The unanswerable question

830: 

In reply to vegan argument, most omnivores don’t, won’t or can’t agree with us. When vegans realise how reluctant people are we get frustrated. We lose patience. Our lack of patience shows and puts people off wanting to find out what we’ve got to say. And that’s the tragedy. For us, all of us. Our losing patience looks like losing faith in people who aren’t like us, and patience is a must because of the magnitude of what we’re attempting to pull off here.

            In our Western societies, even in UK where there are quite a lot of vegans, we can see no BIG change in public attitude. The papers aren’t supportive, the media in general is not making this into an ‘interesting subject’, teachers aren’t teaching it and preachers aren’t preaching it. The concept of veganism, in combination with Animal Rights, is thoroughly ignored, even by the most educated and economically well-off. That’s depressing, but we can’t afford to get bitter or people-hating about it. Instead we need to enjoy acting constructively and persist with ‘what it feels right to be doing’. Hold that thought.

            It could go either way - there will either be a growth of violence in society or a growth of non-violence. I’m optimistic for the latter, simply because there’s got to be a solution to every problem, and violence is the ONE BIG PROBLEM still facing humanity.

            No one will actively welcome greater violence into our society but it probably ‘comes with the territory’, of habitually using of violence-based products. Most of our living expenses are in buying food, and this is where most tacit violence is concealed and where the cruelty behind so much of our food is hidden. Bacon isn’t pigs, chops aren’t lambs - the consumer can’t recognise the animal-in-the-food when looking at the meat trays in the supermarket. The clean, plastic trays of ex-sanguine-ated, headless, footless, de-gutted animal body-parts, show nothing to remind the consumer of the food’s real origin. And to help matters along, the consumer is led to believe in the substantiality of this food over the sorts of ‘rabbit diet’ foods that vegans eat.

            Animal-based food, for omnivores, is simply a sensory matter. It tastes good, it smells good, it looks good; for the average omnivore there’s nothing quite like meat, cheese and eggs and all their derivatives.

            Okay, there’s not much more to say about that sort of food, but if it’s on most people’s dinner plates it’s off most people’s thinking-agendas. Our main problem concerning this food is that we can’t get to discuss it, we can’t overcome the taboo surrounding the discussion of it.

            Slowly the issues are emerging. Vegans are asking a few piercing questions. (So are vegetarians who are concerned about animal welfare, although it’s arguable that they have little right to speak about it whilst they continue to eat animals’ by-products). But it comes down to the problem of getting people to hear our questions. The taboo, surrounding animal-use, protects people (including lacto-ovo vegetarians) from being reminded that they are cold hearted. I imagine there are many vegetarians or even meat-eaters who ask themselves what they can do to stop the terrible things being done to animals, but still they continue to enjoy eating them. That question has to hang in the air, unanswered.