Identifying with a vegan

488: I know a very pushy vegan who is both loathed and loved. He has great compassion but effects a rough, take-no-prisoners manner. On the other hand there are those vegans who are really nice people but ineffectual. The extremes are rude or soft. Who is most ‘identifiable-with’? In the end it comes down to one’s ability to ‘resonate’ with the issues ... but it might help if the advocate-for-animals were more objective and less emotional when promoting Animal Rights. Obviously the advocate has got to be sincere. We need to spark something in others, to impress them if possible … but it’s not a niceness competition, it’s just a plain job. Each one of us has our own approach, each aiming to reach out and inspire interest, and then go on to ignite empathy for all those billions of creatures languishing in their prison cells. My aim is to inspire interest without alienating, so that no one is given any excuse to ‘close the book’ on me. I reckon I’m more likely to make sense if I can show how animal farming worsens our global warming problems, and I often try that tack, and let that be a central basis for encouraging personal reform, in addition of course to the inhumanity of farming animals. People are often embarrassed to act solely on humanitarian grounds, whereas given an environmental or health angle, people feel less self conscious about being ‘touched’ by these issues. And yet, privately, most of us are proud of our sense of humanity, and know that without humanity we aren’t complete as humans, but publically it doesn’t seem to warrant such a radical change of lifestyle (as a vegan leads). It’s probably only when we are fairly young that we set out our life’s principles, aiming to live by them for the rest of our lives. If one of these is to not hurt animals (eat them, add to their suffering, wear them, etc) the ramifications of this one decision only become clearer as we get older. The ideal of being a humanitarian is associated with youth and not taken quite so seriously amongst older adults - and this is probably the tragedy of the sophistication of our adulthood.