Vegan

130:

‘Vegan’ sounds difficult. Not hard to understand but hard to carry out. It’s based on principles a small child could understand but it comes down to giving-up favourite foods, and that’s not appealing. And what about clothing items, shoes, entertainments and cosmetics, boycotted because of their animal connections? And being social misfits? And a vegan’s motives being misunderstood? It’s enough to put anyone off.
But to put it all in perspective, this is one mighty principle that’s being defended. It’s so mighty that maybe we do have to put up with the pain of being misunderstood (as well as giving-up things). Our own life and integrity is on the line here, not to mention a better carbon footprint and the chance to solve the world food shortage in ‘hungry’ countries (where food not being fed to animals is available to feed humans). Being a vegan may be difficult but the clincher is in being able to disassociate with animal cruelty. Whatever hardships we endure as vegans, in a non-vegan society, nothing’s really that hard compared to what animals have to put up with. The thought of the suffering they go through makes boycotting their ‘products’ a small price to pay.
No, going vegan isn’t a breeze. On a personal level there’s addiction to certain favourite foods to deal with, and then being up against a popular belief that a plant-based diet might be inadequate. But once all that is ironed out something else begins to happen. There’s a wish to bring others across. There’s a need to start talking to others about it. And then a new frustration begins ... when one realises the scale of ignorance is far greater than had been realised, and it’s combined with a level of obstinacy, where people don’t know, don’t care or refuse to listen. Then the big difficulties begin.
The hurdles of actually becoming vegan, once overcome, make way for fresh obstacles where the vegan who wants to talk Animal Rights meets a brick wall, and feel so frustrated by this that they have nothing to lose by stirring people up. A huge divide opens up. A belief forms that the only way to ‘get people to listen’ is to shock them. You wear a badge with the slogan “Meat is Murder”, knowing that it’s really saying “You are a murderer”. Nothing could be more insulting than to call a person a murderer. So the battle lines are drawn.
From a personal project, with difficulties now overcome, we might never have taken into account how important recognition might be. To be NOT recognised for what we’ve achieved, for our gesture NOT to be taken seriously is enough to make the blood boil ... enough, indeed, to make war on all those who dismiss what we’ve done.
And that’s roughly where many of us who are vegan now find ourselves, unsupported and disliked because of the importance we’ve given to our ‘going vegan’.
How vegans deal with this is the great challenge.