Abattoirs must shut down

969:  

We must stop killing animals in much the same way as small children need to stop having temper tantrums. We should have outgrown such barbaric behaviour by now. An abattoir mentality runs counter to civilised living. It’s ugly, it’s violent and it’s unnecessary.

My aim is to get that across, for it to make sense, and to show that vegans are people who love both animals and people, alike. And my next aim is to enjoy the struggle of trying to shift this attitudinal Goliath, and do it without using force. When I’m speaking about cruelty to animals it’s easy to get steamed up about it, so I remind myself to NEVER harass people into agreeing with me. I just want to get them thinking for themselves. I’m not into being pushy and I’m also keen to climb down from the high moral platform. So, I’ll put it this way: Most people have a great capacity for love, for being loved and giving it too. The potential is there, for people to see that there’s another way of living life, without using the violent ways of the past. Most vegans I know have a passion to rescue animals from the violence of humans, but we also have a duty to be all-round loving-types. Our whole approach must be gentle in order to persuade people by example. We do have a difficult message to get across but we need to use kind words to say hard things. As much as I want to persuade others by argument I also want to prove to others that I’m self-examining, so that I don’t fall into the trap of being hypocritical and therefore off-putting.

If I ever seem to be judgemental or insulting, I’m sure I’ll miss my target. I have to be frank and admit that vegans like me have made mistakes in the past – we’ve already earned quite a reputation for preaching and even coming across as superior. This sort of comment - “I’m vegan, how about you?” - has to stop, even when we don’t say it quite as directly as that. We need to be good communicators, especially with hostile or uninterested listeners. If we’ve been moralisers or been boring or predictable in the past, all that has to change. We must drop slogans like “Meat is Murder”. The statement might be true enough but what we’re really saying is “YOU are a murderer if you eat meat” and that sounds as if we are being deliberately provocative and attacking. We might mean well but it looks a lot like wanting to use shock tactics to change people. As soon as we make a value judgement of people, like this, the shutters come down. And defensive counter judgements are made, like “What bitter bastards you vegans are!” ... and that effectively puts an end to any meaningful communication.

Abattoirs must close, certainly. That’s the message we try to get across, to show how these places are the epitome of cruelty and barbarity. But the question is as to how we say that without sounding totally unrealistic and extra terrestrial.