People empowering the food producers

771: 

I don’t know how sensitive you are about the human-animal relationship. I obviously think it is completely out of hand, and something dramatic has to happen if humans aren’t to be unstuck by it. But who thinks that far ahead? However sensitive a person is, it must be tricky when facing this particular moral question, as to whether one should be using animal-based commodities, when just about everybody is using lots of them every day.

            If you are troubled by a moral question, in this case condoning cruelty to animals, out of that could come a mixture of fears: confusion, guilt, frustration, addiction and social exclusion. Since guilt helps to make our brains numb, my interest is to get people to think for themselves, use their brains, and escape from guilt feelings if only because it stops us thinking. Most of all, I don’t want you to think of me (or other vegans) as people who are wanting to attack you. I don’t know how to make anyone believe me when I say that, but IF you aren’t sure about that one thing about me, then you and I can’t do much communication on this important subject. You’re likely to guess this way: that I think you are too guilty to listen, that you are part of the crowd and that you don’t think for yourself. That isn’t necessarily true at all. I can only speak for myself, but I know what it’s like being accused of acting like ‘sheep’, with everyone doing what everyone else does. I want to avoid all that sort of judgement, because it kills communication. How do I know what pressures you’re under, which make you NOT think what’s behind the food you eat. Perhaps you don’t buy much food but have it prepared and bought for you, or your friends eat together and you don’t want to be excluded from that group, or your partner would find it too difficult if you started to make ethical choices about your food, or traditional food dishes are too closely associated with your lifestyle. There are so many factors involved in choosing what to eat or what not to eat. It’s probably beyond the imagination of most people to see how one could ever be satisfyingly fed on plant-based foods alone. Vegan diets sound positively dangerous.

            But food (mainly but not solely food) is something that costs money; we eat food each and every day; we give little thought to the way we use our power (money) to empower others (by spending it with them). With a lot of money and very little thought, much power is given to the Animal Industries, by us. And that brings us into contact with some very ugly events.

            I can see all this and want to avoid the effect of guilt on you, but I can’t get this across, whilst you can see all this and want to do the right thing, but you find it not so simple. These are some of the difficult dilemmas facing us over food.