The Australian stoush

549:

If we get the ‘go-ahead,’ from someone were speaking to, to put our case forward, it implies they’re willing to listen. We may have their attention, but we might not have it for long. If we bore a listener, however much goodwill there is, we’ll be cut off. Permission and holding someone’s attention amounts to much the same thing.

            It’s different if they WANT to go through the issues, if their ear is willingly open or perhaps they signal that they’re ready for a full-on argument. Then we can talk. And if we both enjoy the struggle over the details, then we can both enter into the spirit of the thing, and be ready to get as good as we give. This is fighting without personal aggro, and yes, there’s tension and disagreement, but without any danger of personal disapproval or dislike creeping in. Then there’s nothing wrong with showing anger, as long as we’re acting it out, as parents sometimes do with kids, when the kids know the anger means nothing personal.

We can show, by our freedom of expression, a trust in the other person’s feelings towards us. It’s about mutual respect. It’s about having a well established egalitarian starting point, without which nothing can work.

In a good stoush there may be shouting and screaming, interrupting, conceding, ferocious points-of-principle hammered home, and all kept in balance by both parties when they are showing that they are sincerely searching out a point of common empathy or agreement.

To make progress in the face of disagreement we must never allow our stoush to deteriorate into quarrelling. Throughout, we continually confirm our mutual regard, as fellow travellers who are not wanting to score points off the other. We must continually emphasise the bond between us, leaving no room to get personal or become value-judging.

Unless we’re in control of a conversation in this way (on this difficult subject) it won’t get anywhere. Even with anger, if I don’t control it, it will control me. The Australian stoush is truly something to behold! It shows that below the rough exterior of one type of behaviour lies another that is sensitive to the feelings of the other. 

Permission withheld

548

If there are no questions asked, no “Please explain what vegan means”, then why volunteer any answers if it’s likely to set off a quarrel? In truth, I suppose vegans are always looking for an excuse to have a dust-up, to ‘bring it on’. But for omnivores, when they notice the mood of a conversation changing, there’s ALARM. 

“So, nice chat, and thanks for letting it deteriorate into warfare!”

            With some vegans, we welcome a fight. We have a devil-may-care attitude to those we wish to engage. We don’t care if our bring-it-on damages a friendship. We might calculate that we need to say one thing only, to make it stick, to start a change. One win.

            If only it were that easy!

The much longer route is not as destructive, not as risky and yet not necessarily productive of good results either. But if, in a conversation, there’s trust and open-ended permission, then at least we can get into a gloves-off discussion. The way is made clear for taking a few risks without taking unnecessary risks with the long term relationship. Permission to talk boldly about this subject must be mutual and, if not directly spelt out, sensed.

Vegans always hope to engineer real conversational events and, to be honest, they do sometimes happen, but usually only in safety zones with close friends or family. Outside one’s circle however, just how much trust can we expect, seeing that there has been so much evangelising in the past?

I’ve got a slogan on a coffee mug at home and it says: “Risk: Take calculated risks ... that’s quite different from being rash”.

            Being rash, as in forcing someone to listen to me talking about this subject, is about not caring how someone else will react to me. This is sloppy tactics. It’s like the bible-basher’s foot in the door, to stop it being shut against them.

Once we’re given the go-ahead to speak freely we can find the corner of anyone’s heart, and have a fair chance of someone listening to us. No go-ahead and we get the opposite - “Don’t be ridiculous. Why listen to what you’ve got to say we when others tell us differently, when’s there’s no pressure coming from any recognised authority, like science, school or church? Why should anyone listen to you?”

Don’t tell the kids

547:

The quiche we eat, a biscuit with coffee, and many thousands of brand-named items are taken for granted. They all seem quite benign. But each one connects back to animal abuse. The connection between that eggy-quiche and the creature who laid the egg isn’t that unobvious. It’s simple enough for a three year old to comprehend, and for them to connect up and declare the food ‘wrong’, because of the way the hen is treated ... and then to understand why vegans are vegans.

            Comprehending the connection isn’t the problem, it’s the habit of ignoring it that’s problematic. It’s not hard to grasp what the principle is, it’s just too hard to apply it to daily life. And let us never forget that if we can manage to forget it we can then continue on, eating our delicious quiche. We are used to eating delicious things (and quiche is delicious). Refusing to eat quiche means self-denial. And for the sake of what? A chicken? A creature whose body we eat anyway, on a regular basis?

            To think it through, from egg to quiche, from imprisoned animal to dinning table, is a process any child could understand IF they were told. Most kids would have nightmares at the very thought of entombing hens in wire cages, so that we humans could have eggs to eat. They might object strongly, if it were explained to them … but whoa, that would mean one huge hassle for parents, who are making the kids’ breakfasts. If children got wind of it and refused to eat eggs, it could be the thin end of the wedge. It might lead to refusing other sorts of meals. So, parents use ‘a small deception’. They withhold information. This is one farmyard story they don’t tell.

            “Please understand, it’s not lying, it’s just omitting certain crucial facts, and thereby moulding the way we want our kids to think”.

            Children are virtually powerless when it comes to food. They can’t ask a simple question and expect a truthful answer, when it comes to asking where their food comes from.       Keeping kids in the dark, over this matter anyway, is convenient for parents and teachers. When children start to become ethical about food, life gets complicated - “They’d drive you nuts if they started refusing certain foods”.

            Parents fill their fridges with handy, ready-to-go foods which work well with kids. Eggs are used as ingredients for many items of foods. The egg works wonders, as do most meat and milk products. The foods made with animal products are especially popular with kids.

            Okay, well you see where I’m going. This isn’t a tirade about cruelty and cages and thoughtless parents, but just a common enough reaction, if children are going to be properly informed. Most kids have a very natural sense of right and wrong, and they would also understand the animal advocate being angry when other adults take no notice of the harm being done to animals. So, we come back to our own fuming and spluttering anger. We fume because it’s still legal to buy eggs AND to conceal certain facts from children!!

Standing aside

546:

For vegans one enquiry is highly valued, but the enquiry could be largely unnecessary, since everything is already understood, on a deeper level - there’s nothing NOT understood by any of us. It’s like coming across a pristine stream and drinking from it. We all know it, when we taste pure water, even if we’ve never tasted it before. It’s a eureka moment - “This is how water really tastes”.

            So it is with animals. Not many of us could actually do anything to hurt one or would ever want to. Nor is there anything going on concerning animals that, on some level, we don’t already know. Every adult knows that animals kept for food undergo horror. We don’t have to visit an animal farm or an abattoir to know this.

            Since everything is known people can be left to discover things for themselves. The information is accessible for those who want it (and our job is certainly to make that information accessible). Perhaps vegans need to let people work things out for themselves. We can butt out of other peoples’ business. For our part we just need faith-in-people, that when they are ready they will go looking.

            But our problem is that we think others are incapable of finding out for themselves. Certainly, an omnivore who is moving-towards-being-vegan may need some encouragement from us, but our main role is surely to stay out of the way while they go discovering. We can be on standby, ready with the first-aid kit in case the slope is too slippery. We can be there assisting and understanding, especially if people don’t know what to do. Along their route of discovery they’ll hit feelings, as they pick up on the details (of what a plant-based diet is all about, implications of a vegan lifestyle, etc), and as they experience the whole unfolding process; as they realise what they’ve been involved with all their lives; as they realise how their past may now seem like a personal catastrophe; as the prospect of major-lifestyle-change, of succumbing to a single new idea, might feel like being doomed for ever by having thought it. But if we, who’ve largely forgotten the process we went through, nag them, nudge them or even ‘guilt’ them, they might just step back and say it’s too hard, and not want to go through with it.

The water at the well

545:

One ‘thirsty’ enquiry is all I need. It’s like being asked, “Can you point me in the direction of the well?”, as in,  “Can you explain what ‘vegan’ is?”

            A genuine show of interest is worth a million. But I’ve rarely heard it put that way, because, unless someone is naive it would be like inviting me to tell them what they don’t want to hear, and, in their own mind, they’d also be inviting me to big note myself.

            Vegans are well aware how intelligent vegan principle is which is why we find it so tempting to shout about it ... which is why we’re given so few opportunities to explain it, which is why people avoid talking to us about this ‘animal’ subject.

            But you never know. There might be an itch. A curiosity. And for me, that would be enough to make me break out the champagne. But would I then, too quickly, want to get to the heart of things; if there were any sort of interest would I try to convert it into a much bigger interest than it was originally?

            For them, perhaps it would be like kids being sent to collect water from the well. Suddenly they are confronted by a fierce giant, who steps onto the path, sending the children running away in tears, buckets empty, screaming of a horrible bully they’d encountered.

            Vegans shouldn’t be jumping out on people. We shouldn’t be overwhelming the questioner or swamping them with too many answers. We have an altogether different job. We’re merely the bucket-providers, the conduits, the keepers of a universal principle. Ready for enquiry, understanding people’s feelings but NOT spruiking. 

No insistence

544:

By upping awareness of the world about us, there’s a logical progression that inevitably ends up at vegan principle. It seems unavoidable. Sensitivity to beauty ends up with leaving something ugly behind in order to seek out the best there is. What is more beautiful and innocent than an animal, untouched by the cleverness of the human brain, uncorrupted by greed, etc, and so it follows that nothing could be uglier than trying to destroy the thing of greatest beauty. This is a familiar theme of stories. It isn’t the stuff of a child’s bedtime fairytale and it isn’t dry facts in a dull tome. It’s a story about discovering something significant and unexpected. It seems to me that our lives are stories of exploration and discovery, and they’re sometimes unsafe stories but they move towards resolving problems by experimenting with the unknown.

            Our vegan story isn’t an entertainment any more than a sacred text is, but it’s likely to relate to people’s lives and therefore be of universal interest. It’s a story for telling but also for scrutinising. And if you and I are tellers of a story we need to be answerable for it, which is why we don’t need to be seen as weirdos or fanatics, but simply as conveyors of the story-line.

            I believe a good story teller considers the feelings and interests of anyone listening in order to capture their attention. It might not be an easy story to listen to, so it requires some little concentration from the listener, because there are unfamiliar details concerning cover-ups, cruelties and human frailty. But essentially it’s all about animal farming.

            If we want people to break through all the food myths and health misconceptions, the details of which can be quite complex, we do need to engender a certain level of concentration, so that what we have to say can sink in.

            How can that be achieved?

            Certainly, the frowning face and serious tone of voice will achieve nothing. We need to engage the listener. We need to lighten up so we don’t scare people away.

            If you were walking down the street, approaching a small frightened animal that didn’t know what this huge approaching object was, mainly you’d want to seem safe to them. Our approach as vegans may have to be much more ‘slowly-slowly’. We are, after all, facing fixed mind-sets. If we can be seen as people who aren’t brittle and who aren’t insistent, then we’re more likely to be allowed to approach.

            There’s no place for emotional bullying to get people’s attention. We need to come across as access points for information, and not much more than that.

            In the ideal world we’d surely want people to be approaching us, in order to ‘find out’. In the real world though we are in the business of attracting customers. Let us imagine that we have a ‘For Sale’ sign up in our shop window - ‘New and Useful Information’. That’s how it should look on our face. People are invited into our ‘shop’ to see what’s on sale and to pick up what they want. They wouldn’t put one foot in our shop if we seemed threatening.

A story worth listening to

543:

Some people think vegans have tickets on themselves. They condemn us for being proud of our animal empathy and our compassionate natures. But, in truth, we don’t only set out to protect animals. We also want to protect the people who eat them, especially kids who are the innocent victims of forced-feeding (they have no real say in the choice of foods they eat). Kids should be given the facts before they’re given any animal foods. If parents aren’t going to do it then it’s down to vegans, to inform parents and children, especially with information about the harm animal foods do to the human body. 

            Obviously we should be seen as considerate people who are worth listening to. Hopefully, eventually, our story will be heard. Until then we need to be patient, consistent and, most importantly, interesting enough to make people curious, to see how their children could develop so much better on plant foods. For the adult who takes on a vegan diet, it will be great for their health, for their kids, for the planet but it will also be the beginning of their own self-development. If they begin to listen to our story they’ll be nudged towards acknowledging the sovereignty of animals, and see it as an essential part of the whole jigsaw puzzle of consciousness-raising.

How humiliating!

542:

Vegans are preparing for the future. We see a society whose food and clothing is entirely plant-based. But I have to keep reminding myself that it isn’t just a private matter. If we’re nothing else, vegans have a public role to play. We’re surely meant to go public in order to represent the voiceless animals.

            How we present ourselves ‘as vegans’ and how we’re seen by someone who’s perhaps never met a vegan before reflects on every other vegan and indeed the whole cause. Donald Watson’s original concept, in 1944, was based on compassion, non-violence and herbivorous living. If we represent that ethic today we promote it best by keeping our message clear and simple, so that even small kids can grasp the sense of it.

Vegans act on behalf of the voiceless whether they be children (being poisoned by parents who’re feeding them harmful substances) or animals (who are being imprisoned and killed). We aim to protect the innocents from the clutches of the exploiters. That protective spirit in us drives us to bring the whole issue to the attention of our fellow humans.

We can all see innocence when we look into the eyes of an animal. In their innocence, animals are at-peace-within-themselves, and children have a level of that same true innocence too. That’s why our chief job is to protect it, wherever we see it, because by the time adulthood comes along it’s probably been lost. But that doesn’t mean to say it can’t be restored to some extent.

At present we can’t possibly rediscover any level of innocence all the time we’re still committing crimes concerning animals. It’s absurd to think otherwise.

            Instead of attacking them we should be learning from them. Instead of trying to ignore their peaceful natures we should be applauding them, emulating them. When we attack and kill animals (daily, by the billion, everywhere on the planet) it’s as if we are trying to crush their innocence, to bring them down to our level. Unless an animal is engaged in some ravenous attack on me I can’t see any reason to hurt it let alone end its life, let alone eat it? Psychologically speaking there’s no reason for hurting them or for stealing their babies or sucking secretions out of their bodies. It’s just so shameful that humans do this when we no longer have any need to. How humiliating this is for us as a species.

I don’t want to go there

541:

If we vegans think badly of omnivores we fuel a fire which is already burning hot. We don’t need more heat. We can stir them up, sure. We can get their juices flowing. But what is the risk when we do get into a good argument?

            On this particular, unlevel playing field our arguments can be devastating. We know that and so do they. If we’re to have any sort of exchange on this subject it’s good not to get too cocky with our answers. They’ll want to pull down the shutters, fast - they’ll fix that familiar look on their faces that says, “I just don’t want to go there”.

            Vegans set out to solve problems, ‘your problems’ ... but if there’s no perceived problem in the first place (“I’ve got no problem with the food I eat”), if there’s no questioning going on, there’s going to be no opening for any of our arguments. Therefore there will be no requests for solutions. By bringing up the matter of ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ (connected with animal-usage) we are seen to be deliberately attempting to preach, as if we want to turn a chat into a church, as if  barging our way into conversations, because we see no other way of ‘bringing the matter up’.

            Animal Rights, as a subject, is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest taboo in our society - most people observe the rule that ‘animal-usage’ isn’t to be spoken about; they see nothing wrong with using them because they believe they are treated and killed humanely.

            Like street traders, vegans have a good stock of very fine answers on display. We stand around, waiting for some interest in what we’re selling. But the passing omnivore shows no interest in either the problem or the solution.

            If we try to draw people into unwilling dialogue, we’ll find the welcome-mat whisked from under our feet. For most omnivores this isn’t even a valid topic of discussion. They don’t acknowledge the presence of any danger. They see no ‘writing on the wall’ … whereas, of course, we do!

Why trust or even talk to a vegan?

539:

Vegans try to mop up some of the damage they see about them. They try to dig everyone out of their ruts. But try as they might, they’re seldom trusted enough to be listened to. Their authority and advice is doubted. They are thought to be ridiculous and made to feel uncomfortable. But I like to think that we, being on a serious mission, are not so easily put off.

            We so much want to let people take themselves more seriously that we do everything possible to get people to follow our advice. We want them to reach their potential.

            Early in our lives all the attractions and illusions seem interesting and each of us chase them fearlessly. We start out with all the best intentions. We search for lifestyle improvements and self-improvement ... but we don’t always get what we expect. We might discover what we are NOT looking for – and we end up with delusion, disillusionment, disappointment and perhaps worst of all, dullness - but how do we avoid it?

            The most obvious uglinesses, being so prominent, seem to spoil life experience. It feels as if we are condemned to stay ‘in the dark’, never able to find the light-switch let alone the ‘light’. We become convinced that nothing will ever substantially change and that ‘it will never happen, for me’. We fear that we’ll miss-out. We eventually believe that improvement is unlikely and that no good can come from any life-changing decisions we make. We therefore reject ‘solutions’ because they seem unlikely to do us any good.

            We avoid theories such as veganism’s call to make personal change. We say, “Life’s hard enough without some vegan person telling me what I can and can’t eat, based on some animal-defending moral principle”. As for vegans themselves, they seem to have a mission to convert, and surely life’s hard enough without all that. And it’s this very attitude that stops people considering what vegans say. 

            Becoming ‘vegan’ is a prospect that horrifies most people. It sounds as if one wants to starve oneself to death or commit social suicide. And who needs that?

            Even if one has never heard of ‘veganism’, one’s attitude towards that sort of thinking is set in basic reasoning - perhaps we’ve already met vegans and rehearsed our replies to their oh-so-predictable-words. We’d do anything to put them off, to stop them telling us what they think is ‘right’, which in turn is intended to force us to defend our own lifestyle. And in doing that it’s likely we’ll make fools of ourselves.

            So, I’m putting things this way to emphasise a common question - Why trust a vegan? They always seem to try to make omnivores feel uncomfortable. You meet a vegan … and the whole ‘trust-a-vegan thing’ kicks in.

            Imagine what happens when someone first hears about vegans and ‘vegan food choices’. They fall to the ground in fits of hysterical laughter, and during their unstoppable mirth they promise to themself a life-long-loyalty to eating animals. 

            Meanwhile, we vegans are thinking to ourselves … “Huh, and you think it’s just about food choices? And then some!”

            All of these initial perceptions need to be fixed up before any sensible dialogue can take place. 

Advice

538:

One of the biggest mistakes of our wealthy Western lifestyle is that, in our quest for life-improvement, we’ve let ourselves be seduced by advice from those who push products from the animal food and clothing industry. We give our hard-earned money to Society’s most violent people. From when we first seek to improve ourselves, even as far back as childhood, the seduction starts, leading us to believe that we should seek to improve ourselves and our conditions, and somewhere along the line we fall for the advice of those who tell us they have our best interests at heart. We start to believe their ‘truths’ because we see them as ‘true’ people. We can’t believe they could lie on such a grand scale. Over the years we follow their advice … and we seem to be going along just fine, until, in an eleventh-hour realisation, we see what danger we are in. We’ve let someone else make our decisions for us and have, over the years, lost the ability to choose for ourselves. We’ve effectively let a major part of our life fall into their hands, and by the time we see a crash coming it’s too late to save ourselves. We see that we’ve ‘given-in’, and so we go with the flow. We decide NOT to speak out. The inevitable crash happens. Miraculously we survive and maybe we do learn to change - but a certain amount of damage has already been done. We do make changes but avoid the most difficult changes. Some sort of stability is achieved, and we’re going along just fine until we encounter yet another ‘advisor’, who this time turns out to be a busy-body, interfering vegan.

Surely, once bitten twice shy. How can we be sure the vegan is any different to all those others who tried to lead us astray before? If we’ve lost confidence in our own instincts we won’t be able see what is really facing us.

I think most omnivores, of a certain age, find themselves in this position. They are too cynical, suspicious and habit-ridden to even contemplate making major life-saving changes. They lose control of their decision-making and don’t dare listen to any radical suggestions.

The mirror and the video cam

537:

We’re the product of our own perceptions - what I see in the mirror is what I believe about myself and what I presume others see when they look at me. I don’t see an evil face staring back at me, I see what is familiar and what I want to see. I like to think it’s the very best, and like most of us when mirror-gazing, I probably like most of what I see. Most of us like ourselves, and if truth were known we are our biggest fan. If anyone else loves us it’s their attraction to this likeable image, the one we can see in the mirror (which most of us check out every day, just to make sure we’re still the same person as yesterday).

Perhaps there are many sentient creatures who can recognise their own image in the pool’s reflection. It confirms the  “I am” ... that is until a distortion appears. Perhaps a breeze breaks up the flat surface of the pool and the self-perception is disturbed. Or maybe for us there’s a crack in the mirror which distorts our self-image. At that point we question what we see and go on to suspect that our self-perception isn’t as reliable as we thought.

In our culture we believe that the human is the grandest being. We let the mirror tell us what we want it to say. But what a surprise when we see ourselves on video cam. It’s not the same as the mirror. We see another ‘me’. It’s not the mirror image but something more unfamiliar. It’s what others actually see. It’s the reverse of what we’re used to (in the mirror).

The first thing I thought, when I first saw myself on  video was that my own vanity had hoodwinked me. At that point, everything we see on screen is up for grabs; we may start to see the connection between our own vanity and the violence in our personality, which we never saw before. We see how we really look (to others) and how we can reassess our own public image. And this mightn’t be important were it not for the fact that one mistaken image throws light on other more important, unnoticed mistakes, which have only remained hidden because everyone else is making the same ones as we are making.

It takes just one surprise, one shock, to bring us to re-examine what we took for granted before. We realise that perceptions aren’t as reliable as we thought. We see how vanity shields us from seeing our mistakes. We see that these are often mistakes of arrogance. And it becomes clear that we are composed of attitudes and these are held in place by our own vanity.

As humans we have violent and violating attitudes, and spend our lives not realising it. We either knowingly or unknowingly create self-delusion to comfort and cushion our lives. And we’re so cushioned that we exhaust our credibility.

Time comes to settle accounts. The mirror has shown us nothing true about ourselves. The truer visual recording of our attitudes shows us that we can’t go any further down the road of self-delusion and cushion-comforts. That’s surely one healthy step towards self-development.

Growth by Theatre

536:

“Welcome to Cloud Cuckoo Land”. Could a society of herbivores ever exist? “Ya gotta be dreaming”, and yet …

Today none of us has any excuse for doing nothing; vegans strike out and hope to draw others along with them. ‘Going vegan’ is still an unusual thing to do, but I doubt it will always be that way because the idea will eventually be irresistible. We can take our cue from the Theatre – what we say might be somewhat confronting but what we say is probably interesting enough to hold people’s attention.

Lights dim, the audience is seated and they’re ready to see something new. Disbelief is suspended when new ideas are introduced. And who knows, we might even make them laugh when the joke is on them, they having come to see what we have to say, even though it seems at first quite preposterous.

We speak about non-violence and how great changes can come about by one small shift of attitude - that violence is NOT necessary, which means killing or keeping animals is not necessary. But realising this might be a slow process, which is why we need to present our ideas in the form of Theatre. Our radical ideas must be drip-fed into the general consciousness, a little like the slow power of water’s attrition making small indentations in hard rock, eventually gouging valleys to clear a path for water to flow down to the sea.

Slowly we have to wear down opposition to violence, first with plant-based diets (which ends animal exploitation), then with the idea of consistency, where sensitivity no longer sits comfortably with inconsistency - where turning a blind eye to one thing becomes impossible the more we open our eyes in other directions.

On the outside

535:

This is the idea we propose - that the one, generally accepted mainstay of lifestyle, our dependence on animals, is not necessary. To most people it is a preposterous idea. How can we do without animal foods? Why should we do without animal products like leather? Why not have pets and watch animals performing to entertain us?

            What is behind this idea is that animals are available to be used by humans but that we shouldn’t use them, since they have no say in the matter. Humans, being the dominant species and knowing that animals are only a convenience not a necessity, could become the guardians of  the animals instead of their oppressors. Humans have taken advantage of them, treated them badly and spoilt our relationship with them. Vegans seek to redress the balance.

Because what we are attempting to do (desisting from exploitation) is unpopular, our views are ignored or resisted. We base our life on the application of this one principle – to not take advantage of powerless animals.

Others, who stand up for other great causes, might also disassociate from certain human habits of lifestyle. They too might feel marginalised by the stand they take, but the difference is that they enjoy some support from the majority, whereas we enjoy almost none … because we stand at the farthest extreme. We point to a future, beyond the reach of most peoples’ imagination. We try to act beyond self-interest.

Why do vegans feel so strongly about this, so that we act, live and work on behalf of abused animals? Why do we adopt a cross-species empathy? Perhaps because this is a frontier never before crossed. All great causes before this have been about human disadvantage, but this one deals with our shared sentience; to hurt animals on the scale we do serves only to hurt our own advancement as a species.

Some of us now define our lives by our non-speciesism. Since most people haven’t ever thought too deeply about this we receive bewildered looks from them. Perhaps it’s true to say that people do not actually condemn us but we are socially categorised as being far too weird to be easily understood.

Vegans have to be able to handle this. We live on ‘the fringes’. We are the messengers from Outsiderdom. Being socially outcast is unavoidable. But on the up-side, vegans are immune from hubris and therefore likely to succeed in the end, and eventually what we are saying will make sense and animals will be freed as a result of our stand.

Amateur advocates

534:

Concerning food, now that we know we can be exclusively plant-eaters and survive happily and healthily as such, our job is clear; we can focus on repair. Repair is needed on various levels. Repair of ethics, repair of physical damage, building a system to ensure a more sustainable planet. There’s a clear role here for any one of us to play.

            To be consistent in our basic philosophy (harmlessness wherever possible) we have to become open books, so that anyone can pick up and look into what we say and what we believe and how we should behave. And whatever that is, it must be evident in the way we conduct our own lives. Lifestyle reflects philosophy. Our attitude (in the West) concerning animals-being-used (whether they should or shouldn’t be used) is the testing ground.

            The astounding thing is that animal-use is not being discussed very much at all. It’s as if we are in the middle of a cover up. The media refuse to cover this subject. But that’s not surprising when you consider how tightly the media is controlled by their advertisers and their need for popularity amongst the public. There are very few maverick journalists and even fewer vegan journalists.  

            So it’s down to us. Amateur writers. The few vegan advocates, activists, writers and teachers are all that stands between the possibility of a beautiful future and the continuing laissez-faire. If we do our best to edge this subject into the limelight and promote animal rights and veganism, then that’s all we can do. From our point of view it might look like an uphill battle. It might not be for the faint hearted, but there are rewards. Not only may we eventually show a way of repairing the current mess we’re in but, once the ball starts rolling, the arguments will start to be discussed and then the whole subject will more easily become a part of everyday conversation. Imagine where that might lead us! 

Open discussion

533:

When omnivores finds themselves up against a vegan, they might be afraid of being shown up, by better argument. So, if vegans are seen as a threat (about animal-use) omnivores will defend their position in any way they can - any defence has got to work. If all else fails one might fall back on the old standby - hostility.

            Hostility looks ridiculous today, but in the last resort the option of  being offended and then becoming ‘unfriendly’ is the only way some people think they can fight back.

            Now omnivores might know that a vegan has the capability to annihilate their arguments with just one word, or even one look. In return the omnivore, being part of ‘the vast majority’, can out-shout anything we can put up, and once they play dirty then we might think we can too. This is where we’re likely to start making moral judgements … and so it goes on. If we push a conversation about animal use towards the precipice, we can guarantee an aggressive response along the lines of … “So, that’s what you reckon, do you?”

            Aggro can flare up in the middle of a sentence. Our synapse connection can be so fast. It’s all smiles one minute and World War Three the next. The attacked omnivore is pushed over the edge because we leave them with nowhere else to go.

            By NOT attacking omnivores, we can avoid getting involved in a primitive conversation, where there’s a show of anger and plenty of value judgement. Instead we might use a little subterfuge. We can afford some inscrutability, by keeping someone guessing as to exactly where we will ‘land’. And if we encounter any ‘hostility’ our best bet is to try to restore balance. In any ‘talk-together’, whether we’re an ardent omnivore or an animal advocate, if we keep focused on the idea of being our planet’s guardians, we can ride that wave into the shore. Somewhere, on our way in, we might just find common purpose. Certainly we’ll avoid drowning each other.

The charging rhinoceros

531:

When things begin to get out of hand for the vegan activist, when we go into the discomfort zone and the omnivore’s uninterest is made obvious, that’s when we’re liable to make our worst mistakes. Just before blowing our top, at some silly or provocative remark, we should let it sink in. We should use it, to tell us roughly where that person is coming from.

            Just this morning I was in the Council offices, getting a JP to sign my discount travel pass. And I say to the man behind the counter, “This will get me on buses cheaply …” And I heard the woman, from the next desk, who was trying to be helpful, say, “And McDonalds gives you a discount too …”. So, I bristle-up with, “I don’t go to McDonalds”, with a tone in my voice that says, … “to go there is beneath me” (as a prelude to, “They serve dead animals there”).

            I’d planned all that out within a second of her comment being made, aiming at a point further up the track where I could go on to explain why I didn’t go there. Any opportunity for me to have my say, about McDonalds and their use of factory-farmed animals.

            In this case I didn’t need to react with anything but a “thanks”.

In most cases I’ll jump in too quickly to defend animals. I’m reckoning that a small show of anger will help stimulate my adrenalin and prime me for a smart response. But it will be seen merely as a cheap shot. I shouldn’t show that sort of knee-jerk reaction? If I were more constructive I’d do it another way.

            I could instead be acting-out my ‘defender’ role non-threateningly, as if I was emotionally under control and taking care not to aim my remarks personally. I’d be trying to be helpful and well intentioned and any anger I show would be seen clearly as part of my ‘act’.

            I had a teacher colleague once who was always acting as if angry, and she was the most loved member of staff amongst the kids. She was always honest, consistent and trusted. You knew where you stood with her ... and her anger was measured carefully, to be effective, to show her real sense of caring for her students’ welfare. She was a brilliant teacher, needless to say. It was all part of her craft of being the good communicator.

            A poor communicator will misuse anger, allowing disapproval to be part of the anger. This sort of anger usually erupts faster than we see it coming and has a shock effect. But it makes people wary and suspicious.  If we feel it, that sort of knee-jerk anger is best concealed.

            If we are an animal advocate, we’ve usually got enough on our hands just getting to speak at all about animal issues. The last thing we need to show is anger. Ours is a highly charged subject at the best of times. Once out, anger is hard to retract. It sours the atmosphere. It’s a give-away when it appears. The voice screeches and the body language looks ugly. To the onlooker it’s like watching a rhinoceros about to charge. 

Boasting about being vegan

530:

Vegans often want to make a big deal out of the fact that they’re ‘vegan’. It’s worn like a badge of honour. Sadly the motive for doing this is mixed - on the one hand we want to appear brave and ridicule-proof and, on the other, we want admiration for being vegan.

            Boasting might be one of our big problems. Like bullying, no one likes it. In my opinion, being vegan isn’t about being ‘who I am’, it’s about examining my own values, and then feeling confident enough about them to talk about them, if and when the occasion arises. We have this vast untapped subject, and obviously we do like talking about it … especially by breaking through a few taboos which the omnivore might not have had challenged before.

            We obviously like to reach people, about this ‘animal thing’, and we will eventually, just as long as we aren’t using Animal Rights as a platform for bragging about our ‘advanced thinking’. But quite how do we do that? That’s the question - how do we make contact with people when we ever do get onto this subject? Whew! That’s the BIG one.

            How do omnivores see us (whether as vegans or generally as reps for Animal Rights)? They’re either hostile or blasé. If the subject arises, as it might do, we will usually notice their reaction.

            In the mind of the omnivore it might be clear to them where they stand, precisely - what they definitely are NOT is vegan. In this regard they accept the status quo. They actively support the animal industries, and because it’s all so cruel and disgusting no one likes to talk about it, that is until some vegan brings up the subject.

Say I meet someone who seems aware of social-justice issues and who knows why I’m vegan. It only needs a short time with them to notice what they eat and what core attitudes they hold, regarding the food they’ve chosen to eat.

My first temptation is for me to try to convert them to a vegan diet, whereas it might be better not to emphasise food and health at all, at first, but to emphasise the attractiveness of vegan thinking and the ethic of ‘working for the greater good’. 

Being vegan is about Society’s need to liberate animals and not tolerate the imprisoning of animals. I don’t think ‘vegan’ will ever catch on unless the horror of enslaving animals is made clear, and that means talking about it, and obviously we can’t talk to people if they don’t want to engage with us.

I always have to find out if a person is anti or just-not-yet-ready (and there’s no way of knowing, initially). My rule is that if I’m not sure, then making premature value judgements about them is dangerous. I’d rather give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and give them every chance to step up to the plate.

My first point about a vegetarian or vegan diet is to point out that it ISN’T just about one’s stomach or about how we look to ourselves in the mirror. Secondly, there’s an important difference between being a vegan and being the sort of vegetarian who eats animal produce. The reason behind the vegan ethic of not using animals usually has to be clarified, after which I can then try to find a non-threatening way to spark an interest. At present almost every omnivore is a long way from willingly thinking about it.

Veganism is not widely understood and vegans are generally seen as social-pariahs, but our ‘outsiderdom’ might have to get worse before it can get better. We’ve a long way to go yet before the masses are even considering the attractions of their dinners being meatless and their sandwiches being cheeseless. We are still only at the very beginning of a global Animal Rights Consciousness.

Don’t waste your breath

529:

I’m an advocate of animals having rights (obviously!) but I wouldn’t necessarily tell anyone that gratuitously. Why should others know when bringing up this subject is as off-limits as atheism is for those with religion. And anyway, why do I need others to know this about me? I don’t need them to approve my stand … but it’s likely I do need their approval of me as a person. So, I want them to see me as the sort of person they might admire, at least for being open enough to want to talk about it, even if I know they don’t agree with me. Likewise, from my point of view, I’d like to be sure how open another person is. I’m not very interested in grudging toleration or polite approval of me, especially if I know they have a closed mind on this matter of animal-use.

            If you take your clothes off and lay in the sun, you are exposed to the sun’s rays (for better or worse). Vegans need to be less interested in others’ “knowing that I’m a vegan” and more interested in their knowing that I have empathy; that I am, on all fronts, interested in how people feel. I’d like to expose how I feel, to let others feel safe enough to expose their own feelings (similar or opposite). I’d rather know what others are feeling, whether hostility or affection, than not know. I would always want to know how they truly felt about me and then how they felt about this subject.

            If you meet an open soul on your travels, ‘this subject’ might come up. It might be one of many things you talk about. I can tell a lot about a person who is willing to talk about these matters who might already know where I stand on them and know that I know where they stand. I respect that.

            If I meet a person who is adamantly closed-off on this subject then I pick that up almost straight away, and I know that talking about it with them would be like pushing rocks up hill - the more talking I do, the more antagonism is shown, and for my part it’s so much breath wasted.

Softies

528:

If I, as a vegan, wear my heart on my sleeve, if I’m thought to be soft-hearted, then how does that go down with non-vegans?

            Perhaps it’s like wearing a persona non grata badge. In our society life’s difficult for softies. So the softy, sickened by being put down, attempts to win kudos, even admiration. But in doing that we only enter an impossible trap. When we spend time trying to achieve difficult things and find that nobody notices, we start to boast about what we’ve done.

            To the outsider it’s such a big turn-off. (In Australia, rule-number-one is to never ‘big-note’ yourself). Boasting looks like a desperate attempt to get noticed. It shows a lack of self-assurance. We try to attract attention, to force approval or at least ‘milk’ a compliment. Our need for others to recognise us, praise us or even emulate our example, is a form of force. Whether by way of blackmail or persuasion, it’s obvious that if we are needy in that way we will pay a high price.

            There’s a central principle at stake here. However much we want to be noticed or have people take what we say seriously, I don’t think any of us have a right to enter another person’s heart or mind without their permission. Our own righteous self-justification doesn’t amount to a ticket to enter … and when we are rebuffed, many of us stand behind the skirts of Animal Rights and poke fun at passers by - if you can’t join them, beat them.

            If we are ever to amount to anything beyond food freaks, it will have to be for our contribution to peace-making, communication and our having the courage of our convictions. If we need a morale boost it might have to come from within, from our empathy for enslaved animals, and not from the admiration of non-vegans.

Affection and vulnerability

527:

I suppose most of us like to be liked. If you are promoting a particular argument you’ll want that argument to be liked too. However, once the ‘game is up’, once our nasty side has been spotted, there’s both a drop-off of affection from others, then a drop-off in their confidence in us. Maybe other will think I am using crude techniques to get what I want, rather as if I were a two-years old throwing a tantrum. We peace-loving vegans can get angry and ugly, given the right circumstances, and that’s how we can lose friends when we don’t mean to.

            Meat eaters and other animal users can also have their own nasty side. If any one of them holds on to ‘hard-nose’ attitudes they help maintain the fear-ethos in our society. So, things stay the same out of fear-of-change. If we fear our own hardness it’s likely we’ll fear many very sensible ideas just because they concern the heart.

            Although most of us have a nasty side, a contemptuousness which we use to shock people with, we might be learning how to deal with it. As soon as I realise how difficult it is to keep it under control it’s the start of a turn-around. And then I’ll be showing my willingness to deal with it. And that attempt makes all the difference. It shows me as willing to admit mistakes and willing to learn. It impels me to ‘work’ on myself as well as ‘working on The Animal Campaign’.

The combination of my wanting to contribute to the greater good, while at the same time being unafraid to show my own weaknesses, works well. That combination lets people take comfort, instead of offence, from what we’re saying.