Seduced by second class pleasures

283:

When it comes to food and keeping up our lifestyle almost all of us are controlled by the carrot and stick … the ‘carrot’ is in the form of lifestyle-identifiers, the sorts of foods we eat comprising mainly animal product. The ‘stick’ is the threat of reduced disposable income for buying animal product (often owing to loss of employment). The good things in life are abundant for those who can afford them, i.e. those who conform, but meagre for poorer people and those who don’t conform. It’s all controlled. It’s a neat system.
Everything which comes from the Animal (food) Industries is meant to be pleasurable enough to make us toe the line ... but usually it’s second rate stuff – nothing more than a few taste thrills at restaurants, or ice cream, chocolate, cakes, meat and all the little food luxuries we think we couldn’t do without. It’s a sort of ‘seconds world’ of cheap and cheerful commodities and our wanting them keeps us working and consuming and conforming. We fear missing-out so we give very little thought for the animals producing the stuff.
Lifestyle is everything, whereas ethics or the development of consciousness is not so important. Most people will settle for any old ‘pleasure experience’ where food is concerned. Instead of individual thinking and the opening consciousness we opt for group-think - “Everybody does it so why shouldn’t I?”
With safety-in-numbers, going with the crowd, buying whatever one is wanting, we go the popular way. But vegans go against the popular, opting for a life governed by a strict no-animal-use principle. In a very major way vegans disassociate from the crowd and think for themselves.
Understandably this is something which could worry the Animal Industries. They probably realise that the world is coming into a more expansive age. They may foresee a world that is dangerously ‘vegan-inspired’ and non-violence-inspired, and that’s not so good for the future prospects of the Animal Industries. But they also know that it’s still a million miles away, and that today the majority of people are still happy to be poisoning themselves with animal foods. Thankfully, for the Industry, their customers are addicted to their products and reluctant to give them up even though the stuff makes people overweight and pushes them towards diabetes and heart disease.
Vegan food doesn’t protect us from this entirely, but it helps dissolve the addictions to these harmful foods and at the same time strengthens our liking for plant-based foods. The big plus for plant-food eaters it that our diet relieves us of the grumbling fear of these deadly health conditions.
As soon as I got used to a plant food diet, I realised it was good for energy but even more importantly it was good for the brain. It let me feel more alert, and consequently more suspicious of traditional food regimes. By waking up to this conspiracy (the acceptability of animal food) it awoke the rebel in me.
The rebel asks tricky questions in public. The rebel challenges the so called ‘food authorities’ - when I woke up to that, I wanted more than anything to help sap their strength by boycotting every Animal Industry commodity. The more I did that the more I realised how important it was to drop all the crappy stuff they sell or wheedle into products as ‘hidden’ ingredients ... I was realising that once you open your purse or wallet to them, you automatically turn a blind eye to your own involvement in what they are doing. And whichever way you look at it, what they’re doing is not nice.