Don’t get caught!

Vegans, what are they really like? Everyone is different and yet vegans do share one thing, they’ve gone where others haven’t dared to go. Some are testing the communication boundaries too. No big deal particularly, everyone achieves something where others can’t … but the Really Big Deal is that they’ve gone exploring. And they’ve possibly explored hidden depths and found a particular power in themselves … and are presently trying to work out how best to use it.
Unfortunately they’ve inherited an image problem. In public they, as people who take the moral high-ground, are often seen as people-to-be-afraid-of. Vegans have to put up with the tag, the image and the fear. It’s perhaps none of our own making but we have to cop it all the same. For the second-guessed vegan, ‘exploring’ has to be done without getting caught! If we are sprung asking too many questions, we may spoil a whole channel of communication for the future, for others too who’ll come later.
Perhaps being cunning enough not to be sprung, not to be caught, is just a reminder that we should tread respectfully, not so much because exploring others is dangerous territory, but because it’s about sovereignty. We are all sovereign beings, free and self-willed (and so it should be for the animals too). By probing attitudes we’re asking very personal questions of people. Their minds are no terra nullis, they’re individual private property. Exploring and finding out what makes people tick and what their fears are and their motivations and passions – all this is essential for us to discover ways of getting our message across. This is the art of the ‘animal advocate’. But it needs to be done ‘under-cover’ if only to be more effective in helping get animals free and seducing people into a whole better way of life for them selves. We don’t have to be too obvious about being vegan activists. In these early days we need to prepare for the days when people are starting to wonder for themselves. Then we can be there, ready and at their service.
We don’t need to brag about being vegan unless of course our aim is simply to impress our friends or get up their nose.