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!