Why the reluctance to change

16.

Getting this idea (of expanding empathy for farmed animals) across to unwilling listeners, is always going to be difficult. Most people won’t necessarily see things the way I now see them. They won’t willingly give up meat and eggs, let alone their leather shoes or woollen blankets. So they won’t extend their kind feelings towards animals that provide them with those things. Meaning - they’ll resist our arguments fiercely. This is why I think the key to the success of our mission to liberate animals can only be found in our approach to nervous listeners. Somehow each of us has to find our own way to earn their trust so we can put forward our case without causing them to feel too judged or too threatened.

Animal advocates are essentially information imparters and to a certain extent (especially for those ready and willing to learn) we’ve done a good job. We’ve made masses of information available through our campaigns, literature, web sites and in our personal conversations and exchanges of ideas. Thirty years ago we’d spend all day in the library searching for the facts which we can now ‘Google’ in seconds. Today there’s no excuse for ‘not-knowing’. But the feelings we have are set deep. Any amount of facts won’t necessarily alter feelings and these feelings may be specifically of a ‘disinterest’ towards animals. In fact they’re feelings for the opposite - for the taste of meat, for chocolate and a million rich foods laced with milk products, against the frustration of not being able to find vegan alternatives. I think this is what puts most people off making a radical dietary change. It’s the reluctance to boycott animal foods which stops people going anywhere near even discussing the subject. So we animal advocates can rant and rave till we’re blue in the face, but we live in a free society where everyone knows they are free to do as they please. No one is obliged to listen to what we say, and therefore respecting that reality is the first stage in any approach we, as advocates, make.