Leave it to the experts

953: 

The flying time from Australia to Europe is three days by propeller-driven aeroplane,  but just 1 day by jet. Most long distance journeys go for efficiency,  so when we do a long-haul flight today we fly by jet, and not turbo-prop.  In the same way,  plant-based foods are just simply more efficient.  And to extend this awkward metaphor a little further,  most of us probably think of aircraft technology and ‘flight’ as being far beyond our ken,  so we leave it to the experts.  They ‘avail us of their services’,  always seemingly to our advantage.  It’s much the same when it comes to diets and medicines.  We leave it to ‘the experts’ to provide for us.  We trust them to care for us,  as a child does with a parent,  conveniently leaving us free to pursue pleasure.

But when that pleasure comes in the form of food, the pleasure we get may be second rate, as well as harmful.  We conspire against our best health-interests.  We’re too easily persuaded by the advertisers. Their wealth and ‘success’ is based on the assumption that ‘what the punter has never known won’t be missed’.

Eventually some people become suspicious,  and look around for something truer and deeper (and healthier).

Die-hard omnivores,  weakened and seduced by their traditional ‘foods’,  choose to conform.  They allow themselves to be led (in much the same way farm animals are forced to do). Most people perform their function of working,  earning,  spending,  suffering from the unhealthy effects of foods they buy,  swallowing pharmaceuticals to ease their pains,  and then die. Or,  they simply go on and on,  indulging in more anxiety-producing foods. They continue functioning in the same old self-damaging way, blindly being led by the ‘experts’. 

Are you happy now?

952: 

For omnivores,  a vegan regime may sound too radical and even today it seems almost too new to try.  They may value personal safety above everything else.  But also, they might not want to miss out on any chance of increasing life’s pleasures.

It comes down to being both conscious of bodily safety and not wanting to risk happiness (via the ‘little pleasures of life’).  Most of us are a bit precious about our own lives,  not wanting to stray too far from tried and tested diets.  We won’t be too radical or altruistic in case it back-fires on us;  we won’t wrestle with ethical questions,  and unconventional foods aren’t tried out.

In general,  humans don’t like experimenting too radically with food if it means denying themselves food-satisfaction.  If we move away from the daily conventions surrounding food,  it seems like a very big step. Because food has such a significant effect on our lives,  our reason for changing our food regime would have to be very convincing;  food has great power over mood.  It produces a ‘full’ feeling in the stomach,  it provides vital energy,  it provides a guaranteed sensation of pleasure – we won’t give that up in a hurry.

Many of the foods omnivores use are not efficient.  It’s like a propeller-driven aeroplane,  it works but it’s slow. By comparison,  vegan food is ‘jet-driven’.  It’s less cumbersome,  digestively quicker to move through the body,  it makes our brains work faster and in general a plant-food diet has a noticeably beneficial effect.  When,  eventually,  we take on a workable vegan diet there’s a certain, gratifying satisfaction that comes from transforming a simple-enough, physical experience into a conscience-clearing, spiritual experience. But is that enough?

The sticking point here,  surely,  is that humans equate happiness with what they know brings pleasure,  and with that which is readily available.  This is surely why we’re reluctant to give things up.  Meat and animal products are what most of us know from our earliest years.  They feel safe even though they’re addictive.  And these perceptions about our favourite foods are encouraged by vested interests,  who heavily promote them and make them look very attractive.  The Animal Industries know that the ‘happy meal’ is always going to be more attractive than the ‘useful meal’.

Whatever will bring us pleasure (rich foods,  alcohol,  drugs and sex) we’ll go for.  Next to these pleasures a simple diet doesn’t quite figure.  We’re brought up to believe that our food should be instantly gratifying,  especially if there isn’t much else to inspire our lives.  Food can make us happy,  and happy equates to attractive;  so what we eat has to be attractive,  because eating is what we do so often (to make ourselves feel happier).  Animal-based foods give us the ‘rush’ we want at the time,  whereas plant-based foods aren’t as powerful in that way.  So,  can we forgo this immediate euphoria,  to satisfy our need to uphold a principle?

Vegans know they can do without the euphoria side of things. We’ve found out that the addictive qualities of our past-favourite foods have faded.  Other, subtler attractions,  of whole, plant-based foods,  have taken over.  But,  immediate sensations aside,  the main consolation is more long term.

In the beginning it’s a surprise;  you experience a marked increase in energy,  and that’s really worth something.  But then,  once you’ve been eating plant-based foods for a while,  the ‘yummy’, animal-based foods seem a bit second-rate.  The meaty, milky, eggy foods seem a bit primitive,  as do the cakes and creamy-chocolaty foods.  The surprising thing is how easily one can give them away.

Education comes into the picture here.  Where,  for example,  crime is attractive, then the knowledge of punishment holds us back;  where sex is attractive,  the fear of over-populating one’s family makes one take precautions.  And so it is with food.  Food education is the first preventer of many food-abuse problems.  It’s great to learn what’s better,  and not to have to go there.

It may be that people are not well enough informed to get past their own bad habits,  but how can that be? Today we are very well informed.  Perhaps then,  worse than not-knowing is knowing-but-not-caring.  But perhaps worse than not caring is being hooked and incapable of change.

It may be that we stick with the foods we know because we’re too lazy or too frightened or too uncaring to experiment.  We live conventional lives,  eat traditional foods and die of avoidable food-related illnesses.  I would think most vegans find that incredibly sad.

Food prospects - maybe yes, maybe no

951: 

We are used to plenty.  We acquire things. We keep things.  We’re reluctant to give them up.  Voluntarily doing something that doesn’t benefit ourselves might seem masochistic.  Veganism seems like making life difficult for little reason, after all, it’s only animals we’re worried about here, not anything important like the environment. 

When we grow up,  we become ‘conservative’,  we conserve what we have,  and we don’t like missing out on anything; if anything’s up for grabs we want some of it.

But there’s another side to all this materialism and plenty-wanting. Our minds need exercising, our spirit needs free air to breathe. Most of us don’t want to feel ashamed and ineffective all the time. We need to prove to ourselves that we’re in control of our lives, that we can make our own decisions and aren’t afraid of upholding gut-instinct values.  If the opportunity arises, like when we grew to an age when we were allowed to make our own major decisions,  we’ll want to try out new things,  to explore.  

As soon as we’re responsible for feeding ourselves, doing our own shopping and cooking,  life becomes both tempting and dangerous,  especially when we’re experimenting with food.  The two forces at play: safety and satisfaction.  We need to know we can survive but at the same time we need to make improvements to our lives.  Food is something we make choices about every day. We eat this and not that, not only according to the taste of it, but according to what’s in it and where it comes from. Food isn’t just about sensation but about habit and worth and how we spend our money. It seems fairly safe to stick to what we’re used to but there again, young people want to explore. There are unknowns in new diets and unfamiliar food regimes, so something new might be fun to try out, but there again, losing familiar foods might not be so much fun. Indeed it might be unsafe or expensive. Yes, I want to toy with the idea of change and I might be attracted to change, but perhaps I don’t want to be amongst the first to risk making radical change.  Let others be pioneers.  Better to wait until it’s more widely accepted.  Hence, the reason why most people are unwilling to be part of ‘a vegan experiment’.

Those of us who have dared to ‘do it’, whose ideal has been applied to the whole of our own food intake, we already know it can be done, that it’s safe, etc, and from that point of discovery we can demonstrate how we did it.  But this is no ordinary experiment.  It’s not for the faint hearted. It might take a generation or more for the majority to break down their own reluctance and take on ‘animal issues,  and then alter their foods accordingly.

In the meantime vegans must pursue their own goals,  whilst continuing to educate others whenever we get the chance.

Food as fuel

950:

Early in the day the rot sets in.  We go to a shop,  buy what we laughingly call ‘food’ (‘animal-secreted’ or ‘animal-executed’).  The negative vibrations alone should be toxic enough to warn us,  but by chemically poisoning ourselves many times a day with our usual foods,  they have a drag-down effect on just about everything we do.

For those of us past teenage years,  it’s likely we can’t operate our bodies as we’d like to - we no longer run for the bus painlessly or do things we know we should be capable of doing.  Both mentally and physically,  we become more disabled as we grow older. It’s not just down to the food we eat. Our guilt,  or the suppression of it,  drags us down too,  and yet we keep ‘doing’ those things which make us feel guilty.  We think it will go away if we do these same things regularly enough,  until we don’t notice it anymore … but it springs back.  The mind isn’t easily fooled for very long.  It comes back to this matter of food and the amount of time we spend getting it and consuming it.  The subject of ‘food’ is difficult to escape, especially when it comes up in conversation. The worst of it is that it leads onto other things,  which we know don’t add to the quality of our lives. But still there’s a reluctance to change - we’d rather stick with what we know.

If we don’t adopt vegan principles into our life,  it’s likely we won’t be able to do anything very meaningful,  or achieve anything that’s really satisfying. Good intentions and fine aims are our very lifeblood. So, first things first - we need to atone for our ‘little crimes against animals’ otherwise it will always weigh us down.  What we do (by proxy) to animals,  every day,  at every meal,  compromises all the other good stuff we do.

Ironically,  we can’t get to know this because we can’t allow ourselves to believe it.  This mixture of guilt, reluctance and impotence,  means omnivores carry a heavy weight with them all the time.  And that blinds them to the sequence of events unfolding before them. Without a feel for sequence, by not following the logical sequences, we can’t make any ‘great leap forward’. In fact there’s so little ‘leaping’ done that we might as well call it ‘stagnation’.

Having a good day

949: 

In this age of obesity,  the vegan diet is a perfect slimming diet.  What happens in sport (how runners run faster,  how bodies work better) has been known for a long time;  we know a body responds to optimum treatment,  which implies getting rid of the popular poison-foods which make the body sluggish.  If you aren’t an Olympic athlete or not particularly worried about your appearance and don’t care two hoots about health,  you might be stuck in your ways and proud of it;  you’ll probably enjoy indulging in all sorts of rubbish food.  But if you’re a compassionate, sensitive, body-conscious vegan there are various reasons why you wouldn’t do any of that. For instance,  being vegan means you no longer go into the cake shop.  You’d walk on by.  You have reason never to eat crap,  albeit yummy crap.

Every great ambition a human might have can be compromised by bad habits and addictions.  In this case,  the daily compromise concerns our daily food intake, and I’m sure that most damage comes from the animal content.  It’s likely that this ‘nonsensical component’ of our daily diet will slowly,  and in many cases painfully,  kill us, or at least frustrate the ambitions we   had when younger and more idealistic.

Imagine having a good day,  then walking straight into the abattoir,  buying a dead animal,  consuming it,  and then feeling terrible.  That’s effectively what most people are doing every day of their lives.

Why do we do this to ourselves after having an otherwise good day?

Slow sensitisation

949:

Everything is moving relatively swiftly, when you think about it. There is a marked shift in attitude towards animals,  relative to how long humans have been killing and eating them.  But it does seem so slow, the growth of humane consciousness.

It’s as if there is a natural sequence of changes which must be made in the right order,  from stage to stage.   Until there’s a broad community awareness that there is even a problem.  And even then,  there’s a long wait for the action needed to be taken to solve it.  Lifestyles might change dramatically for you and me but there has to be a widespread enthusiasm,  and then a demand for change,  before anything noticeable happens to the collective consciousness.

But it starts with me and you,  and it goes on from there,  far too slowly for our liking but as rapidly as human nature will allow.  I would be wanting the whole thing to speed up,  awareness,  etc.,  but in reality it must go according to sequence.

Take the evolution of speed in travel,  for instance.  When there was no need for very fast travel,  the horse and buggy was adequate.  Horses were slaves and treated badly,  but kindness didn’t liberate them,  it was the internal combustion engine that did that.  As soon as another ‘machine’ emerged the old one lost its relevance.  Once flight was possible,  land travel became less important.  Flight has developed out of sight over the past hundred years.  Think of the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright.  They didn’t wake up one morning with the idea of jet propelled flight,  the propeller let them fly fast enough.  If they’d tried to develop jet-propulsion in 1903 they’d have failed - propellers had to come first and then be superseded.  That was the sequence of events, the simpler idea came first,  followed later by a somewhat more sophisticated idea,  like the jet engine.  Same with animal rights,  a fundamental awareness of the sentience of animals must precede the establishment of ‘rights’.

There’s probably an obvious sequence to every complex change that occurs.  It’s impossible in the early stages,  of say flight,  to see if an idea like propeller-driven flight will die and the jet engine take its place.  Any good-looking idea must evolve from the earlier stage,  in order to move onto the next.  Before the advent of ‘flight’,  such an idea as ‘the jet’ would have sounded absurd - we’d have had no idea how it might come about; but now,  slow flight is redundant and jet flight has basically taken over.

Eating meat is a bit like slow-travel.  An old idea is always open to improvement,  and there’s none older than the way we fuel ourselves. The human body can only function because of the things we do to it and how we feed it.  Traditionalists still eat what they ate as kids, copying Mum’s meals and adopting the dietary norms of the people they grew up with.  The more adventurous cook will try new recipes,  and the true pioneers will look at food as fuel and look more closely at what food can do for us.  They ask if  the ways we feed ourselves, fuel ourselves, can be dramatically improved.  With hindsight we can see how that can be done,  with all the obvious advantages and long experience of using a plant-based diet,  but when consciousness started to change,  when ethics entered the food business,  we were at the very beginning of a long and significant change,  to lots of things, including human health,  animal liberation,  non-violence,  farming methods,  environmental safety and many other things.

But still,  for many,  a plant-based diet isn’t reality.  They know nothing of it,  nothing of this ‘sequence’.  Nor the bigger picture,  regarding animals used for food.

As I see it,  the sequence goes something like this:  Once upon a time it was mainly plant-based foods that were eaten,  then hunting became successful enabling a more efficient food gathering system.  Food became more plentiful.  People began eating more.  Then something happened,  a new twist.  We gained strength and immunity to diseases,  but as we started to grow fatter we got sicker.  But then again,  with the development of medicine and hygiene we started to live longer.  And now today,  the whole system has gone haywire.  We eat too much,  get too fat,  suffer from decadence-related illnesses,  we live longer but suffer from chronic illness,   which lets us suffer over many more years,  before we die.  But that sequence of events is essential for learning,  stage by stage,  how to improve our lives.  It looks slow on paper.  It looks tragic for the individual.  But it seems that humans have to learn the hard way.  We have to learn from painful experience.

Surely we’ve had to go through all the pain before the penny could drop.  After all the mistakes humans have made,  just in this matter of food,  we can now see the advantages of using ‘higher octane’ fuel;  what we might call ‘vegan’ food.  Plant-based foods revolutionise the way the body can function and thrive.  It’s as simple as that.  The reason we haven’t tumbled to that idea before is that we had to test ourselves against the temptation of enslaving animals before we could see how stupid that idea was.

Plant-foods don’t work the way traditional animal-based foods do;  they are lighter,  in more ways than one.  They transform us on various levels,  making us physically stronger,  mentally brighter and emotionally more vital.  An added benefit is that they are generally less expensive and they definitely make us feel less guilty,  because we’re no longer adding to the misery of animals.

All the advantages of a vegan diet are obvious enough to those who eat that way,  but you don’t need to take my word for it.  You just need to try it and see for yourself.

Once you’ve been eating this way for some time,  the food shows itself to be a natural fuel for the human body,  but alongside that important detail there’s something else to consider.  A vegan diet involves both the way humans feed themselves and the way they regard animals - it satisfies both our need for a source of optimum energy,  and for the essential meaningfulness which will sits comfortably with our very soul.

Desensitisation

948: 

I heard on the radio today that they’d built an artificial reef out of steel,  somewhere off Sydney,  twelve metres tall and seven hundred cubic meters in volume, to attract fish; not for their general welfare but for the pleasure of recreational fishers. And then the scientists,  always thirsty for data,  get in on the act. They’re hoping to capture not-too-big sharks and tag them ... by irrigating them in the bottom of their boats to keep them alive while they cut them open,  insert a tracking device internally along with some antibiotics to reduce the risk of infection,  suture the wound and return them to the sea. What with barbed hooks, unanaesthetised surgery and suffocation, it’s no picnic for the fish.  But who cares about them?

It just goes to show how de-sensitised people are to all this violence towards ‘dumb animal life’,  whether it’s birds, mammals or fish.  It illustrates how slowly consciousness is progressing,  how empathy for non-humans is so weak. 

Our advice may not be appreciated

947:

As a species we’ve thrived on meat-eating. We say,  “Look at us now.  We wouldn’t be what we are today unless our ancestors had eaten meat.”  But there are two ways of looking at this – we are creators of wonderful machines, beautiful cultures and fine ideas, but we’ve also become the ultimate exploiter. If we directly exploit animals or if we simply buy foods and goods from exploited animals, we condone the present ugly system, the human-superior-to-animals system. We are what we are, and that gives us the right to exploit everything, especially animals; we imprison them, execute them and eat them, for heaven’s sake!

Vegans try to persuade others not to be involved in all this.  And that’s fair enough,  but we always deliver a king hit by making a value judgement about it,  and then letting it show.  We blow any chance we might have had,  to open some sort of dialogue,  by showing disapproval. And even if it’s just the judgemental tone in our voice,  it’s clear that we are being judgemental,  and that won’t help change people’s attitudes; each free-willed adult knows not to be intimidated by judgement.

If I want to change people’s views,  all I can do is to tell the story of cows, pigs and chickens.  There’s no need to ram home the moral of the story, since it’s obvious.  It can be information without the overtones.  We can own what we do,  refer to our own values and ethics,  but then let others see for themselves.  If we don’t like what others are doing we don’t need to condemn them to their face. Better to speak out in public, where an individual isn’t being personally targeted face-to-face;  then the heat is off them to some extent,  allowing them freedom to consider things, and come to their own conclusions based on what we say about ‘people in general’. 

Green and the bigger picture

946: 

How can environmentalists and conservationists be sensitive in one way, wanting to end whaling and deforestation, but insensitive in another,  namely to the plight of farm animals? They show sensitivity by the great work they do, especially for endangered species, so why insensitive to food, or rather the animal content of it? Why do they hold sausage sizzles?  It’s a confusing message these groups send.

If you’re the sensitive type (and you don’t need to be that sensitive to see what’s happening on animal farms) you are probably green. But how far green, and what does ‘green’ mean? If ‘greens’ are widening their awareness towards animal-rights, then that’s brilliant, because it’s the start of an alteration of daily habits. It’s starting out towards anti-violation and non-violence.

The saddest thing is not war, starvation, typhoon or disease, but the human condition. It’s like the milk turned sour by being left too long on the doorstep. The sour human allows no place for softness and compassion. They’re not even giving a nod in the right direction. Most people are sensitive enough to pick up what’s shown them, sour or otherwise, but then the question is whether they act on what they’ve seen.

Sensitivity is not a machine to be turned on and off at will. If you see a hen in a cage on a battery farm and it gives you a feeling, that feeling can’t be obliterated. It has been felt! We can’t be selective. It’s likely if you feel for trees and forests and rivers you will love Nature and therefore love the fauna,  and therefore love their cousins in captivity. So, we can be sensitive but not selectively so. We surely don’t need great gaping contrasts between the sensitive-me and the insensitive-me.

But specifically, related to animal slavery, with an underdeveloped empathy, what are we left with? Perhaps just a selfish desire for pleasure and a blind spot when it comes to our dodgy food habits. As a collective (the world in general) we have a few other human-generated problems such as war, starvation and to some extent disease. We can’t be held responsible for Mother Nature’s typhoons, but we can do something about the others by how we conduct ourselves at home, and by not exacerbating problems by continuing our animal-killing habits.

Humans are in a bind over this - whether to act for oneself or to blend in with others; as individuals we can make changes to our lives but we’re reluctant if it separates us from others we live amongst. So we compromise. And we have compromised down through the generations, taking up violence as a means of making our lives more comfortable. We attacked animals, resources, anything we could lay our hands on. We stole as much as we could carry off. This didn’t do much for our overall health or happiness, but it made us the dominant species. But so what? It hasn’t made us better, and it’s not likely to bring us happiness or health since so much of what we’ve done was all based on theft and cruelty and other nasties.

We’ve become a stoopid and violent species, and we all know that we don’t have to be like that (‘stoopid’, as in aware but ignoring the consequences). We’re stoopid because we’re violent, and we’re violent because we’re refusing to act on what we see, because it’s easier that way. That’s the point I want to make. We dismiss violence as unimportant, when used in certain circumstances. Presumably that includes anything we do to secure our own food supply?

And, of course, this is the point where vegans say, “Stop”; it’s no longer necessary for humans to eat violence-laden food. That’s basically the first point we make. You can choose it or reject it. You’re either for it or against it, you can’t have it both ways.

So, the dear human animal has eaten what it’s been told to eat, and hasn’t sorted out for itself what’s right and wrong ... well of course it has, but has then decided, while the gods aren’t watching, to stuff its collective face, enough to become overweight by eating yummy-looking foods. Some aren’t so stupid in one way, they know about empty foods and modern husbandry practices, they’re educated, but they’re ‘stoopid’ in a far worse way, they ape the high-living wealthy classes, they eat rich foods and they too die from stuffing their faces. But in addition, they censor what they know and what they think about. They act in one way, but they ought to know better.

It’s quite the opposite case with vegans. We know better, and we can’t stop telling people about it all. Most of all, we don’t want to be that ‘proper old hypocrite’ in order to enjoy life for what it has to offer. I’m sure many people live on the edge and have had to make compromises. I just wish they hadn’t chosen this particular compromise.

The shackled omnivore

945: 

It’s hard to shift normal behaviour today,  especially when vegans are dealing with ‘majority views’.  Because,  in the attempt to do some ‘shifting’, one becomes predictable, label-able.

If you meet a judgemental vegan,  you might start to suspect them, suspect their polemic. You’ll want to avoid them like you’d want to avoid a drunk.  For that reason alone,  vegans may have to consider not attempting to be too direct or too predictable with their omnivore friends.  But it doesn’t mean we have to be on our best behaviour.  We’re free to rattle their cages.  And even though we have some friends who’re deaf-eared and hooked on animal foods,  there may also be some who are not. And they’ll see vegan-principle as a possible ‘escape route’,  from the meat-world, and from the violence of the world.

If you’re in this prison (albeit not alone,  since most other people are in the same prison) it might be largely because you’re still condoning,  still eating animals. Wearing their skin on your feet,  eating their muscle tissue, drinking the milk intended for the calf, etc.  By being involved in all this,  one is effectively helping to enslave animals,  and therefore becoming as much ethically shackled as the animals are physically shackled.  

Most people aren’t aware of any sort of escape.  They presume they have to stay where they are,  captive to lifestyle habits.

But many have broken away.  The surprising thing is the difference between the before and after,  the different predictions and fixed-perceptions of what it would be like,  to be ‘going plant-based’.  The before included fear of tastebud revolt and a never-full-enough stomach, but the after comes as something of a surprise. It turns out that most vegans don’t stick with it because they have great willpower but because they start out with a more developed altruistic intention.  And that intention comes from empathy-for-others and leads logically towards boycotting animal products.  

Empathy-types look around and can’t help seeing those things that are not right. They don’t nose around looking for trouble, it’s just that when it’s so bleedin’ obvious, they have to act.

And what do they see? Surely they see a vast host of living, breathing, sentient, ‘domesticated’ animals and hunted wildlife, who have had their freedom taken away, so they can be used as food for the human.

The more we learn about what this has done to humans,  the more urgent is the need to help them rescue their soul, spirit, body and mind.  At present, in every which-way they are screwed. But all that can change by taking one simple step. Boycott.

You can see the destruction and pain everywhere you look, overweight people waddling down the street, bodies lying in hospital beds, bathroom cabinets stuffed full of pills and potions, rich and blood-soaked foods in fridges - it’s in front of our very eyes, every moment of the day and everywhere we look. We see the seeds of ruin in our friends and families, in individuals and in strangers. It affects almost EVERYONE on the planet; the system of turning animals into food is condoned by just about everyone.

However, some of us are determined not to have anything to do with it. We’ve left this particular habit-prison. We’ve left it, escaped it - and all we needed was a heightened altruistic intention. That’s what sparks it off. By developing empathy we see the bigger picture (by way of contrast - the contrast being between our conditions and their conditions). My relatively cushy life must be compared to the daily, ongoing pain endured by billions of animals, whose lives are dedicated to serve us as slaves.

To New Vegans

[Edited,  1400 words]

944: 

                                                                                                                                             

If I were new to Veganism,  even if I couldn’t get over my keyed-up feelings about the cruelty to animals, there’d be a side-worry.  It would concern health and vegan diets.  I would ask myself if it was safe and if a vegan diet could be efficacious. 

For omnivores, food and nutrition  involves lots of animal products.  In my own past that’s all I knew.  Animal protein was essential and healthy.  It would have seemed reckless to consider any diet that didn’t include them.  Back then, I would have thought it almost suicidal to go against the ‘obvious truth’ -  that 'animal produce' makes for healthy living.  I’d have said that an omnivorous diet had been tried and tested as a diet suitable for humans over millenniums,  and that the good sense of it was therefore almost written in stone.

But eventually it dawned on me that we might all be duped.  I came to consider there’d always been an element of Hobson’s Choice about food.  I began to consider the possibility that we were all victims of propaganda and that we all believed this way because no living race of people on Earth had ever seriously considered a totally plant-based diet.  Nor had any of us considered our food in terms of ethics,  along with good nutrition. I eventually also realised that there’s a time and a place for everything.  But perhaps it wasn’t the right time for this particular ‘good idea’,  for the emergence of that particular consciousness.  People weren’t ready for it.

But things have changed.  Times have changed.  This is not the hungry 1940's in the West.  We are seventy years on.  Plant-based diets have been tested and not found wanting (except our need for dietary supplementation of vitamin B₁₂).  We are also some forty years on from the 1970s, when ‘speciesism’ was first introduced as a concept.  Perhaps in the 1950s,  for a world starved by war,  there had been some excuse to delay the adoption of plant-based diets,  but that was half a century ago.  We are now  in an entirely different position.  We know far more about good nutrition.  We can regard food in a different way.  Here in the West  most of us have never known what it’s like to feel hungry or even to have too little food in the house.  Since the end of that war-torn period,  people in the developed world have been able to look more closely at what ‘food’ really is.  And surprise, surprise, we’ve found that much of the food we are being fed is both 'crap' and cruelly-produced.  Now we HAVE to look at food in a different way.

Respect must be given to those brave people who,  in the early 1940’s,  started to question what they’d been told about food.  They dared to buck the system and out of that has come what we now call ‘the vegan diet’.  It liberates the conscience,  boycotts animal cruelty and outlines healthy nutrition,  all at the same time.

The nutritional side of plant-based diets has been elevated to respectability by research.  Eminent authorities now give their tick of approval to plant-based food regimes.  The nutritional side of things is no longer a worry.  Indeed it is highly beneficial to health.    For those of us who are long-time vegans,  any concerns we might have had about safety-of-diet vanished long ago.  But  for new vegans,  that assurance has to be established.

If you don’t know much about the vegan diet it might seem like a frightening prospect,  especially if you’re inspired by the ethics but unsure of the safety angles.  Once assured of this, however,  the main danger is a social one.  Moving away from others,  from the ‘normal’ lifestyle and food-eating habits.

Like a reformed smoker,  a vegan can soon forget how he or she felt before they became vegan.  You no longer miss your favourite (animal) foods or fashionable leather shoes or other commodities made from animals.  Hopefully you're wanting something quite different.  An established vegan wants most of all to continue feeling ‘clean’ (like the ex-smoker who wants clean lungs).  If we can ‘clean out’ animal foods from our lives,  that’ll make us feel pretty righteous and ten-to-one we’ll start boasting about it - to the annoyance of our friends.  Eventually our veganism might become our reason to be.  If this gets to be a big a part of our new identity,  we can  become too narrow,  as if we’ve only got one interest and that's all we ever seem to want to talk about.  And it shows up most obviously in our ordinary talk with others.  That’s all A-okay of course … until it turns sour.  When it starts to become self-justifying, judgemental talk.   Essential to every vegan's life is the avoidance of anything animal-based.  Sticking to our boycott is foremost.  That’s what we do!  But the reason we boycott must never become an excuse  to  'judge'  people who don’t boycott.  That would be rather like using the ‘animal cause'  to inflate our differences to others.  By talking ‘food’ and ‘values’,  it’s easy to stray into disparaging ‘the meat heads’.  At first it can seem like good, clean fun until it’s obvious that we have a need to do so.

Our excuse:  We’re as frustrated as hell because no one’s listening or agreeing with how we feel about animals.  We’re frustrated because we have no  POWER  to change anything. …..… So we have to let it out by resorting to climbing on roof tops and shouting - “Look at what you're doing, you bastards!!"  But there’s still no joy.  No one takes a bit of notice.  Free people won’t look at anything when ordered to do so.  It’s always going to be a Mexican standoff.   For vegans,  the bottom line is how we come across.  We are and will be for some time yet,  a small minority and they,  the vast majority.  We can’t yet afford to be too direct over our veganism.

Vegans might have some justification to judge those who are not yet vegan,  but perhaps that’s the very reason why we shouldn’t.   We can’t become too marginalised if we want to make inroads with people.  If we don’t judge them, they won’t judge us.  Restraint here shows that we aren’t interested in winning,  but in talking.  We don’t need any pistols-at-dawn. 

Let’s say we go to the movies and see this great inspiring film,  during which we feel our passion moved and our whole outlook changing.  It’s intoxicating stuff!  The film ends and everyone goes home.  And, by force of habit,  we revert to business-as-usual.  Our resolve vanishes and our outlook doesn't change.  We can’t even remember what it was that inspired us.  We can barely recall what the film was about.

Today,  there are so many ideas and so much new information coming our way that we can’t rely on our immediate first reactions to anything.  I wonder how much currency  inspiration has today and how long we can expect it to last if it doesn't touch us very deeply.  Can any of us really be touched that deeply?

All I can do myself is remember,  and it was a long time ago,  that I was shockable and young enough to determine what was the most wrong thing possible and therefore what my main values were to be.  I knew quite clearly what I would have to do about it.  I realised something was wrong and rather naively thought things would change quickly as soon as everyone else discovered what was happening behind ‘closed doors’.  The idea of animals being incarcerated, touched me deeply.  Mainly due to my own horror of being enclosed in small spaces and of invasive surgical mutilation.  In a general sense,  my dislike of any sort of violence.  I can never forget that farm animals have to face all of this.  And that’s really why I feel so passionately (and perhaps hyper-sensitively) about wanting to see an end to the terrible cruelties we inflict on farm animals.                                                                                                                                                            Ed. CJ.                        

Going vegan

943: 

If you get past all the obstacles and finally become vegan, the next hurdle is to try talking about it with people who don’t want you to.  One has to speak on the subject as if one loves omnivores-despite-everything. 

Maybe it isn’t our job to educate others directly,  not by persuasion anyway.  Maybe the vegan is merely living out their life as if enacting a play,  we are performing a lifestyle.  We’re on stage.  If there’s an audience then we should be prepared to give them something to watch.  If they like what our veganism does to us maybe they’ll start to consider it for themselves.  So,  our job might be to illustrate the self-benefit of being vegan (health, conscience, etc) and then head straight into the deeper principles,  on which veganism is based.

Certainly,  in our society,  there’s still a concern that becoming a vegan is something to be taken quite seriously. It’s no longer so much to do with health concerns.  Those have been disproved some time ago.  It’s the implications of such a socially-isolating way of life,  affecting many social situations.  A vegan is likely to feel the threat of loss of friends and acquaintances,  because we won’t participate in so many of the social gatherings that are centred on food.  It shows how serious we are,  even at such great cost,  that we still hold fast to our principles.

The trick for us is not to get depressed about it.  On the contrary,  what is acceptable to most people provides the essential contrast that helps solidify our own views.  There’s always going to be some edge for vegans,  at least until many more come on board.  But edge is useful,  it’s good for our creativity.

On a personal level vegans,  because we feel the differences of view so strongly,  we sit between the two uncomfortable emotions of outrage and intolerance of others.  We feel it and we can’t help but show it.  And if we feel it,  others will pick it up.  Alternatively,  if we seem at ease with ourselves,  they will pick that up instead.  For that reason alone we should keep our heads held high (but not too high!),  stop vilifying the ‘terrible omnivores’ for disagreeing with us,  and simply encourage them to talk with us.  Which is easier said than done,  but by keeping dialogue emphasised we give them no chance to see how vulnerable we might be feeling inside.

Maybe we can’t ignore our own discomfort (mainly over our failure to ‘communicate our message’),  but compared with those animals who’re imprisoned on farms,  our discomfort is nothing.  Our greatest challenge is to ignore the negatives and strengthen our support for the enslaved ones.

Isolation and good intention

942: 

In our western countries,  the Animal Industries do well out us - each of us eats 21,000 of their victims over the average lifetime.  Just in that one, frightening statistic it’s obvious that the ‘no-use-animal’ principle should be taken seriously.

Those observing vegan principles,  out of a horror at what’s happening,  stay clean,  stay clear of it,  even if it means isolating ourselves socially.  We aren’t liked for our non-omnivorousness since we deliberately disassociate ourselves from our friends and family.  And all because of different eating habits.

Luckily for us this is not the 1940s,  when veganism made its first appearance.  It’s seventy years later now, and people are so much better informed and less freaked out when they meet a vegan.  There may be more vegans now, but not many more, and we are still scattered thinly across the globe.  For me,  the up-side is that my fellow comrades,  by sharing my boycott,  make me feel less abnormal.  Nevertheless it’s not pleasant being misunderstood by just about everybody else,  and it’s particularly unpleasant being left out in the cold socially. Poor us!!

But we’ve got nothing to complain about when we compare what we have to endure with what ‘domesticated animals’ go through.  Imagine what it must be like for them,  to feel so utterly abandoned.  They only have us to fight for them.  I’ve often wondered what their mental state must be like,  knowing on some level that the only purpose to their life is being a slave to another being.

It’s as if Nature had allowed humans to take and enslave her gentlest creatures,  thereby showing us how spiritually reprehensible slavery is when we eat the animals we enslave and kill.  Vegans today can’t expect friends to agree with them.  So,  perhaps some of us have got a few problems with omnivores;  it’s hard to ignore the difference in approach.  We have different values to them and because we think they’re better values we can’t help feeling ‘better-than’,  and that makes for difficulties.  We act out our differences every single day and they can’t be fudged or swept under the carpet.

Omnivores don’t think twice about getting together socially and ‘eating-animals’ together.  They understandably don’t like talking about food when it gets ethical.

If vegans mix socially with omnivores,  whenever food’s involved,  there’s a hint of awkwardness.  We often hear the same sort of apology,  “Sorry you can’t eat this” (you’ll notice they often use the word ‘can’t’ not ‘don’t’!).  Perhaps they’d like to say,  “Sorry that we’re eating your friends”,  but they don’t.

The fact is,  there’s such a gulf between them and us.  It might not surface,  but we all now it’s there.  Not much of a problem for them but for us,  we need to be able to absorb this.  Not get too uptight about it.  We have to adjust,  accordingly.

If there’s an event ‘with-food’,  you might hear,  “Oh,  I’ve just remembered you’re a vegan” (carefully mispronounced vayg’n) and they’ll expect us to enjoy the standing joke with them.  It happens everywhere,  whether at work or with mates or with family,  even with ‘fellow’ vegetarians.

For us,  for me at least,  the rarity of bumping into a simpatico person makes me feel very alone.  But living here in a big city,  at least I know I can be with another (preferably likeable) vegan.  It’s much harder for those living in small rural communities.  The social isolation of being vegan can lead me to get very negative in my thinking, about omnivores in general.  I notice that I can dislike their attitude to animal-use and go on from there to value-judge them.  I’m often tempted to get into a quarrel,  even sacrifice a friendship,  to gratify my urge to hit out when I’m riled, just to ease my own inner tension.

The truth is that I find myself disliking omnivores for what they do,  not just because they eat animals but because they don’t care that they do.  But that’s as much my problem for judging them as it is theirs for being the way they are.  So here I am,  keyed up,  trying not to be too obsessed or judgemental … but I’m aware that I still can’t move forward;  it feels like driving through sludge with the hand brake on.

As a vegan I know I play a difficult game,  especially when I want approval.  And yet,  for all that,  my gut-drive is towards actively advocating for the animals.  My first priority is to support them and argue with anyone who dares to talk with me about it for the case of liberating them.

When I do get it right,  communication-wise,  when I think I’ve got my message across and people seem to agree with me,  it feels great. It works best when there’s agreement without there being any bad feelings.  But often,  I discover I haven’t really succeeded,  because nothing actually happens.  Perhaps I was less trying to pass on useful information and more trying to win a convert. So,  I fail,  and why?  Because it didn’t happen,  they didn’t follow through.  They agreed,  they even had good intentions,  but the practical reality trumped all of that.  It’s a curious phenomenon that people do intend to do things but once started,  the inspiration fades too quickly.  It isn’t kept up.

If you feel moved, inspired, outraged,  and then say to yourself that you’re going to DO something,  but end up not doing it,  what happens?  It’s like breaking a promise to yourself.  You begin to doubt any future good intentions that there might be. 

Someone intending to ‘go vegan’ thinks to themself,  “I was so passionate about it one day,  but cool about it the next”.

When it comes to such a fundamental thing as food and meals and diet and eating habits,  we are all so set in our ways.  One of the things we most associate with,  being a grown up,  is that we have the right to eat what we like and spend our money as we please. Each free-willed individual upholds their right to live as they like.  So vegans,  in terms of just food,  face a mass unwillingness because what we’re suggesting is so contrary to habit - the problem being the non-vegan’s stubbornness to give up some of their comforts.  They’ll resist anything uncomfortable.  ‘Going vegan’ seems,  to the outsider,  a very uncomfortable prospect.  You have to start out by having passion for it. Therefore, it has to be strong enough to carry you safely across old, die-hard habits. 

Altruism revisited

Please Note:  At the conclusion to some longer blogs (this the second) - if a blog has undergone editing (by my friend CJ) it will have “Ed: CJ” at the end.

941:

Take the average person.  What makes them feel good about themselves?  I think it’s that every one of us wants to know we’re capable of doing something that’s not selfish or ego-driven. That we can be generous and self-effacing as well.  After we’ve done something we’re proud of - something altruistic - we feel great!

It’s all very well, this altruism, my feeling good about myself.  But can I let my altruism suck out my essential juices?  Does the ‘feel-good’ factor truly compensate for the injustice of ‘always having to do the right thing’?  When no one else is doing the same as me, does that leave me feeling depleted? I’m vegan, they’re not.

It’s just natural to balance the books at the end of the day and ask, “What about me and my own interests?”  I know that once I’ve struck my altruistic hammer,  I must keep it up.  It becomes the standard I set and it’s now expected of me.  “He does one act of kindness and makes a rod for his own back”.

This can apply to almost any altruistic act you care to name.  If I do good, does that mean I’m supposed to ignore the reasons why others don’t?  Whoops! There go some ugly ego considerations winning over the altruistic ones.  But the human condition dictates always, me-first. “Look after me and  logically it follows that I’ll be happier and then I can save the animals”…. ….Which surely is the reason most don’t.  They don’t want to be overwhelmed.  You could say something true but a tad provocative  - “Vegans have guts, others don’t”; “We have the guts for ‘the task-of-living’, others haven’t or they’re more withdrawn when it comes to certain matters in life".   Perhaps for good reason?

For instance, take the starving child.  My feeding the child lets me feel good about that.  But  then I’m surrounded by many more starving children and I can’t feed them all.  I have to choose to feed some and not others.  How can I choose?  I’d be better off ignoring the whole problem (me-first).  If I try to solve it, then things will quickly get out of hand.  And what’s more, I can’t just ignore my anger.  It’s there.  It’s being set-off by something.  It’s an anxiety about choice: do it-don’t do it.  We see something ugly - like hunger (kids going hungry when we have so much) and we do something (anything) about it.  The choice is always there but we decide to become insensitive to it.

So, where was I up to?  Altruism.  In the example above, where’s my altruism when I need it most?

Let’s say that I’m in a deep rage about something and this time it’s not starving kids but the abuse of animals who are ‘used-for-food’ and the profiting-abusers.  I’m angry on so many fronts.  The animals can’t be helped since they’re the ‘private property’ of owners who say I trespass if I try to intervene.  So I’m helpless!  I can’t save one animal, any animal.  I can only go into one of my ego-swells and be perpetually shocked and frustrated.

But that doesn’t help.

I can shout - “How can humans be allowed to do such things to animals?”  But no one’s going to listen to that old stuff anymore, or take notice.  So I just keep getting angrier.  But obviously doing that just eats away at my reserves of altruism.  I see (without getting drained by seeing)  those who’re running factory farms or sending their cattle on shipping holidays, to see what they’re getting away with.  To us (so bleedin’ obvious it hurts!!) this is criminal.  It needs to be stopped.  But in reality, there’s hardly any support.  The abusers are protected by law.  Law supported by people who demand their regular supplies of ‘animal protein’  -  and that’s a lot of people!

Whether you’re a customer or seller or producer,  it’s a fact that the Vast Majority are condoners, not condemners.

So Vegan Activists have nothing much to fight with.  Anger is useless and impotence is inevitable.

Perhaps I’m describing what I and fellow animal activists often feel and then want to describe.  Some days we make a little headway, and that’s enough to keep us going. Other days we’re enraged and despairing, which is why we need a core-energy source to fall back on.   I would suggest that our most dependable energy source is altruism.  It’s our fuel and we should use it wisely.  We may not be able to win this ‘game’,  not yet anyway, but the energy we need to push on against such almighty odds has to come from somewhere.  Our food is brilliant, but what about all this other stuff?    Perhaps the mental-emotional-spiritual stuff we need to look after can only come in a very informal way - contemplating the sheer beauty of altruism.   It has an ability, from within us, to build the resilience and stamina we’ll need over the many years ahead.   We’ll need it in bucket loads to help us grind away at the poor old public's mind.   And even more bucket loads to keep us all ‘in it’ for the long haul.

One by one, people might become impressed with us, with our ideals and the way we put our ideals into practice.   Slowly, drip by drip, we need the truth to come out (as nicely as possible?).   We need to break through the thick-skin-of-comfort-and-convenience.   Maybe though, knowing humans and the slow way they move, probably it’s going to be a long, slow process.

I suspect it’s only altruism that’ll give us the perspective we need.  An overview, like the space station’s shots of earth,  to appreciate what we’re really up against here.  It’s as BIG as the Earth!!   The centuries over which the machinery of animal enslavement has been developing.  And,  same perspective,  it’s so obvious, the particularly persuasive powers of the Animal Industries.  They’ve been doing it over such a long period of time, propagandising the populace so easily by appealing to their stomachs and not their brains.  They did it by being superficially up-front about what they do.  And over so much time, they’ve succeeded, simply by making the use and abuse of animals routine and normal. Some of us, thankfully, have seen through that smoke screen, and work for a clearer vision. But in the meantime, if we animal activists are to build strength, we need to tap into our fine altruistic intention and see the beauty of it.  There’s nothing like the pulse of doing good (doing something for the greater-good) to strengthen our resolve.

Altruism is inherent (is the essential, natural or potentially permanent part) in our wish to benefit the most oppressed in our world at this time -  farm animals!   We should never forget there are billions of them -  right now - standing in their own faeces, with prison walls, awaiting a terrifying death.  Perhaps it’s altruism that keeps a level head when Intellect screams impatience.  They say “Get over it”.   Get over the fact that our fellow humans consort with their animal foods every night at the dinner table!  It will stop, I’m sure of it, and the animals will be helped, I’m sure of that too.  But all I’m saying is that we can’t help anything while we’re still screaming. It’s not only in us to ‘do good’, it comes in the same package as our deeper understanding of altruism. Working for the greater good seems to be like wanting to breathe fresh air.  It stands for an ideal which everyone has and everyone can use, for fuelling themselves.  Altruism isn’t here to torment us or deplete us.  It has to be for me and for you all at the same time.  Altruism must be a two way road.  If we do something selfless and we’re sad about it, is that because there’s no likelihood of a reward for our efforts?  Perhaps altruism is the next stage up from do-gooderism.  The subtlest part of altruism is that we shouldn't expect outside appreciation for what we do, it has to be self-generated.  Altruism lets us tune inside ourselves for confirmation.

I get angry about just one thing, that the Vegan Animal Rights Movement isn’t getting traction in our society.  Vegans don’t seem to noticeably influence anything.  All we do is protest publicly. Or act illegally. We can’t directly influence what’s being done to animals, because it’s legal and it’s socially acceptable.  How does that make me feel? Well, not exactly at-peace-with-the-World.  Not altruistic. “Bugger them” I say.  But nothing is going to stop just because I want it to.  In reality, it’s a long road we travel, gradually eroding the common mind-set, replacing it with another, always tightening down the principles of non-violence.  It’s about choice, when each of us knows we have free-will (and adults like to exercise that)  it’s made easy for us because we have a legal system that allows animal slavery.  Life presents us with a different scale of enjoyment when we can make use of animals, ride them, milk them, egg them, eat them, wear them. To break all that down we need maximum patience, commitment and imagination.  Minimum sympathy-inducing tears, maximum altruism.

(Edit CJ)

The profoundest of changes

940: 

Since most of us aren’t in the military we aren’t used to being ordered around.  We react badly when someone tells us what to do,  our immediate reaction being,  “Get lost. I don’t need to listen to you. I’ve got rights too, not to be pushed around”.  Orders sometimes comes nicely packaged as uncalled for advice;  we can react just as badly to that.  “I don’t want your advice when it’s not called for”.  But, if someone is bold enough to bring something to our attention (“you’re wearing your shirt inside-out”) it’s a different sort of comment,  not necessarily a criticism,  it’s just meant to be helpful,  and would be taken as such.

It all comes down to how we ‘take’ things – positively or negatively.  If I accept advice or even just listen to it,  I’m effectively saying that I still have something to learn ... that is,  until we hit the animal-food subject.  This is where most of us have firm ideas which are not open to outside interference.

All I can do is put my case in as many ways as I can think of,  hoping something will stick.  So,  here is how it seems to me:

If I start to talk about Animal Rights,  my comments aren’t inconsequential,  because they pertain to what is perhaps the most entrenched,  and in my opinion a most dangerous,  daily habit - one’s use of animal-based food.  But it’s bigger than food.  It’s the spin-offs.  It’s about animals,  but then it leads on to ethics,  health,  brainwashing,  courage, life’s purpose,  consistency of belief,  social isolation – and all this stems from the food we eat.

What I decide to do about it doesn’t only affect me.  Being vegan isn’t only for my own immediate benefit.  It is about defending animals’ rights,  and it comes down to this:  either we do as others do or we act differently to almost everyone else we know;  some are unwilling to inconvenience themselves, others are more altruistically-driven.

One person’s meat is another person’s poison

939: 

Attitude change can’t come soon enough for vegans.  We wait impatiently for others to feel some compassion for ‘food animals’.  For animal-eaters of course,  vegans and our ideas can’t disappear fast enough.  To them, we are a royal pain in the arse.

For us though,  we want a chance to say something,  not to lecture but to talk about another type of cuisine.  Whereas,  for traditionalists,  they want to talk about their own ‘latest cuisine’.  Both of us want to talk about our favourite foods,  but in different ways.

Why is it so hard for us to discuss this particular subject?  Obviously we differ with passion!  I say everyone should recognise that animals have rights:  my opposite half says they don’t have to change if they don’t want to and that animals shouldn’t be granted any rights.  These positions might seem unmoveable,  but let’s see how we can be useful to each other;  each of us will benefit from learning why the other thinks the way they do.  Each of us can listen without having to change our own position.

Every time I do listen to the reasoning behind the opposite view,  I learn something valuable.  It doesn’t change the way I feel,  but it lets me appreciate better why other people don’t agree with me.  And I think my listening to them helps them listen to me.  It’s a two way street.

The pariah strikes again!

938: 

For omnivores,  it isn’t surprising if they start to feel invaded when a vegan opens their fridge and makes comments about what’s inside.

If I’ve been invited around to a friend’s house and I’m in the kitchen,  stashing my beers in their fridge,  I can’t help look at his shelves.  I notice he’s got things there that I don’t keep in my fridge.  I remember how important it is to make no comment - here’s a situation where I must respect the privacy of other people’s larders and cupboards.

Similarly,  at the dinner table.  I find myself amongst other people.  I notice,  by what they’re eating,  the foods on their plates;  they’re foods I don’t eat.  They’re all omnivores.  Here’s my opportunity to say something important like,  “I see what you’re eating has seen the inside of the abattoir”.  A small bomb explodes!  My first instinct is to criticise the food,  food that has been lovingly prepared by my friend,  the cook.  You can guess how pissed off he’d feel,  after sweating for hours over the preparations for this meal only to find me being rude about it.  For him it was a creative production to be shared with friends.  I arrive and turn my nose up at it,  and I even make a rude comment.  Surely,  I think to myself,  they’ll be grateful that I point out some home truths regarding this food,  enlighten them as to where it came from, about the animals,  etc.  But grateful they almost certainly are NOT.

Of course,  I shouldn’t have accepted the invitation,  certainly not without first mentioning the food thing,  about what I don’t eat and why I don’t eat it;  all made clear well beforehand.

I suppose every vegan has been in this situation at some time,  getting themselves into awkward situations where they might feel compelled to judge other people’s food,  and then look for a good opportunity to say how they feel about it.  And most of us,  even if we’ve said nothing,  simply by eating noticeably different food,  we become the centre of attention.  And simply by answering a few innocent questions we’ve affected the whole atmosphere around the table.

What usually happens around any dinner table is that the conversation touches on the food,  with compliments to the chef,  etc.,  but what if I say something like,  “Yes, but great cuisine doesn’t necessarily mean great food”?  I create a half-statement for which I must provide the explanation.  I go on to explain what I mean (by which time I’ve already said too much) and after ruffling a few feathers,  there’s a deadly silence.

It’s a big slap in the face for the host.  It’s not so good either for the others, who might have been enjoying their dinner.

There’s nothing like a simple plate of food to spark passions and arguments and to hurt people’s feelings;  offence is caused and everyone has a good excuse to dislike ‘the vegan’.

From my point of view I might have seen a golden opportunity to educate everyone at the table,  about cruelty issues, about vegan principles,  about the health advantages of plant-based foods,  etc.,  but there’s a time and a place.  Muscling in on a dinner party conversation,  to promote veganism,  probably does more harm than good.  By ‘riding rough shod’ over people’s feelings (in this case attempting to give everyone a big wake-up call) it’ll make me feel good,  to be speaking up for the animals. But what really happens is that I’ve crossed the line;  I’ve questioned the right of the cook, to prepare the food he has chosen,  and,  what’s more to the point,  I’ve given his guests an opportunity to back him up,  and given them a chance to tell others the story of that night,  “When this vegan came round to dinner (who, incidentally, won’t be invited around again!),  he said ...”,  “And I nearly said to him …”.

Food fights always make good stories for retelling, but they sour relationships.  So,  as a vegan,  I try to avoid these dinner invitations.  I’m not sure I want anyone to go to the trouble of making special food for me.  I don’t want to be eating ‘special foods’ alongside people who are eating meat.  And that means I don’t accept dinner invitations from non-vegans.  I run the risk of being labelled anti-social,  but that’s better than being known as a social pariah.

How to lose friends and fail to influence people

937:

I often wonder whether we vegans are aware of how we come across to others. Communication can only work when our own approach is in balance and just the way we want it to be.

We see one thing very clearly, that almost every single human of adult age is participating in animal enslavement. It’s unarguable. But we have some blindness too; we don’t necessarily see that we play the game of one-upmanship. When we espouse the principles of veganism, it’s all too easy to ride ‘rough-shod’ over people’s feelings, and not consider the consequences of doing that. In our rush to get across our arguments we can easily create a communication problem where none was needed. One unthought-out comment by us can scythe down communication, and even destroy a whole relationship. It can happen so quickly, and it can create a permanent change of atmosphere where friends become non-friends, overnight.

Healers

936: 

There are two different approaches to healing, one is environmental the other ethical. They sit alongside each other, almost under the same banner. They each have something important to say about the state of human well-being and about the kind of world we want to live in. I might emphasise ethics, you might emphasise the state of (human and environmental) health. Each of us is looking for something convincing, to carry us beyond the damage brought about by modern day living.

            The reason I consider animal abuse as the most urgent issue is that until this is fixed nothing much else can move on. I’d prioritise this.

With a different emphasis, there are those who promote healthy diets and enlightened spiritual practices. They have a wonderful vision, and I’d go along with it entirely, but since they aren’t vegan, they effectively condone the cruel treatment of animals. It’s impossible to get around that. You can’t pray for peace wearing leather shoes!

The great tragedy of those who are on the road to enlightenment is that they don’t put their money where their mouth is, and therefore can’t be taken too seriously. They speak of peace and love, of sustainability and healthy eating, but their food is neither healthy nor sustainable and their lifestyle disproves their words of love and peace. The abattoir castes a dark shadow over the lives of most of us. However holistic or gentle one’s approach to life might be, if private and personal habits run counter to the principles one espouses, then it all counts for nothing. It simply means that one isn’t as completely convinced of peace and love as one would like to believe.

The first step on the road to healing starts when we take a look at the abattoir and say, “This is not for me”.

Traps for the Vegan Activist

Please Note: At the conclusion to some longer blogs (this the first) - if a blog has undergone editing (by my friend CJ) it will have “Ed: CJ” at the end. I’ll put this note out again next week, in case you miss it the first time round.

936: 

For those who DO eat animals,  a clear,  guilt free conscience would be desirable. But for the compassionate person,  this is impossible.  Guilt concerning eating habits gnaws away at both conscience and health.  There’s nothing else you can do to alleviate feelings of guilt,  but to ABSTAIN.

Abstainers have a world of things they can do. Plant-based eating regimes are particularly good for conscience clearing.  If  'conchies' then become 'animal advocates',  the first noticeable change they see (besides weight loss) is creativity.  It’s essential to be creative,  to keep one step ahead of the opposition.   Necessity being the mother of invention, our creativity is sharpened by the huge challenges we face.  Being creative,  as well  as compassionate,  brings out the best in us.  Meaning and passion rolled into one!  Because we’re addressing one of the most important and difficult questions facing humanity - human dependency on animals!   Most bear the stigma of cruelty by proxy.  At the very least, vegans are spared this.

But there’s something else.  Something for your own overall wellbeing. It comes from the satisfaction of being  involved in social justice issues and discovering something meaningful to devote a whole life to, something beyond self-interest.   It's important to

DO IT!  Become Vegan!   Vegans live longer, are noticeably healthier and more energy-filled. We need all of that. For the job of advocating for the animals means we need to focus on the ANIMALS and their problems, not ours. We do what we have to, for them, in the complete knowledge that animals can’t reciprocate. (Oh?). This opens doors to altruism – to having a reason to inconvenience ourself for the ‘greater-good’.  But is this easy?  No, because there are traps - four main "Traps for Vegans".

I’m sure these following traps may also apply to omnivores, but for the sake of argument, let's say these traps are peculiar to vegans.  At some stage vegans decide on what sort of activist they’re going to be.  All vegans want results. We want to be taken seriously and not be ignored.  For some of us, it’s our raison détre.

TRAP NUMBER ONE:   Altruism says it’s a good idea to stand up for the animals, but we can’t help them if we’ve still got ego or aggro problems.  We can’t wage war on everyone.  We can’t attack non-vegans.  Maybe all we can do is keep our cool.

TRAP NUMBER TWO:  Altruism says don’t queer your pitch.  Don’t give up on people who don’t agree initially.  I attack!  I let them know my views and it makes me feel GOOD!  But maybe there were other vegans before me who were making ground with these non-vegans in a non-argumentative way.  If I blow the peace-loving-non-violent reputation other vegans have built up, I effectively undo what others have done before me.

TRAP NUMBER THREE:   My altruistic instinct says "Don’t Persuade".  We’ve had a gutful of "Persuaders ".  If we do the same;   if vegans lay moral pressure on people, it will feel to them like more "persuading" and maybe even "persuasive VIOLENCE".

TRAP NUMBER FOUR:   Altruism suggests we sacrifice precious time and energy, write, demonstrate, make public protest.  But if I do this, I hit the brickwall of padded perceptions –  I’m seen as 'pushy'.  Non-vegans perceive us (the vegans) as potentially violent because we usually end up 'persuading' by  moral force.  If the perception strays this far, it might go further until they decide to dislike me. Then it’s personal!   On a broader scale, by getting noticed in public, one can even become the centre of a story. As media fodder, Trap 4 snaps shut.  If vegans are ever coming across as hard (opposite to the compassionate image) they’ve got us. The media can present us to their advantage. They’ll ‘blacken’ us if they can and great fun will be had by all. Then, with enough repetition,  soon just the very mention of the word ‘VEGAN’ will be linked in the public mind with ‘pushy’.   We’ve done the job for them. When ‘Violence and Vegan’ becomes a story, it goes down rather well with readers and viewers.  It fits in nicely to a dislike of what we’re saying, giving them an excuse to dislike us as people.  So Trap 4 is about the self-defeating ‘angry image’.

Despite all that, taking each of these Traps into consideration, the PROTEST is important.   It should be inspiring.  It can sow the seeds of truth in peoples' minds. But we  need patience.   Yes, yes …. The animals are suffering terrible things as we speak, but we still have to be patient.   Sometimes we forget how long Society has been developing the habit of corralling and eating animals – years and centuries and millenniums of animal-abuse. To turn that around overnight is unlikely. “But”, you say, “It may take too long. We want to speed things up. We want to DO something about animal cruelty NOW.  We must stop it NOW!”.  But what if our words fail?   Some activists get into direct-action, say on a night time ‘raid’ of a factory farm,  taking video footage of conditions there, providing visual proof to strengthen an already powerful argument.

The video footage is shown to students at school.  They learn the truth.  All good.  But at home they don’t (yet) call the shots.  School kids don’t usually pay for their own food, so they don’t usually get to choose it, or prepare it.  But mainly, they just don't  know about food.  They know no more than their ignorant parents about nutrition.  Adults deal with the food and adults weigh the pros and cons.  Kids have to sift through what they're told and what they see on TV. But wait!   They’ve seen the "factory farm footage" !  “How can I deny I’ve seen them”?   For anyone who is sensitive, those images can never be forgotten.

The fact is that Mr and Ms and Mrs General Public can no longer say, “But I didn’t know”. They can only try to forget, so they can get back to eating their favourite foods (from the very animals, they’ve just seen on TV!!).

This brings us back to approach and how we come across.  We are ‘persuaders’ perhaps, but we must be patient AND non-violent AND non-judgemental AND still find time to be effective!

You might say that peaceful protest wins nothing for animals.  The anti-vivisectionists have been fighting peacefully for a hundred and fifty years, but animal experimentation is thriving.  One could think that nothing is gained by being reasonable.

But what if it wasn’t 'reasonableness' but the perceived 'double standards ' of The Protester that annoyed the non-vegan general public.  What if the ‘gullible’ public is more sophisticated than we think?   Was it this that caused the Anti-Vivs to be so ineffective?  Was there something overlooked, souring the message?

We (vegans) can only emphasise - CONSISTENCY!   Whatever the message, this must be first.  We can learn from the mistakes of the past.  The Anti-Vivs provide us with a good example of mistaken direction (not in their work but in their effectiveness).  Sounds a bit formal, I grant you.  And here I go again,  almost attacking the very colleagues for whom I feel the greatest loyalty.  But still, I choose to use them as the example, to plainly illustrate a fundamental mistake.  It’s a mistake of some proportions, shared by omnivores and omnivorous ant-vivisectionists alike.

I think inconsistency has been a killer for animal groups.  It’s why none of them make complete sense. They never speak of fundamentals, namely the denial of rights to the very animals they defend.  The protesters of the past have been almost hilariously inconsistent. An uncharitable person might call it 'double standards'.  They’ll say of them “…….. undoubtedly well-intentioned, peaceful people, but they still support the animal industry”.  The obvious inconsistency. Forcing them to remain mild. Consequently no one took them seriously.  It is only serious when you "put your money where your mouth is".

Today, we have a more sophisticated protester.  He/she is better informed and is probably moving towards totally not abusing animals.  It’s a stunning triangle of logic, health and compassion.  If we ever have to prove that we’re serious, first things first, we must obviously be living according to the principles we’re espousing.

Today we have non-violent protesters who are unwilling to fire poisoned judgements at people, or try to shame people.  They glow compassion.  No disapproval of them is possible!

It’s a hard logic to follow for impatient protesters.  They want to show disapproval without causing injury.  They know that nothing is gained by hurting peoples' feelings.  Nor by causing embarrassment.

Beyond the grinding of our enemies into submission, each of us has to work out for him or herself  how to approach the enquirer or the adversary who suddenly pops up.

(Ed: CJ)

The ultimate cause

935: 

In many ways if the food switch-over can be handled, veganism has a lot to offer. It attracts adventurous people who are looking to build a reputation for integrity, and who want to become energetic activists.

In our world today, there are a lot of good causes to get involved with, but none more urgent than the plight of food-animals. The food industry uses and abuses vast numbers of animals in every country of the world, and almost every single human on the planet goes along with this abuse. No other crime is so coldly committed against so many. And no other crime is so hushed up. Animal Rights goes largely unreported, because so many are deeply implicated in the abuse; it’s convenient if people can still plead ignorance. It’s why everything is so hushed up.

For most people showing any sensitivity to the plight of food animals isn’t seriously considered. It’s not discussed, not thought about, not acted upon; we have the animals in captivity, we farm them, we eat them, end of story.

Caution when approaching the omnivore

934: 

Being non-violent isn’t the same as being passive or polite; it’s an approach that is largely untried and untested, which is why it needs to be discussed.

We all know that in this violent world, many of our systems are kept in place by force. As vegan animal activist eventually come to realise, we can’t fight force with force. We have to be more subtle than that.

If enough activists are committed to non-forceful approaches, if we are willing to consider and try them, we’ll see how powerful non-violent action can be.

If there are ways to approach this omnivore mind-set, using less ‘in-yer-face’ methods, as soon as these non-violent approaches begin to work we hope for a snowballing effect. It’s a long shot, accepting that violence in any form is ineffective and putting all our effort into altering attitude, rather than just people’s eating habits. By taking a punt on this ‘truth-force’ approach, we might find it slower, seeing as how we’re a tiny minority dealing with a vast majority, but the results in the end will be more permanent. They’ll have the power of changing attitudes, which in turn will affect shopping habits and the type of products that are then produced.

We can either set fire to fur-farms or explore less destructive ways of exerting a more subtle pressure. I think change will only come about through by helping to change the fundamental attitude to animals - a fashion-change, in fact.