The block against vegan-thinking is deep

988: 

     

One person eats meat and thinks nothing of it. Another would sooner die than touch the stuff.  That sounds like a big difference, but is it so large?  Here are two extremes of view, arrived at via two different reasonings.

           

It’s no good giving up eating meat if you hate the idea of being vegetarian.  If you’re forcing yourself to eat food you don’t like you will either be ill or die.  All of us know we have to feel good about our food choices, or at least not feel bad. If you are a meat eater then you’re going to have to put out of your mind what they do to animals on factory farms, or any sort of farms.  You’ll have to see it as an ‘unimportant matter’ and not give it a second thought.

For many of us though, it’s different.  For my part, I need to develop a sensitive conscience because I suspect I’m in the greatest of dangers, in that my mind has been manipulated.  I’m seeking a more independent mind.  I fear manipulation.  I fear blind conformity.  I’m very suspicious of my fellow humans, because I’ve seen what they are capable of, especially when they’ve picked on the weakest sentient beings and taken advantage of their weakness.

           

My concern is that certain problems about our world are entrenched so deeply that, even if solutions are clear, they won’t be implemented.  And that, because people are just too uncomfortable to contemplate them. It’s as if there’s not enough get-up-and-go in people to tackle the really important matters.  They’ll prefer to perceive them as ‘unimportant matters’.  They might prefer just to live with the problem.  They’re likely to think that veganism is too high a price to pay for peace of mind.  Therefore they won’t consider it.  They won’t even discuss it.  They refuse to take it seriously.

           

To me, on the face of it, this refusal-to-consider seems illogical.  But I suppose it’s just the normal defensiveness in people.  I remember trying to talk up the idea of veganism and failing.  I only succeeded in talking it down. I knew this subject was very controversial, but at first I didn’t realise that it was quite unlike any other controversial subject.  I was treating it like a political difference of opinion or one concerning religion.  But it’s much closer to the bone.  It’s more like discussing another person’s mental health, the whole matter being just too uncomfortable to face up to.  The last thing a meat-eater wants to do is discuss it … while, of course, a vegan wants very much to discuss it.  

           

Given half a chance, vegans will do anything to promote veganism, but they often make non-vegans go into reverse - the ‘good idea’ becomes a ‘not-so-good-idea’, if you don’t want to hear about it. ‘Veganism’ is one subject that can even make our friends become unfriendly.

A good idea like this might seem simple at first, but it trails behind it long and complicated tentacles that tangle and frighten people.