Engaging in conversation

When we suggest to people that they should stop eating animals it is no small thing. We’re proposing a major change in lifestyle and eating habits, implying that animal slavery is morally wrong and animal food is crap food. That’s one powerful statement which non-vegans, being on the defensive, don’t want to hear about. But that’s what vegans do want to talk about.
So, that’s what we are doing, stimulating debate, encouraging others to discuss these issues. Which means we have to be doubly careful that our motives are genuine. If any discussion gets going, we shouldn’t be in it for any self aggrandisement or to score points. We should be trying to engage people on this subject for their benefit alone.
It’s not a win-win game. We aren’t trying to get the first punch in. We don’t want to force a submission. Quite the opposite, we’re trying to listen to people’s genuine concerns and beyond that, to establish how to talk matters through without the use of high emotion. In that way there can be a free flow of ideas and opinions, each one developing out of the other (which is how a stimulating conversation develops whatever the subject is). So, if we’re ‘discussing’ animal rights we are all learning. Which means we’re all benefiting from each other on different levels, helping to understand one another’s way of thinking, refining our own thought processes as we go along. Importantly we’re learning how to listen.
Since it’s not a win-win game and it’s not about watching for mistakes, or getting to that point where we can prove the other person is wrong, and it’s not about pretending to listen just waiting for openings to jump in again with what we want to say. It’s conversation. And on this subject just to converse is valuable in itself. It airs the arguments and tests relationships by getting to know how far we can go with each other.
Even if we’re feeling a bit marginalised, as minority vegans in a sea of omnivores, even when we’re feeling out-gunned by the majority, we still shouldn’t want to crush the opposition view. If we try they’ll simply run away. Vegans have to be not too pushy even when we are given an opportunity to say something irrefutable. It’s so subtle, especially when we’re talking to a friend who might already have a pretty good idea where we’re coming from.
Our normal everyday conversations are usually largely unselfconscious, in as much as we are merely speaking spontaneously. But in ‘serious’ conversations we’re much more likely to have our own agenda, and if we have opposing views to each other (views which act as the stamp of our identity), by expressing them too hard we can easily put a strain on our friendships. And it works in the opposite way too. If we’re afraid to offend friends it might inhibit our freedom of expression, and then we find ourselves walking on egg shells, and nothing useful is achieved. [Which is a bit like parents of adult children having to hold their tongues to minimise strain on relations with over-confident and now-grown-up offspring. If an argument arises and the younger person’s defence barriers go up too quickly, there’s danger. It’s rather the same with talking to anyone uninitiated in issues concerning animal rights or veganism - vegans are likely to find themselves in a delicate position, and we need to know how to defuse a situation before it flares up. I’m only mentioning all this because things can seem to get dangerous quite quickly, when discussing animal rights.