Exploding myths

1556: 

Vegans will always have their work cut out, persuading people to change radically.  But for us it’s not just about persuading reluctant people, it’s also about being useful to them, without wishing to patronise them.

I like to think I take people as they are, even if they don’t want to listen to what I have to say.  I’m more interested in breaking down some over-comfortable myths, like it being okay to make use of animals just as long as we love them – sure, we love them before we kill them and eat them!!  All I’d like to do is help others see things as they could be (should be) and go on from there.  All I want to do is keep it simple and clear.

Some of our favourite ‘home truths’ may not be as true as we’d like them to be.  For example, many people still believe meat, and therefore animal farming, is essential for human survival, or that testing drugs on animals is the only way to have safe pharmaceuticals, or that having animals in the house prevents our becoming lonely. 

This last one is the least familiar viewpoint.  Take this myth about the value of having 'companion animals' - some say that the inter-relationship of man to animal is supposed to be special, "lighting up the amygdala as nothing else can”.  But this still puts the welfare of a human’s amygdala above the comfort of the animal, in order to justify our having an animal present in our human lives.  People are locked into these sorts of beliefs, which is why we need to balance such one-sided views, in order to show a different way of seeing human safety and survival.  Do we need meat, do we need drugs, do we need pets? If we say ‎’yes’ to any of these, we may be right up to a point (a selfish point) but each ‎‘yes’ means animals will suffer on our account.

In a nutshell, it’s the reliability of instinct that is our main safety, since it tells us what instinctively we should regard as right and wrong in the context of non-violence.  But the value is in self-discovery, not in the reliance on certain types of foods, drugs or pets.  The value is in arriving at conclusions of our own, and seeing for ourselves that we don't need food sensations, drug highs or lit-up amygdalas to smother our fears.  It seems that we'll do anything to divert the pain of the guilt of self-indulgence.