Article 10. Getting Aggro for a Good Cause

In a conversation which moves onto animals, their rights, animal food, etc, instead of cooling things down, gauging my words carefully, perhaps I decide to go for broke. I dive down deeper. I get into the rough stuff. What started out as a robust discussion turns into a fight. The big question here is – can we afford to let this happen, between friends, between strangers, anyone? When talk turns to fighting, our use of ‘dislike-tactics’ can win the argument. But at what cost?
Perhaps, the issue of Animal Rights is more important than staying on friendly terms with someone. If I think I’m right about an issue, I’ll want to defend my position, no matter what happens. I need to be true to my role as advocate, to defend the undefended. And this is all very noble on the face of things, but the approach is often doomed to failure. This is where a non-violence policy enters the picture. If it can be part of our own approach to life, then it can also be part of our approach to others, especially when we’re talking "animals" with them.
If we understand the value of non-violence, we won’t get sucked into fighting. Instead we might decide to submit a little to restore good feelings. We might consider letting our feelings remain undeclared. But is that realistic or even honest? If we have strong views surely we shouldn’t pretend otherwise? And why should defending a position, a serious position, have to go pear-shaped anyway? Surely the satisfaction of an argument, between two points of view, provides the heady atmosphere that can blow cobwebs away, break a few barriers and let us re-examine attitudes. A frisson of tension means the issue is alive, even if it makes us feel uncomfortable. Just by discussing it (Animal Rights) means we’re involved with each other. We are trusting each other. But are we?
This subject is a classic divider, even between close friends. A vulcanologist never knows how big the eruption is going to be. Similarly, do we ever know exactly what will set another person off? Do we ever really know where their breaking point is or precisely what issues are too sensitive for them? How much can we trust another person even if we are certain we don’t want to hurt them or abort on them?
But hey, it’s surely not about our own human sensitivities getting bruised, is it? Let’s not forget just how important this subject is, not only for me and you but for the countless animals currently living in Auschwitz conditions. Surely our own sensitivities pale to insignificance when compared to what is being inflicted on animals. If we feel strongly about this, surely passion must outweigh politeness. Isn’t a little bit of violence-in-our-talk excusable? And wouldn’t it merely look like a show of outrageousness, a bold move away from being Mr Nice Guy? But violence is violence. We are forced to ask whether it is possible for passionate advocacy to coexist with non-violence. If so, can we be sure our non-violent side is stronger than our violent side?
"Dynamic non-violence" is not the same as "not getting involved". It merely avoids our violent side being used for back-up. Take a nothing subject – the weather. We don’t need to get aggressive when discussing this, because the weather is out of our control. Animal treatment is different! We humans do control this, if not directly then indirectly. We do have a say in what happens to them. We help to keep them locked up. We’re all involved. So it’s important to get this one right.
The question is, how do we serve them (domesticated animals) in the best possible way? How can we act as their protectors? Humans, past and present, have subjected billions of animals to a barbaric existence. Many of us feel passionately about this, enough to "fight" their case. But is the standard idea of ‘fighting’ appropriate or effective? Do we need to radically re-define ‘fight’ and thereby be effective advocates by being non-violent?
Humans know how to be violent. It may not be in our nature and yet we know how to use it to protect our self. But once released does violence then control us? We think we are superior to animals, but in this regard is it they who could teach us a trick or two? Could we learn from their non-violent ways?
But we stay violent, continue to exploit animals and non-violence is sidelined. The pressure of the competitive market ups the ante and forces us to be ever more violent to stay ahead of the game. For many of us who are vegan the rightness of advocacy even proselytising is assured, but when it gets pushy it all becomes a little obscene. Then one may want "out".
As I see it, the problem is that those of us who want to stop violence haven’t yet resolved the violence within ourselves. Humans can’t be effective in helping to liberate animals until they learn to subdue their own violent natures. And so the whole sorry business just continues. What we do to them is bad enough, but how we treat each other, when we disagree, really proves why we aren’t able to help the animals, even when we so desperately want to. The fact is, we don’t understand the peaceful nature of the animals and we certainly don’t understand how deeply the violence has been embedded in our own human nature.
We assume animals don’t think. Nor, if they could, that they’d have anything important to talk about. They just graze and doze. But we know well enough that they interact with one another and with great sensitivity. They can become passionate over sex and territory, but they also show remarkable wisdom in other spheres, that humans should (and could) learn from. When animals communicate and fight, what does it amount to? They face up to each other, they make their statement (they don’t usually violate each other) and then they back off. Their aim is not to defeat or eliminate, but to lock horns, to establish intent. They usually don’t do violence because they don’t need to. Nor do they need to "save-face".
Humans don’t usually kill one another either, but they do a nice line in gratuitous violence, especially when they attack with a sharp tongue. This is violent discussion! They bring out their sharp word-weapons and engage brutal feelings without realising what powers they’re giving vent to. By watching humans having a quarrel you’d think they loved it! Once engaged in this way, our wish to be constructive soon gets lost in a sort of blood lust. When push comes to shove, humans become nasty. They don’t know how to be dynamically non-violent without becoming intimidating. Violence is so ingrained in us, that we go too quickly for the jugular. We seem uncontrollably drawn to that one particularly high emotion. The price we pay for indulging this is that it saps our energy and frightens us into ever more violent and destructive behaviour.
If I’m a true bastard, a cruel person, violence comes easily to me. But it’s likely that most of us don’t want to be intentionally cruel. We’re probably the sort of person who regrets it, whenever we start to become aggressive and yet realise it’s almost impossible to undo the damage once it’s done. Probably we let it fester - the air becomes charged with something uglier than we ever intended. Too late- too late.
Preventing this would be good but at the time it doesn’t occur to us, when our main brakes are failing, to use the emergency brake of "non-violence". Instead, we go further and further, sliding deeper and deeper into an energy drain, only to find that we are making no progress at all.