The Wide Divide

1443:

I never see myself or other vegans as crazy.  Not for what we eat or wear.  But yes, crazy, if I entertain aggressive feelings towards carnivores.

Imagine how unwieldy life could be if every person I met, assuming they weren’t already vegan, was subjected to hateful feelings, because they believed animals had to be sacrificed to make 'essential foods' available.  So somehow, vegans have to find a way to get along with people who are active within a system which vegans think is criminal.  It’s because of this dilemma that we find it impossible to hide our feelings without feeling like hypocrites, but know we must find a way, nonetheless.  Either we say nothing and keep our friends or we speak out and offend our friends.  We're between a rock and a hard place.

If we thought, as perhaps the environmental activists think, that people would gradually come around to a sensible attitude, and start to make gestures to prove they were sympathetic, it would be different; we’d just be on a slow journey of educating people.  The environmentalists see people recycling their waste, not littering, installing solar panels on their roofs, joining enviro groups – and this is all encouraging progress, if slow.  But with animal issues, because it affects people’s every day lifestyle so profoundly, it seems as though they can’t afford to make any gestures, let alone alter fixed habits of daily living.   The way we see it, there is no cause so urgent, and yet being part of this cause is so disrupting to ‘normal’ life.  People see vegans as foreign.  And conveniently, we're then seen to be part of a whacko cult that is collectively throwing temper tantrums at a society into which we don’t fit.

It might not be fair, to support this view of vegans, but it's not difficult.  If a person doesn't agree with us, it’s not essential they provide reasons.  Their way of life, the way they see animals-for-the-use-of, is argument enough – they have a right to use animals, it's legal and it's something everyone else does.  You can’t feel guilty about something you do if it's supported by the vast majority.  So, it follows that there's a conspiracy of silence surrounding what each person knows about farmed-animals – it's an essential silence concerning what are perceived to be one of the most important pillars of life.  Animals provide, completely or in part, the contents of almost every meal we eat.  It makes sense that no one would endanger supplies of ‘normal’ foods (and when tested on animals, 'normal' medicines).  Which is why, if faced with the prospect of one day having to eat solely vegan food, everyone would dread it.  And the implications of such a diet would spill over into any number of attitudes that would affect many other parts of our life. The idea of having to live according to vegan principles is terrifying, if only because so many allied attitudes would also have to be looked at closely and carefully.  Let's not be surprised if we vegans are excluded from people's reality.