Making it interesting to people

The BLOG ends here for a week, no access to Internet and working away from home. Blog resumes 12th July.

When it comes to talking about animal rights we need to be seen as fair minded, creating a space for free exchange of opinions, so that those who don’t agree aren’t made to feel unsafe when they speak out against our ideas. Vegans should be assessed, ‘sight unseen’, as decent people. People who wouldn’t try to hurt anyone’s feelings just to win their argument. They wouldn’t swoop in for the kill to make the non-vegan look foolish or evil.
If we don’t let people speak they simply won’t listen back to us in return. If they already think they’re in a weak arguing position we’ve got to hold back on the value judgments, ease up on the rhetoric, tone down our classic animal-defence-outrage. Not use expletives. Not be seen as being-always-right. And certainly NEVER show contempt. It might make us feel good but that isn’t quite the point. It just isn’t a good look. In our own minds we have to get past calling them names, labelling those who won’t agree as ‘intractable’. Most people have to disagree to save face. They take it all in, what we say. But they don’t want to show it. Privately though, they may need time, to add each new piece of information into their own picture, to build their bigger picture, so they can come to their own conclusions, in their own time. They don’t want to be hurried or cajoled. They don’t want to have to agree just to get us off their back. Or agree when they’re not quite sure. Whoever knows how near change someone might be?
If people seem stubborn is it just because what we’re saying is unfamiliar, and they’re ashamed at being so unfamiliar with it. And what we say, anyway, is difficult to grasp, the implications of it all (you talk to someone about Animal Rights and you can see their minds computing all this new stuff and thinking – “oh, shit!”). It’s as if we’re introducing something as new as a distant planet.
Our job isn’t to recruit them or fight them but to interest them … and for our part it’s got to be personal to the extent that we must seem interested in them. In that way we stand a good chance of being liked, not only for our own part but for what we are saying. Having our views taken seriously.

The BLOG ends here for a week, no access to the Internet working away from home. Blog resumes 12th July.