Changing attitude

12.

Despite the die-hard conventionalism of most people in our society there are still many people who’ve been able to break through their own cravings and arrive at a diet that’s entirely plant-based. And let it also be said that a lot of good work has already been done by animal advocates, who’ve devoted a lot of time to training people how to prepare plant-based foods. The work of animal protection groups has brought animal issues to prominence over a thirty year period. But we may have to accept that what we’ve so far achieved is piecemeal. There’s been no tectonic shift of attitude in our society, essential to spark mass habit-change.

Breaking inertia, improving the worst farm conditions, getting people to take up healthy vegan diets - yes - that will be a great step forward but nowhere near big enough to make much difference. The problem is deeper, much deeper; some would say a ‘million years’ deep. The habit of using animals is planted so firmly in our psyche, that no simple dietary shift or welfare improvement will ever impact strongly enough on collective custom unless it is accompanied by an expansion of empathy, for both animals and children of present and future generations. The Animal Rights movement must aim at abolishing of the use of animals to benefit our own lives. Just as the abolitionists demanded a complete end to human slavery (in the Slavery Abolition Act) almost two hundred years ago, so we must do the same to end animal slavery. If we don’t go that far now, we’ll never create the sort of momentum needed to bring about a necessarily large-scale attitudinal change.

The liberation movement is facing two main obstacles. People like what they are eating (and what they’re wearing) and they fear radical change. But these are changing times, and people realise the danger of ‘social meltdown’ if we continue as we are. Our ethics are looking threadbare and the planet itself is teetering on the edge of irreparable damage. Many people now expect that they’ll have to get used to giving up things which they’ve taken for granted all their lives. Radical changes will have to be made to our habits; whether we’re burning fossil fuels and wrecking the planet, eating dangerous foods to the detriment of our health or condoning animal gulags and suffering the shame of that.

The factors linking all the main issues of our day are, in reality, merely reflections of human nature, particularly our collective obsession with high living and maintaining animal-dependant lifestyles. It’s not just a matter of meat-eaters giving up meat or vegetarians giving up eggs and cheese. It is for example-setters to show what can be done by simply changing one single attitude based on a very simple truth - animals are irreplaceable, sovereign individuals, just as we humans are. They aren’t commodities to enhance human lifestyle.