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.