All Animals are Individual and Irreplaceable

1244: 

There are many issues competing for public attention today - global warming, environment, hunger, ethics - and each is significant, and any one of them shouldn’t be sidelined.  But it’s because ‘animal rights’ HAS been sidelined, things need evening-up.

There is this key attitude, affecting all of us - the routine way we make use of animals and think it's all-okay.  As soon as we make that a central attitude change, we’ll stop being brutes and start being civilised.  And with that transition, problems will start to appear far less intractable.  Even the Goliath of animal-abuse is approachable when you're with others and can work with them for repair.  Being around sensitive people with our consciences in sync, aligned similarly.  It's optimism-producing.

Apart from knocking around with much more gently-disposed animal activists, there’s a personal bonus, of relatively good health - allowing us to work hard without suffering all those tedious chronic conditions that plague omnivores.  With good company and moderately healthy bodies, we can enjoy helping to transform our total environment back to its less damaged state.

I think animal advocates should, as their first priority, aim at attitude - if that doesn't change nothing else can.  Attitudes concerning animals lock one into impossible confusion.  As it stands at present, there are many (even vegan)‘simpaticos’ who, nevertheless, find themselves between a rock and a hard place.  They love animals, and show it by the way they treat their dogs and cats.  They show it by not-eating animals.  But their love of animals leads them to becoming rescuers and then ‘owners’ of animals and therefore purchasers of meat.  If not for themselves, then at their behest, they are unwilling supporters of the Animal Industry.  In other words, they can’t support the idea of abolition.

 Unless we address ALL the issues concerning animal-use and abuse, there are too many inconsistencies.  We look almost-sure of our arguments, but never completely convincing because there are too many double standards.  The Animal Rights Movement doesn’t seem to be picking up speed.  Perhaps we are fiddling at the edges of the animal-use problem, for fear of it showing us something too deep to handle.  We know about ‘abolition’ but aren’t yet sure if there can be any exceptions.  In other words, most people, vegan or not, are not free enough to stand behind the Abolitionist cause.