Make them squirm

This very confronting subject of ours causes embarrassment and worse. They see us looking at them, taking note of what’s on their plate (or what they’re wearing). How does that make them feel?
They may think they’d rather be vegan than have vegans judge them, but it’s unlikely. Apart from the very ill, who at the eleventh hour make desperate changes in lifestyle (in a bid to avoid death), people seldom change in such a radical way. Yes, they will make changes to save their health but rarely to save their souls.
The shock of a new awareness, of something as horrible as animal cruelty, of a connection between the cruelty and the support of it by the customer should be enough to jump start a radical change. But it doesn’t. That could turn out to be the most revealing and interesting characteristic of modern man. It could mean we don’t care about others any more. It may even mean we are self centred and self serving and too self involved.
Why we act altruistically in such a way (out of concern not just for humans but mainly out of concern for animals, out of concern that humans had stooped to such levels of base cruelty to stay in business) and in such a non-self-serving way indicates that vegans won’t lose hold of that concern. If we forget the animals they are indeed doomed. And we humans for dooming them.
It’s all to do with innocence, not quite the same as the innocence of children or of the animals themselves but an innocence revisited by the adult (perhaps keeping in touch with our childhood learning, about being kind). By becoming innocent of the unkindness done to animals, by boycotting animal foods, we can restore much of the guiltlessness of our youth. At the same time we help the plight of the animals. It doesn’t seem much, alone, ineffective, but it’s an essential start.
Once we’ve made that move, to act from concern then we’ll want our friends and family to realise their concerns. And when that doesn’t happen we ask why they don’t shock as easily as we do ourselves.
That’s the level we’re dealing with when we try to persuade, speed up the process, be impatient with the slowness of societal change. It probably dims the brain, so in frustration we read the riot act to people and they look on amazed.
They don’t see our agitation, vegan frustration, in the same way as we do. They see us simply trying to make them feel as uncomfortable as they do. Life is lettuce leaves and not much more, whereas life can be full of enjoyment … and that of course includes the enjoyment in eating a wide variety of animal-based foods. If vegans are living uncomfortably why do they want me to live as miserably as them? Vegans aren’t making me feel uncomfortable for the best, most positive reasons.
That’s the omnivore speaking. Now let’s listen to a vegan digging a little deeper into the truth – vegans know they can be on the nose, we know that and yet we do it all the same. We think we do it because we’re dedicated people but it may be that we are dependent on showing contempt when ever we see something we disagree with.
Be warned, you omnivores, that dedicated activists may trample your rose beds, grabbing any opportunity, gathering any evidence to make a case against omnivore habits. It’s as if we think the whole world ought to be on trial. So maybe think it but maybe don’t broadcast it. If omnivores get a whiff of crushed roses they’ll dig in their heels. Trampling doesn’t work simply because this is a world of perception and it’s primarily emotion driven, and the collective consciousness is NOT consciously guilty about eating omelettes. What is more, nor are the purveyors. In fact for them, with their advertising and all, it’s the very opposite. There’s zero guilt … so when Mr Ape Man Dancing For Red Meat is on the ads vegans are driven mad by it. It occurs to us that everyone is dancing with apes, eating their good-for-your-iron red meat. It’s enough to make anyone pessimistic about humans … frustrated, even violent, and so it goes on. How do we stop it, the whole sorry crime against animals? I don’t know, but I suspect we first have to understand how best to expose the whole thing. And that means looking carefully at our approach to omnivores, and that in turn means also looking carefully at how we get our ‘kicks’.