Double standards

All of us, vegan and non-vegan, know we are caring beings and to prove it we take up the cudgels and stand up for what we feel passionate about. We speak out about something we believe in and then, down the track, we find we’re spending too much time on it. We try to spread ourselves too thinly and succeed in pleasing nobody, least of all ourselves, so we decide to prioritise. Some of the most important major issues have to be put on the “back-burner”. We choose the stuff not to care about alongside things we’ll be most caring about. Then we are haunted by the stuff we already abuse and the things we’ve forgotten about or can’t be bothered with … and what happens? Guilt cancels out all our best ‘brownie points’ … (the ones we’ve earned from showering so much tenderness on our loved ones, etc.) Our guilt over a few inconsistencies has the power to spoil the whole barrel of apples. One small double standard undermines an otherwise finely progressing life.
An example of inconsistency is in my own disregard for people who are poor. Take your regular ‘homeless man’ on the streets at night. I see him and I ask myself should I care about him? But I don’t want to take on another ‘responsibility’, so I pretend not to notice him.
In the same way, we pretend not to notice what we know we have noticed. Like the animals behind the food we’re eating. People know that chickens and pigs are just like dogs and cats, yet we regard one as unlovable and the other as loveable. Here’s a small absurdity which should have been dropped long ago. But it hasn’t been. Collectively, the human race has NOT made an agreement with itself that from now on we’ll regard all sensitive and sentient creatures as of equal importance.

Friday 5th March

Vegan principle
By not being consistent with what is and isn’t important we fog up the situation for ourselves … of course! But life isn’t just about clarity. It’s about improvements being made by way of testing ideals, to see if they work, to see if we should follow them.
Now, to be fair, ideals can fog things up too, so we end up being caught between utter absurdity and unrealistic perfections. It seems logical that the starting line lies in the middle, with something simple and achievable. The practical, common sense, down-to-earth way of going about most things has to be clear and completely efficient. It’s best if there’s one a simple revolutionary principle that we can constantly prod and poke and question, and yet remains un-phased. Most vegans would suggest food is the start of such a revolution.
This all sounds a bit seditious to the meat-eater. It makes them feel nervous about us but on reflection it must, even to them, seem logical. But oh! How uncomfortable it must seem (according to current perception, current beliefs, creeds, etc). I quote a 93 year old friend named Mary who says she admires our vegan principles, but the idea of having our diet is a “hideous thought”. She means the food of course. So for vegans promoting veganism, we do spark those sort of thoughts. People imagine what it could be like. Now, younger people are more familiar with new food regimes but the thought might be just as hiddeous. They don’t like ‘it’ mainly because deep down they know all the stories they hear about farm animals is likely to be true. They don’t want further information to confirm what they may be able to forget.