Communicating without Violence

1064:   

When we become vegan, if we speak up about it, then our nearest and dearest will take note; they’ll think we’ve gone mad, and try to persuade us to ‘see sense’.  If we ignore their concerns, we run the risk of becoming outcasts.

Our decision to stand apart like this, may seem radical but it’s necessary, in order to balance the bull-headedness and unthinkingness of the majority of people.  When we criticise the institutional violence of the meat trade, we also criticise the consumer; most people will feel our criticism is being indirectly levelled at them, because of the fact that they eat meat.  So when we go that step further, and directly imply that “omnivores are guilty of attacking and killing animals on a mass scale”, we will always inflame people’s emotions.  It makes us seem aggressive, and that’s not surprising considering what we are saying.

For our part, there’s no reason to fall out with our friends about it.  We must come to accept negative emotional reactions and learn to live with them.  Confrontation can open eyes or raise blood pressure.  The question is, how carefully we can gauge just how far to go.

For any of us who believe what Society does to animals is wrong, our making a strong statement might seem justified.  To us. We may be surprised at the strength of the reaction we get - that no one takes this subject seriously enough or even appears interested in it.  (But why be surprised?  They maybe haven’t met a vegan before, or at least haven’t thought too deeply about the ethics of animal issues.)

We are effectively attacking a person’s whole lifestyle.  And in their perception, the animal advocate will seem to be intrusive or even rude. And that makes it easier for them to downplay the importance of what we’re saying, or simply ignore it; the more hard-hearted the person, the easier it is to do that, but to be fair, the consumer, almost all consumers,  will always turn away - they have to, because they eat animals and use many products associated with animals.

By trying to shock people into changing their minds, we risk pushing our arguments too hard and too fast.  Free-willed people won’t stand for it.  And they know they have the rest of their community on board.  Which is why, as advocates for animals, we need to examine this interface very carefully, to see what opportunity there is for creative communication.  And when we are being rejected, we should resist the temptation to crash into their private space and lay heavy guilt trips on them.  That just makes them even more certain that we are mad, aggressive or even violent people. And here we are doing darshan, epitomising non-violence yet being seen as the opposite.