Still holding back

883:

Vegans need to know that we’re up against emotionally based attitudes - likings-for and disregardings-of. To reach the entrenched omnivore (who is devoted to many of the available animal products) we have a big job on our hands. Our understanding of their emotional response to ‘farm animals’ will help us address their lack of empathy.  When someone is reluctant to listen, not wanting to be persuaded towards a life of self-denial and lettuce leaves, we need to adopt a subtle approach. If they are reluctant they are afraid of something. To make a person less afraid of listening to us, I’ve got two tips:

Drop the slogans and clichés, because they’re boring.

Be as unselfconscious as possible.

Our aim isn’t to convert or even really to be listened to. Our aim is to establish a calm, where any confronting facts and figures don’t generate hostility. Ideally, information is taken in without shocks and offensive inferences. 

At any point in our conversation it’s likely there’ll be high emotion flying around. If I’ve instigated any sort of discussion then I must offer information without getting too smart about it. Being right doesn’t win friends (neither does being wrong) but when necessary it’s best NOT to win every point. We aren’t in competition between two opinions, this is a plain, old-fashioned conversation, a mutual exploring of each other’s idea and viewpoints. There shouldn’t be any hint of threat. And we shouldn’t be grasping every opportunity to lay down the law.

If we hit people with too much ‘law’, if we apply too much moral pressure, if we confront their politics then a friendly chat can turn ugly.

Dialogue is discussion-about, not fight-over. Because this subject is so emotionally charged, as soon as the matter of animal rights arises, there’s caution. Dialogue should certainly include the passing of information, with interesting ideas and ethics and empathies rubbing off at the same time, but it’s also about the vibration of our words.

When we sense any emotional instability in the air, we can almost hear them asking themselves, “Shall I continue or shall I abort this conversation?”. So, dialogue isn’t proselytising, and therefore it isn’t conversion or recruiting. By announcing ourselves as Fighters for The Cause (“I’m vegan, etc ...”), we disturb the delicate balance of equality. Sometimes it sounds like I’m saying that I’m better than you.

Much of the trickiness of this subject can be dissolved by unselfconsciousness. What on earth does that mean? Perhaps that a light touch on this subject is enough at any one sitting. vegans often forget just how explosive one single comment can be. What is so incomprehensible to most people is that we could have taken such drastic action (by becoming vegan and a vegan advocates). It’s often a surprise that we grant status to this ‘subject’, that we’re taking ‘animals’ seriously. the lightness of our ‘touch’ can have the effect of reducing the explosiveness of what we have to say.

Does your average vegan go to this much trouble, when discussing the use of animals? Perhaps we should, and perhaps we need to give some sort of assurance that we aren’t going to become unfriendly, because to take this sort of discussion on board, an omnivore must know something important about me. That I’m fair and non-violent, that I don’t ‘do’ attacks, that I’m willing to resist the itch to express a value judgement of them.

For my part, I need to know I’m safe. On some level of simpatico-mutual communication, I must be able to read the other person and be sure of two things:

1.      That they aren’t likely to attack me physically

2.      That they are genuinely interested in discussing the subject in hand

           

I’ll turn summersaults to keep someone off the defensive, so I’d always be prepared to hold back. I think if you’re vegan and an honest-sounding person, you should always allow yourself to hold back, for your own sake as well as theirs, in order to retain some of our own mystery. It makes us far less predictable. A little inscrutability goes a long way. And we should be careful not to take ourselves too seriously.

            Having said that, we need to remember that all this is happening fast inside our brains. The more we engage in these sorts of hyped-up conversations, the better we get at them. But before we reach the giddy heights of communication-savvy, we must know we can deal with flak. It always hurts, but criticism should never be too hard to handle – just think of the technique of Stage Survival for Stand-up Comedians.

These ace-communicators may be nightly heckled. I think their tactics should be ours. They show the opposite of what’s expected. They’re never too shocked by criticism, but instead turn it to their own advantage. Which brings me to a useful tool in the vegan tool box - self-deprecation. It neutralises the ego-wanting-to-be-right-all-the-time. It replaces it with “it’s okay to be wrong”, for me, for you. We must get across that it’s okay not to have thought about all this very much up to now. And if that doesn’t wash, if they insist on rubbishing our most ‘robust principles’, especially if they do that, we must know that there’s always an advantage in it for us. We know (but keep it to ourselves) that they have no real arguments for their dependency on animals.

We wait. We wait for their side to be defended as strongly as we promote the opposite. All we get back is sloppy arguments, barely at kindergarten debating level. And since they have no good arguments to knock us down with, our best approach is to hold back. Not push things through too completely, not at first anyway. We need to give them space to consider things, then to make a response, but just as strongly we must be saying, “You don’t have to respond”. We’ve got to show all this, so they can feel safe with us.

If we answer any debating point, we have to do it without shooting ourselves in the foot by being defensive our self. We’re in the advantaged position all the time, so it’s best not to exploit that. We know we can always hold our ground, and they know it too. So, their always being on the defensive means they have no real confidence in what they say, and that often means they resort to denigration.

The vegan advocate should be able to take anything, only because we know we have solid answers. We can out-argue on non-violence alone, and in that way always hold our own ... that is until the knuckle dusters come out. And then it’s best to run like hell!