Our ‘nasty’ side

526:

We have a tricky subject here in Animal Rights. Everything we believe in must be reflected in our own daily lifestyle, for starters, otherwise we’ll be seen as false … because we are watched; that’s the first thing people see about us. What counts is that we do make an impact with our information, but as genuine people. If someone is interested in knowing about ‘it all’ (e.g. Veganism) they’ll first look at vegans, those of us they know, and ask themselves if they think we’re ‘for real’, and if they like us.

The personal example illustrates the point – we represent ourselves as ordinary, acceptable people, who one might possibly want to know. We also represent a cause, which is why we need to be double-aware of how we present. Each of us has a personal character but we also represent a collective character. We are responsible to others connected with the cause for how we come across.

For instance, being homosexual I support the aspirations of fellow gays and want to come across as an acceptable advocate for gay rights … but that doesn’t mean I have to approve of all gay people just because they share the same sexual preference. Some are completely acceptable, others not. For instance, one doesn’t have to like ‘nasty queens’ with tongues as sharp as razors.

Likewise, being vegan, I don’t have to like the righteous or aggressive vegans just because they eat the same sort of food as me. I want to try to counter the image of that sort of vegan, so that the person doesn’t muddy the message.

It’s likely we don’t emulate someone we don’t like. For a cause like ours, it isn’t hard for me to let myself down. I do it all the time, and then I drag the cause down too. Some of us, who’re still dealing with our ‘aggro agendas’, don’t represent the Movement responsibly. We use it for our own ends, whatever they may be.

The big problem with ‘nasty’ types is that we each have a hard side which we forget to keep under control. Discussing Animal Rights is tricky because there are so many issues to learn about. I’m never keen to back away from a point just because I don’t know how to answer it. So, what I’ve noticed myself and others doing is capsizing our argument for the sake of saving face. I’ll fall back on making a moral judgement of those who don’t agree with me. And when I do that, it means I have no real interest in being open or helping others to increase their understanding, or improve my own closeness with whomsoever I’m talking to. It’s likely I’m upset when people walk away, aware that I’ve upset them, but unaware that I’ve been showing my ‘nasty’ side.

Strong arguments

525c

Yes, vegans do have some pretty watertight arguments and yes, we have been known to be full of disapproval of those who disagree.

            Vegans do everyone a favour by NOT dishing out value judgements to win arguments. It makes us seem like moral bullies. If we can dispel that image then a healthy, open, good natured and intelligent interchange can take place. Good heavens, it’s not as if we have weak arguments to support our case! Fireworks aren’t necessary!!

            We are simply dealing with head-in-the-sand problems. Discussion isn’t taking place on this subject. We are (at least, I am) simply trying to encourage an exchange of opinions, without engaging emotionally when an opinion is not the same as our (my) own.

Agreeing to disagree

525b

Animal Rights isn’t a subject which comes up casually in conversation. Most people studiously avoid it, which is why we need to find ways to have some sort of dialogue about it. Not just about the welfare of farm animals but about the wrongness of using-animals altogether. Of course, since most people use animals for food and clothing it isn’t likely they’d agree about the ‘wrongness’ of their foods, hence their reluctance for dialogue. But vegans do have an urgency to talk about it, because there are so many problems associated with animal farming. “Your reluctance versus my eagerness”.

            This isn’t some cosy subject for intellectual debate, or a subject we can politely agree to disagree about, “It’s civilisation versus barbarism ...”, and yet whatever outrageous thing I say, it’s perceived by non-vegans as an ‘attack’. But in my perception it’s just a simple message.

            We’re each locked into crude assumptions about each other.

            What’s to be done? I think it’s all bound into the simple message about no-use-of-animals.

            It’s more of a ‘hurry’ thing than a ‘power’ thing for me, as with most vegans. We are ‘look-outers’. In essence, looking-out for people on ‘The Precipice’, even looking-out for the World on a precipice. But the problem here is being thought of as “So up yourselves”. Vegans hate to be thought of as I-told-you-so or ‘I’m-right-about-everything’. So, ego aside, it really comes to this, right down to basics: some see some ‘thing’ coming, and want to help others avoid the danger of it, mainly we’d want to help reduce the gloom of it. And there is gloom, general gloom, about what we do to animals but also about humans-breeding-heavily. Feeding is becoming critical. There’s impending food shortage, along these lines. Question:  “So, how precisely, is the World going to feed a predicted nine billion humans in 2050, unless plant-based foods are promoted and unless animal husbandry is de-constructed?”

            Urgent emphasis on constructing plant-based husbandry. Simple. Something no one disagrees about? Oh really!!

The next hurdle, after swopping to a more intelligent food source will be a re-think about family sizes, but that’s another story, entirely. First, the animal thing has to be fixed, as in - fixing ethics first.

The hit-out

525a 

Being vegan, I focus on both me and ‘them’ - that’s surely the idea of being vegan, being passionate and concerned for ‘food’ animals. But the passion is misjudged. It reeks of the zealot.

            I succeed in making zero impact on omnivores. They can’t trust me (perhaps any of us?) and worse, they don’t like me (perhaps any of us?) and that helps justify their disliking of What We Say. And that, of course, fits neatly into maintaining the status quo of traditional attitude.

            Vegans give up an ‘eat-what-you-like habit-of-easy-choices’, in order to set a difficult example. We can’t afford to be seen as hobby-advocates. And particularly, we can’t have any double standards. If veganism’s about nothing else, it’s about that.

            But if exemplary behaviour gets difficult to keep up, it’s mainly because we’re seething inside, about cruelty. And almost 100% of people in our community don’t seethe, being so well trained (in turning a blind eye). When I sound off about ‘cruelty to farm animals’ I’m ignored, thinking no doubt, “Here he goes again, on about the same old thing”.

            I conclude: I can get with people by being professional, civil and affectionate, and not showing too much emotion. Why should we let our face or body language express an emotion - passion - and be seen identifying ourselves by it? For what reason? Do we do it to make people sit up and listen? The trouble with that approach is that it’s scary. It frightens people who listen to our ‘dangerous views on animals’. And a frightened person gets annoyed and deaf all at the same time.

            I prefer to drive off the subject instead of driving onto to it.

            I think this way:

1.They need to know I’m on their side, theirs and the animals’.

2. And that I know the difficulty of ‘not being anything-yet-with-the-animal-thing’.

3. And lastly, that I don’t care for making value judgements (I try not to stray that way anyway).

            Overall, I suppose it’s my approach, the one I feel most at home with, but I don’t mean getting ‘pally with the enemy’, I merely mean making the communication-machine work better. We vegans should be setting a good example, especially for those of us who’ll still try to be communicating in decades to come.

            “Our Cause”, our Fight, our arguments, our trying-to-grab-people’s attention - whatever I identity with, it’s open to misinterpretation.

            Do we, as the father asks his pregnant daughter of the boy in question -  does he (read, do we) have good intentions? Vegans need to be seen having good intentions. I think it’s what others must see of us, first up.

            So, if only for that reason, we all need to find our own ‘most convincing approach’. Any of us might like a good old barney with people who disagree with us, but I’d suggest that we resist getting our rocks off just to gratify our urge to hit out. 

Bullying persuasions

525:

However long I’ve been vegan, I’ve been fighting demons. The strength I need for ‘the fight’ definitely comes from the passion of being vegan. But to become vegan is to enter a marginalised lifestyle. On the one hand I have found that being vegan gave me a lot of leverage. Being vegan allows me, even tempts me, to flex my muscles, or show off my passion. It’s fun to do that and, best of all, it shocks people. I always want to ‘get passionate’ about animal liberation, but there’s a fine line between my being passionate and my being offensive. In order to get people to trust me (enough to listen to what I have to say), I need to show I’m kind. First up. No confusion. We vegans do a lot of talking about compassion to animals. I’d like to see that same compassion carried over and equally distributed amongst humans. There’s a lot to go around after all. And I suppose people like me tend towards big rescues, and because there are so many animals in trouble that’s where my focus is. I reckon there may be many who would rescue right now if they knew how to.

            My own priority is for the victim-animals. I want to demonstrate my feelings of compassion for them so that others can’t fail to see how important it is to me. (I like to think it’s also making a nicer person of me, but I might be wrong about that).

            A nicer person doesn’t try to make other people feel uncomfortable or guilty but does try to explain what’s involved in becoming vegan. Obviously food is on the mind of most people, concerning taste, cravings, restrictions, health, safety, economics, etc. So at first, food throws up several things-to-be-dealt-with. What we eat and don’t eat is guessed at, and guessing vegan diets are too restrictive. Anything we call a diet shouts discipline, and that’s a turn-off. And yet the up-side is so attractive that almost anything could be given up for it.

            Vegans are in a unique position. Just by being vegan, it allows us to argue a watertight case. Right now, it may not be the optimum time for collective consciousness changing, not on this scale anyway,  but when the time comes ...

            When the time comes, the vegan argument will ring far too true for it to be ignored, despite the kicking and shouting of the vested animal interests.

            In the meantime, for us, we must all go looking for a few graciously-given seconds to speak (until their attention-span ends), or an audience who is hopefully thirsty for information.

            If I had thirty seconds to present a case for being vegan, I think it would go something like this: 1,2,3 ... Life is safe solely on vegan food. Animal cruelty is wrong. Farming animals is cruel. 15,16,17 ... Humans are natural herbivores. Plant-based food  can be delicious, and is healthy and energy producing. 23, 24, 25 ... planet-saving, greenhouse-friendly, and it’s good to feel empathy ... 30.

Vegan is magic

523:

My ongoing, never-ending pursuit of the omnivore-mind continues to be frustrated. I never seem to grasp what it is. There’s some barrier between my mind and the ‘meat-mind’ which is stuck. I seem to have a very strong instinct that it needs shifting. And for that we might need a bit of magic, to help transform what’s on one side of the barrier to the other side - to transform the feeling-of-being-vegan from a mundane feeling into something special.

          I like to attach the word ‘special’ to the attraction of ‘being vegan’. But can I, or can you, ever succeed in projecting what it’s like to be vegan, to someone who hasn’t experienced it? Can what I say ever be picked up, by non-vegans? And if it can, can it be seen as an ‘attraction’ by them? (And not as a threat?).

          Attraction: for me, the magic is within the attraction. It lifts me up and puts me down in another world.

          Vegans are in another world in so many ways, by virtue of lifestyle. That ‘other world’ has a different frequency, so they say (but I don’t understand that) but I did notice something like that a long time ago - I noticed an almost magical quality come into my feelings ... when I started to look at food differently. Things became attractive that weren’t before. Accepting vegan food was total. Accepting what it symbolised was total too. Food wasn’t just the maker of taste sensation or energy or stomach-filling but responsibility.

          Food is a pleasure. It’s a taste experience, and there’s energy, etc, but it’s also driving a lot of activity. We take on deliberate actions like shopping, like preparing and cooking food. My decision, a vegan’s decision, comes from one thing about food, that it is specifically chosen for its ‘harm-free-ness’. To me, no other criteria is as important as that.

          My decision, and my daily reinforcement of it, is based on what I once considered an uncomfortable philosophy. Living by it turns it into something entirely comfortable.

          I didn’t realise that the magic of something so simple (in this case a plant-based-food regime) could make me so happy, happy enough to willingly re-make my one decision, every day. Now I can dance and eat at the same time, and always could ever since I let my membership of ‘The Killing Club’ lapse, indefinitely.

          Surely, the most happy feeling anyone can imagine is being in love, but isn’t that feeling just part of a whole family of feelings. The feeling of being in love is almost the same as not-hurting-animals-for-my-own-survival. And that set of feelings is possible for us in the West, because we are lucky enough to have the choice of what foods to eat.

Good greed

102:

The more confident we are with altruism the bigger the difference we can make with it. Or, put another way, a revamped altruism isn’t so much about being good as being confident of making a difference. Or it’s about being optimistic enough to believe that we ‘live in a safe universe’. Or it’s holding a belief  that pessimism mustn’t screw up the things we do. A selfish cum selfless sort of altruism has many uses.

I try not to think that altruism is only about goodness and idealism but about a good business deal, like ‘clean dealing’, like an opposite to greed, like making altruism into a greed for others, or like transposing it so that it can work for the best future imaginable, for all of us.

       The sticking point though is that altruism doesn’t necessarily bring happiness, not quite as you might expect it, anyway ... because it is all about the long term. The fruits of altruism might not be ready to harvest for some time - we might not personally be around to benefit from any of the altruistic initiatives we take. Altruism can be annoying, for not providing us with fun-right-now. That’s the hard-to-swallow nature of altruism, but it’s better than harbouring dark pessimism and doubt.

       I see it this way: too much indecision and doubt plunges me into gloom and self pity. Altruism, on the other hand, if it’s about anything at all, is about the joy of problem solving. There’s nothing better, than when we can do things without needing to get materially rewarded for doing them. It’s then that I think we have altruism in the bag!

Altruism as an irresistible force

101:


Earth repair and the repair of our ethics are not only needed to counter all the damage we humans have done but also to reverse the habitual violence and violation we are so used to practising. Altruism might in that repair.

But first we need to discover if altruism can work for us on an individual level, by applying it to our own daily habits, not the least of which is the most damaging habit we have, of ignoring animals when buying and eating food. This is one of the many gestures-of-altruism we need to make, without waiting around for others to go first. It’s up to us to bite the same bullet we accuse others of not biting.

Say, for ethical and environmental reasons, we decide to go vegan - it’s up to us to find out if it is safe, food, diet, lifestyle, etc, then be happy to take on more than our fair share of responsibility, to experiment with both food and with our altruistic side. The repairing-ness of altruism is in making violence redundant. It gives humanity a different type of attitude and motivation, which helps us get ready for an entirely different type of world.

However, big repair needs big numbers of people, perhaps even armies of advocates ... not just a willing few. Today numbers are growing, but slowly (although we read today that a Gallup poll taken recently in America is showing the 2% of all adults are vegans, a statistic which is incredibly encouraging). Humans drag their heels because it seems like such a big step to take, to become vegan and then to go on to advocate for non-violence.

For each advocate there must be motivation, strong enough to withstand anything thrown at us. Altruism must be potentially strong enough to dissolve our value judgements of others, and strong enough to step aside from violence and vilification.

Repairing and healing are not immediately for our benefit but initially for the animals. And that shift away from first thinking of ourselves and humanity and only afterwards thinking of our victims, requires a true revolution in our thinking which only altruism can help with.

Reaching for the stars

96:



When we look up at the stars in the sky (which presents no problem for us at all), it’s like watching a cat on a mat, observing what it is without wanting it. It’s there, it’s alright. Maybe we feel a yearning frustration for things we can’t reach. The state of mind of the cat is unreachable by humans … and so what? It’s just as it is.

Maybe as we gaze up at stars and yearn for the unreachable but we always have to return to the here and now, to appreciate what we already have at home. We have our own star, the sun, we’ve got a planet, companions, even a cat on a mat. So lucky!

We look up at the stars. They shine down on us just as they shine down on their own orbiting planets. That reminds us of our future (which we can’t ‘touch’, which we can’t possibly see because it hasn’t happened yet) but about which we can project probabilities. And that seems to be our main guidance. Well, it is for me anyway. By referring to the past, by listening to the stories which have made us what we are and moulded our social attitudes, it helps me to take in the reality of now, by learning from things I’d perhaps rather not know about.

Many humans have been exploited and many lives wasted. The age of the machines has arrived and machine-mind is responsible for a lot of the hard thought we have and the damage we’ve done to each other. We’ve even turned animals into machines so that we now have them producing goods for us, from the confines of their cages and concrete pens. Things couldn’t be worse, and yet repairs can be made. Repairs are possible … no one can deny the possibility of repair.

Order and chaos

95:

Bringing order to chaos - how do I achieve that? It’s like pulling weeds out, to make room for a new tree to grow. Or not-pulling out weeds and letting the tree grow through them. Overall though, chaos falls into order somehow and the tree grows. Strong.

            In the human context I grow, from the strength I might get from considering, for more than a moment every day, the greater good. And how to minimise my destruction. And have realistic energy considerations.

            Dilemma: ‘Order’ doesn’t necessarily solve anything, a little chaos is needed too, but where things are badly out of kilter then some pro-active ordering might need to take place, for sustainability reasons. If I let weeds grow the trees will die. You smiling at me, or making eye-contact, brings order to my chaos, as I go around solitary and competitively.

            ‘Order and chaos’ is as big as questions get; a question to be discussed, in terms of rescuing the whole of human nature itself. In theory, if we humans have the ability to restructure our physical systems, then we can restructure our own nature. At the extreme point, we can re-balance our Earth. 

Altruism as a reference point

93: 

I think I live in a partially unknowable universe. I have to make the best of things. I’d be better off doing things with affection, to lubricate what might otherwise be a painful business. Relating.

          My instinct advises affection, not in the ‘doing good’ way only but in optimising for myself too. If I’m faced with a choice, do I go in selfish (which might come naturally) or selfless (which might also come naturally). It’s natural to be affectionate, as you might be in-thought. When thinking about others first, for instance doing something for the sake of the kids. It’s natural to be altruistic. And altruistic isn’t a one-way road, supposedly feeding back again to ourselves; but in maturity I know it might not feed back straight away. Isn’t this acquaintance (with the trickiness of altruism) at the heart of self-development? It’s consciousness-shifting is about maturing yet grappling with the non-obviousnessness of altruism.

          But however complicated it might be, the simple face is always there; and very handy for parenting, I imagine. A child screams for attention and the parent comes to the rescue. Altruism kicks in. You think, “what’s best?”. What’s best ... best for the child and best for my sanity. Altruism is probably a central reference point here, when making choices about kids - the question being whether to go in hard or soft; indulge the child or deny the child.

          I think it’s the same protective, warm-wrappy-round-cosy-sort-of feeling we have when you hug me. It’s natural to be like that around kids, so why not natural to be like that with bugs. Do species differences mean what we do to them doesn’t matter? That bugs don’t feel? And by extension neither do mammals, much? Bugs, unlike children, have not-identifiable-with-faces, ugly faces. Non-humans can’t smile back.

          So, for example, I’m about to do the washing up. Psyched up and ready to do battle with plates and dishes. First-feeling I have, it’s “luxury-luxury, hot water in the taps”, and “I’ll knock this off in no time”. And then ...

          Then I find an ant in the sink. Instinctively my light flashes up “choice”. What choice? Annoyance-flushes, angry-at-ants-flushes. Unexpected flushes. I’m forced to face a decision. My hand is ready on the tap.

          But altruism is never very far away when it comes to nudging decisions. Advice is always the same -avoid unnecessary-harm-intervention. I grab paper, ant crawls onto paper, pare shaken out of the door, fifteen seconds out of my life. The ant is saved. So if we turn this around, to apply it to philosophy, then I think we have this: non-violence drives, energises and generally inspires altruism. In return, altruism feeds back endless non-violent solutions to problems.  

How to stop hurting animals

47.

You can ask any three year old kid why we are hurting animals and, even if they don’t know the answer they’ll understand the question. It isn’t complicated. It’s just a sad indictment on those of us who are still caught up in the whole sorry mess of violence-towards-animals. And then also there’s the ego factor. Most people seem to be spending a lot of energy trying to prop up the system, or trying to save face, in order to justify what they do.

            The average adult still argues that we DO need animal food for our health, even though they probably already know this argument is dead. The evidence is to the contrary, that nutrition and the benefits of plant-based diets is about keeping ourselves safe, healthy and maximising our energy.

            The nutritional details are available on the Internet, along with advice about preparing vegan food, learning what to buy, and how to make vegan food taste good, and where the vitamins and minerals are. It’s all there at the click of a mouse. What a wonderful age, where what used to take me a week in the library now takes a second or two, click, click, finding out things I want to know about.

            At present we humans can’t plan for the future because we look at ourselves and see no hope for the world. The sorry mess of animal farming and our part in it (as consumers) mirrors the mess inside our own heads and hearts. And then there’s fear! We fear finding out what we need to know - namely, how to stop hurting animals.

Telling it as I see it

46.

How do I, as a vegan, see things?  I see the bubbling violence in people, the ugly food they eat, the things done to animals in their name. I find it’s sometimes hard to eat with people or mix with them socially - no wonder I seem to others like a social pariah. But there’s an up-side for me. If this is the reality, it’s sad, but at least it builds up my will power, especially when I ask myself if I’m strong enough to say “no” when I’d rather say “yes”. I’ve often been surprised to find that, when I overcome taste pleasures and food addictions, I discover it’s not as hard as I thought it would be.

            But however convinced I might be, if I try to tell this to people, I know they’ll never believe me till they try to do it themselves. And they must want to try and want to be convinced that a vegan lifestyle will be liberating, and could even bring them happiness.           

Why believe me when I say, “Veganism leads to our being happy” ? It’s actually not quite true, because I must also say, “But what right do I have to be happy while so many animals languish in cages?” Becoming a vegan isn’t just about my feeling good and warm inside, no, it’s just as much about social justice. If I feel unhappy within myself it’s not because I resent missing out on all the goodies on offer but because I’m sad for what’s happening. I know nothing can change for the animals until something changes in humans. That makes me sad, and I’m particularly sad about how slowly things are changing.

            Animal suffering gets worse. The planet dies one more little death every time another human procrastinates. All the while, I’m wondering why people are so blind to the crime of exploiting animals and can’t see animal slavery for what it is; I don’t know why they sponsor the machines of murder, pollution and misinformation. It makes me furious.

            If vegans seem to get cranky with people, it isn’t because they want to offend people or lose all their friends, it’s because we can’t condone the drone mentality. But my whinge takes me nowhere. My attention should be on how to talk. To talk from the heart. To talk so that even kids can understand and adults are not embarrassed by understanding, that whenever we buy anything from animal sources we support an attack on them. There must be a way through to people’s hearts, but it isn’t obvious, especially when the habit of animal-eating is nothing short of ubiquitous. 

How vegans/veganism is perceived

45.

Vegans have an important story to tell. Not only about the criminal attack on animals but about how vegan consciousness is an enlightening and exciting opportunity. And there’s the bonus of it stopping us buying crap food.

            All this would be wonderful if it were only a private matter of conscience and personal diet, but some of us feel duty bound to speak about it; and when we do there’s a silence, forced on us by people who don’t get it and don’t want to hear it. As vegans, we neither have the power nor the right to change their minds. If we attempt to change people’s fixed attitudes we’ll immediately seem too ‘good’, as if we thought ourselves superior. Or it’s like being stand-offish, or like rejecting the traditions of our culture. And we would seem crazy, for ignoring the fine cuisines of the world, by restricting ourselves to a plant-based-only diet.    

This is the usual reaction when someone finds out I’m vegan: “This is NOT for me!!” they say. “I’d go mad with all that denying-yourself-things. You’re just trying to be different”. I’m seen as a threat, and up go the defences, and in come the white lies, thrown in to put me off the scent. They say all the usual things, so as not to hurt my feelings. “I admire vegans for what they stand for” and “I wish I could do it myself”. But under their breath they’re saying, “Ugh! No way! Never! Not for me!”.

Vegans: Toughening up and softening up

44.

In these ‘early days’, of the growth of animal-rights consciousness, vegans need to become hard working, and to keep up their own thriving plant-based food regime whilst building up a new product market. And do some educating too. Our need is for strength of character; we need to stay strong and committed, and also press for change in others.

            But pressure! It can work both ways. When people want to know what we’re on about we can tell them, but if we apply unsolicited pressure, if we tell others to give up animal-eating, there’s usually a negative reaction. “You say I must be like you? It’s a free world. There’s no ‘must’. I can eat what I like and no one’s going to stop me”.

The main question facing vegans is how we talk about animal issues without seeming like nut-case evangelists. We need to solve this question, of how to ‘talk-animals’ to people who initially don’t want to know. And how do we interest the media who also don’t want to know?

To a vegan, this subject is so ‘on our minds’ all the time that it’s difficult to resist the temptation of ‘talking vegan’ to non-vegan friends. We hope we might convert them, but generally people won’t be pushed into anything too soon. Pressure! It does do damage to how people relate to us, and it’s worth keeping our friends because they are our most precious resource; so by being pushy with them it’s likely we could already be on the road to becoming an ex-friend.

            Friends keep us going when we are down so it seems a good idea to love them at all costs. My advice would be to answer questions, but resist the temptation to try to convert them. Unless they ask, say little; reserve the oration for those times we might be invited to speak in public. And of course, there’s always the people’s forum, the Internet!

Choices

43.

Humans have two choices; either we ignore the plight of domesticated animals or act to liberate them. It’s the only choice left to us and each individual can choose one way or the other. If we do choose to work to liberate animals, then it follows that everything else falls into place, everything has the possibility of repair; one thing leads to another, plant food to health, to a more ethically healthy conscience, to environmental good sense, and inevitably to a solution to world hunger problems. But if we choose not to go along that path then nothing can substantially ever change, things only tend to get worse, and then we’ll never shake off our shackles.

            If we want to free ourselves, our repair has to start at home. It’s about individuals making personal choices in the face of Society’s indifference. It’s a grass roots approach to social change and it has to start this way because no government will ever take the initiative and close down the abattoirs. All the time abattoirs are open the commercial interests will flourish and animal issues will be sidelined.

Public attitude to farmed animals can only change when people are turned on by vegan principle not put off by it; fashion changes when there are enough vegan-minded people who are trying to make vegan principle attractive. Vegans therefore need to become attractive in themselves. Their food, their clothing choices, their ideas about non-violence, all this must come across as the most intelligent choice and be seen to be of the greatest self-benefit.

Gutsy Talk

42.

To stand up for animals you have to be vegan, and to be vegan you have to have guts. No tickets on yourself, no boasting about it, just a strong will. It’s not for the faint hearted. It isn’t a breeze.

            So, why go this far? Perhaps because it’s the starting point to all the changes humans need to make - we’ve done horrible things to each other and even worse things to the animals, and in the process nearly wrecked many of the delicately balanced systems of the planet. Those who are making the strongest and most significant stand are vegans. We have such a simple solution to so many of the world’s greatest problems, and yet because the starting point involves animal protection most people can’t see the connection. They dismiss us, our diet, our ethics, and therefore miss the solution we advocate entirely.

            Initially, the solution comes from a reappraisal of ethics, and leads on logically from there. The reason we make such a fuss about animal slavery is because it’s as ugly as any slavery gets. It reflects the nastiest side of human nature. We should all be ashamed. But we should all take the hint, and seize the clue to the solving of many global problems, related to the destructive behaviour of our species. The clue lies in the way we have chosen to treat the ‘sub-species’.

            Billions of beautiful, innocent, non-human animals are ruthlessly seized, imprisoned, have things sucked out of their bodies and then uncaringly and cruelly killed. It’s the unremarkableness of this attitude which is such a worry. We routinely exploit. Our attitude contains no sympathy for the animals that are enslaved. We fail to see our attitude as dangerous for us. We kill without care - it’s the opposite of a mercy killing; it’s cold and hard and cruel.

            This is mainly why vegans call for radical change. But we’re dealing with determined human beings, intent on eating meat and making money from producing animal products. And no one is listening to us yet. Not the producers, not the consumers and not the educators of children. We are a lone voice, but we’re saying what we have to say, nevertheless.

An egg for breakfast

41.

There’s a belief that eggs produced by free-ranging hens come from happy hens. For sure, they’re probably happier than their sisters in cages, but when they become economically unviable they go to their deaths in the same cruel way as their caged sisters. As for their eggs, they cost more to produce, of course, so the ‘battery egg’ is used in the production of food products containing egg. And most eggs eaten for breakfast are from caged hens, there are ten million in Australian cages and three billion caged hens world wide.

It’s worth knowing the story of the caged hen. Perhaps I should let her speak for herself:

“What exactly is it you don’t like about hens? Keeping us pressed behind metal bars like this. It hurts. There’s no room to move and the ammonia rising from our excrement makes it hard to breathe. There’s no fresh air in the shed we’re kept in. There are thousands of us crammed into tiny cages. We lay an egg nearly every day of the year for about one and a half years, then we’re taken to the processing plant. 

“You saw on TV the other day a story about egg-laying. You used the word “disgusting” when you saw those batteries of cages in the shed. Nasty sight eh? Maybe it caught you by surprise. Sitting there in front of your TVs there was a lot of shaking of heads in disbelief, and some drawn-in breaths, and a few despairing hand gestures. But there wasn’t much more happening. You didn’t say “No more eggs for me”. So much for all that disgust and shaking of heads. What did it mean? Probably not very much at all.

“Would you like to boast, “I’m a Vegetarian – I abhor all killing?”. Well, let me tell you, it isn’t just about meat. Eggs is all about killing too, and worse. When we hens don’t lay enough eggs, they throw us into crates and take us off to the killing factory, which they call a ‘processing plant’ - it sounds nicer put that way. Then they hang us upside down by our thin spindly legs and send us on a conveyor into a prickly trough of high voltage water that stiffens every nerve in our body, so they can  position our necks for the final cut, a set of sharp revolving blades. And that’s the end.

“Can you believe this happens? No? Well, let me tell you, it’s been this way for a long time, the egg business has pioneered the ultimate cruelty, from caged hell to the terror of the killing machines. And YOU don’t care, because here you are, all seated around the breakfast table, tucking in to your breakfast eggs, with no thought for us poor birds. We suffer unimaginably, from birth to death. We girls almost envy our brothers who were thrown, live, into the grinding machine, on day one. At least their agony wasn’t prolonged. They never had to experience the terrible suffering we went through for the twenty or so months of our lives”.

A dairy experience

40.

Once, I visited a dairy in Queensland, to see for myself how the dairy cow lived. I had to be up early. It was pitch black – 5 am. Two all-terrain-vehicles were already roaring around the hillsides rounding up the herd. At 5.15 things were coming to life. The main approach to the dairy sheds was getting crowded. Two hundred and fifty cows queuing to be milked. Every day at this time and again in the afternoon, they queue for up to two hours in mud and excrement, eventually entering the yards and then the milking shed. Inside the shed it’s all bright lights, hard concrete and iron piping. Twenty cows on one side of the milking pit are plugged in to have their milk drawn from their udders whilst being fed cotton seed to supplement their poor diet in drought-affected pastures. After being milked they are released, but by 6 am only sixty cows have gone through. One hundred and seventy were still outside, waiting.

In one corner, in a pen, there was a newborn male calf, who had good reason to feel frightened. On the dairy farm he’s regarded as trash because he’s male (and useless to the dairy) and he’ll shortly be disposed of. If the calf was female, she’d be taken away from her mother 6 hours after birth, which is thought to be adequate time for her to receive all the essential antibodies from her mother’s colostrum. She’d be taken to the calf rearing section of the farm, quite a distance from the grazing herd, and some months later she would join the heifers in another paddock. At 2 ½ years she is mated with the bull or fertilised by artificial insemination - and she bears a calf. From here she starts a career as a milker, bearing a calf every year. She’ll be milked daily until she is no longer economically productive, at which time she will be sent to the abattoir to have her throat cut and her body used for canned dog food

Meanwhile, at the calf sheds, it’s 7.30 am and 30 young animals drink milk from buckets and are put out in enclosures which are ringed with electrified wire and infested with flies. High above swarm a huge flock of cockatoos attracted to these paddocks, mainly by the undigested cotton seed from the excrement of the cows. Their constant screeching adds something of an eerie atmosphere to the place. There’s a feeling of doom here. The river is drying up, not only from drought, but because its water is being used to irrigate the winter rye grass being grown for fodder. Chemical fertiliser is being spread over the paddocks and these same chemicals, mixed with the wastes from the dairy herd, leech into the river causing a bloom of blue-green algae. This particular river has always been clean enough for platypus, but now there is a danger that they might disappear. And all this destruction and interference is just for milk. Milk to pour on our bowl of corn flakes or into our cup of tea.

So, who will benefit? The big dairies down south will and the intensive dairy farms that push their cows to three milkings per day - they will! It’ll be cheap milk for all, but for the animals it will be just more misery and slavery.  

Getting kids to eat their breakfast

39

When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is eat or think about food. I have a routine. The clock tells me what I can do before leaving for work. It’s what most people are doing – going through a routine. For many people young and old it often involves milk. There’s a vague sense that protein is needed to start the day, and that comes from a habit so ingrained that we don’t need to think about it, something like a ‘a corn flakes and milk’ habit.

Kids have very set routines, often involving cereal and milk, which makes it easier to get them to eat something for breakfast. Milk is central to the breakfast habit, which incidentally is great for the milk industry.

My milk, if I use it, comes from soy beans or rice or oats, but traditionally milk comes from cows. Children use milk, as it’s associated with sweet things. It is often sweetened, used with sweet cereal and kids grow up believing milk is essential food ‘given’ willingly, freely and comfortably by cows. That’s all they need to know, vaguely, for an uninhibited milk-habit to form. From parents’ point of view it’s a great food, it’s fresh, it’s cheap (subsidized) and available from any corner shop. Milk is found in every fridge. Children drink lots of it and so do adults. It is an unquestioned food, and yet how it comes to us is a mystery to most people, other than it comes from cows. Most people wouldn’t think that milk involves cruelty and death

Cows get killed for milk, and their calves too. Mum must get pregnant to stimulate her mammary glands to secrete milk. Simple biology. Because humans want the milk, the calf must not drink it. So once it is born, the calf has served its chief purpose and, unless it’s a female destined for the herd, it is usually killed, either for veal whilst still very young or fattened in a beef herd and then killed when fat enough.

If a female calf is produced, she may be put with the dairy herd and milked and impregnated for seven or so years, after which the dairy cow is sent to the abattoir - some 10 years short of her natural life span - because her milk output will, by that time, have dropped below the commercially viable level.

Milk production is something most people don't want to know about in case it forces them to associate it with animal cruelty. If they turn away from milk on ethical grounds they will have to turn away from all the thousands of food items made with milk. And that wouldn’t go down too well with kids, which is why they are never told about cruelty to dairy cows and calves.

Children love to see animals

38.

What message is given to school students taken to zoos, by their school teachers or parents? If I pity the animals, I also pity the kids for being dragged along to these places on the pretext of educating them about wildlife. They get to see a lot of bored, caged animals, and that’s all. I suppose it helps to desensitise them to the idea that animal factories are okay places too; our society certainly doesn’t want children to be too sensitive towards animals in case they stop eating them. By the time they grow up into adults the process has been more or less completed. By now the adult is too obstinate to see what their own eyes are telling them. We learn to believe that zoos are what they say they are, and that they “save animals”.

So just what do we get when we pay to get into zoos to see a lot of imprisoned exotic creatures? We get what we see, namely a show of the worst sort of horror, the reduction of wild beauty to captive ugliness, by way of incarceration. Mind you, if you like horror, the zoo is just the ticket. 

What I saw at the zoo

37.

Zoos busily justify themselves on the grounds that they provide "captive breeding programmes" and "constitute a 'lifeline' for endangered species", implying a sort of protective custody. But with diminishing habitats, there’s little likelihood of a return to the wild either for present or future generations. In reality zoos are in the entertainment business, and a lucrative one it is too. But I wasn’t entertained; I was too ashamed to look too long at the animals or directly into their faces.

I saw things which haunt me still, particularly the once-mighty lion reduced to a mere shadow of his former glory, living in a zone between life and death. There was a clouded leopard with merely six square metres of flooring and no exposure to any sunlight. Great apes were reduced to walking about like zombies. Kodiac bears wore fur, rubbed to the skin from lying on concrete all day. I saw Back Sans swimming in a shallow concrete tank with their wings clipped to prevent escape. The mysterious Dancing Brolga was cooped up in a 4 metre high cage and certainly not dancing. A 2½ metre-wingspan Andean Condor was imprisoned in a similar sort of cage.

And then I visited the ‘Nightlife Show’. Inside a concrete bunker there was a row of glassed-in cages, containing some of Australia’s nocturnal animals and birds. They are being kept here in perpetual dim blue light (to simulate night in the bush). To give the place a ‘realistic atmosphere’, these creatures endure a continuous ghostly drone of a dingo howling. The design of this display must surely have arisen from a particularly sadistic imagination.

Do we want children to grow up immune to cruelty like this? If so give them a day out at Taronga Zoo.

Zoos are prisons

36.

Some animals are imprisoned on farms and executed when the farmer is ready. Food is produced and omnivores pay good money for it. Other animals are not being fattened to be eaten or reared to produce food, they are reared and captured for the sole purpose of entertaining us.

Some years ago I summoned up my courage and visited our local zoo here in Sydney, Taronga Park Zoo. I paid good money to get in, which grieved me. But I had to see for myself what they were doing to animals there. It turned out to be a  harrowing experience. I hear people say that the animals are better off in the zoo than being hunted in the wild. I say they are better off dead.

Those of us who don’t eat animals or wear them or gawp at them in cages for entertainment are ever more incredulous as the years go on, that zoos are still legal. We are amazed that our fellows, family, friends, sensitive, well educated (and supposedly kind and otherwise caring) individuals refuse to listen to what we have to say about animal cruelty. Here in zoos is a perfect example of Society’s sanctioned animal cruelty. Parents and teachers alike bring children to these places and do so in order to desensitize them; to kids, a visit to one of these animal incarceration centres becomes just an exciting day out. The kids may be too young when they first go to a zoo, to be revolted by what they see - especially when the adults around them are telling them that zoos are good places ... and tell them that zoos help to preserve species, that zoos treat the animals well and that the animals are safe from predators, etc. Ah yes, safe from all except the money grubbing humans, who turn a nice profit from ticket sales to visitors.

At zoos around the world, like this one, for these once free animals, each day brings deadly boredom in barren surroundings. All you see is concrete and iron bars and thick (but very clean) glassed-in enclosures. The animals are in prison here for life, in entirely sterile surroundings. There’s a mock mountain for the goats, a concrete tank for the seals, a high walled enclosure for the lions, and standard iron-barred cages everywhere; it’s odd that they call it a zoological garden. What little greenery there is tends to be separated from the inmates by electric fences, otherwise I suppose the wicked animals might eat it.

Go to your local zoo, pay for a ticket, take a note book, write down what you see and then write to your local paper and explain why you are sickened by seeing all these banged up animals. Just don’t ever take the kids or let their teachers take them. Ask children what they think it would be like to be shut in, if they were freedom-loving beings.

Child-friendly propaganda

35.

Family-friendly farms got me thinking just how we indoctrinate children about animals. These farms look like fun places, for animals and children alike. Kids will believe anything if enough adults are telling them the same thing. After all, they’ve spent their entire lives being taught by adults how to do things, how to survive, how to enter the world of the grown-up.

It’s important that Mum and Dad, who provide the food for their children, get them to eat what they believe will make them healthy and strong. And these same adults have grown up believing that their parents fed them the sorts of foods which made them what they are today and which will be good for their own children. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, teaching the rights and wrongs of life to kids, so that they can pass the same thing on themselves.

However, we are not only born with parents and teachers to advise us, but instincts too. And for many of us those instincts are strong enough to make us question our educators. We might see the cruelty shown to animals and decide to take up a vegetarian diet, to avoid the worst of the animal cruelty. Others become vegans to boycott every aspect of that same cruelty, and at the same time re-examine the value of certain foods in order to avoid illness and the eventual poisoning of the body.

But desensitisation of instinct takes place on other levels too. Children are led to believe that instincts are unreliable or misguided. So if we see fear or madness on the face of an animal (or a human) it might not warrant pity but instead give rise to contempt. The child is taken to the circus and sees bears dressed in frilly skirts or lions leaping through rings of fire. The animals are seen as subservient or ridiculous, without any semblance of sovereignty or dignity. It’s as if they are too stupid to protest or refuse to cooperate with the friendly-looking humans who appear to love them. Such is the deception played out on gullible innocent children. The child is taken to the zoo, for much the same reasons, to desensitize them and make them question their instinctive sense of compassion. They are told that these animals are happy, when patently they are not. How could a child question the adult about such things when they have no basis for questioning except for their innate instinct. It would be a brave child who stood against such a barrage of persuasion put up by teachers, parents, uncles, aunts and seemingly the whole of their society. As children grow up, if they have come to accept the rightness of zoos or the rightness of eating meat, they will have taken part in so many questionable activities for so long that any tendency for protest will have been long drummed out of them.

Indoctrinating kids

34.

Food is a dilemma. There’s too much promotion of unhealthy but attractive food and too little authoritative promotion of plant-based foods, which anyway, are not anywhere near as attractive to kids. And it’s kids who make the loudest demands. Unlike adults, children have fewer pleasures and freedoms to distract them, so food often figures large for them. They’ll make strenuous demands to have what they want, aided and abetted by the advertisers who heavily direct their messages towards young people.

            That old familiar boast by the Church - “Give us children for the first seven years and we have them for life” - applies just as well to diet. Raise children on meat and they’ll always see it as an essential component of every meal. But if that is true, it simply emphasises how impressionable kids are. Therefore it lays the onus on the parent to mould the habits of their children responsibly. What sort of mentality do parents want for their children? What priorities should they emphasise?

            My next door neighbours have just come back from their holiday in the country. I knocked on their door early, to give them their mail. Their little girl is four years old and she couldn’t stop telling me about the piglets she saw when they visited one of those ‘family-friendly farms’.  She was allowed to play with them in the straw. “They weren’t very little” she said. “This big - no this big”, she stretched her hands out wide, the size of her small dog. “Just like Sammy” she said. “And they snuggled and let me hug them”. “They grunted and pushed their noses under my arm”. She was over the moon.

            She went on like this for some time. While I was listening to her story I could smell their breakfast cooking in the kitchen. Bacon and the smell of eggs frying. I figured Mum and Dad weren’t going to be telling her about pigs and bacon. I assume they’d decided not to ... not to spoil her memory (her innocence more like). I knew they’d be nervous about me speaking up. As if I would!

            I’m not a parent. I don’t really know the dynamics of all this. But I do realise why the truth about animals may not be made clear to youngsters and that parents, usually quite consciously, decide that their kids must be kept in the dark to prevent them making the obvious connections.

            “When they’re older they’ll understand ...”. But understand what? Perhaps the kids will understand that a loving parent can be ultimately duplicitous, not on the scale of telling fibs about Santa Claus but over the truth about violating animals! If a young child’s curiosity about animals and meat and farms and killing can be sidestepped, it’s likely the whole thing will blow over soon enough. On some level, as a child grows older, they’ll stop worrying about the animals and start salivating over how delicious crispy bacon tastes, and how nice it will be with some googy-egg!

            Rules of parenthood might be: don’t make the connection between animals and the food you feed them. Don’t tell the kids if you want to keep their dreams alive. Keep the memory of that summer day at the farm with the little piggies - it’s priceless. Let them keep this much while they are children ... until they have to get their priorities straightened out in preparation for the real world beyond, so that they fit in. So that when they’re grown up they can, without a second thought, ‘bring home the bacon’.