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.