Dreaming of the big picture

Young people, the ‘twenty- and thirty-somethings’, looking ahead to the future and to the bigger picture ... they might dream things will be alright (or not), but for them to be involved in the eventual outcomes, to imprint themselves on the course of events, they’d have to visualise it first. How would they like it to be? That’s only the beginning, the visualising, the dreaming, the ‘big-picturing’ - the most significant step is jumping from wanting-things-to-happen to seeing the probability-of-them-happening. This ‘probable’ world may be entirely different to the sort of world we know today (and therefore it would seem improbable) so it needs to be brought on.
The technologies may change dramatically, and that’s all-absorbing for inventors of cars or planes, but another change happens with the inventing attitudes. This more than anything else moulds the future.
A young person’s interest might starts out with the adult world trappings of comfort and wizz-bang discoveries but down the track the really noticeable progress is surely made by attitude changing, towards greater empathy. That allows entry into a world not immediately obvious - suddenly we feel for starving children, the oppressed, and suddenly we’re all wrapped up in it. The need for help seems obvious. Empathy takes the place of indifference. Cooperation looks so much more intelligent than making war.
Without a picture of how-things-should-be (or could-be) we’re left with only the status quo and the future looking even worse than now, all grim and depressing. We dose ourselves with fresh ‘grimness’ on a daily basis. We say ‘it-all-looks-black’. The grim school of thinking is the junk food of fatalists.
And yet optimists and interventionists might seem like wishful thinkers. They ‘probable-ise’ a picture of a future-to-come. For example, vegans see men and women of the future as being, at the very least, fed on plant-based foods (and wearing non-animal clothing). They see these future people not as freaks or food fad-ists.
So, looking ahead, optimistically, probable-ising, we see the ‘majority’ (of mostly younger people) is routinely plant-fed, and the very word ‘vegan’ is already archaic since the food that people are normally eating is so obviously plant-based that it goes without saying. And meanwhile the ‘other stuff’ is still available on the black market (as illegal substances always are) and is regarded as disgusting.
In that probable-world we won’t think twice about living more sanely (more harmoniously) within a cared-for environment. And again, it will be so normal we won’t even need to comment on it. We’ll have progressed ... as humans do. But big deal! Cars take over from carts, word processors from typewriters, however this is daily food we’re talking about here.
When change involves our food, our diet, our whole way of looking at what we ingest, then we’ll see evidence of a shift in the collective consciousness. And that shifting-of-attitude won’t be anymore remarkable than the revolution which took place last century, in moving bodies quickly through space by stage coach then in the natural progression of things by jet aircraft.
From today’s perspective it’s obvious what’s happening here - that if plant foods play such a major role in the coming events it won’t be so much about the health bonus of plant foods but about them characterising ‘the kindness factor’. Foods and clothes and other ‘activities’ will be bathed in the sort of kindness which ... oh, it’s such a slushy word, and yet if the kindness factor is to gain momentum it will have to be forged in the heart and carried carefully to the head, to make it work.
To help, there are the little bonuses it carries with it, transformatory bonuses nonetheless - it reduces stress and brings on other health benefits, it solves malnutrition problems in the world and it contributes hugely to restoring oceans and soils, and all because we come to be kinder, we choose to pay attention to the importance of ethics entering our every thought.
The empathetic shift inspires whether others understand or approve of it or not. By way of this one inspired move, humans will surely mark their progress as a species. There is a so-obviously-better system for humans (for living on this planet) and it will simply fall into place as soon as it’s considered. Surely that is the genius of human evolution, for us to have been brought to this ... the creating of circumstances whereby something happens (“we create our reality absolutely”, to quote a famous phrase). For our own part, there’s no need for pushing and shoving, just considering. In the end there’s no need for campaigning or protesting or even spelling things out for one another. We can let it all happen naturally … wwwwunce ... oooONCE the initial attitude changes begin. (I hasten to add that the initial Animal Rights demonstrations and protests which gave most of us the wake-up call we needed at the time, sparked a revolution of consideration. The protests marked the beginnings of major attitude change).
Once the bigger picture is currency and fashion takes it up, there’s be no stopping us wanting, demanding and entering a new era of humanity.

The meaning of trust and the trust of meaning

For a young man or woman, newly independent, setting up on their own, coming to terms with their compassionate selves; for them the best way, the most sincere way, is boycotting animal stuff. That’s one huge statement of compassion. It’s a wonderful thing when you see it. It’s enough to make old-old vegans want to break out the champagne!
Compassion doesn’t come cheap. It involves a complex weighing of advantages and disadvantages, and experimenting with new ideas. This is important weighing, the outcome of which could affect the rest of one’s life. A young person needs to know they’re going to be safe - safe in a nutritional way - if they go ahead and take on a vegan-diet. It is a risk. We can only make that choice based on information received, friends, books etc. The decision requires trust - like bungy jumping, where you have to trust the strength and length of the rope. (Too cowardly, this one, ever to have done it - not enough trust that elastic bands would saves me from plunging to my death).
Trusting a new idea might take a whole lifetime (even many of them!) ... or it could happen in the twinkling of an eye. It comes down to where we’re at, regarding new ideas and taking them on board, especially where so much is at stake over food content. Once we’ve weighed pros and cons and finally arrived at a clear picture and decision, we have to trust it and go with it ... (as with ‘going vegan’). Trust bases itself on foreseeing the next stage, then the next stage after that, and instinctively feeling okay to proceed. It’s rather like climbing a hill, each step feels like hard work. But once we intend to climb it we deal with everything we meet on the way - and if we meet the unexpected or unwelcome we try to cop it sweet.
When we ‘present our self’ to a new idea and voluntarily take on all the hard work it calls for, we can find it, strangely enough, to be NOT like slogging away at hard labour. Working on a new idea isn’t the sort of work you get easily bored with. Quite the opposite, it’s gripping. ‘Meaning’ and ‘work’ meld together.
Part of this ‘new reality’ is so unlike previous work-experience that it’s hard to get used to it. Maybe we can’t believe our luck, to have stumbled over it. ‘Work’ is usually associated with factory, office or paid employment at which we spend inordinate numbers of hours dreaming of weekends and holidays. It’s quite different when work is meaningful, as is a taken-up-new-idea. New ideas give rise to imagination and give a new meaning to ‘work’.
The work of promoting vegan principle and living by it is a new type of work, not often paid and most serious work too ... and it can be frustrating, because we’re breaking so much new ground ... so things take longer. Everything needs background-ing, which means learning new and not necessarily interesting things (for instance, about modern animal husbandry methods). At first progress seems slow, and isn’t helped by the ‘omnivore-resistance factor’ or fellow activists dragging their feet. But this is a right-of-passage for vegans. We have to go through each stage of frustration to find out what sort of vegan we are going to be - a quiet one or a noisy one. If we do decide to talk with others, if we make any breakthroughs with them there’s nothing quite like it. It can be satisfying like no other satisfaction. Here we are, communicating the most important subject in the world (important not merely because we’re saving people from obesity but because we’re helping to provides a panacea for our age). Yes, it’s wonderful when it happens. But most often a wall of resistance faces us, and for good reason. We are ultimately seen as ‘the enemy’ to omnivores.
Animal Rights is a fascinating subject. It’s substantial enough to get our teeth into, communication-wise! It’s up hill, hard work, and urgent too but it’s never uninteresting. And never, for one minute, insignificant to the future of both planet and our own species. And certainly, we sometimes may need to stress that we aren’t the enemy!

Quarrelsome talk of slaughtering animals

If five years olds accept meat eating you can’t blame them, if a fifteen year old still accepts it you might start to worry, and if a 25 year old is still doing it … well, perhaps there’s still a chance for them to change. They might have recently become independent of their parents’ dinner table and have started to shop for food ... experimenting ... mind you, by 25 you’d have to wonder why meat eating wasn’t yet being questioned. Older carnivores are probably beyond the pail. Things have gone too far. They’re too far gone, with too many worldly pressures and commitments bearing down on them. A radical food change late in life is unlikely.
We may have little chance to persuade them because, to them, veganism is probably nonsense. If a drunk was throwing up on the footpath that's preferable to a vegan bringing up this subject in conversation. Anyone (who has a fridge full of animal foods) would find this subject disturbing. Two minutes into an ‘exposure to veganism’ they’d be so disturbed that, in their mind, they’d be rushing to their fridge for a pick-me-up (the fridge being our little kitchen drug store, full of remedies for soothing the troubled mind).

They’ve settled this matter in their own heads. They won’t voluntarily enter into conversation about it. They’ll steer away from all animal talk (or usually try to divert it to ‘pet-talk’) ... anything to stop themselves being lured into the trap of ‘talking to a vegan’.
They may like us, love us, enjoy talking with us … but not about this. Not about killing animals for food. To them this is rather like ‘the last taboo’. And if it is, then they’ll have one rule - no talking ‘animal’ with the proselytisers.

As vegans, if we attempt to barge through this barrier we can alter the basis of a whole relationship. It’s as if we were making a physical attack on them, enough to be in the ‘over the top’ category. They’ll talk about anything, reveal everything to us, trust us with any subject you care to bring up just to see where it’s going … but (with a vegan) rule supremo: there must be no mention of personal eating habits, especially if there’s a danger of discussing diets-based-on-ethics.

The hidden fear, the elephant in the room, is the great body-trampling logic of compassion. Destructively, vegans can intimidate people with it. But some vegans, who aren’t keen to go around attacking people, sometimes choose to say little.
“What? Keep silent?”.
But understatement and even non-statement can be more powerful than any amount of words.

In one way I’m advocating silence, because we are certainly the holders of 'truth-force', but it’s not ours to be profligate with. We mustn’t offend our friends when we know how easily it can be done. In one way we must wait till the world has become more enlightened.
“Wait?”
Even though time seems to be running out, what is it that’s so urgent?
“What?”
Every day the world eats meat and there are billions more deaths, billions more animals being purpose-bred to suffer. The accumulation of insult and damage that humans have inflicted on the animal populations is centred evidentially in the hell holes they call ‘farms’. And it’s all getting worse as intensification is forced on farmers by ruthless competition.

There isn’t any other solution here - we can only boycott it and call forth (bring on) more so called ‘cruelty-free’ products onto the market. But to generate the momentum we need to proselytize that idea we must talk ... and talking is the possible problem here, where we most often shoot ourselves in the foot. So, we must hold back sometimes.
It’s a complex mixture of approaches (a little teasing here, ignoring the whole matter there, sometimes a direct comment, sometimes winding up a conversation as it gets too close to ‘talking about animal rights’ - pushing forwards, pulling backwards, showing we are sensitive to present conditions. We will only be taken seriously when we can show as much sensitivity to the omnivore and we expect from them towards the animals. Our main job is to be conscious of the feelings at the time ... all the time ‘being-with’ that other person.

If (right now) we instinctively think it’s not appropriate to discuss this subject, our changing the subject will certainly bring a sigh of relief from our ‘co-conversationist’ friends. But from our own point of view opportunities can be non-opportunities, and we have to terminate discussion because we don't think it should be talked about, well, not in a half hearted or light-hearted or frivolous way.
Each approach has a time of it’s own. A variety of approaches keeps the omnivore guessing, keeps what we say interesting and not be predictable. We can say anything we want to say as long as it is fundamental to having compassion-for-animals. Obviously I'm suggesting we have empathy for people as well as animals. Our own compassionate nature stops us wanting to hurt anybody. But don't we also want to win trust, enough anyway to talk more freely? If we screw up here, at the permission-to-go-through-the-turnstiles end, it will show. What shows is ‘bad vibe’. That looks like judgement. That looks like us squaring up for a quarrel.

Cold hearted horror

When you see pictures of the Nazi prison camps and the Jews being marched to the gas chambers you realise some humans are monsters of cruelty, quite a bit different to those of us who aren’t. They help normalise cruelty, until it is no longer remarked upon.
I saw the movie ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’, and it said universal things to me. I felt as though I was there by their side at the end, when they entered the gas chamber. Here’s the scene: we glance up at a figure dropping pellets of lethal gas through a hatch in the roof. At that point innocence evaporates - the two boys face a cold killing ‘machine’. A child’s innocence, just like an animal’s, is being destroyed by unfeeling actions of certain humans - they never realise that such levels of un-feeling could exist. The shock of that spoils something precious ... and for the two boys it was the ultimate assault on their very sentience, their awareness. It must surely be the same shock that animals experience when facing human unfeeling-ness, when they face the executioner’s knife. This is why farmers don’t give their animals names, because they will one day have to let them go, to this ‘knife-in-the-throat-moment’.
There’s not much difference between the death camps for humans and the abattoir for animals - each shows how unfeeling, how ruthless humans can be. And it’s that trait that, in some humans, there can be a machine-mind which will commit acts that can do so much damage to our very consciousness, since it is done without a second thought. If this is the capability within human beings it’s surely an extreme of mental illness that needs to be dissolved, and that can only happen by our own personal disassociation with it. Hence, give up meat and give up associating with the machine-mind.
These images of the abattoir or the gas chamber, the emotion of them sticks in the mind. These acts against the defenceless show how far some human intelligence is corrupted. Out of accumulated fear some humans have gone over the edge, simply to get what they want. And what they want we mustn’t; it needs to be boycotted. Cruelty and violence must always be seen to be unnecessary and inexcusable.
But that’s not how present day humans see it. Nor do animal exploiters themselves see it that way. “Animals”, why make a fuss about them? They are ‘mere’ animals. They don’t have brains like ours. They are incapable of feeling and sensation and are not aware or conscious of anything. They can’t be traumatised because they can’t reflect on their own situation nor can they premeditate their own executions. In short, animals are unaware of what’s happening until it does, so for them there isn’t any anxiety or existential angst.
These explanations have comforted generations of humans. They help to lull the consumer into compliance - whole populations of people have been convinced of one thing, that what happens with animals is alright.

Props

Animal Right activists are concerned about attitude, our own first. If we are users of animals we can hardly advise others not to be. But if we’ve walked away from using them, if we’ve made a stand, we’ve done something we can be proud of. It seems obvious to say this but vegans have to stop using animals before they can help them. The ordinary individual can’t change the situation for anyone else unless they’ve changed themselves, by boycotting what shouldn’t be available anyway.
Our advice is that by reducing our dependency on the material items we think we need (most of which we don’t) we start a reduction in demand. If that is copied by others who then go on to promote the boycott idea, how can we possibly fail? Step by step it must work, until there are enough of us boycotting to affect the market place (simultaneously creating a new market for ‘cruelty-free’ products). Slow it might be but it represents a major shift in the planet’s destiny. This is one transformation of the species we are referring to, no less.
If we’re going to get out of the mess we’re in then humans have to make a few sacrifices. Some foods, some acceptance by others, some pioneer-type loneliness and quite a few comforts. Does that sound a lot? Maybe it does but we’ve been spoiled. To the extent that life is spoilt. For many it’s barely worth living. For most of us each day is filled with screaming nonsense. And all the time we know what to do about it, for the future, not straight away results bringing us peace, this is something we must be happily doing for the future, past when we will ourselves reap benefit from it.
Life is possible with just a little food and not very much more. Even bare survival would surely be better than all the luxuries if we could rid ourselves of the shame we feel. We do have a bit of atoning to do, you must admit.
Life can be full of lovely stuff nonetheless, but most stuff is material props, comforts, little luxuries and particularly the fancy foods and clothes we spend all our money on. They’re only props most of which we just don’t need.

Fouling our own nest

Wednesday 26th January 2011
I’ve just seen the film ‘Gasland’. In the United States they’ve discovered a vast ocean of shale reserves beneath the ground, from which they can extract gas. An energy bonanza. Their dependence on imported energy is drastically reduced, but there’s a catch. They can only extract the gas by a process known as ‘fracking’ - by causing mini-earthquakes to explode the shale (deep beneath the earth) to get the gas. Fine so far. But a side effect of the process is that toxic chemicals (from the ‘fracking’ process) have leaked into the aquifer under a very large area of the United States, poisoning the water supplies to millions of Americans. Here’s just another example of a valuable commodity, which appeared to be free but came with hidden costs.
On the one hand we get an abundance of ‘freely available’ energy (Nature is so generous) but the down side is polluted water, causing untold health problems.
Humans always exploit an opportunity. We love the way we’re clever enough to exploit nature’s abundance. But you get ‘owt for nowt’, there’s always a catch not always immediately obvious. It’s the same when we use animals – the creatures seem to breed abundantly, they seem so available, so indefensible, so cheap to ‘run’. How can we be blamed for making money out of them. In fact in the rural areas there’s not much else one can make money from. So animals are put to use … and the rest of the story we know.
The payback has shown up in health problems. The animals are not healthy so the humans who eat them and their by products are not healthy. It’s a very ugly situation on farms, which are economically backed into a corner over animal welfare issues, and on top of that are huge environmental problems associated with modern day farming practices. What seemed so ‘free’ before now seems so expensive, in hidden costs.
It’s the same with petrol or gas being so useful yet so polluting or with trees being so useful but so catastrophic for the environment. We humans won’t learn from one bad experience so the lessons has to be taught over and over, in many different ways, until we do learn. We just can’t help ourselves - we always have to foul our own nest.

Muddle-headed or evil?

Is what food producers do to animals evil? Are consumers, who connive with them, also evil? Perhaps, in reality, it’s more mindless than deliberate evil-doing. When something has been done for millennia, when everybody is doing much the same thing – in this case using or eating animals - it’s not likely to be thought of as wrong.
Of course to a person who does NOT eat animals, to a vegan for instance, it looks very wrong indeed. It’s all in the perception, the belief and the convention. To those in the industry, the farmers, abattoir workers, cage manufacturers, retailers, etc., it’s a living – this is how one makes money, by the use of animals. The use of animals, as we would use any resource, is seen as utterly normal. And to consumers too, who are simply in the shop buying their normal, available food, it is such an everyday occurrence that it isn’t even thought about. Any ill effects this food might have on them, let alone the harm done to the animals, is too far problematic to think about.
It’s easy to imagine what it’s like when a vegan comes along and starts pointing out the wrong of it all. It’s mystifying. These are normal foods which are normal to everyone, as well as being perfectly legal. This food is the only type of food ever known, a meal without animal-derived items is no meal at all.
It’s the same with pharmaceuticals or medical procedures, we trust they are safe, that they’ve been animal-tested before reaching the market. As with farmers producing food for consumers so with vivisectors, who believe they’re helping to fight illness. When they’re searching for a new drug to help combat some horrible disease, conducting ‘safety experiments’ on animals isn’t thought of as evil. They probably think the opposite
We humans have grown accustomed to making use of what’s available, without questioning whether we have the right to do so. It’s not much different to the motorist using petrol - it’s available so why not use it. Animals are simply a resource and therefore available-for-use.
Gradually the human race is waking up to the consequences of this attitude. Gradually we are realising that taking what is not ours might be a mistake. Not so much evil as muddle-headed.

The whole Animal Rights thing

What happens to billions of animals each day is enough to give the average vegan nightmares and yet to others it’s not thought about at all, it causes no sleeplessness; they enjoy their food and, if challenged, they’ll claim not to know anything about the ‘animal thing’ … or claim not to want to know. But is that evil of them? Are they just being dishonest about their feelings? Are they ethical weaklings? More likely they simply see no reason to consider issues concerning animals and animal foods. To them, animals are lesser beings and we humans are simply exercising our rights over them, enjoying the perks of being members of the dominant species. We expect to enjoy certain privileges that animals are not entitled to, namely the right to a life. For those animals we keep imprisoned because of their usefulness, there is no life as such. Every one of them is doomed to existence of the meanest kind. We have made them submit to us. And since they can be domesticated and bred and produce what we want from them, there’s no problem when they’re no longer economically viable to simply execute them. It’s all very efficient and that appeals to the practical brain of the human. If we can see a way of taking advantage of any resource, we take it. We never voluntarily refuse to take, especially from animals. If we do have to hunt them, because they can’t be domesticated, the hunting is done with the same ruthless efficiency with which we farm them. If their main value is in producing useful by-products, like eggs or milk, their day of execution is determined by their rate of production. When it drops they get the chop.
With our knowledge of biology we understand how a body will produce instinctively, mating, reproducing, secreting, fattening, responding in a productive way despite tormenting psychological or physical conditions. Humans know that animals will endure life-long imprisonment, let humans manipulate their breeding cycle, eat and get fat, and then go passively to their execution, at our convenience. They have nothing to fight back with so they are in our power and we can do with them as we please.
Humans are only interested in animals for what they can get out of them, mainly food and clothing. Nothing else matters. The care they’re given is more to do with humans looking after a piece of valuable property than concern for their welfare. Their right to a life or the conditions under which they live are of no interest, since economic factors govern everything. Competition for ever-cheaper product forces the farmer to minimise welfare standards to maximise outcome.
The consumer cheers from the sidelines, and would surely agree that they are hand in glove with the producers of animal foods. We expect constant supply at the shop, just as we might expect water when we turn on the tap. This is a matter of basic survival, so nothing must endanger supply, especially not our own conscience. For this reason vegans are seen to be the thin end of the wedge and it’s why we are, at present, so unpopular.

Omnivores holding back our species

We know well enough that maintaining an animal-food habit doesn’t ensure good nutrition. We know that animal foods are the chief destroyers of health, but we want animals’ bodies, so we kill them and eat them to satisfy our tastebuds and stomach. We’d suffer withdrawals if we stopped. So, that’s a tricky mental condition. If we’re hooked on animal products we can’t give them up, especially since they’re in almost everything we eat. They’re surreptitiously included in foods and we don’t know it unless we study the fine print of the ingredients. The main problem we older or sight-challenged vegans have is that we forget to take our glasses with us when we go shopping; the listings are not prominent.
Showing ingredients is compulsory on packaging. Nevertheless it being almost undetectable and amounts not stated this isn’t very helpful, unless one is boycotting the product for having any animal ingredient. Consequently more and more meat or by-product is slipped into our favourite foods without our realising. We become slaves to our own eating habits. No meal is thought to be complete without meat or at least some cheese or milk-derived product. Animal ‘body parts’ feature in most meals or snacks. And these meats, cheeses, eggs and fats not only poison us but numb us to the ethics of animal husbandry. People don’t feel ashamed of their general ignorance when it comes to farm procedures, it’s the ‘man’ in us who doesn’t think about his ethics when he’s having his dinner. And even when it’s obvious that these products are associated with our state of poor health, we still want them and continue to buy and eat them.
Even if we did want to stop using ‘it all’, we’d have too little faith in ourselves - we “wouldn’t have the willpower to stop altogether”. Secretly we realise how these habits and addictions work – you have to be all or nothing about them. Give into them or boycott them, If we don’t make a complete break they have a way of creeping back into our shopping basket.
It seems then we are doomed - neither logic nor ill health nor guilt nor environmental impact will stop us buying ‘animal’ and therefore nothing will stop the killing of animals for food, and therefore we collectively can’t move on as a species.
Having empathy for food-animals is rare, so let’s say that at the moment, here in Australia, ‘it’ isn’t happening. Animals don’t touch our hearts enough. Our omnivore friends are brick walls when it comes to animal liberation and vegan diets.
And yet people come over - vegans do exist and are growing in number, leaving behind their omnivore habits, taking up empathy for exploited animals. By walking away from the omnivore and taking up with the vegan ... is there anything else to add, anything more we need to say?

Daring to go vegan might be a mental health issue

Saturday 22nd January 2011
Let’s say that billions of people know what they do when they eat any animal product - they realise what must go on behind the scenes before the milk or meat can arrive in a shop. They’d be very naive or ill-informed if they didn’t. Let us say that, nonetheless, they continue eating them. Why don’t they stop? The question could be put another way: why would they want to?
Let’s now imagine the one percent are vegan or moving that way. It’s a tiny fraction of the world’s population. But to us, we see the world substantially differently. To us animals aren’t the same as carrots. We have never been either, but we can make a good guess, that unlike carrots, animals have a sens of their own identity and can, on an individual level, feel emotion and will walk away from danger. They know they don’t want to suffer. This much any of us would have to admit, that sentient creatures are unhappy to be slaves of humans. So, why do we treat animals like carrots? How have we come to that? How did we lose our connection with them?
Well that question could set off a whole history book of movements in humankind, moving from hunter-gatherer to agriculture to captive breeding and factory farming, but this book would obscure the ‘wood from the trees’. That it has happened is sad enough but it shines a light on a more general matter - our own dis-connectivity. Our collective decision to separate from the animals makes no more pertinent statement than our saying “animals shall not matter”. When we say what others say, that animals aren’t as ‘individual’ as we are we step onto a dangerous path. If we believe that animals are amorphous and incapable of feeling on an individual basis, then where did that come from? Isn’t this ultimately complacent?
Animal Rights and veganism come down to a mental health issue - a concern in people that although sympathetic, even empathetic, their concern is greater for their own stability than the safety of unknown animals. Vegans have taken the plunge and tested their own mental health, their dependency of animal products to give them the necessary lift. ‘Necessary’? That’s what vegans don’t accept, that it is even necessary to be frightened into staying with one’s addictions for the sake of keeping one’s mental stability. Indeed they argue that it is this very dependency that undermined mental stability ... and of course physical health.
Vegans obviously see animals as too close, sentiently, to us to treat them like pariahs. As if we thought them to be un-person, just as the slave owners did negroes or Nazis Jews.
Vegans and omnivores are on very different platforms, that is if they ever get to being on a debating platforms. We would say this: why are we allowing such a vast assault on animals to take place right under our noses? Isn’t that the most insane thing we could be doing to ourselves. Omnivores do care about their own sanity and general health, to an extent, but probably believe they’ll sort of ‘get away with it’. They’d argue that they really don’t care enough to make such a radical change to their lives. And little benefit or little kudos in going vegan, or even to become vegetarian.
If the omnivore really doesn’t care or is complacent about their own mental health, guilt, conscience etc. then they can never get past where they are now. Their habits, which at worst are barbaric and at best mindless, will always undo them.

They’re mere animals

“I’m omnivore. Why change?” Why fix something that ‘ain’t broke’? Why fiddle with habits if we’re quite happy with the habits we have? Maybe there’s a small but nagging worry that something’s not quite right, and perhaps we suspect something is broke. Maybe we believe there is no hope for the human race, that people in general are ‘broke’. It doesn’t occur to people that, to fix this we might all be better off being vegan.
Going vegan involves taking a huge punt, in order to become happier about ourselves, and that might come down to the amount of respect we have for the wonders we’ve inherited. Our self respect depends on trust, that we are not doing anything unauthorised, untrustworthy. When we reach for that favourite item on the supermarket shelf we take it on trust, that it is chemically safe, that’s it’s legal to buy it and that it’s an ethical item. Once we’ve grabbed it and dropped it in our basket we’ve already as good as consumed it, so we have to be sure before we buy. This is the moment of truth, of decision-making, and if in this moment we hear a voice inside us, telling us to “stop”, then what’s really happening to us? Perhaps we’re starting to think like a vegan?
At that point, where we’re considering a boycott or a purchase (of meat or eggs or whatever), if we hesitate, if we give it a second thought, we are at the cross roads of decision-making. We might decide to do without, or find a replacement, or to try something new. If so, something has already happened in our ‘new brain’ that’s different from our ‘old’ brain.
It’s a very personal matter. We can’t discuss it with anyone (at least, anyone who isn’t vegan) for obvious reasons. If they haven’t considered boycotting foods on ethical grounds they won’t appreciate discussing boycotts. That would almost be insulting, for ethics is close to having-brains here - doing the intelligent, sensitive, empathetic thing, or not. Discussing any side of this matter is fraught with complication. For a start, we open up a comparison; once we start comparing our decision with their default position of non-decision, then the intelligence behind our decision shows up thee lack of intelligence behind theirs ... we are comparing our vegan brain with their omnivore brain. It immediately becomes an ego battle - my brain better than yours, ‘me better than you’. It’s dangerous not only because we’re likely to be offending people but because our value judgement is a mine field; as soon as we start making personal comparisons everything from then on, by that other person, will be said defensively and self-protectingly.
To suggest our ‘wiring’ is different (between the vegan brain and the omnivore brain) suggests that one is advanced by their being empathetic and the other primitive by their being insensitive. But that’s not how most omnivores see themselves. Although a vegan feels empathy for innocent, sentient victims (‘domesticated animals’) omnivores (who eat certain animals) see themselves as remarkably empathetic and humanitarian, as evidenced by their relationship to their dogs and cats at home. It’s likely they see us as delusional and hypersensitive to the feelings of mere farm animals (who are bred to feel almost nothing). Facing off like this is pointless. There’s no end to it all. All we vegans can do in the light of their being so seriously ill-informed is to (incredulously) ask them to qualify whether they really do think of animals as ‘mere’.

Dealing with certain preliminaries first

Vegans who promote Animal Rights need to understand the size of our task. And the manner of it. People have changed over these past 40 years. We are amongst children of the Information Age. They’re discriminating (as we were in the 1970s, but they have access to more information to ‘discriminate’ with. Today it isn’t enough simply to pass on information and expect to wow people with it, today there’s more cynicism and suspicion - no one’s taking in all the new information available, just the bits they want. We who ingest are information-saturated. As communicators of ideas nothing is very straightforward, especially if the idea isn’t immediately appealing ... if it’s an inconvenient idea, like veganism.
Today, bombarded, softened up by the sheer volume of information being put out, we become pliable (so the commercial and political interests hope anyway). The aim is to intentionally misinform us, to install beliefs and credibilities into our minds, to cauterise individual thinking. They have succeeded if we follow the crowd, if we do as we’re told (as per ‘advice’). Once people have settled into lifestyle habits they’re more or less unshiftable, no different to any chemical addiction since most of the addiction to animal products concerns food and the taste sensation of it.
This is a massive hurdle for vegans, convincing people they’ve been duped, especially about their food. And yet why would they believe us, or want to or trust us enough to? There’s so much misinformation in circulation today that anything too new, too radical or too inconvenient goes into the ‘unbelievable’ basket ... or the too-hard basket.
We need something special to break through all of that. Something all-encompassing, for it’s likely that most people will have no trouble accepting that the vegan diet is great for slimming. And good for other self benefits too, but veganism is more than a diet for personal food-advantage. On a deeper level it suggests a whole other rationale for life. A different way of thinking.
Everything about being vegan, and everything stemming from it, gets the brain cells moving faster. It lets us see potential. It transforms. It addresses a lot of allied issues. Now if, for whatever reason, we’re drawn to it, if we’re receptive to the reasoning behind it, then it’s likely we’re also becoming cool with Animal Rights. We’ll hear what vegans are saying about animals and their ‘right to a life’. Whilst not necessarily agreeing with us at first, they may be ready to consider giving our arguments a fair hearing.
...Unlike those who are most decidedly NOT drawn to it. For them, everything about veganism is either unclear, unbelievable or unattractive. As animal advocates we have wear that. (I suppose that’s what this blog attempts to discuss - how to get the reluctant and the semi-reluctant to the starting post … which means getting them to listen and respond as honestly as they can). For us it’s probably the hardest part of all, juggling the responsibility with the privilege of it and the trickiness of it.
How do we expose the misinformation? How do we get people to believe we’re telling the truth? How do we address our own shortfalls of unapproachability? Perhaps that’s the main purpose of this blog, to weave a path through this undergrowth, so that we can better incite enough empathy to get people considering the plight of exploited animals.

Learning how to like the ‘enemy’

We might think that by morally disapproving of animal-product users that it’s going to stop them in their tracks, and impel them to discover the facts for themselves. We reckon we can shame, and then … it’s a piece of cake.
If only it were that easy! Our own values are usually in line with social norms, but some of these values have become so warped that wrong can seem right when enough people think so. Eating meat, for example - the only way to change the habit is by appealing to people’s individual intelligence. (“Huh!”, you say “people don’t have much intelligence” … but wrong! They have high intelligence, almost all of us have, but we choose to act without it. And that’s when we’re at our most dangerous. The results speak for themselves.
Some do make good use of their intelligence. In fact, they can be angelic in their use of it. Veganism appeals to the angelic of course. It connects directly with our ‘angelic’ centre. It shows no interest in the squalid goings-on, the behaviours erupting from devil-may-care-ism.
Use it - don’t use it. The choice is ours. We all have the ability to go either way. If we choose to endanger ourselves and others we’ll let the element of vested interest appeal to us. We’ll argue our decisions to our own advantage, well at least towards short term satisfaction. We persuade ourselves into doing what we want to do, without considering impact on others - carnivores, for instance, only enjoy eating dead animals, they don’t think about the animal itself.
Overall, our decisions are based on what we want - a lot of inner debating has to be gone through before we can persuade our self to draw away from social norms, especially those to do with food. When we get these arguments and counter arguments swirling around in our mind, we start to consider acting to principle (rather than for pleasure). The over-all pleasure of acting that way seems a better option than only doing what makes us feels better.
So, here we are, going along as normal and someone turns the landscape from black and white to colour. What a difference! Same thing happens with new attitudes, new values and principles; when we come across a new principle, if it looks impressive we can’t help but look at it. In our minds we test it out. If it convinces us then we have to act on it.
This is how I think people change. Not from fear, or coercion, or a desire for the perfect body, or social pressure. We change because we see a good outcome ahead. It excites us, sparks imagination, makes us laugh out loud almost. “Eureka!”
In the end maturity wins. It’s adults searching out and finding opportunities, not just for them self but for their families, their circle of friends. Even for public dissemination. A new principle that generates its own light show sends off lines of connection to a variety of seemingly unrelated branches of an intelligence network. Our synapses tell us when something special is happening, when we make a new discovery.
One of these branches shows light on relationship. This is the Age of Relationship and if we like another person that can be transformative for us. If we make a friend we establish loyalty. If intelligence becomes our best friend the same thing applies. We feel a loyalty to our own intelligence. When we do, we find we do intelligent things and the outcomes speak for themselves.
The popular animal foods of today will eventually be seen as unintelligent food, merely stuff they peddle on T.V., stuff they plant on supermarket shelves to winkle money out of our pockets. It’s stuff that’s manufactured by people who don’t have our best interests at heart. Eventually our intelligence will out it. We’ll avoid the stuff and look back on the days we used it with amazement.
We realise the poisonous effect of this ‘stuff’ on the body. Worse, we realise the conscience-crushing crime of it all. We realise the attraction of organic veggie shops and plant-based foods in general. Real food. Food that isn’t crap food or kiddy-food. We go for energy-food, good-tasting food, ‘adult’ food.
Drawing away from idiot-mode may need the friendly nudge. And that’s where we come in. As vegans we need to sell a product. To sell it we may need to refine our sales pitch. Our arguments must be sleek. Our information tasty in the same way foods are to the tongue.
The story so far: the animal thing (using them) is entrenched, over thousands of years. It’s world-wide. The habit has been there for a long time ... and now its over - end of story.
Vegans need to find a way of telling this story without sounding patronising, without being boring and without ego. We have to find our own way to tell it. And as for the story itself, not too much history and recrimination and heavy on the human face - retelling the story so it’s attractive. You say how can cruelty to animals ever be an attractive story? perhaps that’s where we go a bit wrong - the way we talk about animals and their rights should be drawn back to what is going on with the human - the ‘human doings’. These are interesting because they reveal our own silly habits, all of which we can and must eventually be able to laugh at. Just as we can now laugh at the terrible misdemeanours of our own childhood. We need to get people laughing at themselves. Vegans need a wry sense of humour for this approach. They need some considerable imagination ... if they want to talk to the ‘ enemy’.

A tough job for vegans

Veganism isn’t just food and feeding, it’s an idea only part of which concerns food. Getting people to adopt a vegan diet is not the end aim, it’s just the beginning. The ideas behind vegan principle, which gave rise to the diet and which inspired the boycott, need to be understood. Giving people advice simply about vegan diet isn’t necessarily going to change them as people. More light needs to be shown - there’s a need for rationale. Omnivores need something big to convince them they’ve been so wrong for so long - it has to be something big enough to convince them to get rid of some deeply entrenched habits.
Almost all of us have been brought up with certain ideas about food - that they are safe and ethical. The result of that is that we’ve become addicted to some that are made with animal ingredients. because food itemss have come to play such an important part in our lives, the products we use have become part of us, so much so that their availability out-values other core values that we thought we held. And there’s the rub. That tarnishes our otherwise magnificent self-view.
So, these would be big biscuits - admitting ‘animal stuff’ might be dodgy. We, as vegans, mustn’t underestimate what are we setting off here, by pushing the omnivore’s buttons. Our low key chats with people might have a very powerful impact. As advocates we need to understand the logic and the sequences of the food chain - why humans eat the foods they do, why they believe in them, why they like the taste and feel of them slipping paste their taste buds and down into their stomachs, why they think that their very life depends on having a good supply of them - all this has to be unravelled before omnivores can plunge into the chilly-looking waters of veganism.
Vegans might have to be the most determined advocates because the omnivore population is not going to be swung over easily.

Un-shaming the omnivores

In practice we can’t force people to think differently. And we know that without some substantial attitude changes becoming the fashion of the day we’ll get nowhere with omnivore mentalities … however we do have some pretty water-tight arguments.
No one can say it’s foolish or wicked to be vegan. Our insistence that the food is good for you and that animals have a right to a life is impressive. If that is ever acknowledged then omnivore argument goes out the window. If their argument is lost, that’s scary - therefore no omnivore wants to talk about it. They are uncomfortable with the whole subject.
As vegans we can capitalise on knowing vegan principle is a bigger and more powerful weapon than anything ‘they’ can come up with. Veganism opens up a whole side to us that was closed before, (which, in the interests of the Animal Industries, was held back from us).
Every single human on the planet (but for a handful of vegans) is uptight about losing the argument ... or about avoiding it. Does “up tight” mean we should bring on the psychiatrists? Nah, there’s no need for shrinks to sort this one out. It’s just a matter of not wanting to swallow our pride - in this case, not wanting to ingest uncomfortable information whilst not wanting to deny ourselves the pleasure of ingesting dangerous substances. It all really boils down to shame. And if that is so, then anything which could ‘un-shame’ us could beautify us.
Just to be entirely free of shame is worth a million dollars. And (in some very important, daily ways) vegans have done just that for themselves. Understandably we want others to feel what that feels like.

An omnivore’s definition of ‘friend’

If an omnivore said that ‘animal-food’ was okay, despite knowing what happens to animals and what these foods are doing to people’s health, they’d make themselves look foolish or heartless or both. Most people’s self-image can’t stand that so they put up a resistance ... anything goes. They hate being tagged ‘foolish’ or ‘bad’.
However, the writing is on the wall for omnivorous habits. It’s only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down by which time it will have become too embarrassing for anyone to pretend they haven’t noticed. Our faith in the food we eat is obviously already wobbling. Tentatively, people are flirting with the ‘vegetarian option’. They’d like to be less dependent on meat and such. Their bodies would too.
Above us, as we look up, we can see a mountainous wave about to crush us. And yet it’s a powerless wave once the lies upon which it builds are exposed - the central lie being that animals foods can keep us strong and healthy. A subsidiary lie, concerning the ‘bounty of the Earth’, is linked to ‘our duty to partake’ of this bounty. No one likes to be lied to; no one likes the authority spreading those lies. Consequently, our faith in our food is wearing a bit thin.
It sounds as though we must say to ourselves, “ I eat therefore I must believe”.
To move away from that means a radical shift of habit. And that’s an ego-shattering and frustrating experience, especially when we find it too difficult and we can’t face even trying it. It makes people feel like prisoners to their own habits.
For vegans to be free of this may be wonderful enough, but it doesn’t help with the problem grumbling away at most people. Feeling wonderful about something is sure to put others off, big time.
The reality for most people is that they are glued to their habits and can’t shift them. They can’t do it ... but, in a funny way, neither can we. We, as vegans, don’t suffer from ego-shatter but from a frustration peculiar to our new habits which don’t necessarily help us when it comes to defending our vegan food habits to the sceptical. That’s embarrassing. But not as embarrassing as the omnivore’s inability to defend their own lifestyle which centres about eating abused animals without that habit being defensible or justifiable.
As vegans we are ‘charged’ with the job of ‘experting’ ourselves ... in order to be able to defend veganism. We have extremely powerful things to say. We have a certain power but it’s how we exert and respect that power that is critical. We must realise that what we say is not only potentially the most constructive thing we can say but can also be the most destructive. If what we say rubs salt into the wound, it can only unleash a dramatic response - if we stray too deeply into ‘enemy’ territory, whether with friend or relative, we can expect they might want to ostracise us, for the very reason that “no friend does this and calls themselves ‘friend’”.

Nursery teas

What confronts us, as vegans? Here we have the whole of omnivore consciousness formed up against our puny vegan push. It’s no wonder they can ignore us, for what are we? What do we have to fight them with, weapon-wise? All we are is a few nervous advocates on soap boxes calling out to passers-by (we’re so nervous that we often spend our time squabbling between ourselves, to generate another scrap of self-confidence with which to fight ‘the bastards’).
With what do we have to fight ‘the good fight’? Perhaps only our own intelligence, plus the knowledge that veganism (itself) is unarguable. Pretty much. That’s what the omnivore dreads most and therefore what our own confidence should mostly rest on.
The clarity of our vegan philosophy acts as a Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of every omnivore. It peeves them that they are unable to talk about this particular subject without sounding foolish. And what is more embarrassing than being thought of as a normal, independent-thinking, intelligent person who is forced to think like the mob, simply because they can’t face the reality of going without their nursery teas? The child in us prevents our growing up when it comes to food and treats and the ‘yummies’.

Life without lobster, my dear, just imagine!

Winning support for Animal Rights was never going to be easy. We live in a conspiracy of misinformation which suits almost everyone, because it allows us to be speciesist, which in turn allows us to buy the animal foods we want.
While vegans are trying to defend abused animals, non-vegans are trying ‘not to give a damn’ about them. The educated food lover wriggles in an ethical quagmire, sinking deeper each day by using bits of dead animals to cook with. They might practise the pseudo art form know as ‘cuisine’. Animal-cuisine lends gravitas to food, transferring sensitivity (for animals) over to the aesthetics of taste sensation. This cuisine ignores the ethical provenance of foods and emphasises the ‘food quality’- the origins of animal foodstuffs are unimportant. It’s the indulgence in them (savouring them and salivating over them) which is important. The omnivore gastronome drools over foods, especially the wealthy who can indulge themselves in the exotic without a single thought to the obscenity of what they’re eating. Our favourite fleshy foods must not (“and will not”) be given up lightly - life without lobster is unimaginable.

Light switches and dark rooms

Thursday 13th January
The status quo is like a lump of concrete - at present it is set strong. It’s stronger than anyone’s good intentions to change it. We have to deal with this and not fight the reluctance-to-change head-on. For us, this particular reality includes some disappointment in our attempts to raise awareness. That shouldn’t piss us off. It will always be hard to persuade the omnivores to switch across, especially those vegetarians who are rightly proud of the progress they’ve already made, getting away from eating meat. The sequence of events depends on initial attitudes being in place - if an attitude is locked it shuts out any progress.
However far along the line we’ve come there’s often an attitude sitting there blocking our way and dragging us to a halt. Our own attitude blocks (complaisant pride at our own ‘so-far’ progress holds us back. It could be a springboard for further change, by evaluating and re-evaluating where we are.
We might feel in charge of a great lumbering machine, wanting to be moving forward but unabl;e to because we can’t see where it’s going, what it’s aiming towards. That’s why I think vegan reasoning is so useful because it shows us exactly where the ideal is, up ahead, not how to get there but why we should be moving in that direction. It’s our reason to move, without hesitation, with direction.
Humans seem to have always been in dark rooms, looking for a light-source. Collectively we are groping about, searching at random and getting pathetically small glimpses, sometimes. There’s an appearance of chaos, of the unordered and of the not-very-promising. It seems as if most humans have been high-jacked by beliefs that prevent us from discovering what should be obvious (where the light switch might be found in the dark room). ‘Groping’ is not a good look, it takes energy and concentration to little effect, and it makes those around us feel nervous.
Once we locate the light switch all is clear. Once we go over to another attitude (in this case a respect for the animals we’ve been eating for so many years) we’ll have a more confident grasp on a more appealling reality.
On one level we already know that there’s a parallel reality to the one we know about most of the time. In that ‘reality’ we can see things in almost the very opposite way to the way we were brought up to see them. It is less obedient to authority, more confident of self and therefore far freer ... but also far more disciplined. To discover the order behind the chaos, to stop being so subservient to convention, to stop being random in our decisions we need to see how sequence rules everything. The following of sequences brings us from here to there, from one reality through to the newer (but less tested) reality. A vegan diet, for example, is certainly less tested than a conventional diet, and yet it’s obviously a more intelligent way to go (simply because it’s safe, clean and energy-producing, etc.) The same would apply to compassionate attitude which seems so much cleverer than conventional thinking.
In a parallel reality, on a subconscious level perhaps, we do a lot of planning. Dreaming perhaps. But in this quiet-moving reality we follow sequences that appear logical. We foresee events. And when they arrive we’re already familiar enough with these events to deal with the problems as they come up. For our own personal satisfaction that’s useful enough, but it also benefits ‘the greater good’.
Always in front of us is the common aim: to eventually rescue the animals as well as rescuing our own drowning souls. In other words the sooner we can relax about the hugeness of the challenge (and the near impossibility of these major changes becoming fashionable), the sooner we’ll be able to entertain another reality, consciously. That will almost certainly satisfy our needs, to be on the move, to be working for our cause (whether that be to get people to go vegan or to get people to go non-violent).

The sobering effect of reality

What we are finding out about the effects of veganism on our whole organism, just by going vegan, is so beneficial to oneself that there’s an urge for us to pay back. Gratitude brings out the generosity in us. Our time might be precious, our effort and energy precious too, and yet we want to spend it big ... to promote what we’ve discovered. “Hey, I’ve got an aim!” (which is not the same as big-noting or boasting about a personal achievement). My aim says, “At last it’s clear, I know what to do ... so bring it on”.
That’s such a wonderful sensation that any amount of effort would never be enough pay back for such an amount of strength of purpose. Most activists I know are so grateful for what veganism has shown them that they feel constantly energised by it. We’d do anything to further the ‘clean-up’, to ease the animals’ pain, to ease our own conscience. Therefore it’s natural, for any one of us, to want to build a strong support base for animal liberation.

Communication and optimism

An optimistic vegan is like a small boat in a rough sea, facing up to a whole array of challenges, rewards and emotional outbursts (‘animal-people’ get emotional!). However grim things seem, however gloomy the outlook, optimism must remain the driving force; we must aim to succeed against the current reality of this animal-abusing society.
We have a set of values and we need to stick to them up to the end. The reality taunts us with how big the turn-around will have to be but it keeps us on our toes. Unless we keep optimistic we’re merely fighting a rear-guard action and that’s no fun. The greatest satisfaction for any proselytising vegan is in standing up to our detractors and holding firmly to the most optimistic outcome.
Both omnivores and some within the Animal Rights Movement are loyal to the god of failure. They refuse to see it all changing. They try to squash optimism. They come from different directions to each other, but each tell the same story - how impossible the task is. Human attitude won’t change. They either think selfishness will always win out or that governments will always be too weak to alter things, never accepting for one moment that the ugly, poisonous stuff stolen from animals’ bodies or the corpses of the animals themselves will be turned away from as people wise up to the world they’re living in.
Whether it’s the gloom of fellow activists or the hopelessness of trying to alter the eating habits of the vast majority of the population, always it’s the gloomy reality that tries to warn us not to expect the impossible. And yet people do change, are changing - just look at the many, many vegetarians there are today after a mere thirty or forty years where before that there were practically none. And now there are many considering going vegan and many practising vegans willing to speak up, about issues. Anyone heading towards their own ideals would have to agree that it is dangerously counterproductive to be defeatist, especially since we are at such an early stage of consciousness-change.
Optimism becomes more of a reality when you think of work pleasurably - the whole task of trying to change vast numbers of people’s minds isn’t made difficult by the ‘impossibility’ of getting a good result, it’s made difficult by our own grumbling sense of inevitable failure. Since we’ll never know what might happen up the track (in people changing their attitudes) we can’t afford to fail before we’ve started. It helps for us to remember just what has to happen, the sequence of things, how it was for us; what barriers have to fall before the next one is exposed, and in turn falls to the next.
Here we are, moving from a basically, fairly selfish life (human-centred at least) to another type of life, with a different perspective; we find we’re doing something for ourselves but that becomes ‘doing something for others’, and that fits in with our overall aim. “Work”, always associated before with boredom and reluctant effort, is becoming something entirely different too. Drudgery-work turns into a pleasure because it has purpose. What a surprise! The odds against us don’t have to be a serious consideration, as long as we’re determined and heading in the most (vegan) principled direction.
A correspondent’s reporting work can be gratifying in the midst of what looks like an impossible war - vegan advocates are merely reporting some little-known home truths, both about ourselves and about what humans are doing to animals. The outcome will be as it will be.

Rocky road

Convincing people of the link between food and the slavery of animals should be dead simple. But it isn’t. We are the ‘spoilers’, for trying to do just that. But so what? We know it might seem that way when we open our mouths, when we try to alter attitude. And we know our intentions are good - the very opposite of spoiling people’s eating pleasures.
Attitude colours everything we think about. Pleasure pushes its way to the front, so for omnivores eating comes before thinking; their insistence on pleasure delays personal development. Vegans can only clear the path ... and wait. Our insisting that a lot of what’s eaten is ethically wrong is simply removing heavy rocks from a path to make travelling on it smoother, and the bigger the rock the more useful vegans are for trying to remove it.
Learning how to lift these attitudinal rocks is part of essential training for vegans. We pick up rocks wherever we find them and ultimately that’s the best training we can get, for communicating this awkward subject.

Aim

Our common aim is profound enough. We need to draw energy from that. Our aim is reached by eating plant-based foods and seeing the connections between the food we boycott and the treatment of ‘food’ animals. This is why we decide to become vegan in the first place; we aim to protect certain values and explore the nature of our own humanity. This is how we stop being ashamed of our complicity with animal exploiting. And from these conclusions we see a role for us to play - to get people talking about animal issues.
As vegans, if we are the sort who want to go around talking and proselytising, we should learn how to do it effectively. The job of public-addressing involves outlining the sequences we go through in the waking-up process. First our attention is caught by seeing how cruelty and animal products go together. Everyone knows the worst abuses with chickens in cages and pigs in sow stalls. Then we start to see how ‘clean’ food leads to a clearing view of world events. If people were vegan animals would be spared, our health improved, world starvation would be a thing of the past and the threat of global warming would be massively reduced. The sequence of one thing leading to the next, from food to good nutrition to plentiful food supply to cleaner farming impact on the environment, shows how the world could benefit from simple plant based food regimes. The omnivore needs to be helped to see these sequences, but for that to happen vegan advocates must speak the truth when proselytising Animal Rights.

What’s going on here?

Saturday 8th January
Vegans can be so irritating, especially those who try to invade the public arena.
The difference between two types of vegan - those who don’t proselytise and those who do. There are good arguments for both types; vegans who speak out in public are sometimes pushy and off-putting while those vegans who don’t speak out are benign and yet seem afraid of confronting people. Outspoken vegans do invaluable work, quiet vegans do too by setting a fine example of silent strength. I think both types are valid, but they’re not mutually exclusive. They can coexist in the one person.
If that part of us, which chooses to go into the public arena, is going to become stronger it must be able to deal with opposition. Including those who just ignore us. When the public shuts off from us they’ve the swagger of rulers - they know they’re in the vast majority. Their opinions are strong because of that. And this is the immutable omnivore mind-set. Nevertheless we press on. As advocating vegans we can expect to turn the obstinate public mind simply be enjoying the game of reaching into the public ear. That’s never NOT intrusive ... but it needn’t be too much so. All we want to do is initiate discussion. We can take a few blows to the head, a few insults and jokes at our expense, just so long as we start discussing ... the pros and cons of animal issues.
It may be all very well for me to say that, but none of it is that easy. To ‘initiate’. As soon as we beg the public’s indulgence (“lend me your ears”) we look pathetic. Apologetic. And we lose them. As soon as we dispensing with any pretence of getting permission, as soon as we bring-on the subject, we almost force them to listen ... but listen they do not. Instead they run. And again we’ve lost them. So, whereto from here? A surprise attack may work, but I doubt it. Humour works sometimes but it gives the impression that it’s a light-hearted subject, which it’s not. The trouble is, already we have a bit of a reputation. Vegans - the ‘new’ evangelists on the block. At best we’re regarded as New Age. It’s almost as if there is something a bit smelly about us and instinctively omnivores run away from that.
At 7.30 on Tuesday there’s a discussion of Animal Rights, I’ve rented the hall, plenty of chairs, free tea and biscuits at half time.
“Avoid, avoid”, it’s enough to turn anyone off - some come, but the event is poorly ‘turned-out’. And it’s the same with a street demonstration. Six people with placards. This is a protest-lion which cannot roar, only purr - it’s all too sad because it’s all too little. The same old faces ‘turn up’ to give support and we get one omnivore kind enough to take a leaflet. Yuk. One creepy event!
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that ‘the event is dead’ - the thrill of being part of a big rebellious family, amongst a big crowd of other vegans, asserting our right to be heard ... it’s no longer realistic. Our brave little protest looks more like huddling together for our own comfort, and that obviously doesn’t inspire anyone from outside. All it does is justify our own existence, it make us feel as though we are ‘doing’ something. It’s an illusion - something happening, someone organised ‘the event’, the lion roaring and the public giving us, at best, a tummy rub. At worst, they pay no attention to us at all.
The one event that is well attended is a food fest. It’s always good for a feed, but as for disseminating ideas ... forget it. However, there will surely come a time when talk itself becomes the main course. It will be the only thing left that can satisfy our gnawing hunger for truth. And that will come about following the interminably long period during which there was rampant manipulation of people’s minds. The order of the day is untruth. Most of us expect lies and are numb to them. Eventually we must tire of that - as discriminating adults, we’ll eventually want to know the facts, so that we can weigh the pros and cons ... before making up our own minds on the vital issues of the day.
That’s the sort of age we are in, an information age, a judge and jury age, where each person comes to their own conclusion without having to struggle through a whole barrage of misinformation or a whole library of books to find what they need to know. Information is the new food. It’s helping us to unravel our own tangled present world. The out-spoken vegan wants to unravel some of this mess, clarify ideas ... and, for heaven’s sake, tell people WHAT IS GOING ON.

How appealing - a lover!

An animal advocate, fighting the cause of Animal Rights, has a life-long objective, some might call it an obsession.
Such an aim as living by vegan principle is, like having a lover, good company. It’s a cause, an ultimate source of satisfaction, an intimate tester of our own shortfalls, a source of confidence and it fills our lives with meaning. The testing bit we may nor like at first, but, like the true lover, it is concerned for our long-term education. To have such a mighty aim calls for changes in one’s personal life, which sets off a sequence of events perhaps unnerving at first. The sequence obviously starts with food and vegan principle, and this goes on to signal a major turning point in our life. But as we go deeper into it all, our ‘going vegan’ leads us into a more natural life. We ‘go’ more with Nature and then towards a love of Nature.
With animal liberation in mind the whole journey starts with a private diet. And by being more in keeping with Nature we find ways of making our vegan lifestyle appealing, first to ourselves and then, by talking about it, to others too. By showing ourselves to be happy with all these changes and then to go on to feeding people (with the sort of food we eat, vegan food), we make it appealing to the public mind.

Our aim is to talk

Once we have an aim, such as going vegan, and have cleaned up our act by going vegan, we’re in a position to be useful. Once we’re eating from plants, clothing ourselves from plants and thereby coming to terms with our conscience, then we’re in motion. First, learning new ways of preparing food, learning about basic nutrition (for our own safety) and then moving on from there to learn about modern-day animal-husbandry (concerning the animals’ unsafety).
To set this ball rolling we need confidence in all sorts of ways. We need it to confirm our decision to go vegan, then we need it to carve out great chunks of time and energy for the ‘work in hand’ (involving learning new information and methods needed for talking about this subject). Already our own vegan diet has started off this process, generating self-confidence, but it comes more so, when we start thinking more deeply about it all. Our thoughts develop from food to the animal sacrifices made for food. We start thinking about how it might be ended - the slaughter. And we come to Animal Rights.
“Oh!” We have to entertain thoughts like “No more lobster, no more ...”.
This whole matter is far too serious to think about human inconveniences. This history of exploitation has to be put to rights. It has to be about them rather than me. It’s the story of their suffering we’re learning about rather than my health and enjoyment. Once we’re on this path we’re advocates-true, and so much closer to being able to talk about it sensibly. Sensible talk (truth) is interesting talk. Now we have a whole generation of people wanting one thing - information (truth in other words). And that is precisely what vegans can come up with. (Over thirty years I’ve never heard any arguments saying vegans are lying!).
Once we’re established as practising vegans then we can move into advocacy. And yes, that might mean getting a communication ‘up-skill’. Animal advocates who aim to promote the liberation of ‘food-animals’ need to convince people to stop supporting the Animal Industry, that all. But that means introducing the whole matter of animal-use to people who’d have otherwise not thought about the subject.

Sequences - the reasoning behind a decision to go vegan

Let’s say I consider the possibility of going vegan, then my first question is probably going to be why? Why go this far? Why open this Pandora’s Box and invite so many questions (and their sibling answers)? Wouldn’t it be best to NOT consider issues concerning domesticated animals? Best put it all on the backburner?
We might reason it out that, amongst other important and urgent issues facing us, there’s no room for ‘animal issues’. Take them off our to-do list. And there again, we might not … we might reckon this issue far too important to shelf. So maybe we do take it on. And in doing so we end up heading towards a vegan lifestyle.
Veganism answers so many questions all at once - any number of hatches open simultaneously. Each presents new thoughts, and each new thought is as important as the other. When all the hatches open at once it’s disturbing. Can a plant-based eating regime spark so much all at once? It’s true that for all of us, becoming vegan is at first almost-overwhelming. The very thought of it is enough to stop us in our tracks. Yet we don’t stop.
Like pregnancy, being vegan is all or nothing. As soon as the idea is taken up we experience an explosion of insight, after which (when the flash and smoke have died down) one thing remains - the structure of the changes that are going to be involved. In the mind at first, how did the change take place, what actually happened? What is the usual chronology of events? What is the logical sequence? Now I decide ... I’ll do this. What can I expect to follow? If I take this step is there no going back? Is there something strong within any one of us, which says “don’t retreat at the first hiccup, push through, don’t give up”?
Somehow the idea itself takes on its own momentum and we either ride with it or we jump off, before it picks up speed. If we decide to go with it, we know it’s not a frivolous choice, and yet it’s one we have to learn to relax into. Vegan lifestyle obviously, in theory at least, looks better than our old lifestyle (which can be as dull as the description of it, as a ‘meat and two veg lifestyle’).
As with the development of speed travel, with aeroplanes for example, veganism starts in one place and moves quickly to show up what had, before, been completely unrecognisable. An apotheosis occurs: tiny biplanes using propellers, then light metal structures allowing bigger engines, then supersonic jets and speed travel. If the aim was simply to fly we’d have stayed with romantic biplanes but if it was speed-travel then we end up with what we have today. Vegan consciousness is really a speed-travel idea, a sped-up version of the old lumbering style of omnivore-human survival method. And now we have (the behemoth of) mass denial of logical event-sequence. Independent thought has been sacrificed for the wall Everyman helps to build, to stand huge against what vegans are saying. Our own certainty in vegan principle, as a universal truth, is all we have to fight this denial with.
The reason we become vegan is to overcome the denial of omnivores. We know we’ve got to do whatever needs to be done to win their attention. Get them talking. get them to trust us not to be scheisters. To know we show ‘genuine’ natures.
We have to become strong enough in determination, that we’ll keep in mind why we became vegan - to free the dear, voiceless creatures from their ugly prison farms. That’s the primary reason. That reason has to be more important than any other consideration, and of course there are plenty more. Plenty more reasons to become vegan.

It feels satisfyingly right

"Satisfaction" and "meaning" are the big drivers in life. As soon as we formulate our main aim (in this case, animals not being killed on our behalf) we can start to feel interesting ideas radiating out from it, as if something new is being born, well, at least something new happening. In our minds, in a sort of giving-birth way or an ending-of-constipation way, it’s a private happening. We’ve arrived at a conclusion that has been conceived inside our own heads. And like a foetus it moves, it takes on a life of its own. And all the potential of it comes flooding in, as soon as we decide to contemplate it as our aim. This ‘aim’, as it becomes clearer, comes down to a matter of choice. Decision time. Perhaps we decide to give it a shot.
As one becomes more concerned for the plight of captive animals so we notice, mainly with ourselves, a change of heart. There’s an emergence of empathy. And there’s an instinct to go with it that says empathy is a step in the right direction. It feels mature. It feels unquestionable ... because it’s always connected to compassion (something which so obviously is needed in this violent and wasteful world). It touches the very core of who we are, as representatives of the human race. Satisfaction-wise, that’s worth a lot.

The ‘new’ altruism

Altruism is really a perfectly balanced two-way road, both selfish and selfless, intertwined. It doesn’t ‘ work’ if separated.
Take the idea of selflessness, it leads to insufferable saintliness. It’s unsustainable. And the opposite is just as ridiculous - the selfish world leads to trouble. It’s strange how altruism has been highjacked by the morality mob. By taking things towards idealism we hope to appear definite; we try to define ourselves by holding some strong position that everyone will approve of. It gives our life meaning and makes us look good too, but because it’s so far out of balance it doesn’t succeed.
The saintly, unrealistic and selfless faces-off with the selfish and the materialistic; good versus bad. The only way an extreme can work is in relation to the extreme opposite, so if we’re really bad we have to do something really good to balance it … and that’s so contrary to nature that it fails miserably - any attempt at extremism which calls for overcompensating is energy draining.
‘New’ altruism suggests it’s foolish to go out to extremes. If our altruism is reserved for useful work it won’t get sidetracked by extremes. It will operate on low levels of selfish and unselfish motivation and thrive that way. It’s not as impressive, it’s slower to get results but in the long term … well, that what I’d be backing anyway.
If this is the new altruism, what does it mean? That the slow-but-sure, in-balance way brings satisfying results? It is the expectation of getting a result that drives us on. And wouldn’t that be ultimately what we want? We all surely want repairs to work? And if they work, wouldn’t that be the ultimate result? What else could we wish for? If it works for us personally, there’s good reason (in our perception) to be optimistic about our own future and that of our civilisation?
It’s a circular argument that never gets resolved of course, that we need to ‘do’ altruism in a balanced way to feel good about ‘doing’ it in the first place but we need to feel good about it in order to reach balance. It comes back to optimism being the bright light in our lives, and that everything we do is made that much easier if we aren’t gloomy about things. An optimist may take a very pragmatic, benign slant on things, saying, “So what if all this damage has taken place? It can be fixed”. Optimism "ups" the energy. In turn, our ‘upped’ energy improves our chances of making the necessary ‘large leaps ahead’. They’re attitudinal changes. They’re not the easy ones, they often mean some hard work, they’re changes which to the casual observer aren’t immediately obvious, they’re not necessarily, straight away, attractive - but it’s this scale of change, attitude change, which most helps us make transitions.
Going vegan is an ultimate transition. And even if the rest of the community doesn’t click into it, for us it can be something worth aiming for. By not confirming our don’t-care-about-violence attitudes, by being a day-to-day vegan, we set a course in a particular direction. And we do that not because it’s right but because it means something to us. And it means something beneficial to others too. It is, overal, instrumental to a good outcome.
Amongst all the blather of modern day man, with all the hype, nonsense and untruth of today, veganism stands out, alone, a beacon of sanity. It’s optimistic and, in balance with Nature, looks pretty good. For a vegan it feels right. It’s as if one is dressed appropriately for the right climate. For vegans, anything we can do to promote the vegan principle will be inevitably satisfying, to us and indeed to all of us.

Selfless or selfish

When we get serious about repair we’re doing something big for ourselves and something even bigger for the greater good (which of course includes saving animals). To make this work we have to be a little self-disciplined; it means avoiding what is sensually attractive to us, because of its origins; it means avoiding any number of attractive, traditional foods.
At first this seems like a massive sacrifice (which we automatically associate with discomfort). To get past this, we obviously need some strength-of-intention. But once this first hurdle is jumped another level of enjoyment is reached … and the rest is the journey towards both repair and personal satisfaction.
Going vegan starts out as a selfless establishing of new habits, but then, as effort is rewarded, the selfless becomes self benefiting. What we want for others we want for ourselves, and this smacks of altruism of course. But it’s just a concept. Our own altruism may be mistaken, exaggerated, very based upon Western-Christian-good-bad but all it needs is fresh meaning to turn it from a dull difficult idea into something far more interesting. The ‘new altruism’ doesn’t have to be me-centred or you-centred but a sensible balance between the two, to suit common interests.
It comes back to a central question: am I convinced there’s enough in altruism in me? That depends on whether I think it works. Linking altruism to the relationship between me and animals makes me ask myself, why is this important enough to me? Why would I step out for them? And on the other side of this altruism - what’s in it for me? Ultimately - why would we want to become vegan? Why would I want to do that to myself?

Satisfying repairs

A big part of our life should be about repair. Most of us are devoted to something, feel strongly and perhaps act strongly about the most important issues in our lives. It may be care for trees, for children, for peace, whatever it is we want to repair it if it’s broken or harmful.
But however noble our repairs are, unless we find ways to enjoy the repair process itself, we won’t keep it up. Eventually the novelty will wear off and it’ll look too much like hard work; we won’t have enough motivation to do long term repairs.
Whether we get good results or bad results, the thing we want to repair must be so important to us that to risk losing it or see it harmed would be unbearable. The ‘subject’ under threat might well be satisfying in itself, dealing with it, contemplating it working on it. A hobby, a fascination, a cause perhaps. Most great causes are controversial and not altogether black or white. There is mixed reaction because it probably affects all people who will react in totally different ways.
Certainly Animal Rights is like that in as much as the subject is ever fascinating. It has so many facets and implications. Certainly it is under threat as the attack on animals increases. Today there are many people on the trail of the bad guys who do these terrible things to animals, especially those making a living out of it. They are probably passionate about their livelihood as we are about bringing it to an end. Thamachine they see as working we see as a catastrophe. It’s a very significant subject concerning all of our race, that we think needs urgent attitude-repair. So, yes, if we’re into repair on this scale it’s best we get close to the subject itself. Enjoy dealing with it, on whatever level.
By connecting personal fulfilment with practical repair work, we can make changes less painful and actually enjoy the work involved. By deciding to become vegetarian (no longer using meat and products taken from animals’ bodies and thereby keeping our health as well as keeping animals off death row) we appoint ourselves repairers. When we get into liberating animals then almost anything we do we prmarily do for them, and so it is going to be satisfying.