Altruism and optimism

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Out of optimism comes stability, and if our optimism persists, stability increases, and it brings a sense of permanence. The sort of change that is made by people who ‘go-vegan’, as it stabilises and as habits form and as the practical difficulties are ironed out, brings about a sense of being ‘vegan-for-life’. There’s a sense that we’ve got past the temptation stage where we may slip back into our old ways, and find that even those things we thought we’d definitely miss ... somehow they fade in importance.
No one was more surprised at this than I was.
To achieve this change, to get to the point where I felt entirely at home being vegan, was rather strange in a way, because I knew that I lived in a society where most people have never even given ‘going-vegetarian’ any serious thought. Their meat and dairy foods, and their woollens and their leather shoes, are part of their everyday life - so much so that it might seem impossible to maintain a lifestyle where these foods and commodities don’t play a major part. That’s what I thought but it’s not how I think now, especially because other interesting bits of life open up.
Vegans, once established in their food and clothing regimes, are free to look ahead into other interesting areas, all of which are quite out of the question for anyone still using abattoir products. Those who are still omnivores will find it impossible, for example, to explore the principle of harmlessness, which is central to a vegan lifestyle. Vegans understand that a lot of the negativity which omnivores feel against us, is coming out of a frustration of, daily, being so closely connected with the violence of the Animal Industries ... so for them there’s bound to be some pessimism about the world and its future in general. If any of us allow this pessimism to dominate our reality, we might come to believe in the inevitability of ‘The Coming Catastrophe’.
Pessimism can bring us to believe that change is only made possible by the use of force - “change has to be big and fast, otherwise it won’t work. It will soon fade through lack of momentum”. Something like veganism doesn’t seem dramatic enough to set off the chain reaction major social change needs.
But here is where I think we have it all wrong - veganism establishes the basis for reform. It might seem hardly noticeable to those who can still ignore it but when it enters your life it establishes itself deeply. Veganism is so profound that most people hardly recognise it for what it is. If it suggests any sort of solution it can easily seem unreachable or unrealistic. It represents a fundamental change in the way we view life - it’s an unpopular philosophical view on life which is easily dismissed.
However, popular or not, it is precisely in tune with the character of the 21st century. It’s thoroughness and optimism promotes a root-and-branch change, despite the fact that it might not show any signs of ‘flowering’ during our own lifetime.
Is that long-term prospect off-putting?
The two reactions Society might make - “It’s already too late, so why bother?” and “I don’t give a stuff about the future anyway”, are merely expressions of pessimism and selfishness, neither of which will impress future generations one little bit when it’s their turn to analyse the history of the early part of the century. That particularly negative outlook is certainly not characteristic of ethically driven vegans.