Healers

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There are two different approaches, marching alongside each other, almost under the same banner – they each have something important to say about the state of human health and ethics. The rationale behind each approach might be all very interesting, but who amongst us has the time to contemplate ideas when, apart from health & ethics, there’s so much else to learn about, like the state of the planet, the quarrels between nations and the current state of one’s relationships?

            If I consider the animal abuse issue to be central I will prioritise that and want everyone else to lay aside other issues to prioritise that too. As a proponent of these issues, knowing as I do, quite a lot about animals and farming and the general wickedness of people in relation to animals, I will heavily promote veganism. But in the opposite camp there are some very bright cookies who promote something distinctly different. They are the healers. No, not the vegan healers, the non-vegan ones who are advocating from an entirely different basis, as proponents of ‘healthy’ diets or spiritual practices. They have wonderful wisdoms to impart. All of us could gain so much by listening to them, but by their not yet being vegan themselves they expose themselves to being taken not entirely seriously. They speak highly of peace and love, of sustainability and eating good quality foods. They are admired for their holistic and gentle approach but unfortunately they are laughed at for how they are in private, their habits and the way in which those habits run counter to the principles they espouse. Just by what they spend their money on they show that they aren’t as completely convinced of the peace and love principle as they say they are.

Consistency and fun

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Our primary act of ‘consistency’ is in our own vegan-living, obviously. You can’t be much use to animals if you still ingest them! But the next consistency is in taking on the world, over this one thing – not-using-animals. Being highly consistent in this, vegans are in a very good position to take on and outwit ‘the exploiters’.

Outwitting them should be easy enough since omnivores find it hard to justify animal abuse. But we have a reputation to overcome, that of taking ourselves too seriously and being needy for approval. Obviously, waiting for recognition from omnivores is a big waste of time.

But assuming a vegan does hold respect for people no matter who they are. That doesn’t disempower us – we can still tease them mercilessly with the minimum of harm being done. It’s actually fun advocating the animals’ case, if only by seeing the bewildered looks on people’s faces when we spell out the simple reasons that give ‘vegan’ sense.  

Food fashion

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If the food fashion ever moves towards plant-based foods it will be a catastrophe for the market, or so the fear goes. There will be price-rises, unavailability of products and all we’ll be left with are plant-based products. If that is the trend the vegans of today may feel silly for having too little confidence in how things were to work out.

I’m hinting optimism here. What if the native intelligence of fellow humans changes? Shouldn’t we give them ‘the benefit of the doubt’? For we vegans there’s a trap within a trap; it’s shaky self esteem. We’re in need of personal recognition and we won’t get it by pounding the public psyche.

We’re trying to do two things at once - informing people but still needing them to ‘take us seriously’; we want encouragement from people who’re in no position to give the sort of encouragement we want.

Vegan activists don’t like it when people won’t listen. We get touchy. We don’t balance our duty of care, providing the public with information’, with our own ‘need to be noticed’. Of course we want to be respected but we want to act in loco parentis too. If, as activists, we can’t balance these two needs we’ll remain feeling furious at the whole of humanity.

At root, vegans hate the obstinacy of people because we know that they know. But we can sometimes be like a three year old child stamping his foot when he can’t get his own way. I might  want to ride rough-shod over all the people against me.

We need to realise that any ‘rough’ approach always fails. People don’t like being railroaded. Any kind of bullying feels intimidating. It must be resisted.

For us, we need to remember that because there are so many omnivores out there, that they won’t let themselves be pushed around by a minority of vegans. All I’m saying is that no one knows how things will turn out in the future, but that things CAN and DO change dramatically. It’s a handle to hold onto during these early days of emerging animal rights consciousness. When things do change they will probably change quite rapidly. So, if we want particular changes to occur we need to play our part by actively ‘expecting’ change. For optimism to ‘work’ we must maintain consistency - our own personality is the key. The big trap is in letting the idiot public slow us down, with all the tricks they play to preserve the status quo.

Traps for the vegan activist

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For those who eat animals the most precious thing would be to have a clear conscience about it. But, for the thinking person, that is impossible. The guilt of one’s eating habits corrodes self image as well as destroying the best of our health. Short of abstaining there’s nothing that can help.

For those who do take up a plant-based eating regime their conscience is, to a large extent, cleared, and if they then become active as animal advocates their creativity is sharpened by the nature of the challenge they face.

Being creative as well as compassionate can bring the best out in a person, because we’re addressing one of the most important and difficult questions facing humanity today – human dependency on animal flesh and by-products and the consequent involvement, by proxy, with animal cruelty. A vegan is relieved of both problems by using only plant-based products. I’ve said this already a thousand times.

But there’s something else important here for the well-being of our psyche. There’s a certain benefit and satisfaction in having something meaningful to devote one’s life to beyond solely self-interest – whilst ensuring a longer, healthier and more energy-filled life we’re able to focus attention on animals from whom nothing is reciprocated. That opens us up to altruism, but there are traps along the way.

At some stage vegans may have to decide what sort of activist they’re going to be. It’s a matter of not falling into the obviously-tempting trap of going-to-war-against-every-non-vegan. The trick is to learn to keep our cool.

While it’s tempting to give up on people (especially those who criticise us) it’s better not to lose the ground we’ve made so far, that others have made, before us. So far we might have prized open a tiny crack which might close up if we get trapped by our own anger and proceed to blow the peace-loving reputation vegans might have built.

If we attack those who won’t agree with us, if we try any sort of persuasive violence, we’ll discover a dead end. Protests that become violent are good media fodder and yet another opportunity for them to ‘blacken’ us. The ‘angry image’ is a convenient one for those who dislike what we are saying. When we appear angry it’s self-defeating. But, despite all that, protest is important – it can be inspiring. It can sow the seeds of truth in people’s minds. Naturally we want to speed it up and be seen to be doing something about ‘cruelty’, and bring it to the public’s attention.

Activists go out on a night time ‘raid’, to a factory farm, to take video footage of conditions there. They aim to provide visual proof, thus to strengthen their powerful argument against these places. People watching the news see pictures of shocking things happening. It’s undeniable, and the viewer can no longer say they don’t know. They can’t indulge their ‘no-one’s-noticing-so-what-the-hell’ attitude. For them, it’s impossible to forget what they’ve seen.

But they go straight back to eating the very animals they’ve just seen horror footage of. To the animal rights advocate that’s so unbelievable that we can’t help showing it.

Which brings us back to this problem of approach – whether it is effective to show shock, anger and disbelief or take a more careful, patient and overtly non-violent, non-judgemental approach.

You might say that peaceful protest has won nothing for animals. The anti-vivisectionists, swearing non-violence, have been fighting peacefully for a hundred years and still animal experimentation goes on. One might think that nothing is gained by being reasonable. But were these protesters themselves showing a double standard? Were these well-intentioned peaceful people abusing animals by still eating them? If so, how could anyone take them seriously if they hadn’t been able to ‘put their money where their mouth is’?

Now, today, there’s a more sophisticated protester, a better-informed, totally non-abusing animal advocate, who can appeal to logic, health and compassion, who lives according to the highest principles; and this non-violent protester wouldn’t be rubbing their darts of criticism with the poison of judgement. But that is a hard logic to follow for any impatient protester. Each of us has to find out how we can show disapproval without causing unnecessary injury to others. That’s something we each have to work out for ourselves.

The ultimate cause

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In many ways if the food switch-over can be handled, veganism has a lot to offer. It attracts adventurous people who are looking to build a reputation for integrity and who want to become energetic activists.

There are a lot of good causes to get involved with today but none more urgent than the plight of food-animals. The food industry uses and abuses vast numbers of animals in every country of the world, and almost every single human on the planet connives in this abuse of animals. No other crime is committed against so many, so coldly, and no other crime is so hushed up. Animal Rights is largely an unreported issue, because so many are deeply implicated and it’s therefore convenient if people can still plead ignorance of it.

For most people showing any sensitivity to the plight of food animals isn’t seriously considered. It is not discussed, not thought about, not acted upon; animals are there, we farm them, we eat them, end of story.

Caution when approaching the omnivore

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Being non-violent isn’t the same as being passive or polite; it is a system of approach that is largely untried or untested. Which is why is needs to be discussed in some detail.

Force is the way of the world, and all of our systems are kept in place by force. As animal activist vegans we can’t fight force with force. We have to be more subtle than that.

If enough activists are committed to other approaches, if we are willing to consider and try them, we’ll see how powerful non-violent action can be.

If there are ways to approach this omnivore mind-set, using less ‘in-yer-face’ methods, as soon as they begin to work we might hope for a snowballing effect. It’s a long shot, accepting that violence in any form is ineffective and putting all our effort into altering attitude rather than just people’s eating habits. By taking a punt on ‘truth-force’ we’re sure to find it slower, seeing as how we’re a tiny minority dealing with a vast majority. But the results in the end will be more permanent and have the power of setting a new attitudinal fashion. We can either set fire to fur-farms or explore less destructive ways of exerting a much more subtle pressure.

Violent direct action

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There’s a disconnect between those who care about the animal situation and those who don’t. It is much greater than we want to admit. And if we don’t have a plan to improve that connection, where lots of people switch attitude, then we’re left with our dreams and little else.

We might look forward to a great leap forward in consciousness, pray for it, wish hard for it, but we might see nothing much happening. So far the momentum isn’t building enough for a fashion to emerge. We make dolly steps towards the liberation of animals, but the cause doesn’t noticeably seem to thrive. We see the meat trade doing well and people blissfully unaware of anything being wrong with their eating habits. It’s all quite depressing.

Vegan activists might be wanting some action. They up the ante. They do something outrageous, to get the ball rolling. On a farm where mink are caged, the animals are released and the farm torched. The press have a field day with the story, and of course skew it in favour of the mink farmer.

What actually happens is that the animals are released. But being ‘domesticated’ they’re unable to survive in the wild. They raid local farms and kill chickens. The locals hunt them down to prevent losing more poultry. The mink die. Then the media hunt down the arsonists. Soon everyone has forgotten why the activists raided the mink farm in the first place - no one’s interested in conditions for fur-farm animals. As a result, the public remains ignorant and grows even more hostile towards animal activists. The activists are caught, jailed and fined.

The overall effect of a direct action like this might well be opposite to what was intended. Violent protest stirs the blood of both the activist and the activist-haters. So, how can we up the ante, without going to the extreme of doing damage or setting fires? What will bring our message home and make it sink in? How can we bring to the public’s attention about the hell holes in which so many animals are suffering?

The failure of ‘the push’

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If our own self-development is directly connected with our work for Animal Rights, we’ll want to see some evidence we haven’t been wasting our time. I’ve always found that progress is slow.

            Nobody yet knows the clue to communicating this subject successfully. We are, all of us, struggling to find a way of saying what we want to say, to people who aren’t initially interested. So, how can we shake the sleepy omnivores out of their complacency? It sounds like we have to be a bit pushy.

            But the question arises: can we achieve by way of satyagraha (Ghandi’s idea of truth-force), where we only need truth to be on our side? Maybe it boils down to having complete faith in that truth-force, and that means we recognise and promise ‘no-quarrel’ in exchange for a fair hearing. 

            This is something many of us are unwilling to take on. We think it’s okay to use a little bit of force, to show our adversaries that we’re serious.

From a vegan’s point of view we think a little opposition, in the form of a fight, is justified. And the daring-ness here always makes us feel stronger. We devise our tactics; maybe we go out and superglue the butcher’s locks or graffiti the vivisector’s house.

There’s a fine line between violence and non-violent resistance. It’s thought that if we seem too passive, people will find us too easy to ignore. Then nothing changes. Whereas, if we decide to look tough or brave, we’ll be noticed. Being part of a direct action group is brave. Destroying property gives the wrong message. But breaking into a factory farm with a video camera and then getting the footage out to schools or onto the TV news, that’s quite different. We give people, kids especially, a chance to see what’s really going on. It’s essential that amongst activists we have those who are brave enough to collect the evidence. But there’s a down side, since the brave begin to think like fundamentalists, with everything being either black or white, and that people will simply be forced to agree with us, since they can’t possibly ignore what we’ve shown them. But how long will they remember when their favourite food is at stake.

In theory the ‘pushy’ approach is effective. The activists are shown on the news. People are shaken up. It looks like progress is being made, but in practice, even if people see the most convincing footage and hear the most convincing arguments, they forget quickly. Whatever a vegan says, whatever the omnivore learns from us at the time, it usually goes in one ear and out the other. I think the mistake we make, as animal activists, is to believe that once cruelty has been exposed it will be stopped, and from there we make steady progress towards animal liberation. We refuse to believe that other people may be fundamentally different to ourselves. It’s likely that with such strong traditions and with so many people with the same eating habits, that they will be able to ignore it all, in order to continue eating the sorts of foods they want to eat.

We do have truth on our side but it’s probably best to hold back on the aggression when we start to feel brave.

Scrumping

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Can I take what isn’t mine? As kids we lived near orchards and at the end of summer the trees were laden with apples. We’d go out scrumping when the sun began to set. The idea behind ‘scrumping’ is, of course, theft.

             Kids scrumping apples from orchards is the benign end of theft. Perhaps we’re outraged by some thefts but less so by others. Quite apart from moralising about theft, we can look at it simply in terms of ‘getting away with it’, weighing the pros and cons of getting caught.

So, what is it that is so deeply attractive about theft? Perhaps it’s that we like a bargain and stealing is better than a bargain, so it’s not easy to pass up an opportunity. Cycling past an orchard, what an opportunity - all those apples just lying around.

But it still comes down to stealing what isn’t mine – that’s what we’re looking at here. It could be apples or stealing what belongs to animals – we take it if it’s easy. And animals are easy. They’re docile, imprison-able, biologically impelled to produce useful products for humans – it’s so easy to see them merely as an investment opportunity, especially since they always produce what we want however badly we treat them. Is it any wonder that humans steal from animals? Why wouldn’t we?

The meaning of trust and the trust of meaning

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What must it be like for a young man or woman, newly independent, setting up on their own and perhaps coming to terms with their compassionate selves? For them, the best thing to be doing is boycotting animal stuff. Just by doing that is a huge statement of compassion. It’s such a wonderful thing to see, that for this old vegan I want to break out the champagne! It’s good to see others weighing the advantages and disadvantages, and experimenting with new ideas that could affect the rest of their lives.

To weigh compassion in practical food terms, a young person needs to know they’re going to be safe - safe in a nutritional way. If they go ahead and take on a vegan-diet it’s, at first, going to be seen as a risk.

They can only make that choice based on information received from friends and books, etc. The decision requires trust, just as bungy-jumpers have to trust the strength and length of the rope. (I’d be far too cowardly. I wouldn’t have enough trust that elastic bands would save me from plunging to my death).

Trusting a new idea might take a whole lifetime, or it could happen in the blinking of an eye. It comes down to where we’re at, regarding new ideas and taking them on board, especially where so much is at stake, over one’s food choices. Once we’ve weighed pros and cons and finally arrived at a clear picture, we have to trust. Then go with it. Trust bases itself on foreseeing the next stage, then the next stage after that, and instinctively feeling okay to proceed. It’s rather like climbing a hill, each step feels like hard work. But once we intend to climb it we deal with everything we meet on the way, and if we meet the unexpected or unwelcome we try to cope with it. If we knew beforehand every obstacle we might never set out in the first place.

When we ‘present our self’ to a new idea and voluntarily take on all the hard work it calls for, we can find it, strangely enough, to be NOT like slogging away up a never-ending hill but quite the opposite. If you go vegan it’s probably the meaningfulness of it that lessens the difficulty. I remember when I started, I couldn’t believe my luck that I’d stumbled across the idea.

‘Work’ is usually associated with the paid employment at which we spend inordinate numbers of hours. The drudgery is relieved partially by dreaming of weekends and holidays. But work is quite different when it’s something we do voluntarily and if it is meaningful. Going vegan is hard work but it stimulates the imagination and forces us to redefine the word ‘work’.

Promoting vegan principle and living by it is a new type of work. It’s unpaid and it’s often frustrating, because we’re breaking so much new ground. Everything takes longer. Everything needs double-checking and background-ing. It means we have to learn new and not necessarily attractive things (for instance, about modern animal husbandry methods). Progress can be slow, and we’re often not helped by omnivores’ resistance or fellow vegans dragging their feet (by being less activist than we’d like them to be). But all that is a right-of-passage for vegans. We have to go through each stage of frustration to find out what sort of person we are and what kind of people other vegans are.

On a personal level we early-on need to find out whether we are ‘quiet’ or ‘noisy’ types. For noisy vegans who want to talk, if we make any breakthroughs, it is just great. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s like no other satisfaction - communicating the most important subject in the world. Even for the failed communicator this is no less an important subject, not merely because we’re attempting to save people from obesity but because we’re helping to launch a panacea for our age. Yes, it’s wonderful when we connect but often we don’t. Most often a wall of resistance faces us, and we’re only seen as ‘the enemy’.

Animal Rights is a fascinating subject and something we can get our teeth into, communication-wise! It’s an up-hill task especially because it’s so urgent, but it’s never uninteresting. And never, for one minute, have I ever thought it insignificant to the future of both planet and our own species. And I’ve never ever let anyone think I am the enemy!

Quarrelsome talk

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If five years olds accept meat-eating you can’t blame them, if a fifteen year old still accepts it you might be more worried, and if a 25 year old is still ‘doing’ it, well, even then perhaps there’s still a chance they’ll change but by then it might be too late. They might have recently left their parents’ dinner table and started shopping for their own food, experimenting on all sorts of levels, ethical eating being but one of them.

Older carnivores are probably beyond the pail. Things have gone too far, with too many worldly pressures and commitments bearing down on them. And later still, radical food changes are even less likely.

            To older people vegans are probably just weird. This makes it doubly hard for us to persuade them. They may see veganism as nonsense and prefer watching drunks throwing up on footpaths than having to listen to vegans. If they did have to listen, they might be disturbed enough to go rushing to the fridge for a pick-me-up (the fridge acting as our own kitchen drug store, full of remedies for soothing and satisfaction). Older people usually have settled views on this whole animal ‘thing’ and won’t willingly enter into any conversation about it. They’ll steer away from all animal talk (or divert it to ‘pet-talk’) in order to avoid the trap of talking about animal husbandry or veganism, with a vegan.

On a personal level I’ve never felt any open hostility, but others have. We might not be liked or even being talked with, not about killing animals for food anyway. To them this is a taboo subject. 

As vegans, if we attempt to barge through this barrier we can alter the whole basis of our relationship with someone. Mentioning our obvious differences (of ethical perspective) is like making a physical attack. An omnivore might talk about anything, reveal the most personal secrets about themselves, but they’ll usually refuse to go anywhere near ‘personal eating habits’ when it refers to any diet based on ethics. The mention of compassion involves powerful emotions - mention it too much and it intimidates people. I’d say it’s less destructive the less it’s mentioned.

What? Keep silent? No, but understatement can be more powerful than too many words. In one way, silence can be valid, since we’re dealing here with 'truth-force' (satyagrahya) and it has to be handled with care and respect. It means that we, as vegans, should practise compassion on all levels, on people too. It’s too easy to offend people and for them to be ‘once bitten twice shy’.

Every day the world eats meat and there are billions more deaths, billions more animals being purpose-bred to suffer. There’s been an  accumulation of insult and damage inflicted on animals. Cruelty is now routine, and carried out almost unconsciously. It isn’t perceived by the mass of the population because it is all hidden away – the worst happens in the hell holes they call ‘farms’, or today referred to as ‘operations’; as farming intensification increases they are known as ‘intensive operations’ and less referred to as ‘farms’. 

What is so insidious is that these factory farms guarantee to feed vast numbers of people at the lowest possible cost to the consumer. The law allows the governments to protect the owners of these places, to ensure the population is fed.

For us, as advocates for animals, there’s no point in blaming the farmer or the government or the overseas competitor. The only constructive thing to do is promote a boycott and encourage ‘cruelty-free’ products to come onto the market. But to generate that momentum we need to promote that idea of actively boycotting. And for that we must talk, and talking might just be the problem here. This is where we most often shoot ourselves in the foot. So, sometimes it’s best we hold back, or rather, work quietly.

It’s a complex mixture of approaches (a little teasing here, ignoring the whole matter there, sometimes stirring, sometimes ending a conversation as it gets too close to the edge – it’s a matter of pushing forwards and pulling back, of taking the initiative in each situation.

We’ll only be taken seriously when we can show as much sensitivity to the human as we would expect from them towards the animals. If one instinctively thought it inappropriate to discuss this subject, then changing the subject might be best; it might lose ‘an opportunity’, but we can respond appropriately to a non-opportunity. Sometimes I terminate a discussion because I don't want to encourage talking about this in a half hearted or light-hearted or frivolous way.

Each approach has its right timing and a variety of approaches keeps ‘them’ guessing, and hopefully keeps what we’re saying interesting and not too predictable.

I always feel that I can say anything I want to say, as long as I’m being compassionate with the person I’m talking to. My own compassionate nature should stop me wanting to hurt another person. What I really want is the others’ trust. Get that and I can talk more freely. Obviously, trust has to be earned, and if I screw up on that, if I fail to get permission-to-talk, it simply looks like I’m squaring up for a quarrel. And they will not only shut me out but when you come along they’ll shut you out too.

Cold hearted horror

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When you see pictures of the Nazi prison camps and the Jews being marched to the gas chambers you realise how much danger a humans brain represents, especially when the brain can also help to normalise cruelty until it is no longer noticed or remarked upon.

I saw the movie ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’, and it showed graphically how the greatest damage done is to innocence. When that is broken, when a child is sent into the gas chamber, at that point innocence evaporates. And what exquisite terror children must experience as they see the cold killing ‘machine’ go to work on them.

A child’s innocence, just like an animal’s, is being destroyed by the pitilessness of the deed. For the two boys in ‘the striped pyjamas’, they experience an attack on their consciousness. And I can only think it must be the same for animals, when facing the same lack of pity from their executioner. This is why farmers don’t give their animals names or let their kids develop any emotional attachment to them, because one day they will have to betray them, by sending their animals to have their throats slit.

There’s not much difference between death camps for humans and abattoirs for animals - each shows how unfeeling, how ruthless and how pragmatic humans can be. And it’s that trait, in some humans, that lets them do it without a second thought. This is why we have to distance ourselves from this barbarity, and why we must give up meat.

These images of abattoirs and gas chambers are haunting. They’re attacks on the defenceless. They show what humans are capable of. But it’s in the nature of this terrible routine crime that we don’t see it as a crime at all. Present day humans (consumers) don’t necessarily see it, nor do the hands-on animal exploiters. They might say, “Animals - why make a fuss about them? They are ‘mere’ animals. They don’t have brains like ours. They are incapable of feeling and sensation. They aren’t conscious of anything. They can’t be traumatised because they can’t reflect on their own situation. They can’t premeditate their own executions so they don’t suffer from anxiety. In short, animals are unaware of what’s happening until it happens, so for them they don’t become agitated”.

These explanations have comforted many generations of humans. They help to convince whole populations of people that what happens to animals is basically okay ... because it is essential for human life. 

Props

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Animal Right activists are concerned about attitude, including our own. If we’ve walked away from using animals it’s something we can be proud of but pride can be connected to both accomplishment and arrogance. The vegan animal activist might be proud of their self discipline but needs to downplay it, and never be arrogant or boast about it if they want to be listened to.

It has to be said that if a person is still a user of animals they can hardly advise others to abstain. It seems obvious to say this but there are so many well-meaning activists who are unwilling to

Reduce their dependency on certain material items they think they need. What vegans are on about is that we must be consistent, and have a plan of reduction which, in turn, leads to a reduction-in-demand. If that is multiplied by enough people it reduces the market for unethical commodities and raises awareness at the same time. It’s boycotting.

How can this possibly fail? Step by step we are creating a new market for ‘cruelty-free’ products. Slow it might be at first, but it is the start of a major shift in the planet’s destiny and the  transformation of our own species.

It requires a few sacrifices of some foods and, at this early stage, some acceptance by others. We have to be pioneer-types, and put up with some loneliness, and learn how to do without a few home comforts we’ve grown up with.

We’ve been spoiled and therefore, to a large extent, life has been spoiled. We can no longer enjoy living in a state of unselfconsciousness.

Life is possible with just a little food and not very much more. Even bare survival would surely be better than all the luxuries we have today, if we could rid ourselves of the shame we feel and the lost innocence, and unselfconsciousness we so badly miss. We humans have some atoning to do.

Most of the items we’ve been attached to are merely material props. They’ve been our comforts while growing up. Now we have a chance to be fully mature and can shake off our need for little luxuries, particularly the fancy foods and clothes we spend most of our money on. They are props we just don’t need.

Survival in the countryside

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How can the people in rural areas be entirely blamed for making money out of animals? There’s not much else one can make money from, so animals are put to use, and the rest of the story we know.

The most immediate payback has shown up in health problems amongst exploited animals on farms and amongst the humans who eat them and their by-products. Down on the farms they feed the animals chemicals to increase their growth rate and fend off disease. But who can blame them? With so much fierce competition they’ve been economically backed into a corner over the animal welfare issue. On top of that are environmental problems associated with modern farming practices, again brought about mainly by economic pressures. What seemed, once upon a time, so ‘free-for-the-taking’ is now being seen to have hidden costs.

It’s the same with petrol or gas being so useful yet so polluting, or trees being so useful but in the taking of them so catastrophic for the environment. We humans don’t learn from one bad experience. We have to learn over and over, in many different ways, until we realise how there must be a withholding. Up to now we haven’t been able to stop fouling our own nest. 

Fouling our own nest

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Last year I saw the film ‘Gasland’. In the United States (and now too here in Australia) they’ve discovered a vast ocean of shale reserves beneath the ground, from which they can extract gas. An energy bonanza … so their dependence on imported energy has been reduced … and it’s home ‘grown’, and it’s cheap …but there’s a catch. They can only extract the gas by (a process known as ‘fracking’) causing mini-earthquakes to explode the shale, deep beneath the earth, to get at the gas. Fine so far? But a side effect of the process is that toxic chemicals (from the ‘fracking’ process) leach into the drinking water aquifers, poisoning the water supply for the people up above. Here’s just another example of a valuable commodity, appearing to be free, in a ‘free-ride’ kind of a way, but coming with hidden costs. On the one hand there’s an abundance of ‘freely available’ energy (Nature is so generous) and on the down side the water gets polluted causing untold health problems.

You can’t blame humans for always exploiting an opportunity. We’ve developed that ability over aeons, to make us The Dominant Species. We’ve always celebrated the fact that we’re so smart, clever enough in fact to exploit and disregard Nature. But we get ‘owt for nowt’. We pay in the end.

 The great lesson for humans, in learning how to use opportunities afforded them by using their big brains, is to know when to stop, when to pull back in gratitude, and then to use some intelligence by not regretting missing out on the ‘full opportunity’. That restraint is at the heart of the trend to ‘go green’, and then, if we are ‘green’ (read sensitive and aware) why not go fully green, by dropping the animal stuff in the diet?

Exploitation is a dumb act. Taking things, taking trees, taking rivers, taking any resource, including animals.

There are still many environmentalists who are meat heads. All I’m saying is that just because animals seem to breed abundantly and seem so available, and seem so indefensible and cheap to ‘run’, is that a reason to continue exploiting them, going hell-for-leather (literally!!)?

Muddle-headed or evil?

637:

Is what food producers do to animals evil? Are consumers, who connive with them, also evil? Perhaps, in reality, it’s more mindlessness than deliberate evil-doing. When something has been done for millennia, when everybody is doing much the same thing everywhere on the planet (using or eating animals) it’s not likely to be thought of as wrong.

Of course to a person who does NOT eat animals, to a vegan for instance, it looks very wrong indeed. It’s all in the perception. To those in the industry, the farmers, abattoir workers, cage manufacturers, retailers, etc., it’s a living – this is how they make their money, by using animals. The use of animals, as we would use any resource, is seen as utterly normal. And to consumers too, who are simply in the shop buying their normal food, it’s such an everyday occurrence that it isn’t even thought about. Any ill effects this food might have on them, let alone the harm done to the animals, is hardly thought about.

You can imagine how it seems when a vegan comes along and starts pointing out the stupidity let alone the wrong of it all. For your regular omnivore it could be quite mystifying - these are normal foods to everyone, the only type of food they’ve ever known; a meal without animal-derived items is no meal at all.

It’s the same with pharmaceuticals or medical procedures, we trust they are safe, that they’ve been animal-tested before reaching the market with nary a thought to the pain and suffering animals endure, they who are held against their will and made to test these chemical concoctions. As with farmers producing food for consumers so it is with animal researchers and vivisectors, who believe they’re helping to fight illness. When they’re searching for a new drug to help combat some horrible disease, surely, they say, “Anything goes”. Conducting ‘safety experiments’ on animals isn’t thought of as evil, it’s quite the opposite in fact.

We humans have grown accustomed to making use of what’s available, ‘resources’, and we take without questioning whether we have the right to do so or not. It’s not much different to the motorist using petrol - it’s available so why not use it? Animals are simply a resource and therefore available-for-use.

Gradually the human race is waking up to the consequences of this attitude. Gradually we are realising that taking what is not ours, especially if it’s to the detriment of something or someone else, might be a mistake. Not so much evil as muddle-headed. I doubt Animal Rights is fighting evil as much as thick headedness, ego and blind compliance with the norm.

The whole Animal Rights thing

636:

What happens to billions of animals each day is enough to give the average sensitive person nightmares. To avoid this it’s best to train yourself NOT to think about it at all, thus causing no sleeplessness. By not-thinking we can enjoy our food and, if challenged, we can claim to know very little about the ‘animal thing’, or claim we don’t want to know. This is of course is a betrayal of our feelings. Some people are able to convince themselves animals are lesser beings and we humans are simply exercising our rights over them as the dominant species … and that we have certain privileges which animals are not entitled to, namely the right to an enjoyable life.

For those useful animals we keep imprisoned on farms, in cages, there’s no life, as such. Every one of them is doomed to an existence of the meanest kind and when they’re fat enough or they are no longer economically viable we execute them. It’s all very efficient. It appeals to the practical brain of the human.

If we can see a way of taking advantage of them, of any resource in fact, we will take it. We never voluntarily forgo our advantage, especially over the matter of animal-use. If we do have to hunt them, because they can’t be domesticated, the hunting is done with the same ruthless efficiency with which we farm them. If their main value is in producing useful by-products, like eggs or milk, their day of execution is determined by their rate of production; when that drops off they get the chop.

            With our knowledge of biology we understand how a body will produce (foodstuff for humans), mate, reproduce, secrete, fatten and generally respond in a productive way, despite even the most appalling living conditions. Humans know that animals will endure life-long imprisonment, manipulation of their breeding cycle, be enticed to eat and fatten, and then go passively to their execution, all at our convenience. They have nothing to fight back with so they are completely in our power. We can do with them as we please.

Humans are only interested in animals for what they can get out of them, mainly food and clothing and companionship. Nothing else matters. The care they’re given is more to do with humans looking after a piece of property than concern for an individual animal’s well being. Their right to a life or the conditions under which they live are of no interest, since other factors govern everything; where money is to be made from them and where competition is fiercest for ever-cheaper products, the farmer is forced to minimise welfare standards to maximise outcome.

The consumer, hand in glove with the producers, cheers from the sidelines in order to maintain a constant supply of the food or clothing product. We expect good supply just as we might expect a good supply of water from a tap. If vegans are the thin end of the wedge, by potentially endangering supply, veganism will always be seen as a threat. 

Omnivores holding back our species

635:

We know well enough that maintaining an animal-food habit doesn’t ensure good nutrition. We know that animal foods are the chief destroyers of health, but we have a taste for animal body parts, so we kill them and eat them to satisfy our taste buds and stomach. We believe we’d suffer withdrawals if we stopped, especially since they’re in a large percentage of the things we love to eat. And if they’re surreptitiously included in foods, we won’t know it unless we study the fine print on the ingredients list (many are listed under the cover of words we don’t understand like gelatine, whey and albumin (bones, milk and eggs).

No meal is thought to be complete without meat or at least some cheese or milk-derived product. Even if we did want to stop using ‘it all’, we’d have too little faith in our own willpower to stop altogether and if we don’t make a complete break these yummy products find their way back into our shopping baskets.

It seems then we are doomed - neither logic nor ill health nor guilt nor environmental impact will stop us buying ‘animal’, and therefore nothing will stop the killing of animals for food, and therefore we collectively can’t move on as a species.

Having empathy for food-animals is rare, so let’s say that at the moment, here in Australia, ‘it’ isn’t happening. Animals don’t touch our hearts enough. Our omnivore friends are brick walls when it comes to animal liberation and vegan diets.

And yet there are people coming over - vegans do exist and are growing in number, leaving behind their omnivore habits, developing empathy for exploited animals. 

Daring to go vegan might avoid a mental health issue

634:

Let’s say that billions of people know what they do when they eat any animal product - they realise what must go on behind the scenes before the milk or meat can arrive in a shop. They’d be very naive or ill-informed if they didn’t. Let us say that, nonetheless, they continue eating them. Why don’t they stop? The question could be put another way: why would they want to?

Let’s now imagine something which is probably not even true yet, that there is one percent who are vegan or moving that way. It’s a tiny fraction of the world’s population that sees the world substantially differently. To this minority animals aren’t the same as carrots. Unlike carrots, animals have a sense of their own identity and can, on an individual level, feel emotion and will walk away from danger. We can surely assume that they don’t want to suffer and so are unhappy being the slaves of humans. So, how could we ignore that and how did we come to accept this, and how did we lose our connection with them and start to misuse them?

Well that question must hang in the air – human progress from hunter-gatherer to the farmer as captive breeder marks that disconnect - we decided to separate from animals, and went from hunter/predator to jailer. Somewhere along the line we said, “Animals shall not matter”.

Vegans believe that animals are ‘individuals’, no less than any animal at home. If people want to believe that animals are amorphous and incapable of feeling, or that they’re not individuals, then one must ask where that notion came from. I’d suggest this has become a mental health issue – that humans are concerned about ‘me’ to the detriment of ‘the other’. We know potentially that we are mentally stable because we can feel sympathy, even empathy, but we don’t see our mental stability strengthened by considering the safety of unknown animals. In addition we think that ‘animal’ food strengthens our brains and bodies - mental health can look after itself once the brain-body is strong … and that has led us to the worship of fast-thinking and the admiration of physically powerful individuals, who are no strangers to violence.

Vegans are suggesting we test our own mental health by challenging our dependency on animal products. That even though the dangers are clear we’re really dealing with addiction here, two addictions in fact. The first is a belief that one’s mental stability will be maintained in spite of one’s addiction to poisonous foods, the second that we can retain our sanity despite making unethical choices (purchases).

If this double sided addiction is challenged it falls like a house of cards, because once the poisons are draining out of the body, the craving lessens, and as days go by the need for self-discipline is no longer an issue (giving up foods which we once thought we couldn’t do without). Once this addiction problem is dealt with we can start to see animals as close friends. They’re sentiently close to humans. They’re not ‘un-persons’ in that way the Negroes or Jews were once seen.

Is it not in the very nature of addiction that we shield ourselves from what we see for the sake of ensuring supply; it’s a give and take deal we strike with the Animal Industries, and that complicity has brought about a vast assault on animals. It’s probably the most insane thing we do to ourselves – to give up so much of our birthright for so little. “I can’t imagine life without milk in my coffee”, “My dear, life without lobster …”. Strange to think that our sanity and general health will let us ‘get away’ with this attack on our body and conscience every day.

Is it that we think our mental health depends on what others think of us and not what we think of ourselves? Perhaps the opposite is true. Other people, including ourselves, might well think highly of anyone who confirms our own lifestyle – ask yourself why would we forgo their approval for the sake of making a radical change of lifestyle? Answer: it’s likely to isolate us socially.

We all fear for our own mental health if we’re alone … and everyone knows there’s not much kudos in being vegan, or even vegetarian, but added to that, being alone ... it’s frightening.

If the omnivore is complacent about their own mental health, or down plays the guilt factor, or ignores good sense and conscience, they may not get far past where they are now. Their habits, which at worst are barbaric are at best mindless.

They’re mere animals

633:

“I’m omnivore. Why change?” Why fix something that ‘ain’t broke’? Why fiddle with habits if we’re quite happy with the habits we have? Maybe there’s a small but nagging worry that something’s not quite right, and perhaps we suspect something IS broke. Even worse, maybe we don’t care enough because we’ve already given up on the human race. It doesn’t occur to people that, to fix all this, we might simply need to become vegan.

When we reach for that favourite item on the supermarket shelf we take it on trust, that it is chemically safe, that’s it’s legal to buy it and that it’s an ethical item. But are we really that fussy? This is the moment of truth, of decision-making, and if in this one moment we hear a voice inside us telling us to “stop”, then what’s really happening at that moment? We know that once we’ve grabbed it and dropped it in our basket we’ve already as good as consumed it, so we have to decide there and then whether we will reach for it or not. If we decide NOT to, then we’re starting to think like a vegan - at that point, where we’re considering a boycott (of meat or eggs or whatever), if we hesitate, if we give it a second thought, it’s likely we’re not ready to make such weighty choices; if we decide to boycott any item on ethical grounds then we are at the cross roads of an important decision. This is when we might decide to do without, or find a replacement, or to try something new. It’s a very personal matter, since we can’t discuss it with anyone, unless they too have considered boycotting foods on ethical grounds.

If we try to discuss this matter with someone who HASN’T faced such a choice then everything we are about to discuss with them is fraught with complication. For a start, we open up a comparison - the intelligence behind our decision showing up their lack of intelligence. Once we compare our  vegan thinking with their omnivore thinking it immediately becomes an ego battle. It’s as if we are suggesting that my brain is better than yours, ‘me better than you’, me more compassionate than you. It’s a dangerous game to play - we’re likely to be offending people, making personal comparisons and evoking defensive and self-protecting position-taking.

If we start to think that we are advanced people, by virtue of our being more empathetic, then that will contrast with their being primitive and insensitive. That’s not how most omnivores see themselves. They know they are empathetic and humanitarian, as evidenced by their kind disposition with their children or by their relationship to their dogs and cats at home, so it’s likely they see us as delusional and hypersensitive to the feelings of mere farm animals. (They really do think of animals as ‘mere’).

Dealing with certain preliminaries first

632:

Vegans who promote Animal Rights need to understand the size of our task. And the manner of it. People have changed over these past 40 years. We are amongst children of the Information Age. They’re discriminating (as we were in the 1970s, but they have access to more information to ‘discriminate’ with). Today it isn’t enough simply to pass on information and expect to wow people with it, today there’s more cynicism and suspicion - no one’s taking in all the new information available, just the bits they want. We are information-saturated. As communicators of ideas nothing is very straightforward, especially if the idea isn’t immediately appealing or if it’s an inconvenient idea, like veganism.

            Today, bombarded, softened up by the sheer volume of information being put out, we become pliable (or so commercial-political interests hope anyway). The aim is to intentionally misinform us, to install beliefs into our minds in order to cauterise individual thinking. They succeed only when we follow the crowd and do as we’re told. Once people have settled into lifestyle habits they’re more or less unshiftable. Eating habits are no different to any chemical addiction, since most of the addiction to animal products concern the powerful taste sensation of them.

            Convincing people that they’ve been duped is a massive hurdle; why would they believe us?; why would they want to: why trust what we say? There’s so much misinformation in circulation today that anything too new, too radical or too inconvenient goes into the too-hard basket of ‘unbelievability’.

We need something special to break through all of that. Something all-encompassing, for it’s likely that most people will see the vegan diet one-dimensionally; that it is simply good for slimming. Or they’ll see it as good for other self benefits too. But veganism is more than a diet for personal food-advantage. On a deeper level it suggests a whole other way of thinking.

Everything about being vegan, and everything stemming from it, gets the brain cells moving faster. It lets us see stunning potentials and transformations. It addresses a lot of allied issues. Now if, for whatever reason, we’re drawn to it, if we’re receptive to the reasoning behind it, then it’s likely we’re also hearing what vegans are saying about animals and their ‘right to a life’. Whilst not necessarily agreeing with us at first, they may be ready to consider giving our arguments a fair hearing. And that is the beginning of a fuller understanding of non-violence and all the benefit that is for our own species.

But there will always be those who are most decidedly NOT drawn to this. For them, everything about veganism is either unclear, unbelievable or unattractive. As animal advocates we have wear that. For us it’s probably the hardest part of all, juggling the responsibility of explaining it with the trickiness of dealing with such heavy initial reluctance.

How do we expose the misinformation? How do we get people to believe we’re telling the truth? How do we deal with our own inapproachability? Somehow we have to find our own way to weave a path through this undergrowth, so that we can better incite enough empathy to get people to consider the plight of exploited animals before their own convenience.

Respecting our own intelligence

631:

This is the age of relationships, between me and you, between ourselves and ideas. Relationship gives rise to a feeling of loyalty, to what we’ve been given, where we’re grateful and willing to acknowledge the best of things. If we make a friend we want to be a loyal friend. If we’ve been given intelligence we want to show loyalty to this intelligence by doing intelligent things.

By taking on a plant food regime we’re acknowledging the intelligence of it, whereas eating animal foods is exploitative and we probably feel foolish for letting those who produce it (and who don’t have our best interests at heart) to winkle money out of our pockets,.

Eventually through the growth of relationship with our own intelligence we can come to respect information concerning the everyday commodities we buy. Intelligence lets us see the rubbish and drop it, taking up the good stuff instead. One day we’ll look back with amazement on these days, when we felt so attached to crap foods.

When we realise the poisonous effect of so much crap going into our bodies we’ll realise what danger we’ve been in as well as the conscience-crushing crime of it all. To do this to ourselves is against the integrity of our bodies and the integrity of food itself. As we realise the attractive qualities of organic fruit and veggies and plant-based foods in general we’ll come to see them as ‘proper’ food as opposed to crap food. We’ll move away from ‘kiddy’-food and cruel food and move towards real foods; plants will be seen as the obvious energy-food, which will be good-tasting food and come to be regarded as ‘adult’ food.

As vegans we need to promote this by refining our sales pitch. Our arguments must be ‘tasty’ to people’s sensibilities in the same way good foods are tasty.

The story so far: the animal thing (using them) is a habit entrenched over a long time, and now that needs to change. Vegans need to find a way of telling this story without sounding patronising, or boring, or boasting. We have to find a way of telling our story attractively.

Eureka

630:

We might think that by morally disapproving of animal-product users that it’s going to stop them in their tracks, and impel them to discover the facts for themselves. We reckon we can shame them … and then, after that, it’s a piece of cake.

If only it were that easy! Values are so warped that wrong can seem right, when lots of people say so. Eating meat and therefore abusing animals, for example, might be contrary to our core values but we choose to eat it anyway. Under any threat that something might be taken away is when people are at their most implacable.

The human dilemma is whether to regard such values as important  or not. There’s choice. We can choose to endanger ourselves (and others) by letting vested interest sway us. Or not. Usually our decisions are based on what we want for ourselves. Or not. If not, then there has to be a lot of inner debating to persuade ourselves to draw away from social norms, especially those to do with food.

So, here we are, going along as normal in life, and then someone alters the perception of something so familiar. What a difference that makes. Blinding for some, bliss for others. New attitudes, new values and new principles look impressive but we can’t help but keep staring at it until all the implications have been thought-out. In our mind’s eye we test it out and if it convinces us then … what? We either ignore it or act on it.

People might see change as a threat and fear social pressure. Or they might see a good outcome ahead, sparking imagination, letting us see Eureka! Eureka tells us something special is happening, where we can almost feel we have no choice in the matter, but to simply follow it through, to see where it takes us.

A tough job for vegans

629:

Veganism isn’t just about food, it’s an idea, only part of which concerns food. Getting people to adopt a vegan diet isn’t the end aim. It simply allows us to look at vegan principle without being knocked back by our own food practices. This principle logically gives rise to the diet, and that gives rise to the boycott that leads to an entirely changed view of how humans might interact with the animal kingdom. Giving people advice simply about vegan diet isn’t necessarily going to change them as people. Omnivores need something inspiring and completely rational to convince them to get rid of ‘certain habits’.

Almost all of us have been brought up with specific ideas about food, regarding the safety of it and to some extent that includes an ethical angle; we wouldn’t, for instance, eat whales or pate de foie gras, it would outrage us. But all the rest of it, which is still fashionable to eat, the omnivore will eat. And eat and eat and eat until addicted. And then getting supplies becomes more important than anything else.

We, as vegans, mustn’t underestimate how much we are pushing the omnivore’s most sensitive buttons. As advocates we need to understand the logic of an omnivore mind, ‘why they eat the foods they do’, ‘why they believe in these foods’, ‘why they like the taste of them, the feel of them slipping past taste buds into their stomach, and therefore why their very life depends on supply.

Vegans might have to be determined advocates if the omnivore population is going to be swung over.

An omnivore’s definition of a friend

 627:

If an omnivore said that ‘animal-food’ was okay (despite knowing what happens to animals and what it does to our health) they’d look foolish or heartless, or both. Most people like being known for their casual, anything-goes, easy-to-be-with personality but none of us wants to be made to look stupid. And for most of us, we want to keep up with progressive thinking, wanting to be abreast of the latest information and forming an opinion based on that.

We can see that fashions are changing, and for all the popularity of meat-dominated fast foods, for a large percentage of the population they are not considered to be food at all. The writing’s on the wall, trending away from animal protein. And there’s an understandable fear for many people that if they don’t change they’ll be left behind. So far the food industry chemists are still making food taste and look good, and they’re backed up by clever advertising, but the punter is getting suspicious. And the Animal Industry is getting nervous, since there’s not much more they can fiddle with to make their foods more attractive. The novelty of highly salted or sweetened or mono sodium glutamat-ed taste sensations is wearing thin. With over-stimulated taste buds things start to taste like cardboard.

As faith in popular food wobbles it might occur to some to move towards better quality raw materials (organic, home grown) and plant-based foods in general. As the taste buds adapt to a new type of food sensation so the allure of meat and dairy fades.

Maybe you do consider this sort of diet change. But it’s the initial step that’s hard, leaving behind one huge food source and taking up with another, with all the social implications of no longer eating what most others are willing to eat. To abandon animal-based foods requires a leap of faith, that one will find a new type of relationship with food. Instead of the crude explosions of taste and short term stomach-filling satisfaction we might prefer to go towards the satisfaction that whole plant-foods produce.

There are all sorts of psychological and physical challenges to face here. For many they are too difficult to face. And those difficulties can act like brakes on the process of change.

But, as soon as we realise how animals foods betray us (they don’t keep us strong and healthy) we’re safe. We’re then moving away from the unquestioned habits of the past.

Nursery teas

626:

What confronts us most powerfully today is certainty in the form of omnivore consciousness. There’s a mighty army formed up against the puny vegan push. It’s no wonder they can ignore us, since we appear to have no weaponry worth worrying about. We just seem to be a few nervous advocates on soap boxes calling out to passers-by. And when no one stops to speak to us it puts us in a bad mood. But that doesn’t concern anybody.

What weapons do we have, to fight ‘the good fight’? Perhaps we have one only - that veganism is unarguable. Put to the test it’s what omnivores dread and why they avoid all talk about this subject of animals. If you’re a vegan and if you are ever short of confidence, you should remember how low in confidence the omnivore is, despite there being so many of them.

Our vegan philosophy hangs like the Sword of Damocles over their heads, and probably annoys many of them profoundly that they can’t talk about this subject without sounding foolish. And what’s more, in having to think like the mob it must be quite embarrassing. Any of us likes to see ourselves as normal and yet still as capable of independent thought. As adults, we like to think of ourselves as intelligent and grown up; it’s humiliating to find ourselves still at that stage where we haven’t yet grown out of nursery teas.

Life without lobster, my dear. I just can’t imagine it.

625:

Winning support for Animal Rights was never going to be easy. We live in a conspiracy of misinformation which suits almost everyone, because it allows people to be speciesist, which in turn allows them to indulge in animal foods.

            While vegans are trying to defend abused animals, non-vegans are trying to do the opposite, by ‘not giving a damn’ about them. The educated food lover might wriggle out of the ethical quagmire but they keep sinking back into it each day, by cooking their bits of dead animal and practising the dark art of ‘animal cuisine’. It sounds quite respectable; it helps cooking enthusiasts to apply their sensitivity to the aesthetics of food, overriding the ethical side of it (the provenance of  those foods). It emphasises ‘food quality’ (nutrition or taste experience) in order to downplay the origins of animal foodstuffs.

For most people their pleasure is in indulgence. They think about it, savour it, salivate over it - the omnivore gastronome drools over food all day. The wealthy gastronomes indulge themselves in all the exotic delicacies without a single thought given to the animal behind what they’re eating; their favourite fleshy foods must not be given up lightly. Life without lobster is unimaginable.