Traps for vegans

For those who do become animal advocates, being creative as well as compassionate brings out the best in us, in that we are addressing one of the most important and difficult questions facing humanity today – human dependency on animal flesh. It plays havoc with human conscience and does terrible things to our bodies. A vegan is relieved of both by using only plant-based products. There’s satisfaction too in having something meaningful to devote one’s life to – campaigning - whilst ensuring a longer, healthier and more energy-filled life. But there are traps along the way.
At some stage vegans have to decide what sort of activist they are going to be. It’s a matter of not falling for the obvious; it’s tempting to go to war against everyone but much harder to keep our cool; it’s tempting to give up on people when we’re being so rebuffed by them; it’s difficult not to get touchy or get trapped by anger.
To avoid falling into the most obvious traps we need to first be convinced that any type of violent approach will fail. Protests that get violent are good fodder for the media, and will always be self-defeating.
Protest itself sows the seeds of truth in people’s minds, and we hope it takes root when the time is right. The raid on the factory farm, to take video footage of conditions, provides a powerful argument against these places. People switching on the 6 o’clock news and seeing for themselves what’s happening there can’t get away with a ‘no-one’s-noticing-so-what-the-hell’ attitude. And yet people who want to forget what they’ve seen will do so and go straight back to eating the very animals they’ve just seen horror footage of. Other forms of protest can be even more forgettable. Activists will try everything, appealing to logic, health, compassion, outrage, speaking up with passion and yet still fail to connect with the omnivore. Perhaps the trouble is that we don’t know how to communicate peaceful philosophy without sounding agitated. And ‘agitated’ is close to frustration which is close to anger ... which is ultimately unattractive.
There’s another little trap here for vegans. A personal factor, where we want to be motivated, want to continue with our enthusiasm, want to feel confident and not lose momentum ... so we go begging for encouragement only to find there is none. Amongst omnivores there must be none. Omnivores will do everything in their power to dis-spirit us - on no account must we get a foothold on public attention, for if we do then food fashion changes towards plant-based foods. That will cause hike in prices for those foods, which in turn sends people looking for lower cost, alternative foods – namely more plant-based products.
If that is the trend in future years wouldn’t the weak and defeated vegans of today feel silly, to have had so little confidence in the native intelligence of fellow humans (admittedly only when the chips were down). And wouldn’t the optimistic vegans of today have something to crow about, having been confident and supportive of those omnivores who were in the process of considering change.
The trap within that trap is in our own shaky self esteem – where we need recognition in order to keep pounding the public psyche. We need them to take us seriously (absurd though this is – wanting encouragement from people who are in no position to give it).
Vegan activists are annoyed by people not listening and let themselves down by getting too touchy too quickly. The trick for us would be to coordinate the public’s ‘need for information’ with our own ‘need to be noticed’. If we can’t balance these two needs we’ll fail and likely fall into disaffection, furious at the whole of humanity, for its obstinacy. (A bit like a three year old stamping their foot when they can’t get their own way).
Wish as we might that we could ride rough shod over all the people who hurt animals, we need to realise that any ‘rough’ approach by us will always fail – people won’t allow themselves to be persuaded by bullies who believe they’re right. They don’t need to be intimidated by us because there are just too many of them out there to let themselves be pushed around. At present we are a teeny, weeny, minority vegan movement, growing but slowly. We haven’t yet been recognised, either as a movement or as individuals (for our strength of character). There are no medals struck for vegan active service.
All I’m saying here is that no one knows how things will turn out in the future. But that things can change is something to hold onto during these difficult early days of animal rights consciousness. When things do change they will probably change quite rapidly. If we want particular changes to happen we need to inject optimism into what we do – that way we will seem to be actively ‘expecting’ change. For optimism to ‘work’ all we need to do is maintain consistency - the big trap is to be swayed by an idiot public and let them affect our own momentum.