Obstinate to the core

A vegan’s conscience is outraged at the very idea of slavery and particularly the obstinacy of thought that we can’t survive unless we enslave animals. It’s reminiscent of the ending of human slavery in USA when they predicted inevitable collapse of the cotton and sugar industries – but the industries survived and thrived … and soon enough the idea of enslaving humans became repugnant and then illegal. It could be the same for animal slavery. Animal industries would die out and be replaced by N)N-animal industry.
We can survive and thrive without eating animals or using by-products or co-products like leather, and we can certainly survive without consuming the body parts of animals themselves. We can also be happy and healthy without being clothed or entertained or medicated at the expense of animals. In the future will be but in the present we aren’t. That sort of future isn’t believed in by most people. It isn’t even taken seriously. And that’s our (vegan) great challenge.
But when it does happen, once it is realised, then it’s business-as-usual for humans, then we can get on with human development, uninterrupted. Once we drop the animal dependency (errr … not until !!) then we can address the other major problems still facing the world, such as war, disease, pollution and hunger.
The agony of the human race is it’s obstinacy, having solvable problems held back by a collective reluctance to drop animal slavery. Instead of challenging ourselves to work with Nature we attempt to bypass Nature and “do it my own way”. We fail over and over again. Our addiction to animal products compounds our obstinacy and condemns us to stasis. We stand less chance of surviving because we keeping acting out this role of slave master to animal. It’s a warped, macho, sexual thing I suppose. But it works in a clumsy, short sighted sort of way. And so, why not DO things that way? We seem to have got away with it so far?
And this just means the thief isn’t caught yet, not that the crime is not being committed.
A compassionate society can’t grow whilst human slavery exists, and that is a slavery to a mindset about animals: we free ourselves by enslaving animals – which has to be about as absurd as arguments go! The only chance humanity has of surviving is by giving up bacon at breakfast and leather shoes and enjoying aquariums full of sea creatures. The lot must go if we want to move on.