Saturday, April 14, 2012

Being wary of the vegan advocate

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I don’t flinch at watching footage of animal cruelty. I hate to see it but I’ve seen so much of it - I know it shows up the worst aspects of human behaviour and it depresses me because of that. But its use for me is that it strengthens my motivation and holds my focus where I want it - on my ‘outrage’. But I also know that’s a trap. When I start to talk about ‘all this’, if I sound too outraged I’ll frighten people. It’s important to show how I feel, yes, but also to show how I respect humans, not just animals.
When I get speaking (on my favourite subject) I either create great waves of trust or a threat. For me it’s important to REMEMBER to drop any aggro attitude, since first impressions are so important, and why I don’t need to show my hand as a matter of course.
But vegans like me are natural talkers (about animal rights) and I do a lot of emailing, writing, telephoning and speaking, to put out this vegan message to people. But face to face communication is hard - hard not to sound preachy and evangelical. So, my point here is that omnivores need to trust us. In particular they need to know that we won’t ‘turn’ on them, crush them or attempt to make fools of them. Once they trust us about this then they’ll listen or at least let us put our points forward. We all have to contribute to establishing this trust so it becomes known that this is what vegans are like, not just extremists but people who are gentle extremists.

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