No-use-animal

Sunday 5th September 2010

If a vegan decides to talk to a non-vegan, about animal liberation, we should give them something to chew over when they get home (perhaps alongside that tasty vegan pie we’ve cooked for them). On this very serious subject we can leave them with the germ of an idea, without leaving too many bruises behind.
If we really want to communicate the essence of this subject with people we have to talk their language not our own, which may include lots of typical vegan-to-vegan detail. They need something they can understand. Plus they want to know what they can do about it, if they accept it.
But even before that we should get them to understand some of the fundamentals, about the gradual nature of change, about being gentle on ourselves and about NOT becoming overwhelmed by the idea of moving on attitudinously. The task ahead is, of course, ‘going vegan’ – accepting that animals shouldn’t be being used and, to prove the point, boycotting everything animals are used for. That change, the moving-towards-veganism, may be slow but it does need to be consistently on-the-move.
If the wrongness of ‘using animals’ isn’t talked about then all the chit chat over free-range farming and more humane killing is wasted talk. The point from which any useful discussion may start is at this first principle, the non-using in any circumstance.