Exploding myths

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Vegans will always have their work cut out, persuading people to change radically. But for us it’s not just about persuading reluctant people, it’s also about being useful to them. (I hope that doesn’t sound too patronising!)
I like to think I take people as they are, even if they don’t want to listen to what I have to say. These last three blogs might have made me seem angry (one person mentioned “a crabby critique of some flawed fellow animal lovers ...”) and certainly there is anger and frustration ... even perhaps a few aggressive thoughts towards some adversaries, but not many. I’m more interested in breaking down some over-comfortable myths, like it being okay to make use of animals just as long as we love them. All I’d like to do is help others see things as they could be (or perhaps should be) … and go on from there. All I want to do is keep it simple and clear.
Like any nag I like to stress the same things till the penny drops - that some of our favourite ‘home truths’ may not be as true as we’d like them to be. For example, many people still believe meat (and therefore animal farming) is essential for human survival, or that testing drugs on animals is the only way to have safe pharmaceuticals or that having animals in the house prevents our becoming lonely. A respondent to these latest blogs, concerning companion animals, mentioned the “inter-relationship of man to animal is supposed to be special and to light up the amygdala as nothing else can”. But this still puts the welfare of a human’s amygdala above the comfort of the animal, in order to justify our having an animal present in the human life. People are so locked into these sorts of beliefs that I am moved to explode the myth in order to show a different view of human safety and survival. Do we need meat, do we need drugs, do we need pets? If we say ‎’yes’ to any of these we may be right up to a point but each ‎‘yes’ means animals will suffer on our account.
In a nutshell, it’s the reliability of instinct that is our main safety, since it tells us what instinctively we should be doing (right and wrong, within the context of non-violence). But I’m conscious that whatever I do get across should emphasise the value of self-discovery, because everyone is hypersensitive to being criticised or being judged. Whereas if someone can arrive at a conclusion of their own, they can move on at their own pace and not be held back by their resentment of being preached at.