Communication and optimism

622:

An optimistic vegan is like a small boat in a rough sea, facing up to impossible odds, everyone wants to sink us, the carnivores for speaking out against them, the vegetarians for undermining their reality and even fellow vegans who just want to lash out at anyone disagreeing with them. As optimists we have to be single minded, and not get upset by blasts of criticisms or ridicule. Our job is to hold out for the port in the distance even though we can’t see it, only knowing it’s there, somewhere.

            How big would the turn-around have to be, for most people to swing our way? The challenge of that keeps us on our toes. But unless we keep optimistic we’re merely fighting a rear-guard action. Our optimism is our forward momentum, based on the strength of this one single idea and the practice we get from standing up to detractors.

            Both omnivores and some within the Animal Rights Movement refuse to see anything much changing for the better. Consequently they try to squash optimism, saying how impossible our task is, and how humans won’t ever change. They haven’t taken into account that people wise up to things when too many ‘stabilities’ collapse (as animal food is linked with animal cruelty and ill health) and things have to be re-thought.

People do change. Just look at the many vegetarians there are today after a mere thirty or forty years, where before that there were practically none. And now there are those who are practising vegans, who are willing to speak up about animal issues, who know it’s dangerously counter-productive to be defeatist. In Animal Rights, since we’re at such an early stage of consciousness-change, our work shouldn’t be weakened by those who talk about ‘the pointlessness of it all’. Somehow each of us has to find a way of getting over that, in order to maintain the momentum of change.