Imagination polishing the mirror

BLOGS INTERMITANT DURING MAY AS I'M OVERSEAS AND WITHOUT A CONNECTION

For those with imagination (who are also attracted to ‘isms’) vegan-ism isn’t a bad ‘ism’ to have. But we have to face both what is tempting and what is daunting about it. It’s no good pretending that it’s a bed of roses. There’s a perception out there, of veganism, in current thinking - it’s a mixture of pleasure and non-pleasure.
Most of us don’t ‘do’ unpleasant, not readily anyway. We may be motivated, but not that motivated. There are plenty of isms today and most of them are famous for their punishing (we see punishment as the all-pupose cleanser!) But this ‘ism’ has some invaluable saving graces. You have to weigh the pros and cons here, to get the best deal.
The main thing about veganism is that there’s consistency in it. Imagine the persistence a vegan uses. All that gives it a certain stability, but ultimately its optimism. It gives us achievable hope. It’s like seeing a golden future, and if we glimpse it, why walk away from it. It may seem strange but curiosity alone would prompt us to poke it, to see if it’s alive? And if so, what then?
Here we find this idea, lying at the side of the road. It seems frightening maybe, but if we poke it and it moves and we stay with it … and then move into a period of our lives where we are trialling and testing it, then you can guarantee something of it passes into us.
As soon as we start to identify with the idea, it becomes a part of us, and then like a stage-struck kid, we want to hit the boards. Something we get ‘from’ it we can’t help showing off. NOT to boast about it but to attempt to unlock people’s perceptions of it.
In the doing and the showing we can’t help being affected, and if all this starts to look like smugness, we have to work hard to make sure it DOESN’T. But then, come what may. Then, what begins to shine, from our simple daily routines, becomes apparent. ‘It’ shows. If we ‘GO VEGAN’ it gets noticed because it simply shines. And it comes out in the way we start to live and talk and think.

Farm animals for 'the eating’

Wednesday 28th April 2010

The most abused animals are the food animals. What if they could speak? What would they say about caged hens and machine-controlled cows? What would they say about denuded forests and the latest frightening changes happening to our weather? It’s sad. Omnivores are responsible for so much of this; the huge percentage of our greenhouse gases from animal husbandry, deforestation making room for grazing animals or for crops to feed them, and it’s down to the customers of the Animal Indsutries. Omnivores are compliant with the “mad men” who’re responsible for all this destruction. The average consumer, conveniently blind to all this, give up their valuable dollars to enrich the Industry, The omnivore, with all this to answer for, is still holding out against their own inevitable vegan makeover.
When this one idea eventually does take hold of peoples’ imagination, when the separate pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall into place, people will be forced to examine it.
Stage one: experimenting with it, trying to find out what is genuine about it, sniffing out genuine people to speak with. Stage two: experimenting with trust, of fellow vegans, trusting that a vegan diet is health-promoting and good for the environment. Stage three: discovering the quality that makes it pleasurable.
You can see where this is leading of course. But if you aren’t yet vegan or aren’t familiar with living on a purely plant based diet (or even wearing cotton and canvas instead of ‘other materials’) then all this might be unreal for you. One might consider the idea of veganism and it may easily enter the imagination but if it seems impossible, too painful, too daunting, then it’s likely however great the advantages, we’ll ditch the whole idea. Even if one has contemplated a vegan lifestyle and read a couple of books about it, it still might be beyond our practical daily reality if we can’t imagine being motivated to do it.
Why, for example, would we voluntarily opt for living ‘vegan’ if the pleasure of it still eluded us?
If you can’t come at ‘going vegan’ you’re no help to the animals. If you aren’t vegan it follows that you are still eating them.

What went wrong

I suppose it all started to go horribly wrong 70 years ago, when the War was on. They upped the ante, they took things to a new and demonic level. They exponentially increased the horrors. Horrible pollution, horrible violence and horrible illness.
I was brought up after the War, but more particularly after the bomb. A single hit of that thing and a million dreams go up in smoke. I think my generation of ‘baby boomers’ were the first to feel very afraid. Suddenly there was a chance of total planetary annihilation.
This marked a great ethical leap backwards. Not just the bomb but the simultaneous arrival of the first factory farm. With the bomb and the cage, each stimulated by war and privation, came a new sense of security. The bomb brought safety from war, the factory farmed animal brought safety from hunger. After the war there was food aplenty. And during the ‘cold war’ that followed there were many tests to perfect the atom bomb. There was plenty of everything!
Now, seventy years later, if we have little hope for the future it may be because we’ve let science rage unchecked. We’ve applied what science has taught us to the point where we simply don’t have a future. How many people actually focus on the future when doing things? Even more crazily - how many of us are beginning to ask the ugliest most defeatist question of all: “Do we really deserve a future?”
Here’s where we stray into the absurd, for it’s not actually about what we deserve. (Human destiny is not actually any more significant than termite destiny) The absurdity here concerns other ‘bystanders’, other species do. THEY deserve a future, and would have one were it not for the fact that we, humans, knocked down the forests, caged the animals and caused climate change. If we are intent on continuing being destructive beings our life here is over and this place should be left to the completely innocent creatures.

Pleasure

Repair sounds like a dull business so the motive for ‘mending’ has to be pleasure- based. The pleasure is in the saving of something as beautiful as the planet. It’s the spirit of enjoyment and repair that will be most appreciated by the generation to come.
Here’s a very attractive thought, that the world is growing wiser and healthier as each day passes. Could it ever be possible? If we tried to be that optimistic within our current frame of mind, sure, it couldn’t happen, because most of us are still operating in the old model. We’re still far too routinely violent, pessimistic and materialistic. We’re obsessed with our own sweet selves to the exclusion of all the rest, so attitudes have to be altered first. The damage we humans have caused is so great and on such a variety of levels that there’s no getting around the need for repair, kick or scream as we might.
We have to examine what we actually do with the materials we have at hand. At present the tool kit is pathetically dismal. We’re at kindergarten stage, we’re acting like small children still trying to please the parent. As adults we’re still trying to please our leaders. And they love it and encourage us to do just that.
Many of our leaders aren’t really leaders at all, they’re just people in positions of authority who are good at taking advantage of people. They claim to lead but are there merely to make money from us. They use violence or they violate something most of us wouldn’t dream of violating.
The big lesson of this age is to boycott all of it! All the violated stuff. Give them no ear. Pay them no attention. Try NOT to please them in any way you can.
What I think has happened is this. The outcome of all our leaders’ deals and profits has degraded the lives of ordinary people. We’ve been allowed to merely exist while the so called leaders have continued to have their way with us.
We may safely predict this: that if we, individually, allow them to continue sucking the juices from us (and that includes sucking the planet dry), they’ll be over the moon. If we don’t boycott their commodities we deserve what they are dished up.
Watch out! These big boys will squeeze us, even harder if they have to (especially they’ll squeeze the animals down on the farm) and then none of us have anything to look forward to.

A repair plan

If we do try to address big issues or attempt to repair things, do we do it with gusto or unimaginatively? Is it done half heartedly? When we’re trying to find simple solutions to complex problems, our remedies seem to have almost no lasting effect. It makes us more pessimistic.
Optimism convinces us we’ve got time, at least enough time to do things properly. When optimism motivates it makes us want to give it our best shot, which means things get better anyway.
We all know Earth’s damage-repair bill is huge. And we need to be quick with the repayments if we want to avoid foreclosure. But we need to pace ourselves. Everything is clear and yet nothing is certain. It could all turn out wonderfully in the blink of an eye. Everything could change overnight; it only takes one synchronised decision and anything’s possible. But we know humans! They’re (we’re) too wary to act unless they’ve worked it all out intellectually, by which time it’s a bit late and the repair bill is too big.
But this is about optimism not a review of human history. Since humans are clever enough to bring about catastrophe they’re bright enough to repair it all. If we can set aside our egos and agree on repair we’re there! Once everything is done and once support is there and the planet is “saved”, then everyone’s happy. Then perhaps we’ll just be a little dazed, surprised at just how straightforward changing was.

The altruism of optimism

Saturday 24thApril, 2010

Once we stand on a base of optimism we’re more likely to feel stability and experience permanence. Being born in a violent world we have to work hard on harmlessness (a central vegan principle) but working at it brings a sense of permanence and that is a stabilising force.
Vegans understand that a lot of the negativity, which omnivores feel against us, is coming from an infectious pessimism about the world and its future in general. If this pessimism is allowed to dominate reality, we’re very likely to say: “There’s too little time to stop the coming catastrophe. The damage is so great that change can only happen if we exert force, thus showing we mean business”. And: “If it’s going to work it must be big and fast otherwise major change just won’t have enough oomph to come about”.
Veganism is slower and not so dramatic but once it is acknowledged it establishes itself deeply. Veganism is so profound that most people hardly dare recognise it. Its ‘solution package’ seems unreachable.
Veganism makes a hard-to-accept case for no less than fundamental change, to the way we view life. Is it any wonder philosophical views like ours aren’t popular? Vegans are, however, in tune with the character of the 21st century. Our root and branch change is all to do with optimism and even though our philosophy doesn’t promise flowers yet (in fact most of us may not get to see any signs of ‘flowering’ in our own lifetimes), there is something timeless about it which encourages optimism.
The pessimist says: “It’s already too late, so why bother?” and “Bugger the future”. Not very altruistic! It won’t impress the inheritors of our world, today’s younger people, one little bit!

New habits

Optimism is a mixture of pleasure (self) and usefulness (not-self). We recharge our own energy by the pleasure of discharging energy for others’ benefit. If we were more involved with each other (particularly in each other’s so called ‘spiritual progress’) we’d see optimism oozing from every pore. We’d radiate it in our mutual exchanges and show it in our daily habits. And that wouldn’t be so strange because we all enjoy pleasure-oriented habits, even those involving some disciplines. Just as lifeguards love being on the beach, at the same time they love saving lives when people get into difficulties. They’re useful and they love being so. Whole relationships can surely be based on this same pleasure principle.
As we develop new and sometimes not-so-easy-to-install habits, the main driver should always be optimism. The reasoning behind our habits is a big strengthener for them. It helps set them in place. And when we act optimistically, they fall into place. These new habits (like kids settling in on their first day at school) are a bit shaky at first. It’s optimism that gets us over the hump, equipping us for the repair journey ahead.

Greater good revisited

I suppose I’m arguing that to ignore animal issues is dangerous. In body terms it’s like being passive about an illness until the virus takes over and causes death. We do live in a predatory world, where learning takes place at the cutting edge of survival. But some humans think they are beyond this. They think we can grow sufficiently in a cushy, consumer-istic atmosphere. If we want our society to be a strong force for good on the planet then we have to personally set the standards we want to see. We have to let our enthusiasm for the greater good move freely with the other great forces of altruism and optimism

Consistent ethics

Most people think they have to be experts to be effective but not much knowledge is needed to know that the animal business is “wrong”. Assurance for this conclusion comes from intuition and inborn values. A familiar comment from new vegans is: “Why didn’t I see it before?” As soon as we tap into a more instinctive intelligence, we go for ‘the greater good’. And here even so called ‘enlightened beings’ aren’t necessarily more useful than the unenlightened in terms of optimism and faith. Our own ‘spiritual development’, our own ‘getting of wisdom’ should not be put on the backburner. The experts and the holy people are at no advantage here if they have lost touch with the significance of such mundane things as buying and eating foods associated with animals.
By being exemplary in one field but useless in another, we lose credibility. It’s the same problem we have in any personal advancement whether it’s career, lifestyle or spirituality. We don’t realise how important it is to make an impact on certain deep issues of the day. Further, we don’t know how to do it. By neglecting vital subjects we have too much incompleteness in our life and we can easily slip into double standards. We might wish it were otherwise.
In the end, if we can’t muster sufficient personal power to change even when we want to change (or we’re without enough personal authority to act) we won’t be able to expose and change the corrupted system we live in.

What can possibly go wrong?

What takes the place of pessimism? What reason do we have for optimism? If optimism is to have any sort of foundation it must foresee a good outcome. It must be strong enough to carry us over the tough spots. Its foundation principle of acting and thinking for the greater good rather than for self benefit is significant. When ‘me’ is put second and by being optimistic, interest in personal success fades. By being outward looking and forward looking we work for the greater good – nothing can go wrong?

An end to pessimism

For over sixty years vegans have been forming teams of animal advocates each working to boycott the moneymen; ushering in optimism and helping to drop the pessimistic belief that whatever we do we won’t even scratch the surface. We do what we can. We change light globes, recycle newspapers, eat plant-based foods. Everything we do in this way is valuable, but if we think “it won’t make a scrap of difference to the world what I do”; then we’re doomed before we’ve even started. If we can drop our pessimism we can avert nothing less that the Earth’s downfall! “Down with Pessimism!”

A clean sweep

Today, despite the difficulties put up by the omnivore world, there are already a growing number of people who genuinely do care and who believe they’ll stop the great destructive juggernaut before it swallows us whole.
I, for one, believe this. I want to see things change. I’m not trying to be “predictive”, I’m trying to be part of a ‘mass wanting’ for our species to surge forward. I also want to be touched by this force myself as a personal development route. Cynics and pessimists don’t see things this way but optimists do.
If we were confident of the attractiveness of recovery, we’d be more inclined to support causes such as veganism and want to be involved in their progress. Any great cause can strike a fashion overnight and mop up obsolete systems and hard nosed attitudes in a single sweep of the night broom.

Investing in vegan principle

Saturday 17th April 2010

The number one fear for most of us is illness. It’s just a few points ahead of our fearing energy-loss. We’re “precious” about that. We horde energy, since energy equates to health and any expenditure of energy must be justified and purposeful. For unsupported causes like veganism, people won’t change because they’re too stingy with their energy and doubt the effectiveness of vegan principle, despite all the great arguments for that way of life. Perhaps it’s because omnivores see no ‘me-advantage’ in the vegan deal. If we take up a cause we want to know it will make a difference, otherwise our efforts will be wasted. And there’s the rub. We’re all afraid of backing the wrong horse (horrible expression) and no one wants to be associated with a bunch of losers. It’s a gamble going vegan. We gamble with energy, time and money. We gamble on very long-odds.
Taking up veganism as an idea is hard enough but to engage our minds in it, invest in it, expect so much of it … the faith we need for this one single idea is a big ask.

Pessimism revisited

This technologically-savvy world is causing us to lose our imagination and then we don’t do what eventually MUST be done. Firstly we must stop the moneymen-cum-animal-abusers from growing any stronger, by withdrawing our support. The stronger our boycott, the more we show we care and the less disabled we’ll be. Then, if we care enough, we’ll have no trouble in tightening our belts and doing away with a few comforts. Most of us would do ANYTHING to ensure a stable future for the world.
But at present we don’t seem to be ready. We doubt that anything can be done to repair the damage done. On one level we fear personal failure, on another level we feel powerless to help, yet on another level we know we’ve been royally brainwashed. Overall we say: “There’s no stopping them so why try? There’s no point.”

The world’s self-optimism

At each conscious decision we make, that could have an ethical implication, if we make it right then we edge closer to our aim. By ticking off the boxes as we go along, we’ll be able to see progress. Ultimately (surely!) our overall goal is to focus on increasing the world’s optimism about itself. We can’t do that if we’re pessimistic or if we’re forecasting the end of the world. In other words if we keep buying crap we keep enriching the moneymen. That’s okay by them of course. So, if we don’t boycott, then things will remain as they are. In fact what’s ‘bad’ today will be driven by market forces to become even worse. If we don’t do anything about animal slavery now, history will show us to have been an uncaring people. Future generations will accuse us, quite rightly, of being too casual about a potentially catastrophic problem, and the records will show that we knew.

Optimism revisited

We have great need to become reconciled, vegan to non-vegan, non-vegan to animal. It’s the only way we’re ever going to deal with the very worst mistakes we’ve made. We are all capable of reconciliation and the best start is by reconciling with the ‘food’ animals themselves. We need to turn into compassionate folk - it’s as simple as that. First off it’s a personal thing concerning food choices. That takes us to the principle of non-violence. Next, it’s a reconciliation with our detractors, not excusing what they do but being on friendly terms with them, thence to be useful in reconstructing new habits for them. One we drop our superior-ism and move past the accusing stage, we’ll be able to see how things could possibly pan out (without us each being in separation). That’s optimism for you.

Reconcilliation

Playing the “blame game” is popular with some vegans. There’s none better at it. Animal industries and consumers in general make for an easy target, so why not give them some curry? It helps to release the anger and frustration we feel. But, constructively speaking, there isn’t much to be gained from apportioning blame. What’s done is done and can’t be undone. In any apartheid situation there’s a need to move on, towards reconciliation. It’s been successful in many political situations. It shows a deliberate moving away from the idea of revenge. This is where true compassion shows through and how the example of it can be ‘catching’. In many human situations it has caught the imagination of people and had a dramatic shifting effect on them. Here, the apartheid isn’t the human to human type but a species apartheid. The Animal Rights movement can learn a lot from the conduct of some of our predecessors. Like Desmond Tutu.

Attack

Monday 12th April 2010

Once we can see the part we play in all this and want to do something about it, we’re on the move. But often we decide to pull back by only going half way – eaters of red meat switch to eating chicken and fish, the vegetarians stop at another point, neither gets close enough to the problem to be an effective advocate for the animals. Vegans can be effective advocates of “Animal Rights” but some of us also stop at a certain but different point. First we react full strength and feel mighty proud of it (as we should, it being a great achievement) but then, when no one notices us or everyone makes fun of us, we might try to show off, by telling everyone what we’ve done and what they should also do. We become angry animal advocates, frustrated because no one’s listening … and still nothing really changes. Nothing can change if we deal with ‘animal-attack’ by another sort of attack. What does change is that now we look pretty stupid for thinking this approach could ever work.

World problems all connected back to animal exploitation

As animal consumers and therefore practising members of an animal-abusing society, we do our bit to hurt animals. The kill-club is everywhere on the planet, as is our own association with our local animal death-camps. Most people are linked umbilically to them, so they feed the very problems they aim to solve because so many world problems trace back to animal exploitation.

What’s the point of going vegan?

Saturday 10th April 2010

It’s understandable that pessimism is popular. We’ve certainly got a lot to be sad about today, but where does pessimism get us? If we’re beating ourselves up with shame and guilt and becoming preoccupied with it, we’ll forget about some of the trickier issues. We’ll sideline the most personally inconveniencing issues to concentrate on what we are told are the more urgent issues.
We certainly have many serious and urgent global problems to deal with, none easy to solve and none easy to feel effective about, personally. We worry heaps. And that diverts us from thinking constructively. We ask: “What I can do about ‘it?” and then obstinately refuse to see the connections between world problems and the principles which veganism characterises (and espouses). If we can’t get a clear run at major global problems because we think they are too big, we give up trying to run at them at all. And since we believe everything is out of our control anyway, we won’t go to all the inconvenience of taking on a vegan lifestyle in the first place.

World recovery programme

If you ARE vegan, you find yourself doing a lot of boycotting. In fact in a supermarket survey I did a couple of years ago covering about seven and a half thousand individual shelf products, three thousand of them were either partly or wholly animal products which vegans wouldn’t touch.
By breaking the “animal” cycle another cycle begins and we embark on our own “world recovery programme”, which then becomes a part of a new collective cycle.
By not breaking with old habits, by continuing shopping for items with animal derivatives, we ally ourselves with some of the biggest destroyers on the planet. We remain omnivores because we don’t see that not being omnivore will make a difference. Going vegan looks too bleak. Inevitably that belief makes us feel powerless which is just how the powerful want us to feel. We think we’ve got no power to change things but isn’t that the root of pessimism? To get this knot of defeatism out of our system we need to employ our imagination. The odds are so stacked against a good outcome that optimism might seem unimaginable and a most ridiculous position to take up. So, we invest in pessimism. We almost enjoy feeling gloomy and when we want to cheer ourselves up we go to excitement and sensation. We eat dead animals and entertain ourselves by watching horror movies and “reality T.V.” This rather schadenfreude-ish resort enables us to see worse things happening in others’ lives that in our own, and from that we get some small satisfaction. But that’s a million miles from the satisfaction of having our own world recovery programme.

Defending change

Being aware of the arguments (and the fall back position “the cruelty of it all” – yuk!) and having a few stories up our sleeve is the best defence against those who disagree. So, starting from the pivotal ‘no-more-cruelty’ position, we suggest a transfer of dollars from making the rich richer to buying no more animal products from them. If enough people do that, we can put the rich out of business or better still, we encourage them into more humane businesses. It’s our finest hour when we convince people to spend their money more wisely and it’s their loss if they continue to buy crap products and unethical stuff.

Intelligent change

Wednesday 7th April 2010

We know “shaming” doesn’t inspire people to change. What might move them is their fear of falling behind the current fashion. If we use ‘guilt’ to make people change, probably they’ll eventually oblige us; but it won’t be a permanent change. Until people can identify with a coming ‘fashion’, they won’t contemplate a ‘no-animal lifestyle’. Without that particular fashion already in place in society, the average omnivore will see no reason to boycott and so things will continue as they are. Our consumer dollar will continue to make the moneymen rich and vegans will continue to judge their friends as barbarians, who in turn will dismiss vegans as being judgmental.
It isn’t about who is right or who is wrong. It’s about being intelligent about one’s own life and values. If these ‘values’ point towards change, then we start to see it as a positive move.
Vegans need to encourage others to “test the waters”, to learn the arguments and believe in their own capacity to change. Once they have made the transition to regular vegan eating, everything else falls into place.

Fashion

Vegans want something quite badly. It’s change we want, primarily in our attitude towards using animals. We don’t just want a local change amongst family and friends, we want it amongst LOTS of people. So we need to bring about change on a grand scale.
People will change if they think it’s in their best interests. They’ll be very willing to change to keep abreast of fashion. No one likes being old-fashioned or being seen as anything but “normal”. Normalcy helps us hold down a job and keeps a certain reputation within our group. We’ll change a hairstyle or clothing to suit fashion but when it comes to a radical change of lifestyle, we’re just not interested. Vegans aim to lead fashion not follow it. If this requires some bravery, then we need lots of brave supporters.

Manipulation

Monday 5th April 2010

We want to let people know how they’re being manipulated into buying “yummy” foods made from animals. Of course, in order to push our point home, we’d love to talk more about “addiction”, but that would touch a very raw nerve.
So, therein lies the difficulty for vegans. How do we explain our reasons for being optimistic without mentioning our reasons for boycotting? It’s almost impossible to do that without offending most people. People make great daily use of all the stuff we’re telling them to avoid. We talk about saving money by not wasting it buying rubbish. We talk about the health benefits of eating only from the plant world. But mostly we talk about the guilt of the animal industries and by implication, the consumer’s guilt. This is how we distance and separate ourselves from non-vegans - because we ‘preach’ about it; but we know we can’t afford to be seen simply as shame-merchants if we want to change peoples’ attitudes.

The antidote

Sunday 4th April 2010

To fix our collective pessimistic fixed views vegans argue that the switch can be flipped - by boycotting. By convincing others why they should boycott we highlight what is most destructive in our society; by dropping our participation in that we automatically start to drop our pessimism. But there’s a little personal cost at first.
It means we start to avoid buying things we might have always enjoyed. But isn’t that a small price to pay to reverse so much dangerous destruction? It isn’t the only price – we realise by letting go so many popular food items and having such a clear ethical reason for doing so we pit ourselves against most people’s attitudes towards the using of food animals. The pessimism, the drabness of conventional attitude, the de facto cruelty people are associated with, all this is reversed by a simple boycott of products. As difficult as this may seem, it happens to be the antidote to a very entrenched illness amongst humans.

Pessimism

Today, the weight of pessimism and lack of imagination bears heavily down on us. We can’t seem to deal with our own personal problems let alone global problems. We ignore the significance of our obvious shortfalls, fed as they are by pessimism, which prevents us from seeing beyond our own familiar reality. We’re mesmerised by a dead-end thought: “In this day and age of huge, powerful political corporations making decisions and doing things we disagree with, there’s nothing we (the ordinary people) can do to stop them.” If most pessimistic people feel as though they are falling to their doom, it’s because they can’t see how to fix things. They don’t see the most obvious switch to flip. They’re caught up in a world of destruction and they don’t know how to stop destructive people in society doing obviously “destructive” things.

Optimism

Are we generally optimistic about the future? Do we have reason to be? I’d say most people see no future. They’re pessimistic and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If enough people see the future in that negative way, our collective consciousness will self-destruct. Maybe we won’t be around to see it happen … but ….
Is this ‘pessimism’ why we don’t care about repairing things properly now? If so, isn’t that spectacularly selfish of us, as well as bad karma? And who wants to be selfish? It’s so unattractive. We seek pleasure in life and it seems there’s plenty to be had. Why not make hay while the sun shines? The thought of tightening our belts and imposing personal disciplines isn’t a pleasant idea.
What we’d prefer to do is simply coast along. But the warnings of systems-collapse are everywhere. Our ecosystems, our economy and our ethics are going downhill rapidly. We know something has to be done. To ignore all the warnings seems crazy and we know it won’t be appreciated by people who come after us. They’ll say we didn’t address our problems because we didn’t care enough and that’s the ultimate put-down. But how can they ever know what we went through? How can they know why we are no longer optimistic?

Vegans who are courageous

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, brown rice and having a sense of humour. It’s a healthy position. It can withstand a withdrawal. 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 political corporations. We don’t have to be afraid of any of them because none of them have “the bottle” to take us on in serious debate.
So 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. 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 point of view and a little frightening to our opponents.

Lamb – part three

Wednesday 31st March 2010

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. At least the issue is being brought to the surface instead of keeping it hidden away.

TO CONTINUE THIS STORY PLEASE GO BACK TO DECEMBER 10th 2009. I've started to repeat these blogs by mistake.