Our aim is to talk

901: 

Once we have an aim, such as going vegan, we’re in a position to be useful. Once we’re eating from plants, clothing ourselves from plants and using cruelty-free products, then we’re actively boycotting the Animal Industries. At the same time we are learning about an alternative lifestyle involving new ways of preparing food and learning about a better form of nutrition (for our own safety). Alongside food, we are learning about modern-day animal-husbandry and why it is making life ‘unsafe’ for billions of farm animals.

To set this ball rolling we need to carve out chunks of time and energy in our daily life, for the ‘work in hand’ (and that means learning what needs to be learnt, in order to be able to talk about this complex subject).

But where most work is needed is in convincing people of the connections between what is done to animals and what they buy; as soon as you buy, for example a quiche, you are supporting the caging of hens.

Most people wouldn’t have given it a second thought, beyond how attractive this item is to eat. But as soon as you make the essential connection, between the finished product and its ingredients, a question arises; is it tainted? You either consider the animal connection or you ignore it.

Now, if you ignore it, then does it mean you don’t care, that your egg comes from a caged hen? Does it mean you don’t care if hens are caged? And does that imply you are not a caring person?

If you do care then you can only stop eating eggs - by stopping eating this eggy quiche you make a statement of intent. Carried further, you might apply the same reasoning to any other product which is similarly tainted, in order to show that you care. However delicious you might think something is, having a clean conscience about it might strike you as being even more ‘delicious’.

By making this one decision to deny yourself a pleasure for the sake of a principle, it helps you to think more deeply about the violations for which humans are responsible. By developing any one of the many links between food and animal-killing and animal-incarceration, you inevitably come to consider the need for animals to have ‘rights’ – and that would be a case of conscience over convenience.

Each is a strong contender for our attention. The world we live in is full of tempting, delicious foods, but by boycotting cruelty-foods, many delicacies will fall off the shopping list. You’ll realise there will be no more lobster and no more favourite animal-based food items. If you don’t boycott the lobster, you’ll be condoning the unimaginable cruelty of the lobster being boiled alive (to kill it).

This is more than a matter of human inconvenience, because it highlights the subtlety of our highly sophisticated taste sensation (pleasure) put up against our knowledge of animal suffering (guilt). If you come down on the side of conscience, you are ready to become the advocate; you are suddenly in a position to talk about all these matters non-hypocritically. You’ll then be an agent of radical change.

Now, there is a whole generation of people hungry for information (for the ‘truth’), and that is precisely what vegans can and should be delivering. (Incidentally, I’ve never heard anyone suggesting that vegans are NOT speaking the truth).

Once we’re established as practising vegans, then we need to develop communication skills, in order to convince people to stop supporting the Animal Industries. But initially, anyone can talk about cruelty to animals because it’s so obvious; introducing the whole matter of animal-use to those who’ve never really thought about it. The more details of routine cruelty and speciesism we find, the easier it is to convince others that the non-use of animals is a possibility. Once that has been established, then it’s a matter of learning the specific details of how farmed animals are treated, and going on from there to make it easier for us to convince the sceptics.