Veganism as a new idea

1102: 

Vegans seem preposterous.  Even to family and friends our ‘behaviour’ seems either like bad manners or a play for attention.  People both rubbish vegan lifestyle in general or cite negative health consequences, “Our reason to think vegans take things too far: farm animals are just less important than maintaining traditional life - the life of our forefathers, who never had any scruples about eating them”.

         

‘Animal advocates’ hold the opposite view.  We feel so sure that we are right about all this that it’s enough to create a certain sense of superiority, like me saying, “I’m better than you because I’m vegan”, or “I’m better than you because I’m environmentally responsible”.  We can be hubristic, and bring about separation.  A them-and-us, a ‘de-kin-ing’ is established and it takes a long time for each person to come close again.  Without some sort of kinship or closeness nothing can happen; without some level of mutual respect and trust, there can be no useful communication, especially on a serious subject like ‘making this world a better place’.

         

If we are all going to contribute what we can, to make things better for our world, then separation-attitudes have got to be dumped.  Once we’re thinking of others as equals, never looking down on anyone and never letting them look down on us, we can talk about almost anything, do anything just so long as we never leave anyone behind.

The difference between a vegan and an omnivore is that we take equality further, for fellow humans and on to other species.  We consider animals to be no less worthy of respect than fellow humans.  But this respect is tinged with compassion for all the suffering they’ve experienced - we’ve a fair bit of reparation and repair to make.

Let’s hope the animals haven’t been collecting evidence of human malpractice over the years!!  Presumably they don’t keep books.  Presumably they’re beyond such things!!

So why can’t we give it a go?  Why can’t we treat them as irreplaceable, sovereign creatures as we do our own babies?  If we can think of them that way, we’ll be unable to condone their killing.  And in addition, how can anyone argue that one is less entitled to enjoy a whole un-foreshortened life without violation than another?

There’s no valid reason to treat farm animals any differently to dogs and cats.  So, why is there no love for them?  Easy question, a three year old could spot it straight away - ‘charity starts at home’.  Love is given to kin, not kine.

Most omnivores do not respect the idea of equality, amongst their own species let alone across the species barrier.  And yet this is the starting point to every repair that has to be made - if it’s not obviously equality it is respecting differences, and not grading them.

There must be equality, either between humans and non-humans, or between members of our own species.