Is it too risky to go vegan?

SATURDAY 25th JULY
The big break-through on animal rights will probably come when it’s taken as seriously as global warming and global food shortage. Each one of these issues needs an answer. We don’t want to lose the planet or our souls. So all the things we should be doing probably have a strong altruistic component.
But life is about surviving. Too risky to go vegan? It would mean excluding a lot of environmental focus? But on a more cynical level, is there doubt about which horse we back in life. Which is going to be the next cause, and to be on the winning side seems important. If we aren’t that cynical and believe in simply becoming involved in one of the ‘greater-good’ causes, we’ll not be motivated so much by personal ambition. Rather, we’ll more likely be fired up enough to acknowledge the damage that’s been done. We’ll want to talk about that; collectively want to do something to help fix it up.
The most talked about major issue today is NOT animal rights, it’s green issues. Presently, animal rights has a couple of things going against it. People in general are largely living for the day or for their own survival. They are not contemplating society’s loose nuts and bolts that they must help tighten. They don’t believe there’s a chance to repair things … “things have already gone too far”. And then there are those who simply doubt the need for the cause since, to them, animal rights isn’t relevant to any ‘final solution’, like saving the physical environment (which indeed is absolutely serious, and how! But the connections haven’t yet been made between these three vital issue areas: food shortage, planet destruction and animal slavery).
The first two areas are being talked about quite a lot today, but this last area is NOT. So, there’s further doubt amongst most of the serious and thinking people, that we don’t collectively have the ability to take on a cause which involves adopting a radical dietary shift. On a slightly more frivolous level, the ‘followers’ of animal rights seem, or are made to seem, too weird, mainly in what they say. For most educated or upwardly mobile people, the solution to the world’s problems is primarily human-centred or at least concerned about planetary destruction. To abandon the human causes for one championing non-humans is not only anti-human but masochistic in that vegans associate their whole lifestyle with ethics. So, in a nutshell, animal rights, or rather Animal Rights, seems implausible. On top of all this is a layer of frivolity in society’s misinformation message and it involves that classic put-off to anything – “the cure seems worse than the complaint”. Implying that a plant-based diet is pointlessly inconvenient as well as being too risky.
Perhaps it’s not enough to simply BE a vegan, unless we stand up against all this nonsense dressed up to foster doubt. In spite of all this barrage we must try to hang in there. If you are an abolitionist vegan and are trying to talk casually about animal rights it usually paints the human in a very poor light. And there’s masses of identification going on when we do this! But when we come across with the notion of not-touching-animals people are astounded. For vegans this is a tough one to present. We have no way of watering it down or making vegan principles sound easier. And in our own hearts we vegans have to take on board the fact that we could be facing a Herculean task. Because it’s not just a rear-guard action we’re fighting, we’re trying to present vegan living as attractive.
Vegan is great because of the way it represents the bigger picture, not because it gives us an easy ride or an easy answer. It’s so strong because it simply tells the truth about what’s going on.
For vegans, the complete picture we are advocating is not only a change of diet but a change of attitude on a number of levels. From food choices right down to the need for a level status, not just between each other but between the species. And maybe that attitude penetrates even further! I hope not too much here to pile on the plate.