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.
No comments:
Post a Comment