The killing process

4

Humans enjoy eating animals and animal by-products. We downplay empathy and emphasise a more macho attitude. Perhaps we regard animals as the spoils of a war waged against them. They are trophies and celebrations of our status as the ‘dominant’ species. We eat them with almost every meal, and that ‘couldn’t-care-less’ attitude won’t change until people realise what sort of ugly system they’re buying into.

We need to remind ourselves what actually happens to the animals we are about to eat. Lobsters and crabs are boiled alive, fish are slowly suffocated or crushed under the weight of other caught fish, chickens are hung up by their legs to have their throats run though revolving blades, cattle have a bolt fired into their foreheads, pigs have electrified tongs clamped to their heads, male chicks are thrown live into mincing machines!! The way in which we kill animals is cruel by any standard and yet we humans accept it and are glad to use the ‘end-corpse’ for food. The supermarket trolley, filled with styrofoam packets of muscle tissue, animal organs and even, in the case of fish, their whole bodies, is a long way from the human-fulfilling-the-hunting-instinct. We eat animals that have been imprisoned by others and we allow others to do the killing for us. We’re not too fussy how it all happens just as long as we don’t have to know about it. If we use animals for food or clothing we comply with an industry that cares nothing about the feelings of animals. They simply coral, breed, fatten and execute animals as part of their business. 

Wild animals used for food

3.

In my local supermarket, at the meat counter, are some ‘wild’ products - notably kangaroo meat, for human consumption and for dog meat. I doubt if people really want to know what happens to these animals. These wild creatures are not farmed but shot, at night, in the glare of the hunters’ spotlights. Their young, too small to be useful, are bashed to death or left for predators. Perhaps these animals are killed to make income for the hunters but I suspect there’s some salacious pleasure derived from the brutality involved in this killing ‘sport’ itself.

Many years ago, people were far more in touch with how animal foods came to them. Long before we held ‘food animals’ captive, we hunted them for food. Back then it might have been essential for our own survival, but now it isn’t, we mostly hunt for recreation. My next door neighbor hangs his fishing rod over the sea wall to relax from his stressful job, as a chef. He’s an intelligent, kind man and probably never thinks for a moment that the fish he catches are sentient creatures who share with us very similar pain receptors and nervous system. He may not realize or want to know that the fish he hooks will slowly suffocate to death over a period of twenty or so minutes. He (like thousands of others) fishes for fun, unconcerned about how fish feel when hooked and hauled out of their world and left to die a slow death. As a chef he’s dealing with animals all the time, but his ‘working-animals’ are already dead. He doesn’t have to make any connection between the living creature and the body parts he uses. He simply cooks what his customers ask for (which is mostly meat, sea foods and rich dairy concoctions) without any thought of animals suffering or dying. 

By-products that are used for food

2

Unless one can feel an empathetic connection with the dairy cow or one is politically involved with promoting Animal Rights, the use of by-products is the cut-off point. If we want to liberate animals in general (from being used for food) firstly this matter of dairy farming must be tackled. Because people have such difficulty in giving up dairy products, they won’t choose to look at the ethics of milk production, which in turn dramatically lessens the chances for Animal Rights to get a foothold. Unless the by-product and co-product boycott is widely established, no amount of meat-avoidance will ever be enough to secure freedom for farm animals. In the end it all comes down to the participation of ethically-minded people in the denouncing of the complete range of animal cruelty, not just some of it.

Milk and eggs are so familiar in almost everybody’s daily lives - along with cheese, butter, milk chocolate, yoghurt, cream and various confections. These by-products seem quite benign, as if anything so useful or so delicious could ever be thought to be tainted. Yet ethically, if not also nutritionally, these products are dangerous to both the animals who suffer as producers of them and the humans who ingest them. Certainly both milk and eggs hide behind a very ugly system of animal abuse.

Dairy products particularly are hard to ignore because they’ve insinuated themselves into so many food products. For example, if you read the ingredients label on almost any commercial cake or biscuits, you’ll see ‘milk products’ (and/or ‘egg products’) listed. In fact I once counted over two hundred supermarket food items which contained milk or egg! Most people wouldn’t be prepared to deny themselves that many tasty products on ethical grounds. In so many ways we are well enough informed but we choose to remain ignorant to avoid inconvenience. 

Animals that are used for food

1

I’d like to go back to basics for the next series of blogs, to recap on some of the reasons why we shouldn’t be using animals for food. This is at the heart of veganism and the whole boycotting of any industry that uses animals for any useful purpose at all. Humans have gradually realised that animals can be profited from and that there are no constraints on exploiting them - the general public will not complain as long as the producers give them what they want. Competition for market share has led the ‘Industry’ to lay aside welfare considerations in order to produce food and clothing at the lowest price possible. Animal suffering is no longer considered. I’m mainly concentrating on the food industry here - where animals are used for food.

My reaction to this subject - animals being used for food - is to simply say it’s inhumane to keep animals, kill them, butcher their bodies and eat them! The very idea of denying animals their freedom, keeping them in slum conditions then, on their execution day, hanging them upside down to bleed to death, is obscene. But if cruel and callous things can be done to entirely innocent animals like cows, steers, pigs and sheep, how much worse it seems for the very young, the six week old pullets, piglets, calves and lambs - the children of the animal world.

            The sheer horror of what is happening on a mass scale all around the world to animals makes me (and many others like me) want to try to change peoples’ attitudes by pointing out some of the terrible things done to them both at the farm and the abattoir. Most people, however, seem reluctant to think too deeply about it - “Ho hum” they say and “All very sad, but that’s just the way things are. We humans have been eating animals for a million years. We aren’t likely to change now!!”.

But we are changing, especially here in Western nations where we are better informed about animal exploitation. We’re changing, mainly because the shame is too great to bear. In 1944 the first Vegan publication put it this way. “The great impediment to man’s moral development may be that he is a parasite on lower forms of animal life”. Since the 1940’s, when some people started to eat solely from plant-based foods - without becoming ill - there was for the first time in human history a safe way out of our dependency on animals for food. A vegan regime was shown to be nutritionally healthy. From then on, we were able to look ahead to a time when the use of animal products (such as meat, dairy, eggs, leather and wool) would be viewed as an inhumane and unsustainable practice from a much less enlightened age.

Vegetarians stop eating animals for both health and ethical reasons and certainly they make a strong statement to their meat-eating friends. But not all exploited animals are reared for meat. It’s debatable, for instance, as to which suffers most, the dairy cow or the beef steer. Each is held captive, denied any sort of natural life and ultimately ends his/her life at the abattoir. But the dairy cow suffers in so many other ways. The same comparison applies between egg-laying hens and chickens reared for meat. The milk or egg by-product-producing animals often suffer more than ‘meat’ animals.

            Once again, quoting from that first vegan publication - “Lacto-vegetarianism is but a half-way house between flesh eating and a truly humane, civilized diet ... we should try to evolve sufficiently to make the full journey”. Vegetarianism is often as far as many people will go, not wishing to look deeper in case they find out more than they’d bargained for. They don’t want to put milk and egg production in the same category of cruelty as they do meat. If they did, they’d logically have to become vegan. Milk, for example, is a product involving animal cruelty. It is also a dangerously misrepresented substance - promoted as a good supply of calcium whereas in reality it has the opposite effect. It leaches calcium from the bones. But milk is a problem on another level because it turns up as an ingredient in so many popular food items and for this reason it’s unlikely that users of milk will want to know the details of how it is produced for fear of their having to black-list milk products. They stick with the line that “if cows weren’t milked they’d die” (which is quite true as far as it goes) but the rest of the story they’d prefer to ignore. The biological details of milk production go something like this:

A cow’s biology determines the quantity of milk she produces and whilst it’s normally too little to be of much interest, when she’s pregnant, she makes lots of it. Once impregnated and after giving birth to a calf, her mammary glands go into over-drive. The calf, having served its main purpose in uteri, is often then regarded as a dispensable item and killed just after birth to allow the huge quantities of its mother’s milk to be diverted for human consumption. With continuous impregnation (calf bearing) subsequent loss of calves plus constant milking, she is soon exhausted and her milk yield so low that she’s no longer economically viable. She will live only ten of her normally twenty years before being sent for slaughter. That’s all the thanks she gets for producing vast quantities of milk for the farmers and their milk-drinking customers! It’s an ugly story that omnivores don’t enjoy hearing.

I suspect most so called ‘animal welfare’ organisations don’t want to hear this since it would oblige them to speak out against the egg and dairy industries. They concentrate on factory farming and meat eating, and they promote vegetarianism in order to win substantial support from the general public. They don’t dare to speak out against the broader welfare issues for fear of losing the support of milk drinkers and egg eaters and the users of the many thousands of commercial foodstuffs loaded with these products.

Getting used to non-violent ways

86:  

       

I think most humans are violent. Nonsense, of course they aren’t! Media stories make us think there’s violence everywhere; they bring (what passes for) interest into our dreary lives, to give us something to talk about. So, we discuss violence. We say how we dislike it. But it sucks us in ... then we become disgusted by our own attraction to it and react against it. We swing right over to the opposite side, towards the idea of non-violence. It feels politically correct. We like to see ourselves as non-violent. But that isn’t reality, because it stops us looking for the origins and nature of violence. Is there any purpose to violence?

            In legend, the Lemurian civilisation abhorred violence, they feared it. They were incapable of dealing with it, and eventually they died out, perhaps because they tried to deny the very existence of violence. The message of such legends is that denial stops us searching for realistic alternatives. It’s as if we are only drawn to the passivity of it. We don’t see the dynamic side to non-violence.

            Today we can be dynamic about it, by boycotting violent activities that characterise present human behaviour. As consumers we can avoid using violent goods. We can encourage cruelty-free and environmentally friendly commodities. We can deal with our differences of opinion without resorting to aggression. On a personal level that’s certainly dynamic, but for it to be convincing it has to be consistent too.

            Non-violence can be in everything we do, from thinking and talking to actively supporting commercial enterprises. As more people act in this way fashion takes over, and violence and coercion literally fade away, almost without anyone noticing it’s gone.

            The transition in our society will happen, surely, when those with a strong interest in exploring non-violence are proactive, when they actively set the example, showing it where it counts, by not participating in the violation of animals but also by refraining from making value-judgements about others - resisting both temptations.   

Non-violence starts at home

83:

Non-violence starts at home

Non-violence is no new kid on the block. It’s as old as the hills and the very bedrock of wise philosophy. But it always steps back and allows violence to pass by, remembering that we exist in a world where violence still rules.

            Non-violence says “calm down” in the middle of a heated argument. As worthy as any ‘good idea’ might be, it doesn’t outweigh the need for good manners, so as the discussion of opposite views proceeds it doesn’t hit a brick wall. When we are disagreeing over something important, the reason we need to apply the brakes before the discussion gets emotional and personal is that we need to avoid an explosion, and then a long up-hill struggle to restore things back to balance. The non-violent ethic keeps high emotions under control. It operates on a ‘count-to-ten’ principle to defuse anger and insult. So, we don’t want a pussy-footed interaction, and we surely want to be dynamic, so I wonder how dynamic non-violence should be. Is it simply feeling fearless when engaging in robust interaction? Perhaps being brave isn’t so straightforward, because to the other side it’s how it comes across - it usually looks like a sort of  violence. And violence is surely based on fear, and in this case fear of losing the argument. Fear makes us use violent methods to get what we want. Throughout life we force things to our will. We bend the rules and promise ourselves that we’ll fix any damage later, but than we forget to do that. So violence comes to characterise us, as persons who are willing to forget to heal damage.

            Take the violent world of Nature. Forceful events like storms, epidemics and earthquakes destroy on a massive scale, but this sort of violence isn’t the same as human-instigated violence. Ours is so damaging because it lets things get worse and worse without any intervention intention to repair. Nature destroys and then repairs, it brings things back into sustainable balance.

            Human violence accumulates and corrupts everyone it draws into its thrall. It is driven by insecurity and an ambition to win, and on a collective scale it becomes war and pillage.

            By implementing the principles of non-violence we might be able to stop wanting to win. We can plug-up our violence-leaks simply by bringing in a different sort of energy, by using a different sort of fuel for a start. Namely, by changing the type of food we eat.

            A change on this sort of scale implies a long to-do list. Violence-free food isn’t necessarily always obvious or easily available. But the idea suggests changing our daily habits and that’s something many people would like to be able to do, if only to move away from the usual hard-hitting approach.

            So, I change, you change, then hopefully everyone changes on the basis that the habit of non-violence, and the promise of better things to come out of it, is infectious. The opposite (traditional violence-based foods and violent behaviour) is obviously unattractive, because it promises that nothing will change for the better.

            Violence. We see it in children, our partners, in Society itself. It occurs to me that our main job is to keep non-violent principles in touch with reality. By checking ourselves for violence and seeing how it affects our closest relationships, we can alter the way we do things. As we experiment with it we can watch this ‘new way’ grow. Vegans live a laboratory life, in their own homes, in a relatively safe environment where we can test and trial ideas alongside those we know best. If we can be a cool operator at home we’ll stand a better chance of bringing ‘that way’ more successfully into the outside world. At home we’ll possibly be praised, mocked and criticised, but at home we can feel relatively safe. The impact of any criticism on our ego is softened by the intimacy of people who know us. With those closest to us, we can work through our differences more thoroughly. Hopefully at home we can watch out for each other without losing interest in them. We can move on without leaving anyone behind. That building of mutual care is good for building up confidence, and developing enough chutzpah to go into the outside world of strangers and say “this is what I reckon”. And then to communicate the details.

A Non-Violent World

82: 

Is a no-weapon world, where we trust our neighbour, just pie in the sky? A planet of humans - can it exist without resorting to violent confrontation? A non-violent world is something we can hardly imagine.

            It surely starts with buying cruelty-free and environmentally-friendly products, which sends a powerful message to those who produce goods. It’s the first step towards a peaceful, no-weapon world.

           

Planning for the far future

80:

Needless to say, animals are different to us - no hubris, no superiority and yet they might have no doubt about how dangerous humans can be. Their senses are impeccable, but they can’t know us completely because we are so very different from them. Unlike animals, we try to improve things and with that comes the violence of maintaining our position-of-dominance, over Nature and especially over animals. It’s brought them unstuck, as it has brought us unstuck too.

            The damage we’ve done has come from trying to improve things by wit, strength and ruthlessness. We’ve never learnt to ‘be content with our lot’. Our manipulation and bullying have brought us to the brink of catastrophe. There must be many humans today who are ashamed of what we’ve done and continue to do, to the environment and to animals in particular.

            Now, some of us want to turn that around, turn in a completely different direction.  We see the urgent need for repair, but it’s like steering an ocean liner 180 degrees; it has so much momentum that to swing it around is a very slow process.

            It’s likely that we have to look beyond our own lifetime, to future generations of responsibility-takers, who as true warriors of non-violence will see what ‘the violent approach’ has done to their elders. They’ll see the people of the past to be both primitive and callous.

            In the meantime however, for us here today, our job must be to lay the foundations of a society of people-to-come. And part of that is an attitudinal turn-around which wrestles with a conundrum between aggressive reform enforced by law, and non-violent persuasion which might be ineffective.

            Non-violence has always seemed a bit passive, as if not effective enough to eliminate violence. But perhaps that’s the glitch-point. Reformers are always in a hurry, and change, if it is to be permanent, might have to be slower that we want it to be. Even those with the best intentions aren’t necessarily patient or as peaceful as they think they are. The reality of our situation is that we shouldn’t want to kill off anything and that includes violence itself. It’s the nature of the planet. There’s violence everywhere. Within the body, alongside violent disease is a battle-worn immune system - disease attacks, immune system defends. Or in Nature, there’s a destructive storm and the stalk of wheat bends but doesn’t break in the wind. On this violent planet there’s tension between opposites. In our  human brain we have to be alert to violence creeping in unnoticed and be alert to our non-violence becoming too righteous.

            Non-violence dances with violence. The animal activist watches as the flame of violence burns itself out, and only then can we step in to oversee true change in human nature.

            At this point in time, after the worst extremes of violence during the twentieth century, we’re starting to look more carefully at non-violent solutions. If they come to be the modus operandi of our new age, then we have a chance to survive as a species. But first we have to learn to walk before we can run. And each of us who believe in non-violence must first practice it before we can effectively preach it.

Harmlessness

79:

Talking is something you need confidence for. A shaky voice denotes uncertainty, a cocky voice something worse. Personally, I try to aim at somewhere in between.

            I know inside me that I need confidence to say the things I want to say. But I’m talking about Animal Rights and why people shouldn’t be eating some of the things they eat, so an essential ingredient for talking about all this is non-violence. I want people to pick that up straight away. And I use it too, to push me forward yet pull me back, so that I’m sensitive to how I think someone might be feeling (when listening to what I have to say).

            It would be the same if you were explaining the facts of life to a fertile teenager or if I were touching my ninety year old dad’s most sensitive nerve, when  urging him to “lift his legs and not shuffle”. Confidence is needed in such situations. Tricky subjects these are, to bring up. Talking-vegan is tricky, like that.

            It isn’t just about the food. Food is the symbol, almost. As a symbol it covers lots of daily habits, like eating, shopping, thinking and talking, and our food affects us in so many ways. Our confidence is often based on how we deal with food. But symbolically, I think it suggests what our overall approach might be, namely to talking confidently, about it. It reflects one’s approach to living life generally. For me, with my specific interest, it’s the basis for a lot of my talking, when talking ‘deep and meaningfully’.

            Vegans are always in a tricky position over ‘approach’. I’ll always want to represent harmlessness, so the touch of  anything I say must be both gentle yet powerful.

            Whilst power can be violence-based, as a vegan any power must be non-violence based. Take altruism for example, as a great motivator. It is powerful when it shows that one can be motivated by being useful when it combines with something we enjoy doing. If talking is my ‘enjoyment’ I want it to serve some useful purpose and to enjoy doing it at the same time. I want to enjoy it, be useful with it and to be a confident, non-violent talker. I take my lead from what I observe and admire in others. I’m impressed with what I see amongst some of the younger generation, because they don’t seem attracted to acquiring the trappings of conventional power. I can see the germ of harmlessness in them. They seem to exude something much gentler than most of my own generation. Perhaps that’s because they know there’s been too much power gained through killing, especially during the past century. I think that non-violence is the new power which is, I suspect, why it is becoming ever more attractive to them.

            In the talking trade there’s a need to be assertive, but not too much so. We don’t need to be indecisive but we do need to temper everything with non-violence, ultimately to be effective in what we do or say. It’s not that we need to be passive, but more that we need to be un-needy. We really don’t need feedback, approval, admiration or even encouragement, especially if it’s coming from people who are probably not in any position to give it, since they don’t agree with our ‘abolitionist vegan’ views. We do need to be strongly motivated though. And so perhaps that’s got to come from within. I’m sure that my own needs have to be met by being useful, even if it’s a usefulness that has to be laid up in cold storage for the future.

            The way I see it is that if usefulness can be enough to motivate me, then there won’t be a desperate need for me to condemn my adversaries. Which brings me back to judging others’ values and my own need to ease up on that. Being useful and being effective may rest on how good I am at observing the human phenomenon, which takes me back to talking, and being open to opposition. I need to learn about my fellows and how they think if I am to influence anyone, and that’s why I should welcome disagreement.

            I say this because the Animal Rights movement doesn’t have a good track record - we’re notoriously deaf to opposite arguments. Listening to them and considering them, without agreeing with them, may well be the key to effective communication.

            Most of us (vegans) still have a lot to learn about ‘non-violent approach’. I suspect that’s because we all might hate violence but still have it in us. Some days I am the biggest doubter of non-violence - “Nice idea, but too ineffective”. “It’s too slow”.

            Vegans observe their own ‘rules’ concerning eating habits. But I suspect we break the rules and aren’t too different to omnivores, in certain respects. Which is why listening is useful, to find out how current thinking and rationalising helps to unravel why some of us are and why some of us aren’t sensitive, firstly to each other’s feeling and secondly to the plight of farm animals. So if I can learn to listen instead of only practising my speeches on people, I can learn from others how I should conduct myself in their eyes, and subsequently get them to listen to what I have to say (mainly about what they should eat).

            In our society non-violence is practised by every one, at certain times of the day. Violence is practise at other times of the day. We change from one to the other in a flash. We let our auto-pilot take over the controls when we conduct our unthinking-doings of the day. At times we are in danger, when non-violence isn’t taken seriously and thought to be inappropriate. In certain situations (like eating a steak for dinner, or belting the kids when they annoy us), non-violence is thought to be a bit wimp-ish and ineffective.

            When I have my doubts about non-violence, as soon as I begin to doubt it I emasculate it. And then it’s no longer useful. It becomes a sort of duty, a political correctness, and no longer a pleasure.  

            People may think that non-violence is regressive and weak, and leading to submissiveness. You and I probably detest the cowering, weak person. A ‘veegn’, perhaps?

            That isn’t how I see vegans. I see them as people who want to re-form their values, even to learn from the animals themselves. We’ve all been, at some stage, fascinated when watching animals. With animals, they don’t sense things as intellectually as we do. They don’t have to fill their heads with as much junk as we do. They retain abilities we’ve lost. Their approach (to each other) shows how in touch they are with their inner self and the ‘selves’ of others. They are in touch with their senses - for instance, they smell things a thousand times better than we do. And they have a talent for discerning peaceful intention. They know affection denotes trustworthiness and an at-eased-ness. They aren’t judgmental. They, having suffered so badly from human violence throughout the ages, you’d think they’d show how they hate us, but no such thing. They are arbiters of good taste in the matter of harmlessness. From that, and with that, we humans can imitate their general approach in order to build non-violence into our attitudes and behaviours. Perhaps that’s what we love so much about animals. They teach us things no human could consistently teach us.

The unthinking approach

78:

The principle of non-violence lies behind Animal Rights. With that principle in place no one can justify hurting animals.

            Of course, no one wants to hurt animals gratuitously, but we’ve grown up with a dependency on animal foods and we’re not used to giving up things we’re used to having. We don’t voluntarily deny ourselves things we want, and since humans can overpower animals and use them in any way they like, one has to have a strong, principled stand in order to apply a total animal boycott. Farm animals aren’t protected by law, so we prey on them. The general attitude is, “I’ll do as I chose. I’ll continue to do what I’ve always done. Everyone else does it so why shouldn’t I?”

Straight talking

77:

I often rely too heavily on speaking with great emotion. I forget how that must sound. This subject ignites passion and for me it stirs up confrontation. So, it’s a ‘yes’ for straight talking, as long as we leave space for opposite opinions to be aired. And I must learn to listen without butting in prematurely.

            We’re most of us amateur communicators - we aren’t trained to see ourselves as others see us, and to adjust accordingly. Yes, our stand might be admired, and people might show they genuinely admire the stand we make. But if they are listening to us at all they want useful information from us. They don’t want a lecture.

            Information: if we outline our arguments, half of what we say will be handy tips on vegan diet, the other half is about what is happening to animals and how animal products harm health, and those details we have to get right. For example, if we say that all animal products are unhealthy and cruel we need references to back this up. The association between these products and deadly illnesses (“Meat causes cancer”) must stand up to challenge. If we haven’t any well researched references at hand it’s probably best not to make sweeping statements. The same goes with the cruelty of animal farming. We need to be able to provide details of, for example, the details and prevalence of sow stalls, battery cages, mutilations, etc. And if we are going to talk about milk and dairy cows then we need to be familiar with the biology behind milk production. Similarly with details of what happens at abattoirs.

            Animal Rights is always provocative - we’re telling people why we are outraged, implying that they should be too. We’re commenting on the values of ordinary consumers who don’t like listening to straight-talk about compliance with animal torture.

Debating vegan principle

76:

Why am I so keen to talk about Animal Rights, to alter attitudes and change habits? I like to think it’s a wish to implant a sense of optimism in others - “Go Vegan and Save the Planet”?

            I see potential in vegan principle andI’m busting to talk about it ... but sadly I find no one wants to know. I’m cold-shouldered. Everything is thrown at me to either shut me up or bring me back into the fold. The majority of people are suspicious of us ‘minority types’, saying that we are deluded or even less sincere than we seem. I speak often enough about kindness to animals but maybe I’m not so kindly disposed towards people. 

            Whether that’s true or not, the rejection I often feel makes me try all the harder to come across as a sincere person. And ultimately that’s not such a bad thing. I might need to learn the hard way, that this comes down to not having any ulterior motives. And this is central to my eventual effectiveness.  

Promoting vegan

75:

This is what I wanted to do: establish a vegan lifestyle, and when that was all  in place I wanted to get political. I was urgent to speed things up on the Animal Rights front. I wanted to start a small revolution in my own corner of the world and then see it spread. I wanted to go from a wannabe-vegan to vegan-warrior, ready to take on the world. And yet ... this isn’t reality, is it?       

            However passionate I am, I should bear in mind that I’m not a seasoned politician with a tough exterior, ready to rip into adversaries. I’m just an ordinary person who may be talking to other ordinary people. And what of my ‘adversaries’? I mustn’t forget they’re sensitive free-willed beings too. They will decide things for themselves, no matter what I say or how forcibly I say it. Once I start actively advocating Animal Rights, it’s hard for me not to sound pushy about it. It’s easy for me to forget that people can simply walk away from me.

            However good I think our ‘vegan’ idea is, it can’t be forced onto people. Any uninvited contributions will seem like intrusions, even attacks. And if I aim to push my way into peoples’ private space, when I say to them, as if asking an innocent question, “You don’t still eat meat do you?”, I’m likely to get a rude shock. Once my view is ‘fired’ at people (and they feel suitably uncomfortable) they’re put off. And what is worse, they might even swear off the idea for ever, and I obviously don’t want that.

If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen?

74:

Becoming vegan is like buying a beautifully engineered car with its engine ready but still cold. It needs a kick start. It needs more than the fuel of fearlessness - it needs a confidence kick-start to overcome inertia. Going vegan is like falling in love and then learning how to live together. One can grasp the big idea well enough, but how to get the brain around it, to spark the great engine into life and keep it running?

            We’re all just humans with frailties and fears, so when we ‘go vegan’ we must try to get energy wherever we can find it. I had to talk about it, even boast about it, anything to make it work for me. I squeezed it too hard so that I wouldn’t let my good idea lose momentum. I knew this idea deserved my best shot but it wasn’t obvious. My most difficult problem wasn’t about denying myself certain foods, it was people’s opinions of me and my own attitude towards them that caused the initial trouble for me, especially their reluctance to discuss the subject with me.

            For all vegans, young or old, living within the conventional world, which is so reliant on animals, we have to learn to live in some sort of peace, with that. For us it’s psychologically ‘hot’ in this ‘kitchen’, but on no account can we ever afford to ‘get out the kitchen’.

Resolve

72: 

The decision to ‘go vegan’ is the start to a whole lifestyle change. When I first latched onto this idea it was the biggest idea I’d come across. It said to me that I was heading towards becoming non-violent, animal friendly, green and therefore in the best position to help transform the world. As an ideal it’s pretty much indisputable! “Great”, I thought, but how will I keep it up? I knew that once I started something this big I must continue with it. If I gave up I’d hate myself.

            So what couldn’t I fail with? Certainly, I wanted to leave the violence of all that animal killing behind me, but how would I deal with all the food temptations and more particularly the violence of the society in which I was brought up?

As I was heading into all this the one thing I feared most was becoming overwhelmed by it all and backtracking. When I took on a vegan diet and threw out my leather shoes I was still inspired, but after a while I felt the loss of things. I could see that it was a good idea in theory, but was it really making me feel better? I had my doubts but not over principles, only practice. Would I be making a rod for my own back? Shouldn’t I toss the idea around and let it settle into my life, let my mates know what I was doing, make sure I was comfortable with it?

            What happened was that I stopped eating animal stuff. I found plant-based foods weren’t bad at all. Good in fact. That made me think, “So far so good”, and think well of myself. But I wanted more. And that’s when I hit a hurdle.

I wanted everyone to be supportive, and they weren’t. I faced social isolation. Being vegan was starting to feel like a burden. I even started to think my friends didn’t like me anymore. But that led me to think much more deeply about friendships and communication, and that in turn led me to see the importance of maintaining strong relationships. It got me thinking about non-violence, not just eating cruelty-free food but interacting gently with my non-vegan friends.

            So, I thought the diet change was going to be a big  problem, and it wasn’t (although to this day I do miss Mars Bars - I can still remember how they tasted and how the chocolate and caramel and toffee made for something special confection-wise). With a few new products in the cupboard and by using a few new recipes, I never looked back. I was so pleased that I didn’t miss animal-products much at all.

            My main worry was my resolve, whether it would fade once the novelty had worn off. Would I be able to give it a proper chance? I already knew people who’d gone half way and never progressed beyond that, as vegetarians. I couldn’t help thinking it was a great start. But why stop there? For my part, I would go in full bore. I would try to use sheer will-power.  I’d do just about anything to get to the ‘other side’.

            Some people are gradual diet changers, some sudden. But that’s just food. There are other issues to face, like being seen as going weird. True, I had stopped eating foods everyone else ate but I didn’t worry about that - but had I gone weird in another way? Could there be something disturbing in me - that by going vegan was I setting myself above others? Was I positioning myself to lay value judgements on people. Was I doing this to make me feel superior and protect myself from being judged. Was I doing this to prevent my own self-judgement?

            As a vegan I was starting to experience all these changes, on many levels. And something else was happening – a tension was growing between my passion and my impatience. I wanted to drop all the addictions straight away so that I could become a true animal advocate. Or did I mean an evangelist for veganism?

I mention all this as a lead up to some important associated problems, concerning advocacy and getting others to come on board. I wanted to lie and say, “It’s worth it. Go vegan. It’s not that hard at all”. But in truth I knew it could, for someone like me, be quite a difficult change to make. And yet the idea is strong enough, inspiring enough and revolutionary enough to brave all pressures. It is, after all, one of the main doors into the future. 

Energy

69:

On the face of it, dynamic non-violence needs an ability to discriminate right from wrong. But this leads us into the quagmire of value judgment. I am, for instance, in the ‘right-thinking’ camp, and compare myself to what I think of as the ‘wrong-thinkers’, to whom I’m unattractive and maybe even dangerous.

            I’d be on safer ground if I spent less thinking about good and bad and concentrated on energy. I think that non-violence is a highly efficient energy, and I want to produce it and gain from it. If my energy is used for non-violent activity I’ll experience no energy-drain, whereas violence drains precious energy.

            I’ve never heard of anyone actually advocating violence, it’s what we resort to, for pragmatic reasons, more like a fall-back position. The quick-fix is a temptation, and any violence involved is overlooked, not because we like being wicked but because we think we can take a short cut and get a result. And get away with it. We don’t see how it sucks energy out of us. Meat eaters think they can ‘get away’ with their meat diet without too much damage. But of course damage shows up later, down the track, sometimes too late for rescue.

            “Damn it”, they might say.  “If only we’d been less obstinate, listened to our instincts and advice ... and become vegan ... and not taken such risks with our lives as well as the lives of others”. 

Over-stepping the mark

518:

What mostly keeps vegans and omnivores apart is that one side knows what the other doesn’t. To the omnivore, any information about food-animals and vegan diets is always pushed away, not because anyone believes in cruelty to animals or wants to indulge themselves in any way but because no one likes a bible-basher pushing unwelcome information at them. As free-willed adults, living in Western democracies, we don’t like being told what to do, especially what to eat.

I find myself being a bit of basher - “You have to hear what I’ve got to say, for your own safety”. Omnivores question my authority to say what I say. “You have no right to push me on that point”, they would say if it weren’t likely to lead them into deeper waters.  

I can corner someone whilst staying just inside the boundary of acceptable pushiness, and I’ll be doing some good for the animals too. But what a risk! Gambling the chance of a sensible, low-key discussion of the issues, for the sake of making a ‘hit’. It’s tempting. I’m so used to having my views put down or ignored that ‘pushing a point’ seems justified. And for me, doing it feels good. It feels courageous, and perhaps adds another notch on my stick. It’s satisfying to tell an ‘insensitive omnivore’ what I think of their arguments. I owe it to the animals and maybe I’ll go in boots and all. But perhaps I should wise up. I already have enough problems of communication without provoking or frightening people.

I think what I need to do is turn around my attitude, from confrontation to having sympathy and compassion for the tight spot all omnivores find themselves in. They are probably very reluctant to change their lifestyle and diet but are nevertheless haunted, as I am, by the cruelty of animal farming. Although the issues might seem worth discussing there’s a let-out for them, since they comprise 99% of the population and can shelter behind the normality of what others do.

My view is that I need to get over being ‘insistent’. Even though it’s a significant issue for me (as it is, of course, for the animals themselves). But it isn’t an issue for most others, who believe that animals are here for us to use. Human beliefs are as change-proof as reality itself - things are as we believe them to be. Many believe life without hamburgers is no life at all.

To carry someone across, from their belief to our own, is a big challenge. It’s likely people know what they do, but their need for their favourite foods clashes with a dissatisfaction within themselves; there’s the poisoning effect on one’s health and the poisoning of conscience over what’s done to animals. Changing all that for the sake of a higher level of self-satisfaction seems a high price to pay. 

I know, even if I’m persuasive enough to get them to try a vegan diet that they won’t stay vegan for long if they’re still hankering for something that’s ‘off the list’. I somehow have to turn that around so they can see the light at the end of the tunnel, which goes beyond taste bud satisfaction and disinterest in the welfare of animals and leads them to a less haunted future.

NOT knowing

517:


I know omnivores have arguments of their own but they never say what they are. I do know that vegans have opposite arguments, and I can only state what they are based on and say how sad it is that people have sold out to easy living. Outrage is dead. Societies everywhere in the world have allowed, participated and encouraged outrageous cruelty to farm animals.

After about 1945 (almost a lifetime away) they invented diabolical cruelties for farm animal. At the very same time science showed that animals were not necessary for food, and that human life could be sustained on a plant-based diet. The opportunity to live a cruelty-free life was turned down. Every informed person ignored what they believed could be true. A few early vegans went on to show the science was correct. That, in tune with what Ghandi was demonstrating at the time, was a doorway into a non-violent nature for mankind. It was a response to the cruelty of human nature so amply demonstrated in the violence of the 1940s.

On the domestic front, the greatest cruelty came with the birth of the battery cage, a violation of Nature if ever there was one. It matched the violence of the recent war – now there was violence inside our very food.

Vegans vowed to eat no more violence-food. These were the first experimental plant-diet advocates. They were the first animal rights advocates, who would go on to prove that a vegan diet worked on all levels. They were pointing to a non-violent human-species-to-come.

Resistance to non-violence has strengthened in today’s Information Age. Everyone is educated because information is so available but resistance, to certain unsavoury information, is stealing our greatest freedoms. Our freedom to think for ourselves, along with our much prized freedom of speech, is being eroded. Today, information is pushed away so that people can live life to the full. Cruelty issues, regarding farm animals, are off-limits.

Pretending to NOT know things has become as important, to some people, as knowing things.

‘Vee-ghn’

516:


Are you put off by holier-than-thou people? I bet you are. Vegans might seem so. It isn’t a nice-sounding name, ‘vee-ghn’. It sounds almost ugly. It’s too easy to mispronounce (often deliberately – getting it wrong to show how unimportant it is for you). But does it matter? By now, most people know what it’s about – animals, lifestyle, food, ethics. For some the idea of it is a thorn in their side. It stands like a brick wall between the old and the new, between a life-spoiling idea and a life-saving idea.

On first hearing about it, it doesn’t sound credible. The omnivore sees it as a threat to safety and happiness, whereas for an established vegan it’s probably been the best thing we’ve ever done for our self. Omnivores often feel hostile to us promoting it the way we do. Vegans have to get used to that. If we don’t we become bitter and enraged. And that brings up one of the most interesting features of any new-thinking.

It involves ideas and their application but, at the same time, deals with perspectives and patience . For us, veganism is a long term solution to many things. And there’s such a level of reluctance for anything long-term that short-term usually wins out. To push long-term solutions is seen to be confrontational (especially when it deals with a moral matter).

As soon as we confront we act defensively and then aggressively. No one wants to be on the losing side and yet no one wants to take risks. Vegans are often seen as hypocrites because we say we are peace-lovers but we’re quick to accuse and confront. Each side will resort to attack to win.

It’s a case of rebels versus suckers, or any opposing names we can think of, to create an atmosphere ripe for a quarrel. Whereas no one really wants a quarrel, no one wants to be marked down as ‘wrong’. Both sides are determined to be ‘right’.

A vegan’s radical and idealistic expectations are based on being right. We think that’s good enough for converting omnivores, to show we care for them more than they care for us. Perhaps it seems this way, that we care about something other than our selves. Veganism is about care, certainly, but the reason it doesn’t show up the other way round is that omnivores aren’t out there trying to convert us back to the fold. So they seem not to care for us as we do for them.

Since vegans are the initiators in this debate (over animal use) we have to learn how to handle the sluggishness of people. We need to develop patience in the face of short-term thinking. We need to be thinking long-term and fixing on how things are going to be. We certainly have motivational problems, in the absence of any sort of reward or recognition from our society. And then the conduct of our campaigns has to be right too. We’re the one initiating debate so we have to be the ones setting the standards. There’s a lot to deal with, being a peace-lover. And yet peace is at the heart of everything a vegan says, eats and thinks. If it isn’t we have no credibility at all.

Once the quarrelsome element is taken out of the picture then a proper, adult discussion is a possibility. When there’s no simmering threat on either side we can each trade theories and move towards some sort of consensus. Or at least show mutual respect for a difference of opinion, even when it’s as important as this particular difference of opinion.

The impact of what we say

515:



As an animal advocate, I try never to get nasty or insistent. The seriousness of the (animal) issue isn’t necessarily shared by everyone, so I keep the serious details tucked up my sleeve, in reserve. However, it’s the details that are important and it’s these details people don’t know about. Or say they don’t.

If I do get the chance to say something, what can I mention? There’s so much to say but it’s a matter of timing - the more impact we make the greater the risk of shocking, and then being totally rejected.

But if I ever do get to the details, here are three areas I think are worth expanding on:

Sentience - there’s a similarity between humans and animals, in the way we each feel and suffer pain. Even fish have a similar nervous system to ours, so when they are dragged out of their water-world and left to suffocate, they’re often crushed to death by the weight of other fish, piled on top of them. Ordinarily, fish suffocate in the air over a period of twenty minutes, a detail lost on most anglers. Whether creatures die on decks of boats or in abattoirs, every one of them suffers a terrible death. Each of us (who eat them) plays our part in these deaths. The ultimate detail is held in just one number – 250 – the number of animals each person consumes in one year.

The next set of details I’d mention would concern the long-term health effects of ingesting animal products. The foods and chemicals fed to farm animals together with the fatty, high protein content of the food itself, makes it unsafe, health-wise. The Animal Industries wouldn’t agree, of course.

The environmental impact of animal farming is the final matter to be spelt out in detail, with many compelling arguments for not farming animals, on this score alone.

For obvious reasons, none of this is talked about. My polished ‘details’ are usually surplus to requirement; clouds of obfuscation wash over this subject; none of the important details ever get discussed. And I think that all this reluctance represents something even worse, a social taboo. By not allowing free discussion and by pretending the problem doesn’t exist, we lose one of our most valued freedoms – free-speech. You and I might disagree about Animal Rights but if we can’t discuss it we have a much bigger problem on our hands. If we aren’t free to learn new things or talk about certain things what does that say about us? If we’re silent on this subject we are voiceless, just as the animals are. And that’s most embarrassing, to stay quiet when we should be exercising our freedom to speak out.

Our animal slaves on the farms have no freedom. I think that needs to be talked about, objected to and protested. We’ve taken their lives away from them so they have no purpose for living.

While animals can’t do anything about their loss of freedom, we humans can, since we have freedom of thought. But even for a free-thinking vegan, how much right do I have to speak freely? As yet, not much right since this subject is off-limits. I’m expected to skim over the surface but never to touch on any significant details. I can’t get ‘down to it’ with omnivores because I know how touchy this whole matter is for them.

Out of interest

514:



Aggressive vegans like me, don’t do ourselves or the Animal Rights Movement any favours, by force-feeding facts to people who don’t want them. You can never be sure if it’s necessary anyway. Most people are aware, essentially, of ‘animal issues’. However, they choose not to let on; or they do realise but still eat animal-based foods anyway; or they get irritated by being lectured at (because they think that I don’t know what I’m talking about). Because I’ve lit fires under tender spots their irritation is in the form of non-recognition of me, as any sort of authority. I say, “Meat will kill you”. And “Oh yes?” they say.

We vegans often do adopt an authoritativeness in our voices. How do we know we’re right? For me that’s not such a serious question, but often I don’t get as far as that anyway, to explain anything in detail, because I’m not allowed. And that triggers maybe aggression in me. I’m rebuffed. So I step over the politeness-boundary and try to persuade. At this point a hand is raised, “Stop. I’ve heard it all before”. They forestall me, afraid I’ll become emotional. Or irrational. Or predictable.

With people I know, it’s often not the first time I’ve brought up the subject. And it’s not the first time I’ve seemed to be an authority or rubbed guilt in like an emotional blackmailer. You have every right to stop me speaking.

If you do let me speak, maybe you aren’t wanting to discourage me, or you’re trying to show respect for where I’m coming from, by not belittling my beliefs? In this interplay of human-to-human I’ll take my chances where I can find them.

All I can do is try NOT to be predictable. And not to go for the jugular. What I can do is show an easy familiarity with my subject.

I was thinking today about this. I wondered about the least unfriendly way to open up this subject, knowing that discussing it wouldn’t be a first choice for most people.

Say we were discussing another subject - ‘the kids’ recent bad behaviour. How easy I could relate almost any bad behaviour back to overeating, violence or frustration on the part of the child ... and then to bring up the matter of ‘giving kids the best opportunities in life’; giving them something to work for; giving them the best energy; giving them a great body image. All of this, I can suggest, is in vegan food and vegan philosophy. I can drive almost any conversation around to these entry points. But should I?

I probably have done this. And because I have then I’m probably predictable. Your defences go up when I show my face. Quite frankly, if I were you mine would too. I’d avoid me.

So what can any of us (Animal Rights advocates) do to sidestep the predictability of our persona, always steering things towards this pet subject?

I don’t know if it works but I attempt to be half entertaining and half educating. I think most people respond quite well to that. I attempt to be useful but most of all interesting. But even so, this subject is automatically a killer-of-interest. Anything predictable is a dud, interest-wise.

But if I can somehow seduce you into interest, then I can best hold it by keeping you on the edge of your seat, keeping you guessing what’s coming next, or rather what question you might be thinking of asking me next.

I’m very conscious of you hoping for an escape clause, to stem the guilt factor. You know I know you’re poisoning yourself and hurting animals in the process, and for that you’ll guess I’ll want to attack you. So this is where I head, first up - “Please don’t turn information into accusation”. “Take the bare facts on board. Take them away and think about them”. My only aim is to be clear. And I hope on that score that I’m never unclear about where I’m coming from.

Presentation – I try to keep a quietened-down face and keep all shrill tones out of my voice. If you see I mean no harm, it’s likely you’ll feel free to be yourself.

To me there’s no difference between cats and humans, I act like this with a cat in the hope of winning its trust and affection (it’s the same with humans showing their feelings), and when I do, it’s at this point where true dialogue begins.

This is what I want to do. I want to light up the truth. (And, don’t we all?) I especially want to discover what interests you. And that’s not going to be easy, necessarily, especially if it doesn’t seem relevant to this ‘animal’ subject. I’ve no talent for this, so when you like football I can’t connect that to the ‘compassionate arts’,. And I can’t chat on about inconsequentialities anyway or spend time luring you towards that which is of zero interest, when there are so many profound things to talk through.

But if I can catch your interest, then it’s down to me to hold your interest (and very, very importantly, to notice if it wanes). And then talk about anything but this subject.

If it were me listening to you talking, about Animal Rights, veganism, liberation, etc, my suspicions are there by my side. I am always waiting for your barb. So, if I’m talking to you about this subject, my first aim is to assure you I HAVE NO BARB.

But that aside, and back to YOU talking to me, chucking the vegan spiel at me, and with me listening. I know you’re going to embarrass me. You’ll launch into ‘virtuous diets’ and ‘the guiltless conscience’. Whilst I’ll be saying, “Hang on” and “Watch your manners”. I first want to know who you are, and who this person is who’s talking to me about all this heavy stuff.

My own pretence to hail-fellow-well-met is seen through easily. Religious zealots do it. They start off in soft chat and then, out of the blue, they introduce ‘The Lord’. Suddenly casual has turned into ‘deep and meaningful’. Do I want to be here? Listening to a vegan talking Animal Rights, you’ll at least be wonder if you can handle this.

First up then, if I’m conversing with you, I want it to be known that I’m not a shyster, that you’ll be wasting your time listening to me. If you think I’m fair dinkum there’s a better chance you’ll listen. Out of interest.