You don’t have to listen to us

If we’re hoping to reach people face to face, without the use of computers, we need to come up with a very interesting form of ‘total delivery package’. If we want to connect in a more interesting and inspiring way we have a lot to learn, as a movement, about how new information like ours is taken in. Firstly we’re up against a lot of cynicism. People have good reason not to trust ‘the soothsayer’. No one trusts a salesman or politician anymore. If we really want to educate people, one on one, we have to wait for the other person’s willingness or us to do that. In other words, tedious though it may be, we have to wait for permission to speak. Without that we have no listeners, unless we want an audience of drones. And surely, the animal rights movement doesn’t simply want people who lamely agree with us. We aren’t collecting numbers or wanting to gather people who’re bored with their lives and are looking for a bit of excitement or are willing to accept any old recipe. Our cause needs to bring in imaginative, creative people. We need to take on the vibrant, difficult-to-persuade people, whose sense of free-will is strongly embedded. We must be able to satisfy them otherwise we’ll win no useful recruits. If we can’t answer the big questions for the cynical listener we won’t break through the strong personality’s protective shield … and we won’t even get the ‘big questions’ asked in the first place, unless we’re approachable as people. Today an unwilling audience doesn’t exist! No one can make anyone listen, let alone agree.