1305:
Why would anyone join up with
an Animal Rights movement? To save the animals perhaps? Or is there another
reason, like peace of mind? If that’s the case, then perhaps I’m in it just as
much for my own sake as for the sake of some anonymous animals for whom,
individually, I can’t feel anything since they aren’t known to me. Perhaps I
just don’t want to be weighed down by other people’s mistakes, and want to draw
away from them. But I also don’t want to feel separate from anyone either.
We are all much the same
under the skin but just at different levels of awareness. I’m fairly sure that
our greatest differences are superficial and can be brought closer together
when we start to discuss matters in terms of what is important and what is not?
Perhaps I’m wrong about that,
perhaps there are more people than I think who have submitted to the industrial
machine, for baser more selfish reasons.
If that is the case, then there's
a big difference between people, when one person eats meat and thinks nothing
of it and the other would sooner die than touch the stuff. But is it so big a
difference? Here are two extremes of view with two different justifications or
reasonings behind them. One will say this: "It’s no good giving up eating
meat if you hate the idea of being vegetarian; if you’re forcing yourself to
eat food you don’t like you will either be ill or die. All of us know we have
to feel good about our food choices, or at least not feel bad. If I am a meat
eater then what is done to animals on factory farms is a problem which I must
be able to put out of my mind. It has to be a an ‘unimportant matter’ and I
mustn’t give it a second thought".
At the opposite extreme we
have someone like a vegan who might say this: "I can’t eat anything from
an animal because I need to develop a sensitive conscience, and I suspect I'm in
the greatest of dangers, in that my mind has been manipulated by vested
interests. I’m seeking a more independent mind. I fear blind conformity and am
very suspicious of my fellow humans because of what they are capable of, by picking
on the weakest sentient beings and taken advantage of their weakness".
These are two very different
approaches. Their opposites represent the very position which makes us feel
most uncomfortable. The meat eater,
however, is both dangerous to the animals and to themself. Their view presumes
a lack of self control over one’s circumstances, and therefore an inability to
tackle important matters, so much so that they prefer to see them as
‘unimportant matters’. The danger is in the self-convincing, and their
preferring just to live with the problem. They would say that veganism is too
high a price to pay for peace of mind. And, having arrived there, they must go
on to complete the cave-in, by not even considering it or discussing it. They
refuse to take the matter seriously.
This refusal-to-consider
seems illogical, although it’s just defensiveness. I always knew this subject
was very controversial but, at first, I didn’t realise that it was quite unlike
any other controversy, like a political difference of opinion or one concerning
religion. This one was more like stepping into the dangerous waters of
discussing a person’s mental health, the whole matter being just too
uncomfortable to face up to. The last thing a meat-eater wants to do is discuss
it, for fear of being made to look either illogical, afraid or stupid.
Instinctively, omnivores are afraid of discussing it, whereas, of course,
vegans want nothing better than to discuss it.
Given half a chance, vegans
will do anything to promote veganism, but they often make non-vegans go into
reverse - the ‘good idea’ becomes a ‘not-such-a-good-idea’ when the other
person really doesn’t want to hear about it. ‘Veganism’ is one subject that can
even turn our friends unfriendly. The good idea might seem so straight forward
at first but it trails behind it long and complicated tentacles that tangle and
frighten people.
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