Reason to change ‘me-first’

In the process of change, if we can feel safe about changing, it might help. If we feel confident not to land ourselves in serious trouble, then we’ll change. Coincidentally, aside from the benefits accrued to ourselves from change it may also have been made for all the best reasons too.
Changes may be being motivated by self-interest but they can also serve as examples of ‘sustainability’ and ‘universality’. In their effect. But don’t we want more? More than doing the world some good? More than just doing ourselves some good? Surely we can be progressive, model citizens but attitudinally regressive simply by continuing our allegiance to the ‘me-first’ club. Attitude can be a million miles from respecting non-violent principles. (In the end, this is surely one of the main overall aims for humanity, to study the nexus between violence and non-violence, and come to a proper respect for each.)
The ‘me-first’ is in all of us. But it’s prevalent in certain activities, eating in particular. We eat for pleasure and comfort. “Don’t touch my food”, says the omnivore, to someone like a vegan. But vegans don’t ‘touch-on’ the subject of food for idle reason. We are suggesting that the most ‘me’-centred activities, like eating delicious but harmful animal foods, are so ripe for change that our very potential is being wasted like rotting fruit fallen from the tree. We are, most of us, victims of self-perpetuating, harmful habits. (These are seductive habits with ugly provenance, and I’m thinking of those connected with the brutality of ‘things’ being ripped out of bodies of fellow, sentient beings).
‘Me-first’ doesn’t mean ‘me-last’. More like ‘me-second’. (I won’t mention here the need humans have to atone for sins past!!). We need to step back from the dominator species while contemplating other tiny matters affecting us which incidentally probably don’t afflict non-human animals, matters of addiction, material insecurity and being vulnerable to peer pressure. Me-second lets us address habit change as a vital everyday process of life. It’s our growing-up tool.
Specifically, the habit changes we’re talking about here should come about not only because they’re causing us harm but because they harm animals. A habit change from omnivore to herbivore starts with boycotting. All the time animals are being enslaved and we’re buying their ‘goods’ we’re party to it ALL. We encourage their incarceration to support our own habits. Only by boycotting can we make a sufficiently strong statement - enough both to save our own souls and eventually the whole world. But just for now it’s the boycott, on a daily basis, that lets us be taken seriously. We don’t need people to see what’s in our shopping baskets but we do need people to pay attention to what we have to tell them. But we’ve got a couple of things to do before we earn the ‘privilege of speech’. Before we are, in their heart of hearts, taken seriously.
How do we achieve this? Yeh, yeh, we shift the emphasis from ‘me’ to ‘the other’. Nice idea: impossible dream?
But if it is a dream, what exactly is it a dream of ? Is it a dream about ‘me’, us humans, our kids’ futures, or is it a dream of freed animals no longer caged? What sort of world is it that we want?