How NOT to meet our adversaries

  

1186:

How’s Veganism going? In some parts of the world they’re very vegan and animal-rights conscious. Perhaps it’s in the doldrums here in Australia - it’s so slow in gaining momentum. Sadly beef-steak-man still dominates here and in many other parts of the World.

In our neck of the woods (Sydney, Australia) people still rubbish any attempt to place animals in a different light. Between vegans and non-vegans there’s still a lot of space. In reality, there’s no big problem for us about that. We’re used to it, if we are into promoting animal rights. It’s not such a damaging situation for us. That is, until we try to communicate with the ‘unenthusiastic’, about Animal Rights. And get rebuffed.

Then we hit a brick wall. Then we resent that other person’s obstinacy, indifference, lack of empathy for these animals - the main damage occurs when we extend our resentment into disliking anyone who won’t agree with us. That’s when another whole set of problems occurs: the stress of being on unfriendly terms with certain people sucks the very lifeblood out of us, both. Is it friendly sparing or is it relating ‘toxically’?

Bruising other’s feelings. Getting our egos hurt. Ending up ‘not-speaking’. It’s difficult, once that emotional flood is released, to let it all float over us. It wouldn’t be so energy-draining and upsetting for us, if we could truly accept that: “what others think about us is none of our business”, but that aphorism isn’t yet widely accepted.

If it were, then we’d almost welcome opposition, just for the challenge it presented. And anyway, this is not a guns-at-dawn-duel. It’s an appreciation of our ‘opponent’ that they feel strongly enough to lay down the gauntlet, to discuss each point, and be brave enough to take a knock. It’s certainly better than a person’s indifference and apathy.  It’s often good to have something to spar over. 

But here’s the trick of it - when we disagree, we must avoid at all costs getting personal. Avoid bringing in emotions best kept out of these sorts of conversations. Leave them outside of friendship or indeed any other social interactions. Those emotions - anger, irritation, sneering, raised pitch of voice, each signal something not entirely friendly, where even momentarily, our mutual-liking wobbles. And in that wobble there’s a hint of a possible collapse.

When we sense that, once that line has been crossed, then it feels as though NOTHING will ever be able to repair the damage of it. A whole friendship can end this way. It’s what happens sometimes, when we get judgemental, self-defending or start to take umbrage. Over this matter. The matter about which we feel so strongly - the enslaving.

Send them back to Vega

1185:

Big changes may come fast, but I doubt it, not when it comes to food-beliefs and animal-rights. Anyway, pessimistically, hypothetically, what if it isn’t quick? And if it’s going to be slow, then we might have to be ready for a slow crawl through decades rather than years.  I also suspect mass change won’t happen by us trying to persuade people to change their innermost nature, but we can try, and we must try. Since the cause is entirely noble, any contribution, by any of us, can’t possibly be futile. Everything we do relates to a better future and the greater good.

The Greater Good, an aim in and of itself, but it’s for the long-term. It’s as if we’re of most value if we work ‘alongside’ the as-yet-unborn. And keep our eyes on the bigger picture. And always act like a river, influencing change by way of continuous and consistent attrition. It’s not unlike a fashion-change. Attitudes rather than in the form of clothing.  A fashion of softness which we, individually, especially people of my vintage, may never get to see. But, here and now we can plan for it.  Even though we die before anything significant happens, it’s no longer about my satisfaction but a much more significant satisfaction - that of experiencing from and contributing to the optimistic core. From that core repair happens, and from that core there’s a personal element, a thrill of future as food for our present.

But while optimism is important, it’s not the optimism we ‘spout’ but the optimism we feel privately that counts . This might sound touchy-feely, but motivation is sparked by optimism. And we all need to know what we’ve got in the motivation-bank. If optimism pulses through our veins, then one thing is assured - we’ll always have enough motivational oomph for what we want to do.

I hope mine won’t run out. But how can it, when it’s about foundations stones? Like a bricklayer whose each brick is laid for the future, so is it too with vegans of today, who see ahead to the ‘up-ahead-times’.

This strong movement-to-come, what is loosely called  The Animal Rights Movement, will probably mature at the most propitious time, but only if today’s solid stones are laid. Early on. In preparation.

But to be frank, motivationally-speaking, this sounds like featureless work. “Where’s my motivation and energy to come from? I may badly want to help the animals, but that’s not the same as wanting to work for the liberation of animals.”

[From the animals’ perspective, that’s probably what they’re working on, at this very minute; ways of getting us humans to be very, and urgently, energetic on their behalf; for their eventual liberation]

Work, voluntary work, why? For me it’s not done out of duty, compassion or empathy. It’s done out of interest. The fascination in what’s happening, right now. The  challenge of the subject.

Sadly, for the non-idealist, the focus is on extracting personal pleasure from life. They might be loving and kind people, but they dare not think for themselves on this issue. Fear of lifestyle-change is an horrendous prospect for most people. But they may be kind people, and even kind enough to accommodate people like me or you. They’re cool about us being different. They’re even cool if we want to talk about animals, although not best pleased.

However, in general, they’d be happier if we moved to another planet. Of course they’d miss us for a while (and it’s nothing personal) and they’d feel lots of guilt (but they’d be fairly used to that feeling already, since it’s a chronic condition for many omnivores).  But, one BIG advantage - they’d no longer have to listen to us making them feel profoundly uncomfortable.

Isn’t there a planet called Vega that would have them?

Shifting a Goliath of an attitude

1184:

The attitude-to-eating-animals is still deeply set in most people’s minds. Vegan advocates are interested in the shift of consciousness towards kindness, and specifically (apart from being kind to animals and wanting to see them liberated) we want to see the abattoirs close down.

This is a Mount Everest of an institution to bring down, so we need to see things in perspective. We need to see the enormity-of-impact such a massive change would bring and the depth of opposition it would bring too. Mass-consciousness-change is no small matter. It’s certainly an ambitious project we Animal Rightists have taken on.

Mass change - this is big biscuits. These are lifestyle habits, involving seductions, addictions and dependencies, we’re talking about. This is the collective-mindset we’re taking on. And, at first glance, the mountain is far too high to attempt. But these are significant times, where all the big dangers-for-the-World are being examined. And, centre stage, on the slab, is human nature itself.

What is it about human nature that is so damage-making for the future? Why are our core values deteriorating?

Our values determine everything we do, where ethical choice is involved. What we think is causing the main damage to our world is where our attention is drawn. If that happens to be with Animal Rights, it’s initially food choices that determines the direction we take. Almost everyone still refuses to look at the use of animals, and so everyone maintains a fixed mind-set on these matters. This one attitude, made powerful because it’s shared by seven billion others, concerns using-animals. Throughout much of the World, we all eat similar food, in that so much of it is from animals. The consumer and the producer hold beliefs in common, that animals may be used by us. That attitude has held our species in thrall since the year dot, and it’s likely that the erosion of our humanity started from then.

Vegans are suggesting we return to humanity, and show by our lifestyle principles that humans can be humane, despite the behaviour of the vast majority of humans who aren’t.

The scale of change

1183: 

If I had two reasons why I feel constantly motivated – why I’m a vegan advocate - number one would be that my involvement in Animal Rights is down to it being the most fascinating and challenging of all subjects.  Number two reason-for-motivation is that I really do care about changing views about animal-slavery.

From my own experience, I know my main driving force springs not from duty or obligation or compassion, but from interest.   I’m interested in how the human mind works, or rather why it seems, at one time, to be so brilliant and yet so dumb at other times.  I’m particularly interested in how it allows itself to be manipulated so thoroughly.  And how, in a nutshell, people who work so hard for their money can waste so much of it on rubbish and cruelty-based foods.

If I consider the animal farmer, the abattoir owner and the butcher antediluvian, then I include the consumer.  He or she shares the same antediluvian attitudes (about animals) as the farmers and producers.  But the difference is that most consumers could more easily switch over to plant-based foods.

If they became plant food eaters, like vegans, and if they weren’t dependant on animals for their livelihood, they would be able to help save animals from being farmed.  And enjoy the bonus - a side effect of eating plant-based food being that you’ll begin to enjoy extraordinarily good health and energy supply.  Certain ingested foods, over many years of being eaten, can have an amazingly powerful effect on the human mind and body.  To long-time vegans, it seems no more incomprehensible, that anyone would fill the sophisticated machinery of the human body with second rate food, than putting cheap petrol in a high quality car?

Vegans aren’t really appealing to any particular demographic here, because consumers can also be farmers and all farmers are consumers themselves.  But, farmers aside, most people are not actually living directly off animals.   Most are only consumers.  They aren’t necessarily as loyal to meat as the pastoralist is, so they’re that much freer.

Going vegan: I know it could seem like a nightmare, the prospect of changing something as straight forward as one’s diet when everyone else about you, in the family or amongst friends, is NOT changing along with you.  If you shop or cook for others, then it’s two sets of shopping, cooking two different meals, and that could be time consuming.  But once that’s a routine, there’s only slightly extra work.   For many people a swop-over to a vegan diet wouldn’t present too many problems; the logistics are tackle-able.

It’s possible, therefore, that a change on a large scale could happen quite quickly.  And because of this possibility, we, as animal advocates, should be at least prepared.  However, if that is our eventual aim, to bring to popularity cruelty-free commodities, then we must know, for this to come about, majority support is essential.

I’m interested in the scale of change, the change up to and above the 50% mark, where there are more vegetarians than omnivores, and where legislation can be enacted, without politicians committing political suicide - when, for instance, they vote to close the abattoirs.

Meeting adversaries

1178:

How can I relate to a non-idealist or a dry-as-dust pragmatist, who makes a living out of another’s misery, and only has eyes for a healthy bank balance?  This is the animal farmer, the abattoir owner, the butcher and many others.  To me they seem antediluvian.  Theirs and mine are two distinctly opposite attitudes, probably pursued with equal amounts of enthusiasm.  Apart from their consuming-of-animal-based-foods, these ‘non-idealists’ make things frustrating and depressing for  us, by their not only profiting-from but vigorously promoting-to-Society the very thing I’m so against, namely animal enslavement.

Here I am.  I’m discussing all this with a confirmed carnivore: I suggest that if we work hard enough, for long enough, our opposite view-points may come closer.  Perhaps?

But, what’s important to bear in mind, here, is that they’ve got no particular interest in changing my view.  They don’t care either way.  It’s me who has the interest, in changing their view. And since they are so many and we are so few, they’ve no need to worry about a thing.  They certainly don’t need to discuss ‘animals’ with anyone.  To them most of them it’s a non-subject.  To some of them it’s a tabooed subject.

We are so different – at one extreme the passionate idealist and at the other,  the indifferent do-nothing-ist.  The two extremes are so poles-apart,  about this one thing - animal enslavement.  We’re different, only in as much as: to them, it’s a ‘non-subject’, to us it’s a subject we most care about.  To attempt to communicate on this matter of animal-use to hostile ears is like a soccer-worshipper discussing football with a non-believer.

But strangely enough, there are indications that we may not be at odds with ‘almost-everyone’ – we may be but a hairsbreadth away from one another. 

Our equals - the animals?

1177: 

       

When animals leave the farm, there are no goodbyes.  There must be no emotion.  It’s essential to withdraw any shred of affection for one’s animals, when they leave the farm.  They will soon enough appear again, as figures in the accounts.

Don’t waive them goodbye. Don’t let the kids shed any tears.    They’re just off on a holiday. One way ticket, though.

Will they be transported in comfort?  No.  There will be terrible times ahead, en route.  But if you’re thinking travel-discomfort, think again.  Towards the end of a terrifying transportation, a new dread sneaks in.  A whiff of something not-right. A whiff of the unknown-and-yet-very-well-known.  A whiff of blood and grime. And as it gets stronger the dread increases.  The animal knows something it can’t possibly ‘know’.  En route to the abattoir, do they sense the next level of discomfort? Brutality?

Soon enough, ‘said animal’ is cattle-prodded into the killing chamber, and terror distils fear into adrenalin, which floods the muscle tissue-soon-to-be-human-food.  Terror in the making, steak in the making: life is being terminated.

The emotional detachment of the farmer, the coldness of the killer, the indifference of the end-consumer, all that is carried through from killers to packers to sellers, to eaters, and on to a network of delicate arteries!

How can one’s carelessness turn back to common sense? How can such a devil-may-care attitude switch across to its very opposite - one of love and respect for these animals? It’s true, humans do love animals.  But, only if they’re cute.  Not these animals. These are the unlovable ones.  Otherwise how could we eat them?

Our first step - change the nature of our relationship with these animals - regard them as equals.  If humans have rights, so too should animals; not the right to vote or receive a comprehensive education or have warm clothing to wear, but a right to live alongside us, as partners, even as symbiotic partners.  I can imagine a safe, happy hen, contributing spare ova in hidden nests around an overgrown and rambling garden. With human guardians who are incapable of any violence or killing. A safe, hen-heaven? I can also imagine that this is almost pie-in-the-sky! But humans could so easily be in this sort of relationship with animals.

         

Egalitarianism, for all its faults, provides a levelling influence on us all.  The idea is in our ability to be equalising.  It’s where, say a dog or a human or a tree exist on a similar level, without separation.  If equality is the benign force behind Nature, then that same equality must be reflected in human nature, in what we do.  If we can be affectionate towards a beloved dog, then surely we can show affection towards any living thing, even towards the least lovable.  But why, and for what reason? For nothing better than the pleasure of being like that.   It’s an attitude which covers just about everything – energy, happiness, release-of-energy.  And it all happens by way of actions and thought.  It’s all ‘done’ without any attempt to meet personal-needs first. (Thinking about others before you think self-interest).  

You might say, “A simple ‘thank-you’ wouldn’t go amiss.  But, bottom-line, whatever we do on behalf of a cow, is done without the faintest chance of getting a “thank-you” type-of-reward for our troubles.

“Troubles”?!!!  Wot troubles?

The Nature of Exploiting

1176: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

Taking what isn't ours is a nasty trait.  We humans love what’s free and we love a bargain.  'Domesticated animals' seem to be a perfect 'bargain'.  They’re easy to handle and cheap to keep.  They’re 'looked after' by their humans. Their humans are allowed to treat them like machines.  Anything goes if it make the humans happy (as in, makes them some money).  The animals' humans believe they need animals for food and clothing.  The customer is always there, standing at the abattoir door and ready to buy. 

Unlike our cats and dogs at home, the farmer feels nothing for the animals living on the farm, nothing for them as individuals.  They’re not cuddly or cute.  They’re unattractive and cannot be related to as individuals.  They're 'beasts', living in filthy conditions and exposed to the elements.  Beasts don’t care and they have no personalities.  You don’t need 'personality' when you’re confined!

When the animal is either exhausted or fat enough to sell to the food producers, it’s 'move-on' time.  "Goodbye farm" say the animals.  But there's no friendly wave from Mr. Farmer, no love lost when the animal is sold-on.  When the time comes for animals to be 'transferred', they’re shifted like so many shares in a Company’s accounts, a value shifting to a new owner.  

The animal might have been in someone’s care since birth, almost like a child in the family, but at the appointed time it is simply 'let go'.  Sold to the highest bidder, to a new owner.   They’re sold-on without a second thought, transferred to another prison, another person, until they arrive at the World’s End.

On arriving at the Meat Works, the first encounter is the electrified prod, designed to encourage forward movement.  The second introduction is the World’s End itself.  Here is her resting place, for D59.  That’s how we knew her.  She ended her days in a place specifically designed to destroy animals.  She was exchanged for money.  A deal was done. Any care ever shown her is now forgotten.  This animal is abandoned.  Doomed.

To the farmer, it makes more sense NOT to show any tenderness towards 'the animals', promising the children that animals can’t miss what they’ve never had!  The farmer’s children are not encouraged to pet them.  They aren’t toys.  They’re property. They’re valuable inmates to be regarded as serious income.  These animals are our bread and butter!  They’re important machines to be looked after like a valuable car.  You care for a car to keep it running smoothly.  Same with animals?  Well not quite!

Things are different for animals these days.  It’s much, much worse for them.  They are no longer such valuable assets, relatively speaking.  Relative to the money markets. The animal-rearing market is much fiercer today.  The noose is tightening, for unless you are a Big Herd or Big Flock TransNationalist, you won’t survive.  Everything is now mass produced.  Animals are mass confined.  They’re fattened in massive feedlots.  Their egg or milk production has been ruthlessly maximised.  Animals are simply food producing machines or clothing producing machines. 

They are the robots of our age.  Their sole purpose is to produce body tissue or secretions for us. They lay eggs, give milk, make honey, fatten-up 'for market' until they can't produce anymore.  As soon as an animal is no longer economically viable, it can’t justify its keep.  It gets the chop!  Isn’t it charming how the same loving care lavished on animals at birth, is turned off like a tap when they grow older.  And bigger.  And productive.  You’d think it’d be the other way around!!

Animals’ wisdom, vegans’ principle

1175: 

If I went mad tomorrow it would probably be because I tried to find out who was to blame for the mess we’re in at the moment. My madness would come from the same place as yours, as all. Our collective madness comes because we won’t share the blame or point the finger back towards ourselves.

But wait. Isn’t that just another version of the Church’s “We are all sinners”? It occurs to me, whilst still sane enough to know, that judging and blaming can do more damage than bombs.

What’s done is done. It’s best to move on, towards repair. If I choose to go insane because of all this, maybe it’s just a cop out. I refuse to see my madness when I look in the mirror. Out of fear. I run from ME. How much better it would be, to simply take as much blame as you can, and then work out how to repair things. Many people are busy doing just that. They’re the sane ones. They’re the ones who think it’s important to respect the delicate machinery of our own sanity, and who remember just how wonderful this world is. They’re the ones who know what a subtle machine we have, what subtle machines we all are. Designed for repair! Designed for creativity actually, but until we do the repairs, creativity can’t get a footing. Until repairs are made, we don’t have a blank canvas to work on, we have no future to build because we haven’t come to terms with the present. Indeed, we’ve given up on the future. And by giving up we lose sanity. All you can see is true insanity.

But if there’s even a slender chance for repair (to get the machine re-working) then why wouldn’t we give it a go, if we are told, “this might work”?

Our history is black and selfish. Now, repair work is needed. Humans like strength, they like dominating their world, controlling it. Who isn’t impressed by strengths, by winning wars. Our physical and intellectual superiority has led us to believe we can control anything we want. War has decimated so many human lives, but the other kind of war, on animals, has decimated their number, and breeding has refreshed those numbers. If humans are superior it is for their sophisticated husbandry and their total disregard for ethics. In consequence, we are a very unhealthy species devoted to environmental terrorism. The main repair is to their single attitude which says, I am better than you and I deserve a tribute. From this comes separation and acquisition. As it consolidates it creates classes, castes and creeds. For the purposes of keeping everyone controlled by teaching them their place in the hierarchy, which is Society.

Some of us disagree that our betters are better. Nor do we agree to see ‘others’ as inferiors. We respect Nature. Feel sympathy for the animals. And by being able to see each animal as an individual, we can see their irreplaceability, their sovereignty and indeed their simple companionability. In many ways, Nature keeps giving us important clues, and yet we don’t seem to understand Nature’s messages, and it’s galling to admit that Nature is wiser than humans, even that animals are wiser than we humans.

But some humans are waking up to the urgent need for repair. We’ve strayed so far from the natural order that we need to get back ‘home’ to Nature, to where the peace is. And we can learn to do this by observing animals. If we’ve got a lot of repairing to do, and not sure where to start, we can remember one thing. That just about every necessary repair complies with vegan principle.

Meltdown

1174: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

We humans, especially those in the affluent West, have never learnt to grow our own food, at least not enough to feed ourselves.  Even gardeners haven’t really learnt how to deal with the harshness of Nature.  We’ve lived on easy street all our lives, dependant on others to feed us.  Most of our food comes from the supermarket.  Most of the wealthier people eat the worst food, living on fast-food and especially food saturated with animal products.  Much of our food has animal content.  We buy it because it’s quick to prepare and tastes good.  It’s the food we grew up on.  We don’t question the ethics of eating food from dumb animals.  We eat it because we can.  We eat animals because we are 'supreme' and have become a take-what-you-want species.  Humans have access to everything that’s useful and we’re clever enough to use it all.

If animals think anything about us at all and if they could speak, they’d probably say “You are the dumb ones. You're undoing yourselves with your violences and barbarities”.

If there were a major global collapse, most humans would be helpless.  We'd react badly at the prospect of any social destabilisation or shortage of food.  Our collective state of mental health couldn't cope with the idea of such a situation.  Any major collapse would trigger our deepest fears, mainly for ME and MY family. Because, wouldn't we look after our own skin and kin first?   No room for empathy.  Certainly no room for empathising with non-humans.  At this level of meltdown or social crisis, if we are already acting irrationally on full stomachs, imagine how we’d behave hungry?  Perhaps at 11.55, we’d realise it was almost too late.

We have lost touch with Nature.  Even you lucky-to-have-a-garden veggie growers.  The implications of this show up at times of meltdown.  Once started, such crisis times tend to last a while with no clear prospect of  ending, thus causing more panic amongst the people and more 'inward-turning'.  In this modern type of crisis times there’s a strange irony.  One thing in particular we'd probably notice is that animals are capable of surviving far more than easily than us.

Before that eleventh hour comes, we can 'prepare' to 'repair'.  We can prepare to do without certain material comforts and start repairing our food habits.

If I were Gaia I‘d be very nervous right now.  Nervous at the prospect of seven billion hungry and deranged humans, gripped with fear, causing ever more damage and catastrophe.  My alarm bells ring (don't yours?) when I heed (nice word that) heed what we face right now.  I ask myself what the main danger spots would be, especially for me, for you, for the planet.

If I still have my wits about me, I should be able to answer that quite easily.  At the head of the queue, most urgent for repair, is that old friend 'violence', in all its applications.  However, wits or no, I might not wish to see that about me;  that there may be some unsavoury social violence links within my own life.  I might choose NOT to use my wits.  I might be too stunned by what’s going wrong (on so many fronts - all at once) that I can’t think straight.  Especially about repair.  I’m so afraid.  I’m immobilised.  I’m shit-scared to future-look.  So much has gone awry and I can’t do anything about any of it, let alone ALL of it!  I’m a victim of my circumstances.  I feel helpless.

To a very great extent, that’s how many people probably feel.  But once you’re Vegan, that fear largely disappears.  It’s likely that once we stop using meat (and all the other many products from animals) we develop enough self-discipline to bypass our worst fears and cravings.  Once we’re no longer paid-up members of the Animal Bashers Union and no longer supporters of the gratuitously violent Animal Industries,

we can see clearly.  THEN we can draw energy from repair.   

Repairers (once they become Vegan) see it clearly enough.  Our human problems stem from the damage we’ve brought about.  There's one gigantic human conscience haunting our lives.  The human either listens or ignores Conscience.  Repairers act and try to do something about it.  Non-repairers do pretty much nothing.  They’ve largely given up.

You may reckon that Vegans are pretty smug.  Got all the answers.  Really?  Yes, in one way.  Smug or not, Vegans hit on one simple and supremely intelligent answer - We don’t DO animals!

We don’t screw them and we feel better for it!  

You could say that we’ve stumbled onto the truth of non-violence.  You could say it in one word - 'empathy'.  Vegans want to communicate that more than anything.  Empathy helps us consider others and consider how we might impact upon them.  Hopefully Vegans have glimpsed one of the important corners of the bigger picture.  If we face human-made danger, it’s because some of us (not all of us) have caused it.  We’ve been found out, looking after our own interests, and not looking after the greater good.

To use a shipping analogy:  The great ship of Society is sailing towards rocks.  It hits a reef and begins to leak.  It needs running repairs to avoid sinking.  The 'little matter' of steering this huge ship away from the rocks is going to be difficult.  Just the steering is difficult.  Hard to port 180 degrees!

The ship is taking on water!  There’s panic!  The atmosphere on-board isn’t good.  Where’s the energy and creativity when you need it?

"PANIC!"  

Our conscience burdened shipmates are all at sea.  They don’t have any idea of how to fix things.  It’s suddenly got out of hand.  It’s all going spectacularly wrong.

We need urgent running repairs or we’ll sink!  But everybody is transfixed by the gashing rocks below and frozen with fear.  The ship is getting heavier.  Disaster is inevitable.  "Rescue ... unlikely" they mumble as they pace the decks.  "Should we jump?"   "Should we GIVE UP?"

With animal cruelty being such a deeply ingrained 'acceptability' in our society, we don’t see the danger-rocks ahead until we hit them, by which time it’s almost too late.  It's almost over.  The rocks - our potential end and our Planet's end.  Feel helpless?  Feel overwhelmed by the scale of it all?  There’s so much in need of repair.  The gash in the side of the hull is very deep.  All we can do is sit down, have a cup of tea and watch Society founder.           

Vegan Principle suggests a way out of this.  An idea for steering away from the rocks.  It’s so simple it almost defies belief.   In the 'ship' analogy, we stuff as many oilcloths as possible into the gash to stem the flow and then steer hard away from the rocks. The ship is saved!

To repair the accumulated damage that humans have caused, whether it’s damage to oneself, to friends, to animals or to the planet, Vegan Principle is the repair kit.  The first aid kit.  It forewarns of dangers and suggests repairs.

As advocates of Veganism, we place our boycott on violence, especially the violence used in obtaining 'farm produce'.  It's a two-for-the-price-of-one solution.  An end to crap food as well as crap behaviour.  Veganism means non-violence that is energy and intelligence combined.  It can enable us to do some amount of worthwhile repair every day.  And surely the physical world we live in and the relationship world we share with our fellow sentients are both in need of much repair. 

Human attitude towards those life forms we have so badly abused in the past is our biggest embarrassment.  It speaks, deep down, of our need for the egalitarian.

I’m drawing a line here, but if Veganism stands for nothing else, it stands for the end of 'separation' and for the growth of 'equality' feelings.  It specifically stands against the nasty idea of 'species-domination'.  The principle opposes the idea of doing things for self benefit alone.  It also speaks to other interrelated problem areas like Third World malnutrition, extravagant lifestyle addictions and the use of animal slavery just to benefit - ME!

Whether it’s our own problems or problems that others need help with in order to effect their own repairs, it comes down to empathy.  Humans are crazy to think they can turn a blind eye.  Crazy if they think they deserve to enjoy a slack code of conduct.  Our sense of responsibility and conscience have been so shamefully neglected, that it’s come down to a bunch of self-righteous Vegans to show how things can be tightened up and to point out the damage we've caused - ALL of us.   No choice really.  Start repair.  Repairs can be fun and they can take place during a storm even as we face 'meltdown'.   

In time

1173: 

In time we’ll realise what we’ve done. We’ll treat all animals with as much dignity as we do our own children and companion animals.

Just as environmental consciousness has sprung out of a concern for the planet, so a plant-based diet will spring out of our concern for animals as well as our own health. As empathy grows with the spread of information, as non-violent solutions to our problems begin to make sense, so entrenched attitudes will inevitably shift. And as time goes by, as this shift takes place, we’ll forget why humans once ate animals. The word ‘veganism’ will by then be long-since redundant, since plant-based eating will be the normal (read ‘intelligent’) thing to do.

Time is the great healer. I hope. I hope time-passing will help us atone for what we’ve done to them. History will record what happened to animals, and later report on their rehabilitation, in sanctuaries. But the big date in the history of our times will be the day the law was passed, where it became illegal to breed animals. “The very idea of interfering with another species’ breeding cycles, let alone imprisoning them! As unthinkable as Dr. Mengele’s experiments on humans, in Nazi Germany”.

         

When humans become animal guardians, both humans and everything else will find peace.

I just hope to hell the animals will be able to forgive us.

Farm animals

  

1172: 

A farm animal, and the peaceful cow in particular, is a victim of many abuses carried out behind the scenes.  I’ve seen what goes on, and can see till I’m blue in the face, but I’m helpless to intervene.  It’s not much different to a child watching Mum being raped, and being too small to stop it.  Only to feel concern.

My concern and your concern is all we have.  This is a world set against animals (and of course lots of other things).  Our concern is our only powerhouse.  Distress and hatred, anger and judgement won’t help us, and they certainly won’t help any locked up animals.  They are simply regarded as the property of their ‘owners’, who are allowed to do with them as they please.

Humans are naturally empathetic, but empathy gets diverted from helpless-animal to the more human-centred concerns.  The environment, climate, pollution, planet itself, anything but the ‘dumb creatures’ who’re banged up by the billion, on farms.

My concern wants to be syphoned off into world-peace and world-hunger issues - issues not unworthy of our concern.  And concern there might be, aplenty.  We can afford an abundance of it, because these issues aren’t touching our lives quite so immediately or directly.  They’re not greatly affecting our own lives.  Whereas us all doing at least four-times-a-day feeding, we face the animal thing.  And it’s too close for comfort. It’s so close to our food habits, which is why ‘animal matters’ are binned.   We strive to keep them hidden from our concerned minds.  For fear of certain stories, about animal exploitation, affecting our minds.  The real concern here is for ME.  It’s ME who reflects badly on those stories. Each one of us who spends any money whatsoever, buying the very products which help to keep cows in prison, each of us is in some way financing the ‘animal prison’.  And we do NOT want to know that. We collectively put our heads in the sand, saying, ‘Animals’ are just too messy to think about.

         

The bottom line is that all animals live in the most appalling conditions, and they all face a grisly death.  And we, the consumer, have effectively hired the killers, since none of us have the guts to do the deed ourselves.

An animal’s destiny is so preordained by the human, their fate so inevitable, that for them there’s no salvation.  I just hope they don’t premeditate what’s coming their way, soon.   

Humans who eat animals think they can get away with it.  But at the abattoir, it’s likely the adrenalin rushing through an animal’s body, during their greatest point of terror, saturates into the animal’s body tissue.  It makes their flesh toxic, and those who eat it ending up poisoned by it.  It’s not unlikely that most of our worst illnesses are linked to ingesting so much of this chemical in our food, which has so frighteningly weakened our immune systems.  And so the worm turns: if we hurt them, they have a way of damaging us.  If we kill them, they kill us.  That’s justice for you!

The Spoilt Brat

1171: 

Everyone and everything wants a life, but humans deny domesticated animals just that.  And by the way, they also deny them affection, and we do nothing to ease the pain of their terrible deaths.

         

If we humans can’t see the wrongness in any of this, there’s probably a reason - it’s likely that we’ve learnt to bypass our guilt because of our strong urge, as members of our society, to conform.  If we didn’t conform, there’d be anarchy and insecurity.

But on the matter of what we put in our mouths, we should all be more circumspect.  We trust the food manufacturers and rarely ask what they are putting into their foods.  We accept what we’re told, that their food is safe. And then there’s the ethical question - whether we should be eating products from enslaved animals.

Don’t go looking to Society for answers. Farm animals have been stitched up by humans - we’ve made special laws that outlaw cruelty to dogs and cats but which makes it okay to abuse ‘food-animals’.  Farmers can’t be punished for what they do to them and consumers aren’t doing anything illegal by sponsoring the farms.  If the law is on our side, so too is there a psychological safety in numbers - we all take part in the abuse, we all spend our money on Animal Industry products. When we’ve been doing the same thing all our lives, and see everyone else doing the same, we don’t question what we are doing, how we are living.

Our failsafe in all this is supposed to be our own personal ethics, conscience and intelligence.  Supposedly these functions stop us in our tracks, and urge us to start questioning.  But our cravings and senses push us on. They tug at us like any temptation, “I really, really want ... those shoes, that steak, that chocolate”. Which is why the Animal Industries do so well out of us.  They play on our ‘temptatious-ness’, and thus keep themselves in business.

What it boils down to is this: they can continue attacking animals without fear of the law or fear of causing public concern. It seems that we humans may attack animals as we wish - animals can never pose any direct threat to us. And if they can’t retaliate, there’s no reason why we can’t exploit them up to the hilt.  After all, animals were ‘put here’ for us to use!

Animals make profits for farmers, drug company, wholesalers and retailers.  As a society, we allow the Industry to shaft the animals because it pleases us to do so.  Our protective gene is switched off, and a new belief creed begins to ring true -indifference. Saying,  “Animals don’t have the sort of feelings that we humans do”,  suggesting animals are no different to machines. And as machines, we don’t have to feel anything for them.  They aren’t like our pets at home.  They MUST have no feelings like that.

There would be big trouble if we treated our dogs as we do pigs.  If we did to our cat what we do our hens.  The RSPCA would get involved.  They’d make sure enough TV cameras were rolling, to expose us.  

It’s not-okay to hurt cats. Stories of ‘cruelty to cats’ usually make big news, but what about ‘cruelty to farm animals’? What is the difference between a mistreated dog and a mistreated cow?  Why aren’t we interested in the cow’s emotional wellbeing?  Why don’t we care about a hen’s health, unless it affects her ‘egg production’?  And more to the point, why aren’t we concerned for ourselves, for what we are getting ourselves involved with?  Why can’t we make the connection between the numbing of our collective conscience and our present fall from grace?  Why do we do these terrible things to animals, and all for such slim pickings?  Are we looking at a spoilt-brat attitude, that insists that, “I must have milk on my corn flakes, or it just be right”. 

Farms and Labs

1170 : 

We’ve been brought up to see animal-farms as romantic or at least useful places.  And, heaven-forbid, the same goes for animal research labs.  As a community we seem to value the work of farmers and scientists who ‘work with animals’.  Consumers, along with factory farmers and vivisectors, are becoming increasingly desensitised to the suffering of animals, especially when they can be so useful.  For instance, consumers let themselves be persuaded that an animal laboratory is a benign place, and that researching, using animals as models, is acceptable.  They allow themselves to believe that pharmaceuticals are produced to make our lives safer.  As pharmacy customers, we want to know nothing about what goes on behind the scenes in those animal-testing labs.

The consumer would rather not know, because it’s difficult enough to avoid feeling ashamed about eating food-from-farmed-animals, let alone taking drugs that have been safety-tested-on-lab-animals.  So, this whole subject is ignored. And truth is not relevant.

But to the animals it’s very relevant.

Cow prisons

1169: 

Why should we care about cows living on prison farms?  Surely cows are the living example of how we’ve made a machine out of Mother Nature.  We’ve harnessed Nature to supply our needs, and insured our survival by having so many animals ‘on tap’.  Consequently we can guarantee our major food supplies.  We’ve achieved this by using our brains.

         

Again, it’s illustrated best by the use of the cow.  With our useful knowledge of the biology of this animal, we’ve taken control of her, body and soul.  Keeping a cow as a milk-producing machine involves forcibly impregnating her, letting her carry a calf to term, and letting that biological process stimulate her mammary glands to produce maximum milk.  And this milk is for us only. So it makes sense to dispose of the newly birthed calf, in order not to have to share this valuable milk.  This is the perfect example of slavery.

Certainly in Nature terrible things are known to happen between creatures, but everything done by the predator to the predated is part of the natural world.  But there’s nothing ‘natural-world’ about farming cows or any other animal.  They are enslaved, shut up in cages, enclosed by concrete walls, in constant contact with hard steel, and attended by cold hearted humans.  There’s nothing natural about them being made captive, being used up and then being coldly executed, when the human is finished with them.

         

Something in our finely developed human instinct should tell us this is profoundly wrong.  But for most of us, our empathy-instinct is cauterised, and what we find acceptable has been manipulated, so we see no wrong in the way animals are used by us. 

Milk

1168: 

Today, many people are beginning to realise that cow’s milk is not nutritionally essential, and even that it’s unhealthy.  Because there are thousands of different products made with it, almost everyone still continues to buy it, or foods that contain it.

There’s a tendency for we humans to insist on getting what we want.  Perhaps it’s a ‘dominant species’ thing - we want it and prefer to get it without a struggle.  Take milk, for example.  It is legal, cheap (subsidised) and plentiful.  It is therefore the favourite ingredient of many food manufacturers.  It is a truly struggle-free product.  Fresh supplies are available everywhere. We go no further than the nearest corner shop to get our milk supply.  As consumers, we can’t contemplate drinking tea or coffee without it.  Everyone has a carton of it in their fridge.  There isn’t a more prevalent consumer item on the market, and therefore milk is a guaranteed money spinner for the Industry.  They’ve turned it into something as natural and available as fresh air.  They say it’s essential to human life.  Its use has become part of an entrenched consumer habit.

         

We forget that whenever we buy milk, we are helping to finance cow prisons. 

Economics of Farms

1167: 

Perhaps humans have no sadistic need to harm animals for the sake of it.  It’s just that economics dictates how we keep them whilst alive, and how we bring them to their deaths.  We do what we have to do, to get what we want from them, without spending too much money.  Since the world is a very competitive place, it all has to be done at low cost.  Those with lowest ethical standards set the benchmark.  For example, take the matter of producing eggs.

‘Cage-eggs’ are cheap, so every egg farmer in the world must cage their hens or risk going out of  business.  It’s the same with all commodities.  If milk is cheaper to ship in from overseas then the retailer will buy it from there, and Australian dairy farmers eat your heart out!

To take (her) milk and sell it for a profit (our profit), a cow must be cheap to keep.  Oceans of milk, produced at minimum cost, supply the maximum numbers of consumers.  And it’s the same with all farm-animal produce.  We want huge amounts of it, and if the animals have to live in slum conditions and eventually be put to death, well, so be it.

It’s unusual in our society to be compassionate enough to refuse to be party to harming these animals.  In our culture, we are so used to animal products that to voluntarily deny ourselves of them seems absurd.  In our culture, we consider animal cuisine an art form.  The appreciation of animal food is greater still if we think it makes us strong.  For most brainwashed omnivores, it’s unimaginable to deny oneself any of what is available in shops, simply because these products are said to be unhealthy or represent human cruelty to animals.

And likewise, omnivores can’t imagine animal products being satisfactorily replaced by plant-based products.  They just don’t believe it’s possible.  And because they can’t imagine it (whereas of course vegans can) they continue to demand ever more animal product and, in consequence, condone farming practices and the way in which these animals are deprived of living a happy life.

Animals wild and enslaved

1166: 

If an animal is wild (and not regarded as a pest to humans) we study them, marvel at them, protect them, although sometimes we hunt them.  But if an animal is docile and edible or can make useful products for us, then we put them in cages, and keep them ‘on tap’ for our use.  These fall into the ‘domesticated-animal’ category.

They are kept behind bars.  They are put into service.  Escape is out of the question and even their bodily movements are restricted.  We take these animals very seriously indeed because they aren’t meant for entertainment but for food and clothing.  These animals play an important part in human-lifestyle.  It follows then, that if an animal is not for cuddling or admiring it must be enslaved and imprisoned.

The human tries not to get too close to these particular animals, since they’re always heading towards being executed, when they’re either big enough or exhausted enough.  We can’t get too friendly if we’re eventually going to make them unhappy (about their journey to the abattoir).  Their happiness is the last thing we need to be concerned about, when we’ve got them banged up in prison.  When the time is ripe, when they arrive at their unhappy last day, perhaps they at least know their suffering will end.  Their lives are to be ended and their feelings traumatised, but perhaps it’s a blesséd relief to be free from having humans torturing them.

          

Companion animals and the fate of others

1165: 

Our attitude to animals in general is a paradox.  It’s curious how we humans can be close to our cats and dogs, even sometimes closer than with our human companions.  We might do everything for our cats and dogs, to make their lives happy, despite the fact they only offer us companionship (‘only’!) and produce no useful products for our use.  We call them pets or companion animals and place great value on them.

Mind you, when they’re no longer able to fulfil their role as ‘companions’ they too may be shot, well, ‘shot’ full of lethal chemicals to ‘put them to sleep’, anyway.  But when they’re alive, living with us as working companions, we often try to give them the very best.  We give them love, food, shelter and expensive medical care.

         

But not so other animals, who are valued not as companions but as property and often as edible property, at that.  These animals enjoy no quality of life whatsoever; jailed for their whole life and, in fact, a life of perpetual torture.

The cow

1164: 

Humans will manipulate anything to gain personal advantage.  We exploit resources to strengthen and protect ourselves, and especially when there’s no danger in it for us (like when we use captive animals).  Our advantage-taking, inspired by slavery, allows much of our food and clothing to be taken from animals.  By putting animals to work for us, whole livelihoods can be provided.  We put them to work for us because we can, because there are no negative repercussions. (Or so we think!)

         

Take the cow for instance.  We steal her milk. She is the victim of theft and assault on a daily basis.  Her fate is in the hands of those humans who want to get 20-40 litres of milk from her every day.  The new-born is pushed aside so that we can get the milk.  We’ve always stolen it, and now we hardly notice it, and see no reason to stop doing it.

On the farm, the calf is dispatched as quickly as possible, having served its chief purpose in embryo, as a foetus.  Having stimulated its mother’s mammary glands to produce huge quantities of milk, there’s no point in extending the calf’s life.  Often, calves are shot on day one.  One or two female calves (of the five or six calves born to a cow) are sent to ‘calf prison’, until they’re ready for dairy duties, or for fattening purposes.

         

It’s a sad thought, that we abuse such a peaceful creature.  Anthropomorphically, we can guess that both cow and calf are not too happy about this.  But it’s legal. There’s not much anyone can do about it.  The milk is marketed, profits made, the cow enslaved.

Are people unhappy about this?  Are they ashamed?  Not exactly, because most people have never even thought about it, or if they have they’ve chosen to ignore it.  The dairy section of the supermarket is full of products we like and would have considerable trouble giving up.  We even believe that the milk content of foods is good for us.  We’ve been nicely brainwashed.  Our desensitisation has reached the point where considering ‘the rights and wrongs of dairy farming’ has never entered our heads. 

I’m from a dangerous species

1163:

We fear losing our freedom and our position at the top of the food chain.  To prevent this loss we acquire power, build up stocks of money, exploit resources, and that includes animals. Anything to make us feel more secure.  And if I can get to the top of the pile, I will.  Money is my main security-in-life.

I’m careful with money ... but not so careful elsewhere.  I’m willing to be clumsy and cruel.  I’ll push you aside if you’re in my way.  I’ll exploit you if you happen to be useful to me.  I don’t care if I damage the environment or hurt the feelings of an animal, if it can get me what I want to make me feel safe.  In my quest for security I’m willing to squash my sensitivity and put on my hard skin of pragmatism.  I have no qualms about adopting a coldness of heart if it can get me what I want.

I’ll desensitise even further, until all traces of compassion and imagination are gone.  That’s when I’m ready to take on the animals and exploit the bejesus out of them.  I’m from a dangerous species.

Milk - what is it?

1162:

Milk is a big issue, but it’s not often talked about. It is not a subject for discussion. It nutritive values have been overblown and it’s nutritive dangers hardly ever mentioned. Nor is it mentioned, the mechanical sucking of milk from cow’s udders nor the killing of baby calves, who otherwise would have access to the udder.

The cow herself is regarded as a machine for making milk. The quality of her life is never considered. The substance from cows is valued, the cow’s life is not valued, unless by vegans. We’re very happy to talk about it, notably that empathy for cows seems to be largely switched off.

If we do think about the cow’s situation, if we can feel any empathy for her, then we can guess how she feels - for instance, when her calf is taken away. Anthropomorphically-speaking, we can guess how the cow is feeling, being connected up to a machine twice a day, made to feel powerless, being forcibly   inseminated leading to a birth. Then she has her offspring taken away. 

         

Loss of freedom is inimical to all wild creatures, and humans too. Once we grant animals their freedom, as in no longer making use of them, and once they are being looked after in sanctuaries, then, perhaps, we can restore relations with them. And however it is, when we’re with them, as long as we aren’t violating them or disregarding them or treating them as if they were inferior, then we’re on the road to repair and atonement. And then, once again, we can enjoy being close to them.

         

It’s just this very human trait of wanting-to-be-close. The buzz we get from animals is not so very different from the buzz we get from kids. Unfortunately, some people are not familiar with that sort of closeness. To them animals mean very little. They see them as objects, certainly not as equals. They’re there to be exploited. An attitude like that, amongst 6 billion milk drinkers from 300,000 cows, all over the world, puts cows in a parlous position. The only thing that will save cows from their horrible treatment is for a shift in attitude amongst the milk-drinkers. 

Harm an animal? Are you mad?

1161:

Most of us associate our happiest memories of childhood spent in the company of animals - being with them can be exquisitely satisfying.

Whether they’re pets or wild or living on farms, we might have known them, fed them, cared for them, helped them in trouble.  And that’s how it still is, at least amongst some vegans.

Advocating for ten billion captives, in our capacity as slave-liberators or rescuers, most of us are doing what we can - for animals.  We expect no thanks from them.  If I do ‘do’ for them, I’ll get no more than a friendly dog-nuzzle, and substantially less from the cat!  These noble entities are beyond the confines of  good manners. It’s up to us to understand their language. And it’s more vibratory than vocal.  And it isn’t morally proscribed. So, we don’t value animals for their manners but for (radiating) something else we find invaluable. What do they give back? (and don’t say ‘love’).

Perhaps animals transmit something which isn’t easy to describe, but whatever it is, that same ‘something’ is transmitted by us too.

If I do something fine, I don’t need to make a song and dance about it.  It’s the stuff of life, or put another way, it is the altruist and ‘altruee’ being involved with each other.  The beloved is being loved, the giver approaches the receiver, the active connects with the passive - it’s a sort of momentary symbiosis.  It lets us be as close as we need to be, even just momentarily, for the purpose in hand.

At best, there’s a moment of harmony between myself and another living entity.  There’s nothing to discuss with them - it’s all been said in a micro-moment.  So, my point is that we don’t need to understand each other to be able to communicate.  We don’t need to comprehend animals. We just need to interact with them ... in a symbiotic way.

At any moment, there can be a partnering, them with us and we with them.  And at that moment, there’s that point of contact, where ‘something’ is reached. It might be a moment in the actual presence of an animal. It might be a moment when we’re simply thinking of them, empathetically. 

If there’s a possibility of human-connection-with-animal, then there’s no possible reason or excuse to harm them.

Humans, doing what we’re good at

1160: 

Humans are a paradox when dealing with ‘underlings’. We’re capable of love and yet capable of the most cynical pragmatism imaginable. We sometimes take great care of our fellow humans, who are less fortunate than ourselves, but that same caring doesn’t extend to non-humans. It always ends up with some level of exploitation.

We have a very inconsistent relationship with animals.  Some we push down into hell (at one moment) and others we love to heaven (the next moment). But all of them are exploited in some way - our motive being to look after them, to make them more useful to us. And yes, our treatment of them can be mixed with affection. But most animals we use without compunction, and when used, we kill them in a brutal act of violence and betrayal.

At heart, humans are not natural tormentors, we’re much better at alleviating pain. We like making life smoother for others. We can be very good to our neighbours and especially good to the vulnerable people we meet, not just out of kindness but because we’re fascinated by them. And instinctively we want to be useful to them.

Humans can be very caring for ‘the other’, whether it’s an ecosystem, a needy person or an animal. We get involved in ‘foreign causes’ and we do it, to some extent, out of kindness, but mainly we do it because it’s interesting, it’s challenging and it’s about solving a problem somewhere. That’s the allure.

Part of the challenge is that we mostly enjoy the chance to observe something that’s not immediately understandable. In this way we might reckon to get closer to other fascinating consciousnesses. Perhaps we’re all pretty good at doing this, and never more so than when we’re  observing companion animals.

Now, since I personally like having company, I try to be a good companion-animal myself - closeness is my main motive, my main satisfaction. I like to be a good looker-afterer. It’s fun to exercise the skill, on either a great or small level. It’s most fun when you’re being useful. And if we could get over expecting thanks and come to appreciate what we can do - just the fact that we’re capable of being useful should be enough for us, for complete happiness.

So, why do we want anything more? But we do. We ALL do! We are so needy ... which brings us back to the animals. They ‘let’ us indulge in all sorts of things. From them come the main resources - mainly by way of food ingredients. Animals provide for humans very generously (!!!), anything from delicious foods, to being handy research tools, to serving us as our companions (like dogs being our excuse to do some exercise by walking them). We’re entertained by them, shod by them, and warmed by them. The animals give it all.

Animals are a most reliable resource. They’re vulnerable and supremely available. They’re guaranteed to satisfy our needs ... but that means we’ve got a slight relationship problem. Imagine cooking your faithful pet dog when he was plump enough for the pot. Our connection with certain (useful) animals, forces us to turn away from having any sort of loving relationship with them. We can then enter into a contemptuous relationship, in order to make full use of them. Humans have built whole industries out of them, reducing them to mere foodstuffs or commodities.

For most of us, we don’t rely on animals for our livelihood, we just eat them. And that in itself is an anomaly, because we don’t need to; we kill them as food because we don’t know how else to feed ourselves (although of course, we do!!). We don’t kill animals out of hatred but because we are locked into a process, and this feeding-clothing process accompanies us throughout life. It starts at the abattoir and continues to butcher, to shopkeeper and to consumer. The processing of animals is a habit that humans are locked into. And on the face of it, it hasn’t been very well thought-out.

Take food as the prime example: meat-eating is automatic, learned, and goes largely unquestioned. Whereas, once a person starts to think for themselves about it, they start to move towards becoming vegan. As people move in that direction (via vegetarianism usually) they turn away from an ugly abattoir-inspired world and into another world entirely. They transit into a wiped-clean world that is initially inspired by a plant-based diet. Ideally, it goes that way mainly because we want to enjoy a more benign relationship with the animal kingdom.

It’s All About Empathy

1159:

Edited by CJ Tointon

Altruism is concerned with possibilities and opportunities, for ourselves and of course in the traditional sense of the word, for others.  Altruism should be 50% about being selfless and 50% about being selfish.  Selfishly we might need to fight for a cause to give our life meaning and selflessly we might just want to help.  By pouring our energy (altruistically) into a great cause, we significantly participate in the big issues which concern our age.  For Animal Rights activists, there’s great satisfaction in being part of one of the main great causes of our day, namely the liberation of animals.

When we’re aware of our own altruism (like parents can be with their kids) even if it’s only by not being so self-interested, it acts as a strengthener.   At home, where perhaps we’re dealing with elderly parents or bringing up small children, altruism is always close at hand.  We gain a certain type of energy from what we do.  Extra energy.  And with it, we go beyond the home, beyond personal interest.  In some cases we find ourselves working for other people, sometimes for other species, sometimes just for ideas.  Animal Rights is one of the great causes, lining up with planet care, social justice and the fight for 'right to life'.

Many people divide up their stocks of altruism between personal matters and world matters so the energy has to be pretty much guaranteed.  When you start a thing, you’ve got to know you can carry on.  Energy for this comes out of  our - what?  Perhaps our empathetic enthusiasms?

For us, as humans, empathy is our forte.  We can feel almost as much for the losses of others as we can for our own losses.  Humans are often drawn to compassion when they see suffering and death, especially amongst children.  To know that kids are needlessly dying is heartbreaking.  But  exploited animals are needlessly dying too!   All animals have a 'right to life'.  But it seems that billions of them have their lives prematurely ended, not from starvation, but from execution.

As with kids who die of malnutrition and treatable illnesses, farm animals are dying young;  but they are then slaughtered.  The scene of a baby animal being brutally murdered is the stuff of true evil - in anyone’s book.  But it happens.  They do it.  And we do it just as culpably when we sponsor the Animal Industries - in any way.

When kids die, it’s sad.  When an animal dies, we don’t feel quite the same way. We shed no tears if it’s another sort of kid dying - the baby goat having its throat cut, or a young sheep or a calf or a hen.

As it is for children so it is for animals.  Destruction of life is why great causes spring up.  They intend to end the killing.  

For Vegans, empathy for the killers (our fellow man) is much the same sort of empathy we feel for the dying and the doomed, the incarcerated and those being made to suffer.

The ability to cause suffering, purposely and carelessly, whether it’s denying kids food or caging and killing animals, is the opposite of empathy.  In fact it’s full-on separation.

When we’re separate, we’re far removed from the other.  Separation allows us to alienate, exploit and kill.  It allows us to fire bullets at the enemy in war.  When we humans turn against each other, there’s a feeling of warlike separation between us.  But when we turn against animals, it’s worse than separation.  We have no cause.  We have no grudge to bear against them as individuals.  We bear them no malice.  What we do to them is simply murder-for-gain.  It’s the coldest form of separation and like all the great destructive forces on our planet at present, we know it best as 'enslavement' or 'slavery'.

Maintaining this sort of relationship with animals can't be good for us.  Try seeing it from the animals point of view!  We humans exercise power over them, unashamedly. We grant them No Rights only the 'privilege' of staying alive long enough to be productive for us.  And isn't that about the most cynical foundation for a relationship you can imagine?

Is there any better reason to pack up the crap in the fridge, chuck it out, and Go Vegan?

We don’t need to understand animals

1158: 

When I come across people who are different from me, I either alienate them because I fear them or I make an effort to get close to them. It’s the same when I’m meeting animals.

With people, they may remain a mystery for some time but their differences, if not threatening, become points of interest. Maybe, at first, I don’t understand them, but do I need to? The more differences others have, the more they ‘bring me out of my shell’. The more I can learn from them, about how they operate and how they see the world, the more interesting they seem to be.

         

I think that learning by observing differences, instead of wanting similarities, builds relationship. There’s no hint of expectation.  And that applies not just between fellow humans, but with animals too.

Who hasn’t wanted to be close to a creature? You might not understand them but aren’t they always fascinating? Who hasn’t learnt from them and wanted to understand them better?

But surely the question is, why should one even want to understand them? Surely we want to be close to them, as you do with cats and dogs.  Perhaps they with us too? Even with strangers? Everybody knows the feeling you get, whether you’re one year old or a hundred – the way they are so easily intimate with us. We want to get close to them. But there’s no need for us to understand them any more than they need to understand us. 

The human connection with animals isn’t just being near an animal, but getting them to like us and trust us. We want to be friends, indeed it could be said that for many people, some of their best friends are animals.

But more importantly, it’s the empathy most of us humans feel, a protective feeling towards them. Animals, especially when in danger, bring out the guardian in us.

So when you see any animal distressed it’s heartbreaking, especially when it’s caged, penned, tied up or enclosed. It brings me out in a claustrophobic rash. It might bring us out in an ‘empathy flush’. It might get you hot under the collar. All I can say is that captive animals make me feel empathetically-ill. But it doesn’t have that effect on many others (otherwise they’d be vegan, of course!). But these ‘others’, even if not particularly ‘animal-y people’, even if they eat them, they don’t necessarily want to make an enemy of animals. But somehow, they have to repress their guardian nature because they can’t conceive of life without animal content. And there doesn’t seem to be any direct danger from using them, since we know that animals are less powerful than us and can’t defend themselves.

That contradicts natural instinct that makes any of us want to look out for them. Humans are natural protectors. Almost no one is capable of hurting an animal, any more than they’d be able to harm a child. As protectors, we humans do it well. We like being involved. We’re not that much different in that respect to animals. They like being with one another (and maybe also with the humans they’re close to). As it is with dogs. With thousands of years of being-close-to-humans, they’re good at it. In fact dogs are renowned for being protective of their youngsters, loyal to ‘their humans’, and with humans in general, they’re often loyal and irrepressibly friendly.

Perhaps we know less about the other animals, since we’re seldom living with animals unless they’re cats or dogs. But all animals, amongst themselves are protective of their young and act for their wellbeing. They, like us, have an altruistic trait. Maybe it’s a bit different in animals, but in humans, altruism is one of our main talents. It often springs out of us, instinctively.

But there’s another element in humans that animals don’t experience; we ‘do’ altruism. They don’t ‘do’ it, neither intellectually nor by design, whereas we do. Altruism in humans is (but not always) a reflection - “oh, wouldn’t it be great if I were altruistic, not just for my kids and family, but altruistic out of a love of fun and being constructive”.

And that, I think, is how Animal Rights advocates feel; they want to bring that altruistic side out in themselves. They want to step beyond self interest in order to attend the urgent needs of those animals who are part of a vast enslaved population. We try to empathise with both animals and the humans who are still eating them. We certainly don’t need to understand either humans or animals in order to advocate for animals, but in our attempt to wake up our fellow humans and in our work to protect the rights of animals, we can have fun doing that, as well as perform a constructive function.