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Because most rich foods are made using animal ingredients, vegans
avoid most junk food and cream-filled nursery teas. So we don’t eat those foods
that make people fat and sluggish. If our boycott seeks to protect the animals,
it also succeeds in protecting us from the many ‘non-foods’ on the market. There’s
nothing in a cake shop we eat, very little from a confectioner’s or a
delicatessen. And we don’t visit the butcher’s or cheese-maker’s. Call it ‘self
discipline’ if you like, but it’s really just keeping all that poison out of
our bodies.
Yes, it’s
true, I miss out on all sorts of mouth-watering cuisine. This is the food which
most people consider the yummiest of savouries or sweetmeats. And often, when
the equivalent vegan-friendly product appears, it soon vanishes because of insufficient
market. So, here’s the sticking point - vegans are able to ‘animal-empathise’
enough to overcome the ‘yummy’ factor of the foods they avoid. Non-vegans don’t
empathise enough. Perhaps they aren’t prepared to make a statement on behalf of
farm animals (whereas many people do boycott pharmaceutical items that are
tested on animals) and that’s the separation factor holding back this great
tide of potential vegan-conscious food-eaters.
For those of
us who’re already vegan, our greatest challenge isn’t sticking to plant-based foods
but in convincing others. Our first problem is to get a hearing. Maybe talking
is a bit too in yer face, so it might be more useful if people watched on video
what is happening. But, how to get them to willingly watch when they don’t want
to watch it. They can guess what will happen - if they watch it, they’ll end up
wrestling with the images they’ve seen and what they could imply. Excellent
video footage has been taken, but it’s not proof that’s required, it’s
sufficient reason to darken our own day that’s missing. Amongst the brainwashed
omnivore population, there’s not enough empathy, not enough reason to take
drastic action and not enough interest. (‘Going-vegan’ is considered drastic!!)
So, what we
have, our most persuasive weapon, filmed proof, even that is not enough. Simply
put, it is not widely watched. Amongst our omnivore population, if everyone
sticks together we won’t have to know what we don’t want to know.
Our second problem is internal to
ourselves - it’s about keeping up our own morale in the face of constant
rejection, ridicule and indifference. No one is for us unless they’re one of
us. My own relationships with non-vegans (that is just about every person I
know) often seems to be on shaky ground, whenever this subject comes up.
You and I
might be chatting away, and we hit this ‘animals’-‘food’ thing, and suddenly we
notice they feel uncomfortable. They want to change the subject. It’s not just
the ethics, the diet, the food, the animals, it’s my rightness or my
righteousness that’s such a big turn-off. Imagined or real, there are problems when
with vegans.
It’s difficult for both sides,
when our ethical differences-of-opinion crop up. None of us like confronting
issues, confronting passions, or only holding weak arguments. For vegans
though, there’s nothing more annoying than having our whole philosophy
summarily dismissed, without any attempt to deconstruct it. Both sides have
grievances. So what can be done?
Each has responsibility here, but
since it was me who brought the matter to a point where it sits in front of us
like a lump, since I did this, I must take the initiative to NOT fight back directly.
Instead I must observe other people’s inner assurances about their own moral
and ethical positions. However, observing isn’t completely fulfilling. I’m often
left with a feeling of unfinished business. But I know the problems worsen when
I can’t let the issues go ... and continue past the permission-point with what
I want to say.
The upshot of all this is not
pretty and not exactly fair. We vegans can start to harbour grudges, and
because we can’t convince our friends, we get wild. And even wilder, when we
hear the spruiking of commodities we daily boycott. Now, the tendency is to save
our angriest judgements for the ‘big boys’, who vivisect animals or run factory
farms and abattoirs. We rage against them. But there’s no satisfaction. So, we
turn our wrath back onto the consumer, but since that involves just about
everybody, we end up waging judgemental war on the whole world. It seem all we
can do.
I’d suggest that there may be a
more effective, non-judgemental way to initiate change. It starts close to
home, in fact within our own mind; getting to know the Animal Rights advocate
in ourselves. Firstly, we need to acknowledge that we’re in a strong position,
even though we’re hopelessly outnumbered. We have what they don’t
- a rationale, and eventually that must be discussed. Then we’ll have our say
and effectively so.
Our strongest argument is that we
hold to the non-violence principle. We apply it daily, without any exceptions.
Some would call it an act of faith. And this central value is something others
can’t easily oppose. If the concept of harmlessness worked for me, jolting me
out of my own dark corner, it can work for anybody.
We’re hopefully brought up with beautiful
values like honesty and kindness. These are values anyone can respect. But what
if that isn’t what makes a person ‘come out’? What if the essential value of
equality has been ignored. As a value, it’s just as beautiful as honesty and
kindness. Surely, a better way to approach the difficulty (of us all holding different
views) is to emphasise that we’re all in ‘this’ together. The vegan advocate’s
job is surely to find ways of dealing with common problems, our own and other
people’s, by interacting with others on every possible level, and not by
separating away from them. Humans are wonderful planners and communicators and
visionaries. It’s simply a matter of presenting certain possibilities and
potentials, and then helping to ween people off second-rate gratifications and
onto more first-rate benefits.
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