"You are inferior"

If I think your views are inferior to mine and if I try to tell you you’re wrong, your hackles rise, maybe mostly because it feels like a criticism of you as a person. If I believe I’m right and you’re wrong it seems like I’m saying I think I’m brighter than you. In a discussion when I win the point I also lose the point, because no true overall advancement has taken place. All we have is a satisfied feeling that we ‘got that one across’ strongly, that we’ve proved our point.
Confrontation and emotionally charged one-upmanship gets us nowhere as communicators. All the time we can see a tight lipped intention not to change we are not making the connections we need for a fair-minded exchange of views.
Perhaps there’s something the righteous have in common, when talking on their favourite subject, that makes people dig their heels in. If that ‘better-than-you’ is absent then even the most outrageous disagreements can seem like fun, and can in a zany way seem quite constructive, as if our jewels might be good for “take-out”.
What we as ‘the communicator’ shouldn’t do is betray our own stand, by seeming to go along with views we don’t hold ourself in order to keep the peace. If we do that we’re going nowhere.
On some level, for vegans, there must be an acceptance of the omnivore. (For heaven’s sake, MOST if not ALL of the people we know ARE omnivores!) There are so many of them! We need to accept them and be pro-active in showing that – that’s if we want to have any chance at all of touching their hearts. It won’t work the other way round, by attack and confrontation. We’ve got to work out how to ‘dialogue’ with people, even when they disagree with us vehemently. This vexed question of whether our subject is regarded by others as ‘important’ - animal food and animal cruelty – is the foundation for all dialogue we have on this subject.
If this subject were talked about as freely as, say, environmental matters we’d be less frantic. Food and animal food and therefore animal husbandry touch a raw nerve like no other subject. For us this makes it that much more difficult to talk about than, say, an environmentalist talking environment. First up then, vegans need to ease up on the attack mode and relax into the role of ‘information-imparter’. But of course it isn’t that easy.