Animal ‘use’ is always abuse

1207: 

If we aren’t ready to move on, towards being vegan, we must settle for being lumped in with the meat heads - if we’re animal consumers we can’t condemn their abuse.  If you don’t eat meat but still use animal by-products, you’re still involved in the same level of cruelty*.  Look at egg-laying hens, for example, and what they have to suffer: eating eggs condones their suffering.  Even if ‘free-range’, we still condone their eventual execution in the most unimaginably cruel conditions. (*Reading this back, I don’t think there’s any other way of putting this, even though anyone who is NOT vegan will probably react badly to what I’ve said.  But it still needs to be said and I doubt if anyone could suggest that it’s not true).

If you’re not vegan you can hardly become an advocate for animal rights, unless you don’t mind being thought of as being hypocritical.  By the same token, the onus is on vegans to take up animal-advocacy and that means being squeaky clean ourselves - it all comes down to this: if you can’t buy cruelty-free you shouldn’t buy at all.

If you aren’t vegan you can’t play a meaningful part in animal liberation, let alone the awakening of non-violent consciousness.

If you’re a kind and gentle person but have had to rule yourself out of the ‘liberation process’, you might feel marooned without any meaning left in life, simply because you continue to act against your own best instincts, as if you are subservient to The System.

If we can’t leave animal food alone and if we’re unable to condemn it because we also condone it, we’re effectively hand-tied.  Most people are still falling into the arms of what they know best, the-traditional-way, the common practice.  It leaves us without any escape, without any realistic future prospect of being able to expound on how the future should be.  We can only  divert ourselves with entertainment and eating.

The energy expended on seeking pleasure could be used to help end waste and cruelty.  But by doggedly remaining an omnivore, we block any better source of satisfaction.  If we don’t advocate for animals (and we at least owe them that!) we’re effectively taking the part of ‘gaoler’.  We exchange ethics for enjoyment.  We retreat into the juvenile state, forever searching for fun, which is a poor substitute for meaningful, passionate and ethical activity.

Imagine then, at the end of each day, having a different sort of feeling - a feeling that we couldn’t have done better with our day, not only by lessening our carbon footprint but also by doing whatever we can to minimise harm.