Between a rock and a hard place

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The horror stories about animals in farms and abattoirs horrify and confront all sensitive people, whether vegan or not. But for omnivores it’s a mixed message. “I love animals but I’m afraid of finding out too much.” As soon as we know what’s happening ‘down on the farm’ we realise that it implicates everyone, because of what we eat. We’re all connected, some more than others, in something so routine and on such a massive scale that it seems futile to try to fight it ... especially when it seems most people are either cold-hearted or burying their heads in the sand. ‘Most People’ just don’t want to know - the animal-holocaust being a daily event ... and yet, however horrific it is, it doesn’t make most-people step away from their eating habits.
Vegans have stepped away. As a vegan I, personally, seek to change everyone. A big task! To be an animal activist is to act solo, in defiance of family, friends and social pressure. To act independently takes courage. Some would say animal-activism is an impossible dream. But so what? What else can you do but try to change it?
Farm animals (‘food animals’) are badly used, and we know it. But even though every educated adult, in every part of the world, feels some guilt about it, they don’t shift. They possibly know ‘animal food’ isn’t healthy but don’t act on the advice. The reason for this may be obvious, but nonetheless it’s the never ending question vegans contemplate. Until we unlock that particular mystery - why some do respond, why some don’t - our collective-way-forward won’t be clear.
If you DO act, if you do respond, life changes quite radically. Then, intermixing with the rest of the world alters ... or at least it felt that way for me. By being an advocate for the ‘abolition-of-animal-slavery’, one is marked-out as an ‘all or nothing abolitionist’. And since you can’t be a little bit abolitionist anymore that you can be a little bit pregnant, once you’ve said “I’m vegan-on-principle”, in reality there’s no going back. Once you’ve faced your cravings (with me it’s still Mars Bars) you can step out of one world into another ... I don’t mean there’s a Vegan Club-of-Paradise, I mean ‘step-out’ mind-wise ... perhaps with a thunderingly altered perception of things, which, now, I, personally wouldn’t be without.