Fighting talk

929:

If five year olds accept meat-eating you can’t blame them, if a fifteen year old still accepts it you might be more worried, and if a 25 year old is still eating meat, well, even then perhaps there’s still a chance they’ll change, but by then it might be too late. They might have recently left their parents’ dinner table and started shopping for their own food and catering for themselves. They may be experimenting on all sorts of levels, with healthy/ethical-eating being but one of many experiments.

Older carnivores are probably beyond the pale; things have gone too far, with too many worldly pressures and commitments bearing down on them, so radical food-changes are unlikely.

            To older people, vegans probably just seem weird. This makes it doubly hard for us to persuade them. They usually have settled views on this whole animal ‘thing’ and won’t willingly enter into any conversation about it. They’ll steer away from all animal talk (or divert it to ‘pet-talk’) in order to avoid the trap of getting into talking about animal husbandry or veganism.

Although I’ve never had any hostility shown to me for my being vegan, others have. This is one of the most tabooed subjects. As vegans, if we attempt to barge through the barriers, we can alter the whole basis of our relationship with someone. Mentioning our different ethical perspective feels, to the omnivore, as if we are making an attack. They’ll talk about anything else, but refuse to go anywhere near ‘personal eating habits’ that impugn one’s ethics. And let’s remember that this whole matter is primarily about ethics (not health). How frustrating it is, that the less ethics are mentioned, the better.

So, what to do? Keep silent? No, but understatement can be more powerful than using too many words, which have the effect of cornering people. We’re dealing here with what may be called 'truth-force' (satyagrahya) and so all information we have in store, needs to be handled with care and respect; in order to show how important compassion is to us, as vegans, we should practise compassion on all levels, on people too. It’s too easy to offend people and for them to be ‘once bitten twice shy’.

Every day the world eats meat, causing billions of deaths and causing billions more animals to be purpose-bred to take their place. Cruelty is now routine, and practised without a second thought; it isn’t perceived as ‘wrong’ by the mass of the population because it’s all so cunningly hidden away – behind the closed doors of farms or ‘intensive operations’. 

Factory farming of animals guarantees to feed vast numbers of people at the lowest possible cost to the consumer. The law allows animal farms to do what they do, to ensure food supply. Laws pertaining to cruelty-to-animals don’t apply to farm animals.

For the animal advocate, there’s no point in blaming the consumer, farmer, government or overseas competitors. The only constructive thing to do is promote the reasons for boycotting animal produce and continue to encourage ‘cruelty-free’ products to come onto the market. But to do that we must talk, and talking might be our biggest problem here. This is where we most often shoot ourselves in the foot. So, sometimes it’s best we hold back, or rather, work quietly and consistently.

It’s a complex mixture of approaches: a little teasing here, ignoring the whole matter there, sometimes stirring, sometimes ending a conversation as it gets too close to the edge, sometimes being bold about being vegan and at other times being self effacing and making light of the subject – it’s a matter of pushing forward and pulling back, but always taking the initiative, in each situation.

We’ll only be taken seriously when we can show as much sensitivity to the human condition as we would expect from others for the animals’ condition. If you instinctively think it’s inappropriate to discuss this subject, then change the subject. You might lose ‘an opportunity’, but by terminating a discussion you are winning another de-evangelising brownie point, by making it clear that you aren’t trying to convert and also that you aren’t willing to talk in a half hearted or frivolous way.

Each approach has its right timing and a variety of approaches keeps ‘them’ guessing, and hopefully keeps what we’re saying interesting and not too predictable.

I always feel that I can say anything I want to say, as long as I’m being sensitive (and compassionate) to the person I’m talking to. I never want to hurt another person’s feelings, because what I really want is the other person’s trust. If I can get that, then I can talk more freely. Obviously, trust has to be earned, and if I screw up on that, if I fail to get permission-to-talk, it simply looks like I’m squaring up for a fight. And that gives them the right to shut me out. That’s bad enough but then, when you come along they’ll remember my aggressive approach and shut you out too.