Meeting resistance

Tuesday 19th May 2010
What sort of people are vegans speaking to when they do get the chance to speak. We always hope they’ll be compliant and eager to learn all the stuff we have to tell them about but it’s likely they’ll bogged down and reluctant to listen..
We have to consider that many people don’t feel badly about behaving badly. If they do know the suffering of animals it might not matter to them, and therefore eating these animals doesn’t concern them. There is nothing to get these people to pull back a bit on their animal eating if they want it badly enough. We can appeal to their sense of right-behaviour, to their health, to their compassion but if it’s legal and if most other people do it there’s no argument in the world that will persuade them to change. They won’t even let their minds rest on the subject of animal rights let alone change their diet. This is their food, their favourite foods, we’re talking about here. It’s the one consistent strand linking all the days of their lives right up to the present day. To attempt to alter any part of that might seem socially suicidal.
The vegan is out there, say, wanting to communicate about an entirely different reality to the one they’re used to. For the omnivore what we say is contrary to every food acceptance known. When a vegan starts speaking they’re met with a great inertia, or worse, a casual dismissing of the values we’re espousing. It’s no wonder vegans feel such a force of discouragement against them. But despite this, vegans need to work out how to move ahead, communicating despite the collective resistance.