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.
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