re not all of us very nice people. Hot on the trail of criminals who hurt animals, outraged but not being gentle people. Not true of some activists but there are those who aren’t always open to arguments if they contradict the no-use-animal principle. In the beginning it was great that this principle was so firmly established, but now in order to communicate it, it still has to be clear and firm but gentle, if only because we can’t be seen to be taking advantage of the logic of our arguments. Because no one likes a smart-alec. We are without doubt on the moral high ground. So, we shouldn’t flaunt that but instead drive slowly along the approach roads, trying not to force people into the ditch. We should be allowing them enough space to weigh the evidence and set their own pace, make their own decisions and be their own judge and jury.
If we expect them to respect our views (because that initially is all that they are to them, views) we should respect their freedom to express their opinion. The sort of changes we want to see happen can only come about when free-willed individuals decide for themselves that it’s time to change. I believe that change happens when a good idea sparks excitement not guilt. Guilt may shift us at first but it usually dissipates after a while. Quite different to when inspiration resonates with something deep inside us, when it continues firing up new thoughts and fresh feelings.
Veganism has the capacity to inspire. It’s something any one of us can identify with but it’s the way it’s presented that either impacts or doesn’t. Do we identify with the idea’s presenter, the vegan who presents it? When we’re talking about all this to people, we have to be careful not to come across as people with good arguments but ugly personalities. Just that can stop people identifying with us, and therefore with what we say. If we can be engaging, if we can hold their interest and leave them with something to think about, they won’t be so ready to run away. And then we’re half way to winning them over.

Dialogues between grown ups

To get a good dialogue going we need ground rules. Before we can be taken seriously our adversaries need to be sure that we’re fair minded, enough to give them a chance to say their piece, after which they’ll feel more obliged to let us say our piece.
If there’s any personal disapproval in the air it will get in the way. By keeping our arguments away from the personal we’ll be able to show we aren’t afraid of opposition and then we can make space for debate to take place. And if we ever get to debate this subject properly, then we’ll have achieved a lot for animal rights. This issue of animal rights is potentially explosive. It’s confronting. But for vegans and animal advocates it’s exciting too, since it deals with potentials and attitude break throughs. For us (and of course potentially for anyone else) it’s liberating and profoundly inspiring. For us a debate is something to value. It’s our chance to state our case. Whereas it’s another matter entirely for meat eaters. For them debate is more difficult because they don’t have so much to back up their case.
But for quite different reasons, debate is not easy for vegans either, because they have a lot of bottled up anger that needs to be kept under control. If we were more mature as people, then both meat-eaters and vegans alike would be able to communicate better. But as yet we aren’t. And since vegans are the ones who want the dialogue to take place, it’s our job to take the initiative; to act like grown ups and set the standard of behaviour.

Listening to opposite views

By adopting an overall non-violent approach in communication, we don’t weaken our connection with people nor weaken our consideration of animals. We emphasise the way we think reform should come about. The underlying principle of non-violence is guardianship and that means encouraging a feeling of responsibility towards the animals in our care. It also implies that we are kind with one another and patient enough to allow people to change at their own rate and within their own capacity. Certainly change is urgent, certainly the horrors of animal farming must be stopped as quickly as possible but nothing can be hurried when we are dealing with free willed people who hold strongly felt opinions. We deal with free-willed people and it’s this free will that humans have fought so hard to get. The downside of free will is that it has given us permission to slip underneath the scrutiny of responsibility, humans being so great in the scheme of things that we are exempt from culpability. That makes this particular free willed species a very dangerous one indeed.
If we, as vegans, want to alter people’s views about animals we certainly have a hard fight on our hands but it isn’t the sort of fight that requires aggression. It’s one that establishes connections with people, without rushing them, by listening to them, even when they seem to have opposite views to ours. And if they still believe in their right to eat or exploit animals, then we are faced with a big test: to show we can listen without feeling threatened or by not resorting to violent reaction.
If we can get that straight, then we can go that extra step and resist the temptation to make personal value judgements. About ‘them’. By not aggressively defending what we believe, we stand a chance of getting through to even the most obstinate people. If we attack, there’s going to be counter attack … and then no one’s listening to anybody.

Agreement isn’t the aim

When we’re promoting Animal Rights we’re trying to make our arguments non-judgemental and present them non-violently to the yet-to-be-convinced. But people aren’t accustomed to moral matters being delivered in a mild mannered way; important issues aren’t usually presented with both sides of the argument. In today’s world we don’t believe we can get ideas across unless we speak polemically. But that’s what rankles, the unsubtlety of that approach - propaganda, spin, indoctrination, they’re all unattractive and yet that’s still the way new ideas are put forward. On an emotional level it’s thought to be quite effective. When we’re selling an ethical idea, we don’t usually adopt a reasoned approach but instead choose to exaggerate its virtues and then denigrate the opposite view. The approach is often aggressive, in order to force people to think about what they are doing and make them agree. We’re often reluctant to admit this approach doesn’t work well because, in matters of personal morality, especially concerning our use of ‘food and research’ animals, people hate being told what to do. In consequence they dig their heels in. And once that happens we’ve got real communication problems.
To prevent this happening we might need to bend over backwards (to show that we realise how difficult these issues are for people) by presenting the pros and cons of ‘the argument’, the aim being to have our arguments critically assessed. With animal rights we aren’t looking for plain agreement, we’re wanting people to think about issues and arrive at their own conclusions.
Often, in the flush of wanting to be in agreement with an idea, we act and then, later on, forget the reason we agreed. It’s like coming out of a movie feeling pumped by the whole emotional impact of what we’ve seen, and then later on, as the details fade, we can’t remember quite why we were so carried away. With new opinions, if we don’t examine and digest them thoroughly enough, the power of them fades too quickly and we revert back to our earlier opinions.
As animal liberationists, if we can inspire change we need that change to be permanent, and that means arguments have to be introduced carefully, that is non-violently and non-accusingly, so that they come across clearly and stick in the memory. We should promote liberation for what it is, not just welfare reform or incremental stages of granting rights or fiddling at the edges of our omnivorous diets but as a clear cut abolitionist attitude from which all other arguments flow. It’s much the same as the great opinion change that took place with the end of human slavery. It was always about outright abolition, so there would be no sliding back into old habits.

Animal rights via non-violence

Vegans tell people about double standards and inconsistencies in buying food made from animals. I’ve heard vegans saying things like, “You say you love animals but you eat them”. Saying this to people doesn’t usually go down too well. (No surprises there!). Vegans want to inform but like everyone else they don’t want to be disliked for speaking up. But that’s the problem - how to do it without antagonising. As vegans we may dislike having our views dismissed, but we have to remember that our adversaries feel bad about being morally attacked.
What I think happens is that we vegans feel a lot of compassion for animals and less compassion for animal eaters, so as soon as we start to speak about animals we appear hostile to the human. Perhaps it goes something like this:
“You eat meat? Wow! That is so uncool”. Obviously a hostile statement. Most of us wouldn’t be so up front, so perhaps we’d say “Well, it’s your choice”. But however we say it, if we say it with judgement in our voice we can guarantee a bad reaction. We’re all familiar with the problem here: if we speak too softly we won’t be heard but if we speak too boldly we’ll seem over the top. If we say exactly what we mean (to maximise our impact and to give the impression that our view is important to us) we risk offending people. And if we know the person we’re talking to this is a good way to lose them as a friend.
Whatever we say on this matter, it’s bound to shock, and it’s likely we’ll either be dismissed or counterattacked, depending on how we put it. So how do we say something strongly without inviting overreaction and making further discussion impossible?
Perhaps the most powerful statements are understated. No fireworks, just a statement without too much emphasis. We can say something relevant to the conversation, in passing, which is said so that it sinks in but doesn’t necessarily demand a response. Our key statement can be slipped in between sentences and then moved on from, so that it’s obvious we’re not trying to hammer anything home. It’s a balance between saying something we feel strongly about but softening the shock of it. Example: we’ve been offered a sausage roll, we’d been talking about a film we’d both seen, “no thanks, don’t eat animals. What I really liked about this film was …”.
The whole process of changing a person’s mind isn’t a simple, quick or easy thing to do. It’s likely that we’re dealing with a powerful mind, even an informed mind, a positioned mind that’s resistant to change-on-demand but possibly pliable enough to consider change in the privacy of thinking about it later.
If we are in the business of ‘advocating’ I think the best way to succeed is by not using any force at all. We have to work out ways of approaching this subject without cornering people. We need to establish perceptions first, to show we’re aware that they eat animals and then establish our own position - it may feel right to say that “I see animals as my friends … and I don’t eat my friends”. Or it may not, in which case something milder is needed, something less confronting. But however we put it, we need to make it clear that we hold very different views but we’re willing and happy to discuss things in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Somehow we must get close enough to exchange views without exchanging blows. And that’s where a totally non-violent way is the most effective way.

Out of sight

Will Tuttle has written a book The World Peace Diet. http://worldpeacediet.org. In it, on page 222, he says:

“We tell ourselves that we are good, just, upright, kind and gentle people. We just happen to enjoy eating animals, which is okay because they were put here for us to use and we need the protein. Yet the extreme cruelty and violence underlying our meals is undeniable, and so our collective shadow looms larger and more menacing the more we deny its existence, sabotaging our efforts to grow spiritually and to collectively evolve a more awakened culture”.

This is a picture of humans with their hands tied. He says, on page 221, “We will always be violent toward each other as long as we are violent toward animals – how could we not be?”

Humans are by nature kind people. Most of us would be completely incapable of deliberately making an animal suffer. But we are by nature duplicitous too. We let a proxy do what we can’t do: kill our food animals. And somehow we think we can reconcile these two opposites and come out smelling like roses.
This ability to accept ‘out of sight out of mind’ says a lot about us. We say that what our eyes don’t see our heart won’t grieve over, so whenever we buy animal products we see nothing wrong happening - when we’re out shopping we visualise buying a familiar product. We remember how it tastes. We know the packaging. We know where to find it on the shelf. We reach for it and, as soon as we touch it, it’s as good as taken, and eaten. If we have the money to spend on it we know there’s a never ending supply of it. We make our purchase and a replacement immediately fills the empty space left on the shelf.
The routine buying of animal products is so familiar to us we do it without a second thought. If it’s a battery egg or a leg of a lamb, we buy it because we want it. We refuse to be concerned about how it was produced. We buy it because it is irresistible. It doesn’t mean we’re necessarily in favour of cruelty to animals but we know what is most important to us - we do notice that whenever animal welfare reforms are made, prices go up. That one factor makes us less enthusiastic for any further reform of farming practice. In the end money talks. Economics supersedes ethics. When choosing what to buy, it is nearly always for our own personal convenience and self-interest. This is what determines our decisions. When we want something, we will always decide to buy it despite having a strong ethical reason not to.

Animals must not matter

Everyone says they want a peaceful world. Few act to bring it about and of those who do act, few of them link peace with food choices. Even amongst the most educated people, very few believe animal rights will see the end of violence in our world.
To vegans, however, the importance of granting animals their right-to-a-life must seem obvious. Our treatment of them seems to so obviously symbolise our present downfall that to restore any semblance of dignity, animals must come to matter to humans The only way to bring about lasting peace in our world is to admit the association between many of our life-comforts and our own human violence, especially the violence associated with animal food. For meat eaters, the brutal killing of animals means animals must not matter and this is not an easy precept to hold down, yet it’s essential if human exploitation of animals is to be allowed to continue.
Unlike any other predator (whose food supplies are limited) there is abundant choice for humans. However, we pretend we have to eat meat and animal products to make us strong. We desperately want to believe this, despite knowing instinctively that animal products are slowly poisoning us. Further, we live by the double standard of appearing nice as people but who are nevertheless too cowardly to kill the animals we eat; we let someone else do the dirty work for us.
As humans, even if this were our only inconsistency, it would be enough to fundamentally weaken us - how can a world damaged by human behaviour ever be saved by humans that refuse to change that behaviour? If we stopped, if we became stronger willed, if we took up vegan principles … but it seems that making the connection between comfort and violence is too painful and becoming vegan makes for too great a personal sacrifice. We are too hooked on our foods and lifestyle and therefore instead of our being a great asset to the planet, we remain its greatest curse. Our unwillingness to sacrifice a few comforts ties us to the abattoir and dooms us to inevitable self-destruction. All the time animals remain property, all the time we keep the slaughter houses open, all the time we turn a blind eye, there can’t be any peace and we have to accept that the fate of humans, not animals, must not matter.

Meanwhile back at the ranch …

People don’t seem to care much about the appalling fact that land-based animals are getting killed at the rate of 1500 per second. They do care about and believe that animal products are vital for good health. But that’s ‘people-in-general’, a minority are alarmed not only by the misinformation and cruelty but by the insidious promotion of animal products themselves.
Everything is done to make things easy for the consumer; products are made easily available at shops, packaging is bright coloured to make products look attractive and they’re guaranteed to taste good. It’s all very tempting. But some consumersaren’t completely blind. Those who are more discerning sense that the tide is turning – that meat eating is becoming as unfashionable as cigarette smoking and that we are coming to the end of an era. To date, most consumers haven’t seriously considered changing their eating habits and perhaps they will hold out until they are personally too afraid for their own health to deny it any longer. Or too afraid for the future of the planet, or until their conscience pricks too badly. But so far most people, especially older people, are nowhere near being vegetarian let alone vegan. Hope rests with the better informed young and those with a compassionate bent.

First cracks appearing

It might be preferred that people like vegans are portrayed as extremists. However, whether Western society likes it or not, the terrible things happening down on the farm have made many people feel ashamed of supporting it. We’ve all seen the unacceptable with our own eyes. It’s been documented by the brave film makers who’ve entered factory farms at night with lighting and cameras, to expose what goes on there. Most video footage has been suppressed by main media outlets but some has made its way into the nightly news bulletins.
Although the subject isn’t often discussed, when animal farming methods are mentioned, or less often when footage is shown, it shocks people and that’s enough to put the shivers into the meat industry. They see how a vegetarian culture might spread, as it has in places like Europe and USA. Although very little has been shown and isn’t yet enough to panic the Australian public, the animal industries have cause to be nervous. There is already a desperate tone in their advertising, which has the effect of making people suspicious. On the one hand they’ve got to calm their nervous shareholders, who fear the industry will go down the tube, on the other they’ve got to persuade a more savvy public that their products will not harm health. They’re between a rock and a hard place - it never looks good to have animal products so often linked with all the big diseases of the day, so they have to risk using misinformation to allay fears. They can employ scientists and actors who will lieu through their teeth for a salary but the fact is that they don’t have many watertight arguments. So even though the animal industries still do good business and vegans are still too few in number to pose any serious threat, the writing is on the wall. There is a faint rumbling in the distance.

Vegans take things too far

Because most people are still grappling with their people feelings - humans who are different- there’s no room left to consider our kinship with other species. For most people it hardly bears thinking about (to be considering animals as if they mattered). If we didn’t rate one species (our own) as better than others we’d be little more than animals ourselves. We are only able to feel separate, superior and special because we confirm it every day by eating animals. If we thought any differently we’d choke on every mouthful of meat we ate. This is why veganism is potentially such a danger to society and why conventional egalitarianism isn’t quite convincing because it stops short at animals - we can be friendly to the dark skinned neighbours next door, but being nice to cattle and pigs … steady on! That’s taking things too far. We prefer to eat what we want and take egalité with a pinch of salt. We prefer to make life as comfortable as possible for ourselves and only then determine how much extra consideration we have to spare for others. But certainly, we’d much prefer it if people like vegans were kept quiet (or forcibly quietened!). To that end, vegans need to be portrayed as uncool, weird or as extremists.

The comfortable truth

In our culture, when specialists tell us to eat foods derived from animals, we listen and take note of what they say. We want to believe them, especially if they are okaying those yummy, rich animal foods we like to eat. That’s why their advice is easy to follow and why it isn’t such a big step, to think it’s okay to actually kill animals.
Animal Rights addresses the ethics of slavery and killing. It’s a thorn in the side of almost every animal eater who has ever been made aware of ‘animal rights’. If the authorities didn’t want so badly to keep the spotlight off animal issues altogether, they’d love to issue warnings to avoid animal advocates who, they’d warn, are dedicated to subverting society. They’d love to advise people to beware this cult of eating solely plant-based foods. But they’d draw attention to it and make an issue out of something they most definitely want to keep as a ‘non-issue’.
Only by ignoring what vegans are saying can animal slaughter continue, and consumers continue to do what they’ve always done, buy what they’ve always bought and mix with ‘others who are undisturbed’ by it all. It’s a comfortable world if you accept the comfortable truth!

Kinship

Although adults have more life experience than children they nevertheless don’t differ from kids in one particular way - both adult and child have an innate sense of kinship. They enjoy each other’s company. They have a sense of guardianship for each other, the elder for the younger and vice versa. In the same way humans, although very different to animals, can have a strong sense of kinship with their companion animals, the family dog being like one of the kids in the family. Humans seem to be naturally wanting to protect these vulnerable ones from being hurt or exploited. So why do we feel different about other animals, in other places? It’s in the culture. The hardwiring is something most people accept. They don’t think they can overcome it. Many don’t want to because, to date, it seems to have worked well enough for almost every consumer on the planet. Animals have provided humans with so many convenient materials for food, clothing and medicine.
For just about every human living today, it’s vital to think that it’s okay to exploit animals if you eat them and especially if the animal industry provides us with our weekly salary. If you work in some branch of this industry, it’s hardly likely that you will have a highly developed guardian instinct for the animals you’re helping to exploit. That same lack of protective care is not much different for consumers of animal products. It’s little wonder, therefore, that we almost forbids each other from discussing welfare issues (concerning those animals we use for food and clothing) let alone ‘rights’ issues!! State-sponsored education never mentions having kinship with these sorts of animals, only a need for kindness and respect towards certain wild or companion animals. Most education revolves around the need for humans to eat meat, milk and eggs, and it emphasises the serious danger to our health if we don’t. Since just about every person either makes a living out of animals or eats them, there has to be a conspiracy of silence concerning ‘animal issues’. This is what vegans are up against.

Separation

If we are ‘separationists’ and we have dealings with exploited humans, whether low caste or uneducated, we (the boss) need to keep a firm trench dug between what we are and what they are. How big the distance-of-separation is depends on either how far we go. We might want to do the right thing by them. Or we might be willing to screw them. Exploitative attitudes (once they’ve been established and passed on from one generation to the next) are likely to become group attitudes. If we mix socially with 'separationists', soon enough we’ll learn how to put a person ‘in their place’. Even simpler, we can turn on the auto-pilot of dislike – and by disliking ‘people who are different’ we can regard them as either a threat or as a resource. But that’s a people-attitude. When it comes to handling another species the separation process is much cruder. The gloves are off with animals because they are never a threat and nearly always a resource. Whick makes them fair game for any amount of heartless treatment.
If we turn away from separation and are attracted to people who are more egalitarian, we’re likely to act very differently. Our ambition will be to promote the interests of minorities. We won’t see the differences in other people or other species but more likely to regard them as deserving of the best treatment.
But separationists are still in the ascendant, their view is that other people from other cultures should be put ‘in their place’, and that makes it much easier to feel separated from other species; they transpose their culture discrimination to species discrimination. Most humans rate animals (and some lesser-people) as being lower, in order to treat them badly whilst not feeling bad for doing so. Humans do terrible things to animals and yet still maintain their equilibrium, as if nothing bad is happening … that is, until people like vegans come along and burst the bubble, in a most alarming way.
We point out what’s really happening to animals at the hands of humans (read ‘consumers’). Sitting at the dinner table, listening to vegans talking about our “kinship with animals” is not a pleasant experience, especially if one is eating an animal at the time.

Exploiting

Once we feel safe to exploit, the process of separation has already taken place, just as it has when we do it to ‘certain’ people, to put them in their place.
Once we’ve made it clear in our own minds where our inferiors stand, then all we have to do is simply withhold friendly feelings from them - a dependent employee, for instance, in fear of losing their job, doesn’t need to be befriended by the employer. From a superior power base, the unscrupulous employer can push employees to their limits, in order to get the most out of them. As long as they’re careful (and within the law), they can come very close to enslaving their workers. Much the same thing happens on the farm, with animals, only much worse – a farmer, by having biological control over the animal can feed them and breed them at will. Animals may be used to pull a cart or produce an egg or fatten or reproduce, and all of them, once used up, end their days in the execution chamber at the abattoir. Even our pets, once past their use-by date will be sent off for execution. We euphemistically call it ‘euthanasia’ or ‘putting them to sleep’. Whether kind or cruel, this determination of the fate of animals reflects our deepest belief that, as inferiors, they require less consideration and less ‘trouble’ on our part, and usually that means less expense in keeping them alive beyond our comfort zone.
But it’s the ‘food’ animals that suffer most, and in their billions. They are regarded merely as property. They are strictly utilitarian objects for making money for humans. They are subjected to their own biological body functions and their breeding is manipulated. They’re made to produce whatever is useful, and that’s the extent of their being, as dictated by their human masters. A milking cow, for example, is artificially inseminated to produce calves, and often these calves serve their only real purpose in embryo, their presence in the womb being enough to stimulate high lactation in the animal which maximises her milk production. The cow is as powerless to stop her calf being born (and then disposed of) as she is to alter the biological functioning of her body. She lactates and gives birth all her life. And whereas at the age of 20 she would normally die, in the dairy she is ‘put down’ at about half that age, too exhausted by constant pregnancies and milking to live much longer. More importantly at this age she is no longer economically viable. She doesn’t warrant any more life. The decisions that are made about her are as cold as that.
The bonanza which a farm animal represents can be quite considerable. Not only does the owner of the animal benefit from the sale of the animal’s carcass and the co-products like leather which are often more valuable than the carcass, but also from their various by-products, taken from her while alive. Animals make ideal slaves. They don’t complain and they don’t fight back. There’s no need to make friends with them any more than bosses do with their employees at the factory. Humans have separated so completely from these animals that normal standards of care (like the ones we are obliged by law to show to our companion animals at home) do not apply to these animals.

Being superior

In the broadest possible way, we need to establish where we stand on the non-violence principle. We can make a start by rejecting anything that’s been achieved using violence or violation. If it’s going to be worthwhile at all it’s going to be done in a non-exploitative way. Even though humans have always been advantage-takers, we now need to reject that whole idea, whether it’s in the form of racism, speciesism, snobbery or cruelty. And if very privately we think we’re better than others, that too should be reversed, otherwise we’ll think we deserve to be special, which is exactly why we’ve landed in our present trouble in the first place. Advantage keeps us separated from others. We are so hardwired in favour of separation and against equality that it’s little wonder that animals are always regarded by humans as inferior.
If we want to understand this attitude, especially in regard to animals, we need only look at the way most of us treat people who are different from us. We indulge in separation to avoid integration. Perhaps how this process works is as follows: we might not admit it and we might even appear benevolent towards strangers (in order to win a liberal reputation for ourselves), by showing compassion for the less well-off … using this as a tactic to mask our contempt for them, where we half-heartedly try to get to know strangers and help them and get miffed by their reaction. Could it be that they feel patronised and want to keep us at arm’s length and could it be that we then feel rejected … by which time we can feel justified in separating from them. We might say to ourselves, “ I guess they’re not worth getting to know”, which brings us nicely round to not liking them, and then to not thinking of them as equals. Thus we arrive at separation.
I lived in a town after the second world war to which Sikhs migrated. People then had no experience of other races in town. They thought they smelt (as of course they did and as we must have smelt strangely to them!) and noticed that “they don’t even speak proper English”. To this day the two communities have never accepted each other.
We stay in a separation cocoon where it’s more comfortable for us. We don’t wish to make the attempt to integrate, so we notice things like the way a person dresses or talks, and we conclude that we have nothing in common with them. Soon enough we are thoroughly distanced from them. To be a minority victim of this sort of attitude must be terrible (those with ‘inferior’ origins must surely know how it feels from bitter experience!) and it’s a feeling that many of us, from ‘superior’ backgrounds, are hardly aware of, because we are so used to ‘practising’ separation on others, when it suits us.
It’s the same process we go through with animals, especially and most dangerously those animals living on ‘farms’. We humans feel distance between ourselves and them. We believe them to be inferior to us, and that allows us to exploit them without feeling pity for them. Separation-beliefs make some humans and absolutely all animals into inferiors. This allows us to treat them differently. We believe them to be ‘brutish’, less sensitive to pain and therefore unable to notice what we dish out to them.

Leaving others behind

To separate from others, to leave behind those who choose not to change, that’s a big step but it allows us a certain amount of freedom to explore new ways of doing things. But I don’t think it serves any useful purpose to make value judgements about those we separate from. Some sort of separation is a necessary evil, but we don’t need to make it any more difficult than it needs to be, like having less regard for those who don’t agree with us. It’s surely enough to break away from the norm without going further, by accusing others of being deluded because they support the predominant values of their society. If we’ve made significant changes to our own attitudes and behaviours there’s no need crow about it. As vegans we can enjoy all the advantages (of our plant-based diet and lifestyle) but we should avoid leaving friends and family behind. If we abandon certain aspects of traditional lifestyle it doesn’t mean we have to abandon friends, or make it a condition of our friendship that they are supportive. A threat of friendship-withdrawal is usually a response to our being ignored or rejected, and vegans should be bigger than this. It serves no one’s interests to quarrel with our adversaries or trash their feelings. And in terms of strategy alone there’s nothing to be gained by using shaming tactics.

Hardening our nature

Sunday 14th June
Making radical changes to our diet doesn’t do a lot for our image as an acceptable member of our society, especially if we’re advocating the overturning of so many normal behaviours. To become a vegan would seem ludicrous to most people, especially if it were done to benefit mere animals. The aim of most people is to be acceptable to others and hopefully make a little headway in life on our own behalf. If we do anything that doesn’t fit in with that aim, which isn’t self-benefitting, it might be for the environment; to save the world for our grandchildren or at least preserve the way of life as it is now. Most people wouldn’t believe that, by accepting animal slavery, we were hardening our own nature. Even if we believed it, that society’s acceptance of killing animals for food had a malign influence on us, it isn’t obvious how we could escape it . . . unless we were willing to psychologically separate from our own society. But this is exactly what vegans have decided to do. By disassociating from the norm, vegans illustrate that they are unwilling to compromise or allow their nature to be hardened.

Violence on the back burner

Saturday 13th June
The worst violence done in the name of food is committed by the animal industries. They not only exploit animals but people too, who, over time, become dependent on their products. Once hooked, big issues, concerning the unhealthy nature of animal foods or the violent origins of these foods, are no longer noticed. Animal food is so routinely used by most people and so widely promoted by the industry, that we hardly ever give it a second thought, certainly not in terms of whether we should or shouldn’t use it. Our habits are ingrained. We don’t like to think about the part we play in state sanctioned violence, and we certainly don’t want to be reminded of what goes on behind the doors of factory farms and abattoirs. Meat eaters stick to traditional meals and buy the clothes and shoes that everyone else wears. They buy what they want, and their only decisions concern the quality of the products they buy. With food it’s about cost and freshness and general nutritional value. Provenance is hardly ever considered, unless one ensures the eggs are free-range or the milk is from organically fed cows. Mostly the animals themselves are of little concern.
Since animal-derived food isn’t judged ethically it means the animal, from whom it comes, is of no ethical concern either, and that is tantamount to approving their violation at the hands of the industry. We are willing to live off the backs of these animals and if we ever consider the greater good, it is only in terms of our impact on the human community or the environment. Hardly ever is it about the billions of animals living on factory farms. Despite the staggering number of animals living these terrible conditions, our attention is always directed towards our own condition. That’s our priority. Animal affairs are so secondary that we prefer to leave them permanently on the back burner.

What’s in the fridge?

I often work in other people’s homes and put my lunch in their fridge, but I usually have a squiz inside, just to see if I’ve stumbled on a vegan household. No such luck! I’m always disappointed. There they are, the same old products, bits of dead animal flesh in neat little trays or the cheese or the politically correct free range eggs, or worse. And my clients are usually lovely people and I shudder to think how far they are from being at the forefront of social change.
The move away from animal food is where any transformation of the species has to start because it symbolises the most routine and widely practised violence that we humans practise. Our attitude to where our food comes from is at the heart of a much bigger attitude change. Animal foods symbolise the violent side of human nature. That symbol is familiar to all vegans, and it makes a vegan’s life very different to other people’s. We buy different things to most others to symbolise our non-violence. Our kitchens smell differently and our fridges are full of violence-free products. Vegans boycott a huge chunk of the consumer market which is violence-based, and just by doing that we begin the transformation. And that is why veganism is where non-violence starts.

The biggest battle

If the population was much closer to agreement with us (as they are over environmental matters) there would be greater support and a louder demand for reform and a greater acceptance of vegans. But animal rights isn’t like that. Animal liberation is not (at least obviously) a planet-saving solution nor is it perceived as being ‘good for us’. If something isn’t going to benefit us directly and personally we’re not as likely to agree to any personal inconvenience connected with it. It’s likely that we’ll do nothing until we have to . . . unless we grant some support for giving hens larger cages or pigs bigger pens, but that’s as far as it goes. And that’s as far from the abolition of animal slavery as anything can be. It’s so far from addressing the matter of animal rights as to make a joke of it.
This struggle we have with the popular mindset is a classic David and Goliath battle. For us to create the right atmosphere for an entire switch of attitude seems like an impossible dream. It’s almost a hopeless cause, and yet it doesn’t rest there if our final aim is to use these issues as a springboard towards building a non-violent society. If we do want a peace-loving human to emerge, if we want a transformed species of human to emerge, then we must want a world where ethics are considered before personal comfort. That will mean, at the very least, a compassionate consideration of other species. At present we stand a million miles from this.
What we have at the moment is a love of comfort. Animal foods, being one of the greatest comforters, can’t be threatened. Therefore animals themselves must be seen for what they are – as objects more than as sentient creatures. In this way we can enjoy eating them without empathising with them as individuals.

Communicating without violence

When we become vegan, if we speak up, then we automatically stand out and obviously our nearest and dearest will notice. We run the risk of becoming outcasts. Our decision to stand apart like this may seem radical, but it’s necessary in order to balance the bull-headedness of the majority of people. When we criticise the institutional violence of the meat trade we also criticise the consumer; most people will feel that our criticism is being levelled at themselves, because they eat meat. So when we imply that omnivores are guilty of “attacking and killing animals on a mass scale” we will always inflame emotions. And that makes us seem aggressive. That’s hard to handle maybe, but it’s not surprising considering what we are saying. For our part, there’s no reason to fall out with our friends about it. We must come to accept emotional reactions and learn to live with them.
For any of us who believe that what society is doing to animals is wrong, our making a strong statement might seem justified, to us. We may be surprised at the strength of the reaction we get - that no one takes this subject seriously or even appears interested in it. But why be surprised? We are effectively attacking a person’s whole lifestyle. Obviously the animal advocate is going to be seen as intrusive if they bring the subject up, so we’re not winning any approval on the basis of our passion. That will always be downplayed or ignored, but so will our message. People will always turn away - they have to, because they eat animals. By trying to shock people into changing their minds we risk pushing our arguments too hard and too fast. If we ‘have the floor’ we don’t need to take advantage of listeners just because they’re our captive audience, and free-willed people won’t be taken advantage of in this way, anyway.

Attitude versus attitude

Being vegan means putting up with people’s misconceptions of veganism. To ‘have attitude’ usually means being resentful and uncooperative, and vegans often seem this way to outsiders. In advocating for animals vegans have to become ‘refusniks’ and maybe suffer for that reputation; by showing empathy for food-animals we might have to accept derision from people who not only disagree with us but who think we regard ourselves as superior. However unfair that might seem, we need to hold onto our position to get our message across effectively. And not take umbrage.
Our reason for disassociating so radically from the main group is that we believe that certain social values need radical re-examination. Vegans don’t want to be exclusive, we just want to get this animal slavery problem taken seriously. We need to get some communication happening without alienating our own personal support base.
A non-vegan friend of mine mentioned to me the other day that global warming was the biggest issue facing us, and I said there’s another equally big issue, if not bigger … but before I could expand on my outrageous theory I was stopped. He ‘knew’ what subject I wanted to bring up and he mentioned something about “we can all get a bit obsessive …”, which was his way of closing down the discussion. The problem was that he thought he knew what I was going to say, and that I was about to open up a whole deep discussion of certain matters, which he neither had the time or inclination to get into. So I never got the chance to explain what I had in mind.
It’s not easy to find anyone to listen, especially when people get wind of what we are trying to bring up. But that is the reality we always have to come to terms with. It illustrates not how we’d like it to be but how it actually is, now. To discover how to inspire people we must surely learn first how to deal with disappointment and disillusion, and keep trying different ways without being put off. The eureka moment won’t be handed to us on a plate. In the meantime we need to hold onto the belief that people’s attitudes will change in time.

Two forces

In advocating for animal rights there are two things going on at the same time: we are trying to advocate for the animals but we are also trying to come across as an acceptable and rational human being. On one level we need to seem just like the rest, not better than anyone. On another level we want to stand out and have what we are saying taken seriously. Some would say this is impossible to pull off, given the subject - Animal Rights is an unpopular cause which will make us unpopular. That’s something we just have to face.
We are torn between two forces here - being ineffective but acceptable or saying “to hell with social acceptance, better to be disliked than ignored”. Two forces: either we stand up for what we believe and feel good about it or we compromise to gain the support of others. It’s our choice. But it does rather depend on who we are talking to. It means observing them and then deciding on our approach.
Some days I just go along silently with whatever happens. I don’t speak out. I keep smiling and everyone likes me. Other days I bite, and I can see how it affects people who might have thought I was a sweet guy. One day I’m cowardly, the next I’m violent.
We might ask ourselves how we are ever going to turn attitudes around when we don’t dare to speak up. These days if your voice is too soft no one will hear you let alone listen, let alone pay attention. If our message gets lost it matters because there is such a massive a shift needing to take place, if we want to see an eventual abolition of animal slavery. We need so much support for that to happen so we can’t afford to waste any opportunity to communicate with others.
But how do you make people want to listen to you? This is the eternal question. Be too sweet and they won’t take us seriously, be pushy and they’ll run away. Either way we lose our opportunity, but the price we pay in losing our friendships is too high and a solid enough reason not to be too outspoken. So maybe we don’t try to convert friends and family but confine ourselves to speaking in public; being outrageous, dramatic and courageous when we’re most exposed. That will hopefully have the effect of stopping us becoming too aggressive in our overall approach, both to friends and strangers, whilst still being effective with our message.

Why vegans go out on a limb

Sunday 8th June
The group we belong to, what we may refer to as ‘my group’, is likeminded about certain things. It’s nice to belong, to be amongst people we can identify with … and even nicer to feel special. Most of us want to be part of the group and for it to be approved of, to be well thought of, by family, friends or even by our town. And what wouldn’t we do to be famous in our own country? The bigger the group that 'knows us' the more special we feel. Some people will sell their soul for fame.
But when that prize is stained, when the goals of our society seem wrong and we have to turn away, then we might have to face people’s misunderstanding of us. This isn’t so pleasant. It’s the opposite of approval. It’s a feeling of being alienated, and that feels like real punishment. No one wants to be excluded or to stand out like a freak. So most of us do what others do. We dress the same, talk the same, behave the same … that is, until we come to something we can’t accept and must speak out against, even if we are going to be judged for it. Not everyone who wants to stand up for a principle is strong enough to maintain their stand, especially if they get an unpleasant reaction … especially if it seems unfair. It’s the unfairness that makes us angry, even if it’s only from being ignored.
Animal rights advocates have to put up with this. They feel like victims, so they react, and in so doing become victimisers; they are judged by society for following their principles and in turn judge people who don’t agree with them. It’s like a deadly no-win game we play with our adversaries: it starts off reasonably enough but if it turns aggressive, then dialogue ceases and we become ineffective. Unfortunately some of us become aggressive in order to make ourselves heard and to show how deeply we feel about animal rights issues, and then it becomes a fine line between being assertive and becoming violent. To be outrageously noisy is one thing but to push value judgements into the faces of the people we talk with is always counter productive.
Today, in a place where I was working, the occupant, eating her lunch, said to me “I hear you’re vegetarian” and I hit back with “Yes, I don’t eat what you’re eating”. That was rude. Of course I smoothed it over but I felt ashamed about this – I was put out because she’d been cooking beef for her lunch and I couldn’t stand the smell and had to go out for about an hour, never of course saying a word about it.
As soon as there’s any disapproval in our voice, however convincing our argument may be, the message gets lost in the delivery. And when it fails to get across we aren’t much help to the animals. And we get a reputation of being a bit aggressive or rude, and in that way we lose support.

Non-separation

Being associated with the animal rights movement or the vegan movement requires a big commitment. There’s so much ground work to be done by so few people. But to keep up our drive we need to have a high frustration threshold, because almost everyone is opposed to what we are saying. And people don’t necessarily say so, instead, they assiduously ignore us and hope we will go away. Of course we won’t, but it’s like being buried under an avalanche of indifference. It’s debilitating. No other activists, in any other minority group, put themselves up against such a brick wall, against such a universally observed convention as that of animal eating. Almost everyone is implicated, and if it’s not eating them it’s wearing them or using them. What happens to animals is ugly, we all know it. But people don’t want to be reminded of it, which is precisely what vegans are trying to do, to help raise consciousness regarding our use of animals.
We are a thorn in the side of almost everyone, and for that reason we are not liked. And because we are scorned, we’re lonely. And lonelier still because, within this small grouping of people, there are so many different approaches, each one believing their way of ‘breaking through’ to resistant people is the best way. Inevitably there’s antipathy between activists. This of course is the stuff of any political grouping but it’s worse for vegans working for animal rights because we comprise such a tiny percentage of the overall population, especially here in Australia.
The realities of ‘animal activism’ are hard enough on a personal level, without our adding to our difficulties by distancing ourselves from others, by feeling superior to other activists or other people in the wider community. The aim, after all, is to connect not to draw apart. As soon as we separate from others we make ourselves look morally superior, which is not a good look. So we’re looking here at non-separation.

Relative altruism

Things we do voluntarily should be done because we find it difficult to stop, because it gives us pleasure. I remember my parents playing with their first grandchild. I knew they’d never get bored by her, even though in their old age the child’s energy was exhausting for them. They just loved being exhausted that way. This is what relative altruism is about - using any amount of effort to find a balance point between the selfish and the selfless, between benefiting self and being of benefit to others and always knowing that we do the best we can and that each day we’ve tried to foster a sense of altruism. We don’t need to win brownie points or pave our way to enlightenment. We just need to do things for others for the fun of it. If there’s no fun there’s no altruism.
Relative altruism guarantees us a certain sort of energy relative to that which we put out. In this way the energy of altruism is self perpetuating. It expands rather than expends. At the outset, altruism might make our lives more difficult but by its valuable lessons, our day is made brighter because of it. If what we do benefits the planet then it is a bonus and if at the same time we can also withdraw our support from "the cageman", all the better! We can help put him out of business, or better still encourage him to make his living another way!
Altruism clarifies the order of things. It tells us what to avoid and what to do next. It brings us home.

Good greed

The nature of altruism - the more confident we become with it, the more we really make a difference; the more difference we make, the more others will try to make a difference too.
Do we doubt that all this could happen? Is it impossible for us to see ourselves operating in a selfless way? If so, that’s probably because we still think of altruism in terms of selflessness, moral goodness and idealism, whereas it is nothing more than realising a good business opportunity. It is an alternative form of greed, but this time it’s greed for others, greed for a fabulous future (from which we personally mightn’t be around to benefit) and a time when racism and speciesism are forgotten concepts. But could it be this way? Could it happen? Even the goal is easy to lose sight of because we have this bad habit of plunging back into gloom and self pity. We forget that altruism has already stepped into the breach and is waiting patiently in the wings for us to use to transform ourselves. We don’t need to forget the past, but there comes a time to get our minds focused on new ideas - like plant-based eating regimes, a world parliament or a new type of motivation. So how will altruism help?
As individuals, we actually 'do' it all the time (if we did but know it) by smiling at someone passing by, donating money anonymously, giving credit to others for things they’re doing or looking out for others, as a parent does with a child. Altruism always has the potential for setting off a chain reaction. But if we fail, it might be because we’re still carrying heavy moral baggage and that means our altruism looks like wowser-ism. Altruism should only be about joy. The joy of problem solving, the joy of accepting challenges, the sheer fun and exhilaration involved in making alterations to our lifestyles. When we do things without needing to get materially rewarded for doing them, we switch an important attitude. We transform our world view. As soon as this attitude becomes common, it supersedes other types of pleasure. At that point we have altruism in the bag!

Altruism is irresistible

We need to discover if altruism can work for us, at first privately and then collectively. As individuals, we need to take the initiative without waiting around for others to go first. It’s up to us to bite the same bullet we accuse others of not biting. It’s up to us to find out if our initiatives are safe, then go ahead and enjoy them as we explore them. We have to be happy in taking on more than our fair share of responsibility. It’s not a matter of who does more or who is more culpable or, even, more capable. It’s simply a matter of going through the motion of repairing what we’ve all done, as best we can. Altruism shines brightly here because it is the one thing that can transform the violence of the past and give us a different type of motivation to take us into the future and help us gear up for a different type of world. By knowing it will happen and then acting as if it is a certainty, we can promote altruism as something to be taken seriously. However, if we are to mend the damage, we need an army of advocates.
For each advocate there must be an energy source and a motivational force in their lives, so that they can stand up to anything thrown at them. Each of us must agitate for the greater good and, at the same time, transform the way we function as individuals. As we think, so we act, and if we are altruistically motivated, we have the capacity to cause a certain type of chain reaction, inspiring people into being creative and optimistic. Altruism should be seen as irresistible because it is a force for transformation. Of course, the danger is that we get so carried away by the idea, we forget the principle at its heart - thinking of others before, not after, we think of ourselves.
If the idea is to work and be impressive enough to swing over other people, it must first ring true to us, ourselves. We must be comfortable enough with altruism to let it dissolve our value judgements of other people, to let us never get involved with violence, or to get pushy or to become righteous. If we act altruistically, the great reward is found in seeing others also acting altruistically.

Plant-based diet

1946: We baby-boomers were the first generation to see a mass collapse of ethics. It was quite a shock for many parents of kids at this time. Certainly, for my mother and father, this coming crude, human-advantaged world wasn’t what they had hoped for when the war ended. They had plans for a golden future for their family, in a world which had surely learnt its lesson during the war. But it was never going to be that simple. That war, that bomb, that cage - each had to come into being to so revolt people that they’d have to find a better way. Specifically, there had to be another way to handle the food supply problem. But there was no awareness at that time, no one seemed concerned. Over the succeeding sixty years since the war ended, things have become decidedly worse and still most people aren’t concerned. One has to ask why we haven’t found a creative way to supply food without causing chaos and misery to so many sentient beings? Perhaps it’s because we refuse to look at the most obvious answer which has always been staring us in the face - a plant-based diet. People still don’t realise that this simple solution solves most health problems and ethical problems in one hit. But most people say they aren’t ready for that! And you can see why. Peoples’ attention has been powerfully redirected elsewhere. Towards other matters. We are focused on very important issues, on anything in fact, just so long as it doesn’t stray too near to our daily food and the question of animal slavery.
The latest fear is climate change. It makes us sit up and take notice. But it doesn’t do much more than that. We still believe in serendipity and again it seems we talk a lot about this big issue and solve our problems in conversation, but that’s never action. We probably won’t ever achieve as much as we could or should because we lack the necessary motivation and energy. We have high ideals but we almost know we won’t achieve them. We know that certain changes, if they were to take place, would inconvenience our own lifestyles and personal relationships. We know we’re still too selfish to act for the greater good.
And even if we aren’t selfish we’re reluctant to make changes when similar changes aren’t being made by everyone else. It’s a case of you first, me next!

Dodging ethics

Monday lst June
The man who came up with the idea of imprisoning hens in fetid, sunless sheds, set a trend. He and others invented and then developed the caging system. They were pioneers of pragmatism and many of them were also builders of similar prisons for other animals. It came to be known as the "factory farming" process. Perhaps it was all inspired by the Nazi holocaust, since it too came from a death-camp mentality. This may be a clue to the main weakness in humans - our ability to allow the monster to develop, to turn a blind eye for the sake of convenience, and to dodge ethics when it suits us.
By associating with such anti-altruistic acts we show an acceptance of cruelty, but then to go on from there to benefit from that cruelty … The significance of this trend, particularly in the treatment of domesticated animals, is opposite to the central tenet of altruism - empathy. It shows how easily humans can go along with what is supposedly being done 'for the best' whilst knowing it to be fundamentally ethically flawed. Take eggs for instance. Scarce during the hungry times of the second world war, but now plentiful. When we allowed the cage to be used as an emergency means of feeding hungry people, we neglected to write in a twilight clause - so it continued. Now eggs are mass produced. They’re cheap, people are hooked on them and like so many other animal products, we buy them because we like the taste of them. We didn’t see the danger in allowing factory farming to happen, perhaps because it could have proven too inconvenient for us personally, so it continued as a means of supplying cheap foods, many of which are our favourite foods. The animal industries have always known how to cater for the consumer and we consumers have always been dazzled by improvements to our lifestyle. We’re particularly wowed by the wide variety of attractive tasting food experiences now available. If animals have to suffer for that, too bad!!
Today nearly all humans ignore animal suffering because they think they will get away with it. They think they’ve got the whole thing sewn up - ruling Nature by perfecting animal enslavement techniques. The score: humans one, animals zero.