Awake

Vegans are like the early morning wake-up call which makes us face up to the day. A little later in the morning we’re glad to have been woken up. In the short term vegans have an unpopular job, jolting people into new awareness. Our advice may not be appreciated at the time, but we don’t have to be more unpopular than necessary.
It’s not a straight forward job, advising but being pushy with our advice might seem as out of date as an old time preacher’s bible bashing. Communicating animal rights today has to be a subtle process.
How do we bring the concept of animal rights to people’s attention, bearing in mind we are waking them, even alarming them? How do we get them eating vegan food and thinking about animals, when they don’t want to? Not by finger wagging, that’s for sure. Nor by disapproval or making judgements about their values.
I suggest the principles we’re promoting should be coaxed along by the attraction of the foods themselves and by the attractiveness of our own personalities - then there is something for them to identify with. And that might need imagination on our part. For a start, we have to squash misinformation. We need to kill off the absurd notion that strictly disciplined vegans live on a diet of lettuce leaves. We need to show off how delicious vegan foods are and promote the attractiveness of a vegan lifestyle. That’s a job in itself and it hardly leaves us much time for nursing any personal resentments or indulging our own feelings of alienation. People need to see us as up-beat about our lifestyle and beliefs. We are, after all, keen to share the details behind our robust health.