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.