Do yourself a favour

831: 

We vegans could seem like a threat to people’s peace of mind, but since vegans are in such small numbers at the moment, we’re still rather ignore-able. (In most countries veganism is hardly known about at all). Here in Australia it’s rarely mentioned in the media and for most people the whole idea of animals having rights is a completely foreign if not laughable idea. Gradually things may change, who knows? At present though, the general attitude towards veganism is either to find it incomprehensible or a vague threat to one’s own lifestyle. Possibly it’s even a subject that’s dangerous for impressionable young minds.

            Any threat veganism poses isn’t physical of course but it can be somehow disturbing all the same, because it touches on everything all at once; any impact it makes, it makes deeply. For example, we argue that animal slavery can be related to just about every violence-based activity whether it damages the human body, the environment or the lives of animals. Any threat vegans pose isn’t physical of course but we can be somehow disturbing all the same; if we do make an impact we make it deeply. For example, we make the connections between animal slavery and illness, global warming, world starvation and many other central issues, while most people are collaborating with destructive forces simply by remaining omnivorous.

            The central question is about whether humans are innately destructive in their primary attitude to the world, and whether this can be justified.

            We live the way we do today in laboratory conditions of our own making. We’re almost desperate to find out if we, humans, are worth saving. Does it mean that we, despite our brilliant discoveries, have gone too far? Have we destroyed too much to deserve to be spared? Maybe that’s not a useful question, except that it points to the need for a solution - the principle of repair through a concerted act of non-violence, which cancels out the violence which has caused the problems in the first place.

            Vegans are presenting compassion as a principle that is still being shunned by the world at large. It’s neat because it’s incontrovertible (and that makes people hostile towards it because it shows them to have been wrong).

            Compassion theory is obviously making its mark. We care about things we didn’t care much about fifty years ago. We care for trees and threatened species. We care about the planet. We care about taking children’s views into consideration, we show concern for the troubled worlds outside our own comfortable world. But ‘compassion’ (heart-intelligence) seems an obvious threat to the macho status quo.