A certain tone of voice to make the atmosphere

1460: 

I think it’s important to tell it like it is.  We shouldn’t pretend that becoming an activist for animals or taking on a vegan lifestyle is very easy.  Or very difficult come to that.  Honesty about this particular matter is appreciated, for anyone considering ‘joining up’.

Whoever we’re talking to, whether meat eaters (about their shopping choices) or farmers (about their animals) or teachers or students (about vegan principle), everything we say should eventually come back to the human relationship with animals, and how we've lost sight of some very fundamental principles concerning our human violence.

We all have a strong connection with animals whether we eat them or try to protect them.  For our part, vegans need to talk about animals as if we want to know them, and come to regard them as irreplaceable individuals.  In that way we can talk about animals as if they are different to us but equal to us, in terms of their deserving a right to a life.

Most people don’t think too much about animals, at least, not the ones that are eaten. But here I am, talking about them as if they really mattered!  If anyone disagrees, they need to feel free to say so, by my giving them the green light to interrupt what I'm saying.  If I can let them ask questions, I make this talk more like an open discussion, as if I want to get benefit from the evening by learning and listening as well as speaking.

Let’s say we are speaking to a hall full of people.  We should create an atmosphere as if we are a group of people sitting around a kitchen table, discussing matters of mutual concern.  Because this is an intimate subject, full of contentious issues and a subject crucial to the future of us all, it needs intimacy on all levels in order to discuss it fully.  The success of any public talk is best achieved by the tone of the speaker, intent on avoiding any feeling of separation with those on the listening end.