Free-will

Everyone, each of us, has reasons and justifications for what they do. Everyone is capable of change but we cling on to our free will, not wanting to compromise the hard won freedoms of adulthood. From our earliest years as babies we struggle to assert ourselves, and at each stage of childhood we’re insisting on older kids’ privileges. We refuse to be treated as we’ve been treated up to now. We demand more freedom, more pocket money, later times to bed, then later, it’s about going out late, having sexual relations, indulging in mind altering substances. What ever is won has been hard earned. Whatever freedoms we have they let us do things on a grander scale. The initial freedoms granted us as teenagers fuel our fire, the main one being money. As we get closer and closer to being able to earn serious money we equate that with being able to enjoy adult privileges, especially all the extravagances of ‘free will’.
Now we can drive, so we can choose a car (or dream of owning one), we’re old enough to get involved in politics because we have a vote, we can eat what we like, dress how we like, entertain ourselves how we like. Temptations galore … when we come of-age. From total captivity, having been locked into childhood and obedience, now, with free will, we have a get-out-of-jail card. We can determine things in our own way. We can even avoid listening to people we don’t have to listen to. As the song says: “School is out for ever”.
If vegans are up against anything it might be an obstinacy that comes from prizing free will. This badge we adults wear lets us eat and drink what we want, and we can’t be told differently by our mothers or for that matter anyone, which includes vegan proselytisers, speaking with enthusiasm but no authority. Omnivores are determined to protect their ‘right-to-choose’ and being in the comfortable majority they have no wish to persuade vegans to be like them, whereas vegans, being so few in number, are keen to persuade omnivores to change. It’s not just because we want company but because we are convinced that everyone should be acting for the ‘greater good’. However it doesn’t gives us the right to put pressure on people to change diets, clothes, cosmetics, etc. We have no chance of succeeding that way, anyway.