Learning about and teaching Animal Rights

13.

We can’t necessarily trust what we’ve been taught. Every major issue now needs to be run past our conscience to weed out misinformation and test out new information. If we ever do learn the truth and want to pass it on to others, we have to be convincing and make what we say interesting enough to compete with other disciplines, each vying for the public ear. We need to inspire, inform and warn, whilst not sounding too full of ourselves. We can’t afford to have any dodgy habits ourselves, any double standards or any obvious vulnerabilities if we want others to emulate what we do. In fact we have to be squeaky clean and only be seen to be helping people understand this difficult subject, and showing them how to make changes painlessly. There are a few more guidelines I’d like to suggest here. Since Animal Rights is a foreign concept to most people, we advocates need to be a fount of information for those who want it. At the same time, for those who are less willing to listen, we need to avoid making value judgments of them. It’s such a big turn-off! We need to show them the sort of empathy we’ve developed for animals; sublimating any tendency we might have to hurry people on. For ‘newcomers’ there might be a lot to find out, not only about cruelty to animals but the nutritional and environmental consequences of animal farming. All this may sound like a hard slog, but there are great personal rewards too. Being a true vegetarian, we show that we respect ourselves and are open to the truth about animal exploitation. And once we’ve learned we can teach some of the valuable life tips we’ve picked up.