Getting to know the animals, as ‘people’

573:

Most people don’t give much thought to enslaved animals. They might want to but they know, if they did, a thousand products would fall off the edge of their shopping list. That’s why, for them, veganism is so difficult to consider.

            They don’t think they’d have enough discipline for it, to stick with it out of empathy and to overthrow a whole lifestyle system, permanently. Probably, most omnivores think it best NOT to go down that road in the first place. They think it’s best not to know, and pretend not to notice the ingredients list on products, whilst pretending not to know about husbandry methods on farms, and pretending that the idea of ‘vegan principle’ doesn’t exist.

            To allow that to happen and to help ease the conscience, a number one aim might be to avoid contact with vegans and animal rights advocates altogether. To keep the flood gates shut one must remain ‘unsure’ or ‘unknowing’. But today, that’s almost impossible. Information flood gates are constantly being opened, so that to NOT hear about what is going on in our world is almost impossible.

            The more we hear horrible stories of caging, confining and routine brutality and killing, the more the ugliness of animal farming touches us, and the harder it is to ignore the bigger problem of trying to ignore it altogether. It’s as if we are, in our day to day habits, becoming a serial forgetters or doubters or ‘not-knowers’. And that in turn saps one’s confidence in the adult world where we are supposed to be old enough to determine the sort of life we lead. This is, ideally, what vegans are here to help with.