Weighing the odds

The foundation of our sense of freedom as individuals within a society makes slavery incompatible with any intelligent value system. Throughout history, it’s the freeing of humans from bondage that has marked progress, and now it’s the turn of animals to be released from that same slavery. Only then can we mark a break through. But it comes at a price. In uncovering certain truths we set ourselves in opposition to our elders and most of our peers. And we certainly make a point of opposing every 1%’er. Getting off-side with so many people over one central issue may not seem like such a good idea. It’s obvious that living a vegan lifestyle upsets almost everyone. But we shouldn’t despair. There are chinks of light ahead.
In this narrow corridor of mutual understanding our boycott makes sense if only in terms of health. We, as vegans, can identify with most 99%’ers who have made or are making or want to make an attempt to escape the pit. The common wish to weaken the1%’er influence may be strong, but by supporting their system for so long it’s been like a marriage. In it we’ve all been abusive. We’ve all been involved. If we’re still involved, it simply means that, by eating animals, we’re participating in a 150,000 animal executions a minute game. Until we move away from this, we are in no better position than anyone else. Until there is a personal statement of disassociation from the daily holocaust at abattoirs, nothing can possibly go well for us personally or collectively.

Conforming

1%’ers, with their brains focused on self interest, are safe in the knowledge of ‘probabilities’. They know customers. They know they can be relied upon to not want to know what’s going on. They know most 99%’ers are happy to stay in the pit and accept their state of captivity. It stems from being born in captivity and therefore learning how to be not-free.
When restrictions were first put on us - to protect us - as kids, as we grew older we came face to face with authority, with models of what “normal” behaviour and beliefs were. We found out how they help us to conform. They bind us into the collective mind. Habits form in keeping with others’ habits. And the most damaging habit in amongst a whole range of other destructive habits, is our choice of foods. They aren’t “vegan” foods!

If we are free enough to choose our own values and if we choose solely plant based foods, we create a massive rift between ourselves and almost everyone else around us. To inexperienced young people, the implications of this may not be obvious at first.
But once beyond parental care and control, once independent, then personal/individual decisions can be made about what food to eat and what enterprises to support (or withdraw support from). Withdrawing support is our only way of showing the extent to which we disapprove. We hope that disapproval will, like a cloudy day, break out into sunshine and positive ideas for life improvement. But at first the boycott is everything, disapproving of the 1%’ers and their exploitation, their use of slavery and their meat products. If young adults question everything, reassess things and eventually get as far as veganism, they’ll see two liberation flags flying, one for us and one for the animals.

The exploiter class

Making a start, cleaning up the mess of today, thinking about pollution and animal slavery, being aware of the modus operandi of 1%’ers, all this is about leaving ‘the pit’ behind us. Vegans, by releasing themselves from the ‘1%’er grip’, are making a start by liberating animals, because that’s where the biggest, ugliest 1%’er game is being played out today. By ending this slavery and harnessing our innate rebellious energy to the work of compassionate repair (yes, it does all sounds very idealistic) we begin our own escape from the deadly grip of the 1%’ers, whose first priority is to successfully feather their own nests.
“Charity starts at home” – 1%’ers do what they do in the name of providing “a better world for our grandchildren”. They care nothing for the community in which they live unless it’s to sweeten their customers, they know nothing about being motivated by ‘the greater good’ and they can’t justify what they do.
I was listening to a hunter on the radio trying to justify the pleasure he got from pulling the trigger on a moving animal. He couldn’t say what it was, except that it felt ‘natural’ to him. He’d always done it since he was a boy!! Basically he was saying that he’d never really thought about it.
It’s natural for a 1%’er to exploit. That’s how they make their living (and/or get their kicks!). It’s literally ‘in their blood’. They are born to find opportunities and, if necessary, take advantage. The 99%’er sees a forest in terms of beauty, 1%’ers see them as lumber.

Our main fears

Being vegan doesn’t protect us from everything - we can have the same fears as anybody and suffer just as much as others do, but it’s significant that we probably suffer from different things. Vegans perhaps fear and suffer from being isolated within their community, because of their unfamiliar beliefs. 99%’ers fear guilt and ill health and may have cause to fear both. 1%’ers, materialists, feel most insecure because they’ve abandoned their sense of guilt and used their money to pay for hospitals when they inevitably get ill as a result of their rich lifestyle. Their main fears is the withdrawal of the ‘retail’ dollar - they accumulate money to protect them from such an eventuality and acquire property to make them feel safer. As representatives of the ‘straight’ world they fear rebellion, not by violent insurrection but by customers becoming better informed and taking their dollars elsewhere. These are dangerous times for 1%’ers. They’re at odds with Nature for a start and with their customers too, owing to their record of misinformation. They’ve grown fat on lies and now, out of the blue, their whole way of life is jeopardised by public access to real information. 1%’ers, who invented misinformation, are now seeing their world beginning to wash away, and that’s down to the Internet where useful information is making its impact.
As 99%’ers learn more from reliable information, they gain more control of their lives. If they can rely on friendships and networking to avoid personal isolation, then material insecurity can be largely played down. In the place of material security we can develop a greater faith in Nature, in the sense that any of us can come closer to the model Nature intended for us. It reminds us of our need to survive (safely) but it might also feel like being-at-home IN Nature. And that mightn’t mean going native or living in a forest, but simply being more streetwise and less vulnerable to the 1%’er influence. Our closeness to animals, even the most domesticated one, lets us experience to some extent how it is IN Nature. Without the trappings of rich living life is uncushioned and we naturally develop survival skills. Perhaps by living in a more Nature-oriented world we are, like the wilder beings, living off our own wits. Life regularly testing our metal. In that way we can explore our own individuality as we liberate ourselves, as we help liberate the whole of our human species. A transformed species would have far fewer self-imposed limitations. The sky would be the limit.

Rebel’s view of things

(Last blog, as I’m off line, till 28th Dec)

The changers, the rebels, are fighting against a HUGE popular trend. They need fuel to be solo fliers who are trying to be conscious of what they do. Good food yes, but other fuels too. We might start by dropping bad habits and replacing them with better ones, and maybe, after that, get used to flying on auto pilot, make flying a breeze … in order to better relax into rebelling.
This deliberate act of being “more aware” might sound a bit scary at first, as if we’re losing our life-long carefree spontaneity. But somehow we have to find a way to boycott that of which we don’t approve. We need to drop our support for the 1%’ers. By questioning the 1%’er system, by increasing consciousness rather than reducing it, we can start to break free.
But it’s a mixed bag of opportunities and fears. If fear stops us from becoming vegan, that’s very unfortunate. Admittedly living a vegan lifestyle might be, initially, an uncomfortable experience. At first we need to prove to ourselves that we’re really breaking out of ‘the pit’. We have to be sure we’re not intimidated by anything, like missing our “favourite" foods or missing being just like others. By giving up the enjoyments that others “enjoy” we can, to some extent, emerge from the pit. As we leave and slough off our old skin, we’re really shuffling off the hardened element in ourselves. Thus putting behind us our ‘service’ to the world of the 1%’ers.
However (going vegan) doesn’t guarantee complete protection but by rebelling against the conspiracy of silence surrounding animal abuse in our society, we start moving towards vegan consciousness, towards being ‘the rebel’. And immediately, from that point on, we’ll be able to see the connections forming between various modes of thinking … thence to see ALL the big issues in a somewhat different way.

Hammering in the nails

The big worry today isn’t about being in the pit, it’s whether we’re conscious of it. Like sex starved teenagers who’re losing their virginity, we adults lose our acuity. By forfeiting fine minds (bursting with full consciousness) we settle for any old ‘pleasure experience’ we can lay our hands on. Instead of opening doors of consciousness we close them. Maybe not voluntarily but nonetheless we justify our closing them with that cheap cut: “Everybody does it so why shouldn’t I”?
By our being so easily seduced by safety in numbers we’re able to get over our guilt simply by going with the crowd. Even if we suspect we’re swimming against the tide of the coming age, we’re still in step with the march of the day.
If we’re not so easily seduced we may have jumped ahead already and be changing fast. If we also work it all out for ourselves, logically, then we’re also moving towards veganism and our own disassociation with the crowd mentality. Understandably any such ‘unauthorised change’ is a threat to the 1%’ers, who’re aware the world is approaching a more expansive age. Do you think they ever get horrified when they realise the coming age may be “vegan”, may eschew gratuitous violence and overall be a more aware, more intelligent age. Not good for arms shares and not good for animal industry profits.
Today, this “expansive awareness” still seems a million miles away. We’re still poisoning ourselves with the corpses of animals, still at war and still carrying the weight of huge bodies, huge egos, double standards and hubris. Vegan food doesn’t eradicate this entirely, but it helps to dissolve the ‘lump’ of it. It breaks open the belief that we eat meat for strength or that we can kill fear by being semi-conscious all day. By being vegan we can at least be alert. We can even wake the rebel in us. Trouble is constantly being silenced.
The rebel stands up to the 1%’ers by asking tricky questions in public. If we let that rebel in us stay sleep we’ll be allowing these frightening (and truly frightened) people to carry on controlling our world. If we aren’t sapping their strength by boycotting their commodities (mainly animal food and clothing) then we’re only boosting their spirits. When we open our purse or wallet to them, we also open our hearts to them (rather as we do in worship). We do it in the name of non-awareness - by pretending we aren’t aware. We tip them the wink and turn a blind eye to our own involvement. We let our dollars ‘hammer in the nails’.

Second class pleasure

Ordinary people, almost all people, are controlled by, shall we say, the remaining 1%. We’re (most of us) controlled by the carrot and stick method, only that for humans the ‘carrot’ bit is mainly in the form of animal products. Our love of them keeps us controlled. It’s a neat system.
Everything that comes from the animal industries is meant to be pleasurable but usually it’s ‘second class pleasure’ – cheap thrills, ice creams, chocolate, nursery teas, that old favourite, ‘meat’ and all the little luxuries we equate with enjoyment. We’re given almost anything to keep us ‘sweet’. It’s a sort of ‘seconds world’ of cheap and cheerful commodities, to keep us working and consuming. It’s like that now in Australia but it was like that half a century ago, for me growing up in England.
When I was a child I had a friend who lived a dull life in our exceptionally dull town, forty kilometres down the river from London, an hour’s train trip away. He used to go up to the ‘bright lights’ on a Friday night for the purpose of ‘having a laugh’. London for the poor is an exceptionally dull place, no laughs there. But just getting away from an even duller town for the night was some sort of enjoyment, some sort of relief from life “in the pit”. (Our fathers worked ‘down the pit’, in cement and paper factories situated in ugly depressions cut out of the chalk cliffs along the River Thames). We did have our indulgencies which made life bearable but they were strictly second rate, often to do with ‘treats’ made from animal stuff. It took our minds off the awful trapped feeling of living in this inescapable ‘pit’. The deal was that if we came to terms with life there, we could have plenty of indulgent ‘treats’. Obviously to many people living today, in this sort of cheap-thrill world, they’re tempted by the very same tawdry pleasures.
In order to socially engineer the lives of people, it makes sense to hold people in ‘the pit’, keeping them happy with a few miserable ‘indulgencies’. As ordinary people (I’ll call them “99%’ers”), we don’t have to deliberately indulge in evil activity to get what we want, it’s done for us. Neither do we have to be aware of acting compliantly when we’re trying to find relief, because we do so many things in a state of semi-consciousness (we gigglingly call it ‘indulging’). I suppose I’m rather obviously pointing to one of the most popular activities, that of eating animals. It’s an example of acting semi-consciously – that is, eating indulgently but keeping what we’re doing away from our full consciousness. It’s evident at meal times, that if we didn’t reduce awareness of it (when eating animals) we’d be in trouble – with ourselves. If we couldn’t “detach” from the guilt of what we were doing, it would cripple us. In order to conduct our day to day lives we, reluctantly, have to do some things semi-consciously. The dull town I came from was almost entirely, and probably still is, full of people who act semi-consciously. And yet these same good hearted people, trapped as they may be, are still capable of true feeling. They know the feeling of guilt and temptation and they learn how to enjoy the simpler pleasures of life. This is in sharp contrast to the rich (I’ll call them “1%’ers”) who control others’ lives but who keep themselves immune to any sense of their own wrong doing. For a start, the 1%’ers don’t ‘do’ guilt whereas the 99%’ers do!!

Enjoying money

Friday 18th December

It’s hard to enjoy hearing about the daily unreported massacre of animals. It’s very hard to take any comfort from our own responsibility for it. By pretending we’re NOT engaging in the act of hurting (hurting ourselves, hurting animals, hurting the planet, etc) we enter double-think and delusion. Our logical self tries to escape the inner eye by NOT seeing what’s going on. It’s laughable to think we can kid ourselves when we’ve already thought it through in our mind. As consumers we are party to a 1%’er’s reckless and juvenile projects for making money. We know they have to do it because they’re insecure and they have to find “safety” wherever they can. Because they consider “money” = “security” they are practically immune to the gentle heart approach to life. They expose and ridicule this very approach by calling it “bleeding” hearts of people who will get sloshy about something as insignificant as an animal. Reality is not a vegan life but a moneyed one.
Which brings us to money itself. Whether we are elite 1%’ers or amongst the 99% left over, we’d all jump at the chance to have plenty of money - to cushion our fear. It isn’t just the wicked who believe this. All over the world humans fear poverty and being forced to “live without”. So we try to get hold of as much of it (for security) as we can get – ‘high’ living - food, sex, intoxicants, anything to relieve the fear of insecurity and the tedium of living as a poor person. With money we can spend indulgently, to make life safe and in the everlasting search for enjoyment. Get rich, get smashed, get “out-of-it”, get fed, get bedded - enjoy.

“To do”

The wicked 1%’ers do know what they’re doing; however they ‘do’ without moral constraint. They know the consequences but do it all the same. They act wickedly because their fear of standing alone is so great whereas 99%’ers fear the guilt. They fear doing things wrong. Maybe it’s a superstitious fear of being clobbered by karma or by God, but it comes down to a dread of feeling guilty. For 99%’ers self-punishment of guilt is worse than being homeless.
1%’ers are cold, hard bastards so there’s no problem being ‘wicked’. For them failure to make big money is the important sin. They say “if it works, go for it, whatever it takes”. They don’t have dilemmas about morality and certainly not with regard to using animals as a resource. There’s no indecision concerning the way money is made. For 99%’ers it’s not that simple. It is a “moral” struggle. We often use food products to relieve the monotony and stresses of life. We can’t afford to look too closely at our “comfort” foods, not too consciously anyway, and that very blurring compromises our chances for achieving personal growth. If the contents of our foods doesn’t wreck our bodies then the avoidance of the ugly origins of our foods will play havoc with our sense of reality, concerning our part in the massacre of the animals.

“Wicked”

I’d be very surprised if even 1% of humans are truly “wicked”. To be wicked one would have to be so chronically frightened of life as to sell one’s soul. Those who take advantage of others and amass money and power in order to avoid vulnerability, could be said to be “soulless”. To ensure this level of “safety”, moral constraint must be abandoned and this opens the way to acting wickedly.
For the remaining 99% of us it’s different. We may be scared but not chronically frightened. We put limitations on what we are willing to do to ease our fears. We wouldn’t sell our soul just to feel safer. Would we? All of us probably have a few really deep fears – fear of failure, fear of poverty, fear of abandonment, fear of death etc., but 99%’ers don’t have the monster gene. We might flirt with the devil sometimes, but we aren’t held to any contract, we aren’t trapped. But we may be less than fully conscious of what we do, maybe purposefully underachieving or deliberately not knowing something that is easily knowable to ease our consciences without actually “selling our souls”.
With everything that’s known about animal husbandry today, you’d have to be pretty unaware and insensitive to carry on eating the poor creatures and not feel something. So we act blind sometimes, as if we don’t know. Apparently that’s what JC said when they were hammering in the nails … “They don’t know what they’re doing”.

The wicked

The way the entrepreneurs have made money out of animals is both diabolical and clever. The things they’ve done to animals make their work truly diabolical but the way they’ve manipulated their fellow human beings is just down right clever. Not too many people will admit their connection with all this, but it’s obvious who is spending on it and who is being rewarded from it. The ‘rewarded ones’ control the whole environment through the subjugation of humans, by way of the subjugation of animals. By addicting humans to eating animals and coming to depend on their secretions they have built a guaranteed market with guaranteed permission to provide for that market in whatever way they sought fit. The animal industries have garnered their support from generations of customers comprising almost every human that has ever lived on this planet. They’ve provided what’s been needed at the survival level and catered for every taste right up to the luxury level. Their influence is everywhere - in many of our clothing industries, in most food industries and absolutely all shoe companies. The animal industries control us by controlling our main spending habits. They seem to offer a service, by providing what seems like a reliable, safe, economic and fashionable source of supply (and when they offer a new line in food or clothing we all jump for it). They give us what we want.
This albeit small percentage of the population have an insatiable appetite for money. And that mightn’t be such a wicked thing if it were not for the fact that they have no scruples about telling untruths. We ordinary people, comprising the 99% bulk of the population, won’t believe they can be such rogues or that they are made up of rather a lot of people, who’ll stop at nothing to shore up their own bank accounts.
As if bank accounts could allay the deep fears life contains, as if selling your soul for money was even a vaguely good idea.

Brave

To stand up for animals you have to be vegan, and to be vegan you have to be brave. Not grim, bitter or angry, just quietly brave. No tickets on yourself, no sense of being better than anyone else, just calmly brave, but it’s not for the faint hearted.
Often vegans have to say “no”. No to animal slavery, no I won’t go with you to the zoo, no to a simple ice cream on a hot day. To us it’s plain straightforward why we say no, to others it’s not wanting to join in, a stand offishness. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot socially, and soon enough we get a reputation. We get invited round to dinner and knowing the problems it will cause we say “No”.
People don’t always mean what they say, when they say they admire what we stand for. “Well done”, “I wish I could do it myself”, but beneath the praise an alarm bell rings – “Avoid this one, he/she’s a tree-hugger (or whatever name they give us) … after a while the dinner invitations dry up. Why would anyone want a vegan to come round for dinner, the problems of cooking special dishes but worse, the danger of them embarrassing everyone else by trying to discuss the principles behind a plant-based diet.
So yes, brave. But it isn’t masochism. That’s the point here, why we say “no’ when we’d like to say “yes”, knowing that if we agree to go along with the carnivores it will confirm that they are right and we are ornory. You can’t put a positive spin on that.
By standing up for animals we must go it alone, we can’t expect cows and chickens to encourage us. It must all come from within ourselves. We have to be able to withstand people’s lack of sympathy but also the market’s lack of suitable replacement products. Food and clothing depend so heavily on the animal industries that alternatives often don’t exist. So vegans have to search for their products and often have to pay more for them because there is such a small market demand for them,
On top of all this, vegans need to support the efforts of other vegans who are trying to raise public awareness. And that’s a problem. The pressures of society are so great that just to be vegan is hard enough without other vegans needing support. Those who have got on top of their diets and clothing, who have learnt ways to withstand the heavy pressure from society to conform have usually begun to persuade and encourage the non-vegans to consider making the break with conventional habits, but they themselves need help. The sort of help that can only come from fellow vegans.
This is why veganism has got to embrace a few disciplines and values that will get things moving. There is little discussion here in Australia about moving away from animal use. Animal activism is generally concentrated on the worst abuses of animals on factory farms and in vivisection laboratories. It doesn’t address the wider problem of fundamental attitude change. And yet if this were established, if it became the fashion to boycott anything coming out of the animal industries, we’d see everything else follow; with veganism established the markets would accommodate the demand, the abattoirs would close and the animals farms would go bust, the animal labs would be defunded and the zoos would be shut down. But at present we have a very piecemeal approach to the problems. There are still too few people willing to rally to the call for a thorough uprooting of animal exploitation. And so everything is weakened because of this.

Vegans have the bottle

When vegans are the butt of a carnivore’s joke our response shouldn’t be to make them more frightened than they were when they considered making ‘a joke of it’. The aim of a sharp edged joke is to attract attention. If the joke calls for a response and none comes, then what? If we withdraw does that necessarily mean we can’t come up with a sharp enough retort? For vegans it’s all a bit ho-hum. It’s this sort of ‘joke’ that always sparks a bun fight. It’s the sort of debate you have when you’re not having a debate. It’s a simple heated exchange.
These are still early days for Animal Rights. We’re building foundations and encouraging new attitudes towards animals. We’re outlining law reform that will illegalise abattoirs. There’s so much call on our energy that we can’t afford to waste it on local skirmishing. Maybe “the lamb” jibe needs to be let through, if only because jokers and ‘people with vested interests’ are still in the ascendancy, and they’re busting to put us down if they get the chance. And that’s the trap. We don’t need to be provoked and then appear as the snarling activist. Discretion might be the better part of ‘going in boots and all’. Discretion lets us withdraw instead of fight.
Our compassion for animals is right, of course it is, because it’s the logical outcome to the anti-slavery movement. It feels right.
Just like veganism and eating brown rice and having a sense of humour, it’s the healthiest and most logical way to be. It’s the most viable position. It can withstand a withdrawal. It can handle a heckle or two. It’s ridiculous to wage war over a puff of smoke. We don’t need to take on every red neck we meet, or parry every joke or even be intimidated by what the political corporations have to say. We don’t have to be afraid of any of them because we must never forget one thing - none of them have “the bottle” to take us on in serious debate.
The world’s at a funny stage at the moment. Too many questions still haven’t been asked. For instance, how is it that some of us are passionate advocates for animals and others are indifferent? How is it that vegans are enlightened and meatheads are so backward? The fact is the differences aren’t really that clear yet. Vegans are probably not that much brighter or kinder or healthier but we do have more self discipline because we do so much boycotting. We’re more used to questioning and arguing our case and that makes us stronger in our views and a little frightening to our opponents. It’s their fears we have to try to allay.

Table attack

Vegans are used to people trying to have a go at them. Usually it’s a very half-hearted attempt to make our “over sensitivity towards animals” look foolish. In company an insulting comment levelled at a vegan is often enjoyed by everyone, confirming their image of the vegan stereotype. To deny them their enjoyment means we have to tweak our image a bit. We shouldn’t let ourselves be provoked. We don’t need to show outrage, and we do need to be sure of our arguments. We must be able to ride out these minor annoyances and allow ourselves to be open to cross examination without losing our cool.
Meat eaters, from their safe majority position, always like to put down the righteous vegan. They want to show how easy it is to make us angry. Actually it isn’t a sadistic thing they do, it’s just self defence. They want an excuse NOT to have to listen to what they don’t want to hear. Our anger at them gives them the excuse to shut the door in our face. We’re fair game for attack because we dare to question their most private lifestyle habits. Most carnivores don’t care about animal suffering and don’t want to talk about it. Others want to take us on. So, as vegans, we need to be ready for ‘the dinner table attack’ and use the occasion to show how we can handle anything they say.

Getting caught up in arguments

When we meet an adversary and discuss our opposite views concerning the eating of animals, we are at a disadvantage because we hold such a minority view. It’s almost impossible to win our argument if our opponents feel supported by the dominant culture and feel the need to establish their position.
For those of us not blessed with brilliant wit, if we try making hasty responses we usually blow it. We see an attack coming out of left-field, it’s distinctly personal in tone and seems like a challenge. In other words, there’s no indication that a fair-minded debate is about to start, quite the opposite in fact. A simple comment couched as a joke shows a clear intention to be humorous. And since the whole point of a joke is to be in and out in a flash, there’s no prospect of a detailed discussion starting up.
This comment, fired off at ‘joke’ level, is sharp and not to be shrugged off. But it’s difficult to respond without giving an aggressive reply … and in that split second, as we bite back, we know we’ve been trapped. We’ve been manipulated – it was really our aggressive response that was meant to be the coup de grace of the ‘joke’. That’s what ‘turns’ the atmosphere. It’s us (vegans) who are made to look bad, as if we took things further than necessary. It’s they (the joking carnivore) who are outraged at the thought that their comments could be taken so personally. “It was meant as a joke”. “You’ve no sense of humour”.
By taking umbrage, by turning a bit of light hearted banter into something offensive, we show how ready we are to quarrel over this issue. It’s proof (to carnivores) that we’re not really compassionate people, nor socially cool, nor as non-violent as we say we are. We look like losers, who seem to have gentle views about animals but not about people. They win!!

Defending our position

This friend who is eating lamb is also wanting to justify it and put down anyone who disagrees with her right to eat what she wants.
“Skirmishing over the Lamb” - good title for a book? This whole subject, jokes included, evokes anger, frustration, a need to put-down-the-righteous (as happened to me over tea!) and a great reluctance to shift one’s view. Try convincing a vegan to take up meat again and, when they stop laughing, they’d simply say “NO WAY”. It’s easier to convince a carnivore to move on, but it’s nearly as laughable, especially with the older ones. They’re usually set in their ways. At some point in their lives this whole matter has been settled (about eating animals and they have promised themselves, family, friends and colleagues that it won’t be talked about, thought about or acted upon. That position is held firm by frequently making tasteless jokes about it, to show their contempt. The position gets stronger as one gets older – there’s more to lose if we change sides. But the greater problem is in losing friends over these ‘issues’. What happens when a friend puts up some opposition? For instance, during a conversation an animal issue arises and people take sides – they take their positions. Do we stay out of it or do we wade in? If we’re put on the spot, do we say what we want to say; and if we do, are we sure we can control our language? What happens if our words don’t flow smoothly? It makes us look foolish, as though we haven’t thought things through. This powerful change we’ve made in our own life now has to be defended. Can we put our defence into powerful enough words?
These situations can happen suddenly. We respond by defending both ourselves and the issue at hand. If that feels uncomfortable, we might be tempted to bite back. And then there’s no end to it. I decided this was one of those times for withdrawing.

Committed to making a stand

My friend tells me ‘jokingly’ how she enjoys eating lamb.
As the joke goes along it gains momentum, volley by volley. Hers is the first comment, mine comes next and it goes on until someone “wins”. “The lamb” is pitched as a joke but really it’s a challenge, a jibe, a quick in-and-out. To any long-time vegan, this sort of sniper attack is tediously familiar, but strangely, predictably, we vegans always rise to the bait. Meat eaters probably enjoy the outrage on our faces and even enjoy watching us trying to take control of our reply.
This sort of joke is a winner because meat eaters can be sure that a vegan’s sniffiness (about animals-being-eaten) will be aroused just by mentioning “the lamb”. It could be any animal of course, but we use the same word –lamb - for the animal as well as the cut of meat, so this word (this animal) is sure to trigger reactions. By admitting to eating a young sheep, a meat eater ill certainly provoke outrage in a vegan.
My friend’s daughter, having known me for the past thirty five years, knows I always defend the rights of animals. The way I do that, depends upon to whom I’m talking. Sometimes I’ll withdraw. That’s why I’m writing this down, not just for my own sake, but for the interest of both sides of the debate. If we all have anything in common, it’s our interest in the present and in predicting the future. Most everyone these days is aware of headline issues. There’s a tipping point with every one of them, and particularly the eating of animals. Once we tip one way or the other, we seem to be committed to a certain stand. It’s noticeable that even though carnivores are less adventurous, their stand on eating meat makes them feel cocky because of their “safety-in-numbers”. They love to win an argument with people like vegans.
They usually initiate a joke to wind us up. It’s a show-off position and they intend to win. But more importantly it’s grist to the mill. By having a real “head-on”, we give ourselves something to talk about with friends later. These carnivores, what bastards they are … but vegans do exactly the same, making fun of meat eaters amongst ourselves. We don’t like to let our side down.

The cuisine excuse

My friend who likes to eat lamb and advertises the fact, she represents the meat-eater interest.
I’ve known her since she was a child and have followed her views for over 30 years. From the beginning she was sensitive to animals and familiar with vegetarianism. In later years she became interested in cuisine and now she’s making a stand for eating meat, hence her mischievous joke about “having the lamb”. Knowing me and knowing my stand, was she meaning to be unfriendly? She was obviously making a point about the eating of animals. Her having the lamb was a throw-away line but meant to attract attention. It rather changed the mood of our little tea party. Whatever could I say in reply that wouldn’t land us in hot water? I’m always up for discussing these things but I don’t quarrel to win my point. Some like a good slanging match. Maybe she wanted one. I don’t know her well enough, these days, to be sure of her affection. She’s intelligent and sensitive and doesn’t like letting things go.
As vegans, we’re not only up against lazy no-brainers, but also bright people who put up opposition. By deliberately provoking me, by rubbing it in about having “the lamb”, she knew it would get under my skin. Here I was having a cup of tea with my friend and suddenly ‘BANG’, out of nowhere things turn “heavy”. (My elderly friend, incidentally, was unaware of this conversation as she has a profound hearing disability). The three of us talked about the birthday dinner, the restaurant and the enjoyable evening had by all, then we get onto what each person ate … and then we came to “the lamb”.
I think she meant to tell a joke, at this precise moment, but this sort of joke, like most jokes, is at someone else’s expense. I suppose it was aimed at me, at how foolish I am to take these things so seriously. For her it’s almost mandatory that a joke is made, to counteract my stand on Animal Rights. For her perhaps it’s important that whenever ‘animal-eating’ comes up in a conversation, it needs to be joked about. It shows people like me how unattractive and un-cool it is, to get sniffy about cuisine.

The lamb

The following blogs are about two different attitudes at the heart of the animal debate. On the one side there is often a boiling anger felt by vegans, towards people who brag about their meat eating and who don’t give a damn about the animals who die for them. On the other side there’s a discomfort felt by people who feel they are being forced to consider animals when they don’t feel they need to. There’s a gulf between people over the subject of animals - not the cute, cuddly ones, the “edible” ones. Until a couple of decades ago it didn’t get a mention, but then it all came out - how animals were being treated on farms and what was going on in abattoirs.
In the early eighties The Animals Film and the book Animal Liberation shocked people. We realised for the first time how much of our food relies on animals and what actually happens to the animals themselves. Slowly this information seeped into public consciousness, then, surprisingly, it came to a standstill. At least it did in Australia. Why? It has been a matter for some discussion on vegan websites and magazines but nowhere else. In the general community there’s a reluctance to face up to animal issues - probably because we feel too guilty to think about it. In private, if there’s any talk of it at all, it’s argued without much intellectual rigour. We like our animal food too much to want to put it down. We’re addicted to it. The matter of eating animals is just usually the butt of jokes.
Recently I was visiting an elderly friend of mine and her youngest and eldest daughters were visiting at the same time. The younger one ‘needed’ to joke with me about her choice of food at her sister’s birthday dinner in a restaurant. She let everyone know(particularly me), that she had had “the lamb”. This was her way of saying “up yours” to me, a reminder of how much her views differ from mine.

Judging the vulnerable

Take a different example, the arsonist. Even if he or she is a child, an arsonist is easy to judge. They are responsible for burning the forest, causing mass death. A teenager, old enough to dream up this plan, may not be old enough to foresee the damage the fire will cause. So when they light the grass and an inferno ensues, how deliberate is the intention? The arsonist may know but no one else knows, unless under close questioning we can really find out all the reasoning behind such an act of destruction.
But in a million living rooms that night, how does each person think, when watching the fire on TV news. We feel the loss, we mourn the loss of bushland and the loss of life and property. We might feel impotent rage. We might want revenge. We might become judge and jury when we say out loud, “Hang the little fucker”. It is surely much rarer to think along the lines of finding out why it was done. And even rarer for anyone to admit to being thrilled at an exciting story in the news or having an excuse to get angry at someone we don’t know. It could be something that lifts our otherwise dull day, giving us pleasure in the misfortunes of the victims. But of course we keep all this well hidden. We hide it behind our judgements of the evil of it. The evening’s news fertilises the judgemental mind.
Our judgemental feelings are far closer to revenge than we’d like them to be, and usually a long way from any wish for the rehabilitation of the wayward teenage arsonist. I mention all this because it has parallels with the same bubbling up anger that many of us feel towards even our friends and family when they waste the lives of the animals they eat.

Judging

Saturday 5th Dec

Making value judgements of others is a big waste of time, but we like wasting time. Most of us procrastinate the use of our time to avoid using it for more productive purposes (difficult tasks), which we try to put off. Instead we indulge in judgement as a sort of entertainment. I often catch myself passing a judgement on this or that to fill an empty space in my mind? I suppose that most others do that too.
If this is a popular ‘sport’ it may be spurred on by a sort of schadenfreude impulse, where other peoples’ behaviour makes ours look better. It’s where we might try to step into the affairs of other people, and try to clean them up. Maybe we try to throw a rug across other people’s dirty floors, so that we can step towards them without getting our feet soiled.
One of our harshest judgments is reserved for peoples’ routine un-thought-out habits, actions that aren’t self-directed but largely directed by others, or copied from other people’s behaviours. Take for example my reaction to the routine eating of meat or wearing of ‘animal’ clothing. Maybe I don’t believe it right to eat meat or wear leather but how justified would I be in judging you for still doing that? If I, as a vegan, am judging you wrong, I think it’s best to keep quiet about it. Because if I approach you and express my judgement of you, you’ll know immediately that I intend you to feel my disapproval. I’d be using it to get you to agree with me, to get you to throw out the meat and toss out your shoes. In my reckoning, if you do this I will release my judgment of you, start to form a better opinion of you, and we can all be friends again. This may sound absurd but it’s close to what many of us do to each other on many counts where we have different views.

Victim and victimiser

The arsonist lights a bushfire. Great judgement rains down on this act and its perpetrator. The act and the person are as one. And we might say “but there’s a difference between the one who is guilty and the other who is not”. But it makes no difference. Most of us have lost our sense of fairness, we judge with a knee-jerk reaction and without careful consideration, and therefore without fairness.
To judge is a weighty business. The professional judge and the judicial process can spend months and cost millions of dollars, just to get to a decision, namely the judgement of a person’s guilt or non-guilt. So much depends on this sort of judgement (the possibility of taking away their freedom). The result of the amateur judgement may result from us being too quick to condemn. It’s the negative value judgement that can be so damaging, so whether I am an arsonist or a meat eater or doing something you disapprove of, I’m given no chance to defend myself because you have given yourself no time to make sure your judgement is fair.

Dangerous judgements

Meat is symbolic of strength and it’s symbolic of the rich, successful life (despite the fact that most people in the West can afford to buy it). This is the problem for vegans when they are trying to communicate on this subject. Meat, rich animal foods (even luxury leather shoes) seem to be regarded as ‘quality goods’. They are attractive to our ‘trained’ tastebuds and expensive enough to make most people associate them with good living. Quality consumer items appeal to those who “appreciate the good things in life”. Vegans seem to want to deny people their pleasure because they deny themselves, acting in a ‘fox and the sour grapes’ way. And so if vegans show dislike of meat eaters and make them feel like criminals, that will be reciprocated; people will dislike vegans and the food they recommend.
As a part of the ‘vast majority group’ people do what most others do, and their conformity leads to stereotyping and the need to make judgements about others. For example, those unfortunate people whose facial features aren’t considered to be beautiful probably know that almost everyone who has ever seen them agrees that they are ‘not good looking’. It doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault, and it certainly isn’t fair to be making that sort of judgment but we are probably (privately anyway) in common agreement about facial beauty. And there are other things we all agree about it, and in agreeing we show our judgements are like others’ judgements, and that makes us feel ‘normal’. By expressing a judgement we show others in our group what our values and standards are.
I say someone is “ugly”, others agree. It might help us to dislike that person and give us an excuse for not being friendly with them, almost as if they deserve to be ugly, along the lines of bad people are ugly: ugly people are bad. That’s how unfair and damaging a crude judgement can be – notably for the facially challenged. For example, their whole life can be spent thinking they are ugly and being disliked and avoided because of it.
This extremely unfair judgement is one of the worst we make, and yet one that most of us are capable of making. We may say what we are thinking and, out loud, most of us would condemn that approach as being uncharitable. But inside our own heads we decide to avoid the ugly person, avoid the bad person. Or we agree with others when they make a joke of this person’s looks. We’re all capable of making unfair judgements. Ultimately these become our downfall.

Good intentions

Being offended by vegans (who are up front about their diets) is a favourite defence of the omnivore. It’s the justification they most often use for ‘not listening’. But some are listening and taking what we say seriously. They may be deciding to alter the food they buy. But for what reason? Do they change because we’ve nudged them, or is it a naturally awakening compassion? Is it a wish for political correctness? Intentions not only test ideas but test resolve. If there’s any enthusiasm to become vegan can we marry it with real action. Becoming vegan comes down to a matter giving up favourite things and eventually giving up our MOST favourite things.
Intentions are interesting things, we all have them and we all know what a failed one feels like. It’s like when one sneaks in a sly hamburger or pretends not to notice the animal content in some delicious food. It’s not much different to having a smoke behind the bicycle sheds when we were kids. Stolen fruit tastes the sweetest - there could be an element of that in continuing to eat meat, as if stopping doing it would be giving in to the passive side of oneself.

Vegan police

Tuesday 1st December

Whenever we gate crash the party, we act like the moral police force, or at least that’s how it looks to people who consider what they do, eat or wear to be quite okay. In their mind there’s no obvious damage being done (!!) when they’re only doing what others do … and which is anyway legal to do. Vegans may want to win points for being brave and forthright but our behaviour is always being measured against our current image.
If we go around opening fridge doors and pointing out that we disapprove of a cut of meat we find inside, and if we mention this, then we’re no better than peeping toms. We are stepping over the line, or more importantly we are showing a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom-of-choice: and some of the free-choosers will understandably react badly if we start to mention the contents of their kitchen. Perhaps they’d be too polite to object to our face but later, privately, they might be getting quite upset about it. And that’s the feeling that becomes associated with the self righteousness of the vegan activist who tries to barge their way into people’s private lives.