Up against Human-centred Causes

1145: 

If you became a vegan some years back, it’s worth considering how it might be harder today, in one way.  Today there are more competing pressures on people to change.  We are so much more aware of dangerous trends in our world, and therefore so many issues about which we’re supposed to have an informed opinion.  Today, it’s important to find a way of prioritising our concerns, and see which seem practical and which too idealistic.  Perhaps our own self-inflicted demands are becoming overwhelming.  How do we assess our own strengths and weaknesses?  How do we develop ‘the self’.  Self-development is almost an industry today.

Animal Rights is one cause amongst many causes vying for attention, each cause being as important as the other.  But the animal issue is handicapped by being up against human-centred causes.  Public perception says that we vegans care less about people and more about animals.  Some do, perhaps.  But most of us speak to the need for ‘liberating’ our fellow humans from their mind-sets about animals, before animals can be liberated.  But that’s difficult to get across, especially since, weighted against us, is the customer who won’t take animals seriously, since they want to eat them.  Multiply this customer by about seven billion, and you see the scale of the problem vegans face, convincing people to leave animals alone.

We need the support of many ‘customers’, to put enough pressure on legislators to pass laws, to bring an end to animal abuse (that is, animal farming).  To pull this off, veganism has to appear very attractive, meaningful and the way of the future.  And those of us who are promoting a vegan view must be squeaky clean.  No room for vegetarian compromising, since you can’t be a little bit vegan, if you want to act as a role model.