Is it to be vegetarian or vegan?

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I went to see an elderly friend today. She was telling me about a woman she knows who had a bad reaction to vegetarians - she’d apparently been to dinner with some and “All they ate was vegetables!!”. So then my friend told her about this vegan she knows (me), and she’d never heard of that. When it was explained what I didn’t eat (never mind what I wouldn’t wear!), the poor woman was completely nonplussed. “Is he all right ‘up-stairs’?”, she asked.

            After we’d had a good laugh about this, I got to wondering how many other people would find veganism completely incomprehensible. I guess many would. I also guess that many people would think vegans were backing a loser. I know vegans too, who often feel as though they are wasting their time, expecting such an apparently unlikely fashion to take hold.

            But I also know those of us who are not phased at all by the fashion of today’s attitudes, and can see that eventually people will come around to our way of thinking; they’ll be disillusioned with today’s realities and want to find a different reality. They’ll be wanting something to counterbalance the barbaric world they are part of, a less old fashioned, less violent way of conducting their lives.

            History is littered with examples of similar un-likelihoods that become the new custom, in a new age. So perhaps we should regard veganism, vegan diet and vegan principle as concepts which are in-waiting, preparing the way for another age. No one can know quite when it will become relevant to thinking people, who will be interested enough to want to understand ‘the difference between vegetarian and vegan’. When they do, consciousness will have taken a noticeable step forward, from indifference to being animal-conscious.

At present though, whether it be cutting down on meat or cutting out meat altogether, easing up on rich foods or supporting an animal welfare group, it’s all progress. And vegans, at present, can expect no better reaction than a “thanks very much but that’s as far as I go”, since for most people the idea of being vegan is far, far too extreme.

But for those of us who are vegan, it’s because we go to the extreme of not using any animal-based materials, that we are in such a totally different head space than most people around us. The danger for us is to either think we are better-than or to worry about being too-different.