Different From Me

1157:

Edited by CJ Tointon

Perhaps some of the great ideas, non-violence, non-separation, empathy and egalitarianism, can suggest a very changed approach to life.  Taking any one of these ideas on-board is likely to have a good effect on how we treat each other and how we perceive animals. 

We might even start to see animals as being of equal importance to humans and therefore equally in need of protection.  If I get this far and realise it implies a change to my lifestyle, I might find things a bit scary.  But the upside is that a door opens to a whole new world of exciting possibilities.

Take animals for instance.  In some ways we’re superior to them, but in other ways we’re NOT!  I can learn a lot from them for my own benefit.  I don’t have to eat them to learn from them!!

By realising some of their superior qualities, I’m more likely to change the way in which I perceive them.  For example, they probably have better survival skills than me, better relationship skills, or they’re less gratuitously violent than me. They probably don’t do revenge.  They don’t bear a grudge.  They seem, in many ways, so much more sophisticated than I could ever be.  That’s one whole heap of learning I have in the pipeline.

To accept animals as my equal I need to use my imagination.  If animals are worthy of equal respect, it’s no different to my respecting you.  If you come from a different cultural background to me I could draw benefit from your showing me things I didn’t know.  I could learn things about myself.

At first it might feel uncomfortable.  I might be hostile to your 'differences' and be threatened by the unfamiliarity of them. But whether there are species differences or racial differences, once I get used to them, I can practise empathy.  Then, all my distrust and dislike can turn to interest and then to admiration.

We’ve just had a series of programmes on TV, here in Australia, on asylum seekers.  It was called "Go Back to Where You Came From".  A group of six people went to live with refugees.  Their initial hostility, along with various misconceptions, melted away as soon as they entered these peoples' daily lives.  There was a huge attitudinal shift in each member of the group.  Inevitably this has been a hot topic of conversation around the dinner table and in the media. 

After seeing the programme, I came away having learnt a lot about foreigners and about foreign cultures.  This helps me transfer empathy towards other humans, as a token of appreciation for their culture.  In much the same way, it helps me appreciate the non-human culture. 

Soul change

1156: 

For those who won’t accept the dietary changes being suggested by vegans, there’s a hard lesson to be learned, concerning the poisoning of the body, mind and soul (whew! That’s one heavy pitch!) notably in the health dangers of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, each being associated with eating animal protein and animal fats.

And what about the “mind and soul”?

       

It’s not just human physical health, it goes deeper. It touches conscience ... and if I’ve got a weak conscience it’s likely I’m going to be into advantage-taking. I’ll be using my position of ‘superiority’ to benefit me. I might be abusing women or children, or the environment,or my own body. Or I might be contributing to a mega-abuse, like the fishing-out of oceans or the caging of hens. None of which are particularly good for the mind. Who wants to maintain a guilty conscience for the rest of their lives? And guilt is not good food for the soul!!

       

Abuse and exploitation has a sting in the tail, even though it might not be immediately obvious. It’s because it isn’t obvious that we blithely continue abusing; everyone seems to be doing it, and eventually I copy them, and think nothing of it; then it seems too late to change.

But that’s the weird thing – it’s never too late to change, and late change is often the most thorough and permanent type of change, and therefore the most effective. I’ve seen people in their 80s make a complete change, dietarily and attitudinally. They saw themselves caged-in by a lifetime’s bad habits and didn’t think their own cage door could ever be opened. And they proved themselves wrong about that.

Perception-wise, the door is shut because we just can’t believe it’s openable. As soon as empathy kicks in, we take the emphasis off our own situation and look about us. We see cage-doors everywhere. And as soon as we begin to empathise, we begin to care more about the animals’ plight than our own comfort. And that allows us to give away some of the advantages of habit, for the sake of the greater good. And feel all the better for it.

       

Sure, at first we might have to deal with some inconvenience, but in the long run our decisions will be justified by some surprisingly wonderful improvements. We’ll be enjoying better health as well as a lighter conscience.

       

It’s a straight forward switch, from being an abuser to being a repairer. We all have to move that way sooner or later, and as soon as we do, we’ll notice a gratifying expansion of consciousness. 

Think about it

1155: 

The rescuers’ video footage made at a factory farm is usually powerful stuff, not easily dismissed.  But after that, we must rely on words to get across details, to explain why these things happen to animals and how customers help to perpetuate it all. 

Getting all this across, with pictures and words, is essential, but the information we give out is often too heavy to digest.  So, as communicators, we need to avoid the temptation to say too much, too soon or with too much emotional punch.  We mustn’t lose our reputation as information providers.  If we preach it’s a big turn-off.

Anyway, we don’t simply want people to agree with us.  We want to get them asking questions and thinking about it all.  As speakers we don’t want passive acceptance, nor does the Animal Rights movement want tame followers.  The greatest need is for people to find out what they need to know, so they can make a great attitudinal leap forward.  The need is for them to imagine how-things-could-be in a freer world, where all things are freer including animals, environment and impoverished people.

If the world is a living organism, it will find great benefit in a change in human eating habits - less deforestation to grow pastures for grazing animals, more trees to act as the planet’s lungs, less fodder grown for animal feed allowing more plant food to be grown for humans.  The planet benefits, starvation is eased, animals reprieved, and human health improved.

Perhaps the reason a vegan diet is still regarded as a threat is because it touches on so many interrelating attitudes.  For many, the very idea of it is overwhelming and again, our job is to show it needn’t be so; we need to be able to show how changes will merge normally into our daily life and how effort reaps rich rewards.  But not for the Animal Industries though!

The power of nostalgia

1154:

 

I’m in England, watching the waddling masses making for their favourite cafes, to eat their beloved chips with everything.  But it’s holiday time here.  A special time where all waddlers can indulge in nostalgia, and foodwise there’s nothing as popular as fish and chips.  Here, by the south coast, in summer sunshine, the waddlers and their troops of waddling children, their large girths filling out their steel chairs, eating from buckets and cartons, and all washed down with Coke.  But these are free people who’re on holiday, with money in their pockets.  They’re buying the kids a few treats, and the kids are asking for holiday food, like fish and chips.  They’re all on holiday, enjoying the sea air, smelling the sea and frying chips and crunchy battered fish.  How can they ever NOT want to repeat this pleasure, over and over again? Imagine the disappointed children being made to give all this away, on account of an ethical decision to protest against cruelty-to-fish.  Cruelty?  What cruelty?

No one wants to know about what happens on decks of fishing boats, because they don’t want a reason to give up this instant nostalgia buzz. For fish-and-chip lovers, returning to childhood memories of the beach and that smell of sea weed, mixed with the vinegary chips and battered fish - this is such an ideal.  It’s our reward for holding our position in the animal domination-league.

Being humans, we have certain pleasures available to us.  Being human we are able to make choices.  And this is the mighty, free-willed human we’re talking about here.  This is the over-eater and habitual spender, who makes up the vast majority of people on the planet.

This free-willed human may be obstinate and perhaps even arrogant, selfish and thoughtless. But they’re just doing what they’ve always done and what everyone else does. They’re all customers of the Animal Industries. It’s likely they’ve invested so much in one lifestyle that they’ve had to build a strong resistance to our arguments.

To all intents and purposes, I’m referring to just about everyone. And yet these ‘every-persons’ are not hard hearted, nor bloodthirsty, nor even implacably anti-vegan. It’s just that they’re attracted and often addicted to many yummy foods, like fish and chips, which just so happen to be animal products. The last thing on Earth they want is to give them up and never return to them.

Consequently they badly want to hear NOTHING of what we’ve got to say.  In their mind we’re to be shunned, boycotted and ignored.  In the same way we don’t want to be around them.  We boycott so much of the food they eat, and their dinner parties and various other social eat-together events: they boycott us and we boycott them, in effect.  It amounts to a lot of separation.

That’s why vegans have their work cut out.  We need to work out ways to prove the vegan diet is so much better, and then do all we can to reverse this separation problem.

Direct Animal Activists - Are They Wrong?

1154: Posted Chichester, Sussex, Friday 12^th August 2014

Edited by CJ Tointon

Some direct animal activists are willing to destroy property to save animals who're imprisoned in disgusting conditions on farms, laboratories and abattoirs everywhere.  They risk being fined or even losing their own liberty, to save tortured animals.  But let it be said - They avoid causing injury to any personnel (human or animal) and let it be added -  They do it for love.

It takes guts to be a direct-action activist and I think they deserve our respect.  As do those who have set up sanctuaries where rescued animals can live out the rest of their lives in peace and safety.  But so few animals are rescued and so few sanctuaries exist. 

If we really want to scratch the surface, to bring about massive changes in consciousness, to make meat-eating 'unfashionable', then maybe less-direct methods should be considered as well as direct-action.  It might be more effective with our carnivorous friends.  Public perception is very important in the shifting of fashion!  Direct-activists have earned a dodgy reputation within the Animal Rights Movement.  A lot of this comes from carnivores'  convenient "hating-the-enemy" perceptions, but some is justified.  We have to be careful with perception.  

The public needs to be swung over, without their having to deal with a lot of perception baggage.   Becoming animal-conscious and therefore becoming a plant eating vegan is a tricky matter, especially when one can't identify with other vegans.  They can seem out of reach, hostile, righteous and pushy.  And why not when so many of our friends are living under concentration camp conditions??  But by breaking into these nasty torture chambers, we get a reputation for being terrorists or eco-terrorists, especially since some of our activities (like direct action) can whip up lots of hostility from a highly propaganda-ized public. 

What’s wrong with direct action?  Nothing - as long as the non-violence aspect of it is rigorously emphasised.  I’d say we are fighting a perception war here.  I think it all starts out with very good intentions, providing data and video footage

to show people and inform them.  There is a potential for mass distribution of video evidence of animal cruelty.  But we can easily stray into something we find more difficult to justify.  Mainly, it puts paid to the excuse many people still trot out, that "we didn’t know".   Eventually the embarrassment of pretending "not to know" (when there’s so much evidence available) will jolt people into "thinking again".  Eventually it will become obvious who our non-friends are; the people who poison us and profit from us and try to pacify us. 

I believe there's nothing wrong with direct action when ultimately it's directed at setting up refuges for the animals who are saved.   But it’s before this that the trouble may occur.  The 'breaking-in' of the various Auschwitzes.  Access to these jails is of course essential and, in truth, the only real damage done is to Animal Industry property.  Surely, for the cost of a few broken doors and locks, it’s a small price to pay to educate people about what’s going on.  Of course the Animal Industries don't agree!

But my question is:  "Do these rescue missions impact on the general public in the intended way?"  I doubt they impact on the 'egg-and-bacon-for-breakfast' mentality.  As long as people still want the animal foods they are so accustomed to eating, they'll be reluctant to change.   If they do change their diets, the process of change will probably be seen as a duty.   We want it to be more than that.  When a person's weight falls off and the vegan diet has been seen to work, something else should be kicking in about perception-of-animal-slavery - unjustifiability. To get people to that level, a lot of smoothing over is needed.   Direct actions can sometimes cause the activist/advocate's reputation to suffer unnecessarily.

The Animal Rights movement with all its good arguments, might not yet be big enough or respected enough to persuade people to listen.  We need to be super-intelligent in how we approach people who are, to all intents and purposes, still virgins.

The hardest decisions

1152:

When I decided to think seriously about my own ‘animal mindset’ (seeing animals as an acceptable source of food and other commodities) I had to decide what to DO.  It came down to one question leading to another, and another:

Could I handle such a dramatic alteration of a lifetime’s habit?

If I did have a strong enough willingness-to-change, could I then go on to drum up support from others? 

Was I more interested in my own personal development or more interested in helping others to change consciousness?

And then onto the next ‘hardest decision’:

Could I stop using disapproval, guilt, shame or other emotional-blackmail to frighten others into change. 

Going vegan takes you from food to wanting to talk about food, and then talk about a lot of other things.  You might succeed in making the jump to plant food but you may fail when it comes to talking about it, leading onto the whole subject of Animal Rights.  If you do try to speak about the Animal Rights and the Vegan Diet, people get very sensitive when you suggest they change. 

I’ve decided to approach others with mild suggestions only.

Is ‘going vegan’ safe?

1150:

Assuming you’re not put off by vegans, and you’re maybe considering veganism, it’s likely you’ll want to prioritise the main pros and cons. If you’re at all tentative about switching camps, you’ll want to know it’s you making up your own mind. No one else is doing it for you.

If you’re considering such a big change to your life, you first need to know the changes will be safe, healthwise. And that brings us back to you  having confidence in eating (every day) plant based foods and feeling they’re efficacious. That means you swamp any doubts that arise when we become inconvenienced. |And a vegan life can be inconvenient.

If you do get to feel safe about going vegan then there’s a deeper level of consciousness available, beyond the importance of health and nutrition. The ethical dimension to this ‘move’ is at least as interesting as the food we’ll be eating. It deals with the place veganism has in a broader level of allied consciousness. It touches non-violence, and environmental sensitivities, it addresses the question of world hunger, it affects so many things, including ones approach to a subject.

How we get to talk about all this is both tricky and significant. The best way to pass over information and make it stick is not by telling people what we think is important, it is to get them to ask us about what they want to know, And then, I’d rather have you dragging information out of me than me foisting it onto you.