The animals’ revenge

1585: 

I’m glad not to be one of the exploiter class. I sometimes find myself working for them and see the splendour of their houses, cars, fine clothes and expensive belongings. I’m also glad not to be too closely involved with political corporations, which aren’t too fussy about the ‘natural resources’ they exploit. The corporations, and those who run them, for them the rule number one is - to succeed. They face fierce competition from each other, both here and from overseas. They must not fail, even if only for their shareholders' sake. In many ways, their lives are unenviable. They conserve their assets, expand at every opportunity and play every dirty trick in the book to keep their advantage. In that way they stay afloat and keep their customers happy. They are the producers: we the consumers. And we're especially ‘all-consuming’ when it comes to food.

We buy items that are, to some extent, addictive. Our addiction to our favourite ‘animal’ foods (or other animal products we ‘can’t live without’) is essential to the Industry but there’s another nasty twist, that all this producing and consuming and enjoying is The Animals’ Revenge.

It may be so that, by so carelessly tampering with the genetics and chemical composition of animal bodies, and then by consuming the (stolen) body parts of these animals, there’s a payback in the form of a creeping deterioration in our own metabolism. The animals we eat are unhealthy creatures and if we ingest them and get used to them, we pay dearly. Animal products are health destroyers and good for keeping doctors in business. Perhaps that’s why most of them don’t advise their patients to follow a vegan diet.

Animal foods are profitable to the exploiters but just as certainly not so good for the humans who consume them. We, along with the hapless animals, are simply victims. But, to some extent, we humans can look after ourselves. We can learn and we can change since we aren’t entirely enslaved, whereas the domesticated animal is helpless. Entirely. And vegans are calling for a stop to all animal farming not only because it’s unhealthy and suicidal but because animals can’t defend themselves against their human attackers. So what we do to them is bullying in its worst form. We act as parasites on the animals. For a so called 'advanced' species this is shameful. It's an example of the strong made strong by making the weak weaker. I, for one, am so glad to be out of it.

Soul food

1584: 

You say we shouldn't be eating animals? “But they have no souls, so it’s okay”. “They don’t feel things as we do”. “They can’t reflect on their situation or see what’s in store for them”.

Whether any of that’s true or not, it doesn't matter. There's so much information today explaining why it is safe to eat solely plant-based foods, so why not simply do just that? Admittedly, we all live in a world of misinformation. Who to believe. Most people don't dare to change to an ethics-based diet. They go back to the same food Mum served, and on the subject of animals, they continue holding the same attitudes they held as kids - that animals have no souls and that meat is good for us. Or that, “We’ve been eating meat for two million years so why stop now?”

But now, there's been a lot of fundamental questioning. It's touched sex, religion, politics, and because of these breakthroughs we’ve moved on in so many important ways. We are no longer Neanderthals. But we're still predominantly ‘carnivores’, and cruel with it. We already know we can safely survive without animal-derived foods. We already know how cruel 'the system is towards making money, and animals mean business. 'Animals', singular, is about producing certain foods from 'animal'. And businesswise, it’s easy pickings. Indeed the only pickings if you live in rural areas. Animal farming is a big industry, happening all around the world. But the world is now a global village, we all trade with all. And because entrepreneurs are setting up intensive farming operations anywhere in the world, the products from any animal farm face competition. We have price wars, which spells danger by way of lowering husbandry standards, in order to lower costs, and undercut competition. Hell hole factory farms aren’t designed as punishment camps, but simply based on the cheapest way of growing the product, in order to stay in business.

We no longer chase and hunt animals to kill them for food. Instead we keep them locked in private chambers, and treat them like machines. Since the early part of the last century, the wealthy Animal Industries have been intensifying animal husbandry, and quoting from J.S. Foer’s Animal Eating: “Modern industrial agriculture has asked what hog farming might look like if one considered only profitability – literally designing multitier farms from multistorey office blocks …”. The ruthlessness is in the design of the implements of intensification; they reflect the worst imaginable outcome for the animals themselves. Perhaps the worst is the caging. And the customer goes along with it. The customer doesn’t want too much detail. They pay and thus empower Agribusiness, and it's not so very different to years gone by, when the lord of the manor, held his serfs in his inescapable maze. And today, Agribusiness provides for our 'needs', letting us earn money which can be spent at the shop which is working for Agribusiness.

The Animal Industries have been successful at cementing-in our shopping habits, by giving us what we want. But, at the same time, they've been messing with our minds. Effectively, we let them do our choosing for us. They do it by brazenly tempting us and spreading misinformation. By subtle and subliminal means they secure our loyalty to their product – and we, the customer, support them in order to ensure supply of said goods. Apart from noticing vegans, have you ever noticed anyone routinely NOT wearing animal skins somewhere on their body or NOT eating abattoir-derived food for dinner? And you don’t need to look too closely to see that most adults over the age of 40 are already losing their sense of well-being. Many are already ill from their life-long use of this so called 'food'. Need one say more? Have you ever seen The Biggest Loser on television?

By using misinformation to draw the spending dollar from peoples’ pockets, the Animal Industries also screw up the future of the planet. How did they get so much power? Perhaps by learning how their customers think, and by not giving a stuff about those values most of us observe. But double standards are everywhere, in us all - we take what they give us even though we know we're their playthings - they will play us with whatever it takes, to maintain their advantage. As conservatives, they conserve what they own. And always act within the law since they effectively ARE the Law. They disregard ethics but take care to protect themselves by never being accountable for what's being done. They're removed from the action of farmers and abattoirs and may be found inhabiting offices in cities. And they play with figures all day. They never openly act against the interests of humans since they wouldn’t want to draw that sort of attention to themselves. They know the customer. For all their stealth and careful image-making, they know their customers don’t need to know too much. They know they don't really care about what’s being done to ‘non-humans’. As long as the good times keep rolling.  

Conforming

1583: 

The exploiters, focused on self interest, know their customers can be relied upon to not-want-to-know-what’s-going-on. More importantly, they know customers are locked into a tightly controlled, food-oriented habit.

Children are often born with in-built trust. They trust their elders. So it was for me. When I felt the weight of adult restriction, as a kid, I accepted it from people I considered were lovingly protecting me. Through them I learnt what ‘normal behaviour’ meant, but the sting in the tail of this cosy background was conformity. My habits were to conform with everyone else's - first guided by parents and then by copying conformist behaviour. When it came to choice of food obviously that meant choice within an omnivorous range.  (When I was a kid, no one had ever heard of vegetarians let alone vegans).

Once I'd escaped parental control, I was able to decide what 'normal habits' involved. I wasn't long before animal issues came up, and the need to boycott abattoir stuff. Hence vegan for life.

And if young adults today follow a similar path of logic, they'll eventually arrive at the same vegan principle, concerning the need to free ourselves from subservience and free captive animals from theirs. It's always about slavery and freedom, and the freedom of choice most of us humans have - one over the other.

As a teenager, I took up running and the only teacher who showed any interest in my athletics was also my history teacher so, in return, I showed an interest in his subject, which later I went further with. By studying history you study slavery, and the human struggle to escape it. Humans have forever been trying to win their freedom and discover value systems that align with true progress. We've found the first part but not the second. Yet. If we look back in history we can see how that fight-for-freedom unfolded. We prize that freedom. Most of us are basking in freedom these days. In the relatively-free-West, we no longer have to struggle on our own account. We don't need slaves since we can use machines to do our hard work for us, and this lets us enjoy the luxury of contemplating the ugliness of slavery. That's human slavery. It doesn't cross the species barrier.

For those of us where it does cross over to enslaving other sentient beings, we desperately want to do something about it. As advocates for these enslaved food-producing animals we have to shout loud because, unlike their human slave-counterparts, they have no chance to organise their escape. Animals have no power to do anything against the wishes of the human. They're powerless against human oppression. Unless there's a human advocate, vegans no less, to step in on their behalf, they have no chance of being released.

As vegans, our own present highly prized freedom allows us to be animal advocates, but that comes at a price. By uncovering certain truths and speaking about them in public, we find ourselves getting off-side with people. Animal advocacy upsets almost everyone, and for obvious reasons! But it won’t always be that way. There are obvious chinks of good sense in what vegans are saying. It will be apparent, eventually. Vegan principle and anti-slavery make sense in two ways - as buoys marking the progress of human evolution and as cautioning the danger of neglecting our human health. We, as vegans, wish to weaken the ‘exploiters'’ influence on Society by keeping people away from animal foods and therefore out of hospital, and safe from premature death. We encourage people to un-poison their bodies and minds and of course to no longer be part of the obscenity that amounts to 150,000 animal executions a minute. Until we move away from so much gratuitous self-harm and this daily holocaust happening at abattoirs all over the world, nothing can possibly go well for us personally or collectively. The first rung on the escape ladder from the omnivore trap is to drop our 'matey-ness' with the 1%ers. 

The exploiter classes

1582: 

The dark forces, the wasters and polluters, and those inflicting cruelty on animals bear a heavy responsibility for the mess we’re in today. But we're all, as consumers, lesser-but-still responsible. None of us have clean hands. However, the mega damage is being done by big business. Especially big animal business, which is not only the ugliest business but one with the greatest carbon foot print. Through continuous advertising they are guaranteed maximum customer support. Their grip on things can only be weakened by withdrawing that support. Anyone can do this for their self, and then be in a position to influence things, and help quicken a return to good health by way of recommending a plant-based diet. But whatever help a vegan can be of the human, they can be a thousand times more helpful to the legions of ‘domestic’ animals, since their plight is so very serious. Seventeen billion of them are standing there watching us at this very moment. They can only wait. And wait. And wait for whatever we can do, to expedite their eventual liberation.

The exploiter is often a kind and loving individual who genuinely cares about family;  a ‘good’ person, believing that ‘charity starts at home’; hoping for ‘a better world for the grandchildren’; caring somewhat less about community welfare; and even less about animal welfare (let alone 'animal rights'). Since the exploiter classes are earning money by unethical means, they aren't likely to be too involved in working for 'the greater good'. The farmer farms animals and makes a living from animals, so 'animals', singular, is seen as business (whereas vegans see animals as sovereign beings, as individual as our dogs and cats at home). The animal farmers are interested in acquiring money by way of animal sales, and necessarily have little empathy for 'their' animals ('their' animals - as if anyone can own another sentient being!!).

I was listening to an ‘animal lover’ on the radio the other day. He loved animals so much he hunted them and ate them. By day he farmed animals. He loved guns.

He tried to justify the pleasure he got from pulling the trigger on a moving animal. He couldn’t say what it was, except that it felt ‘natural’ to him. He’d always done it since he was a boy. “It comes naturally to me, animal farming, animal hunting and animal rearing. It’s how my family have always made their living. Out here it’s hard country. Our family got used to finding opportunities and taking advantage of things.”

The  vulnerability of all domesticated, captive animals, is in their total inability to fight for their own freedom. Vegans are championing their cause because we regard them as fellow sentient beings who, through no fault of their own, are victims of crazy humans, and especially the most dangerous humans, the 1%ers. The exploiter classes are very opposite to the rest of us, in that they worship what money brings. Where most sane people see a forest in terms of beauty, the 1%’ers, see them as lumber. Where most people could no more kill an animal than kill their grandmother, the exploiter classes have no trouble with that, especially since they're cunning enough to employ others to do the messy side of their business for them. And those others are grateful for the work.

And why this whole system works so well is that it operates on mutual support - the consumer wants the goods, so they let these people thrive. And that these people thrive, with the support of so many dollar-spending customers, allows them to believe they're doing nothing wrong. They act like the spoilt child, and the consumer acts like the weak parent - the longer these children believes they can get away with bad behaviour they will, and then the stronger and more dangerous they become.

Hammering in the Nails

1581: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

Are we fighters for the future or slaves of the past? Are we builders of consciousness or are we trying to numb it? Are we open-mouthed fledglings, waiting to be fed, or are we discriminators, refusing what isn't good for us? As adults, we can determine our own destinies. We don't have to do as we're told or swallow what others want us to swallow (and I do mean 'swallow' literally). Most people do it many times a day, every day - swallow the body parts and secretions of farmed animals! For those who don't indulge, the very idea is disgusting. 

I ask myself why people are submitting to these death-foods; allowing themselves to yield to the wishes of the advertisers? Why can’t even the most intelligent consumer be persuaded to leave it all behind? Perhaps they don't realise how easily they're being manipulated, or how sophisticated the food industry's persuasion machine is. Perhaps some people want to be led, allowing the machine to do the job of thinking for them. If they do, there's a great danger of them losing concern about the origins of the animal-based foods they buy.  Like fledglings in the nest, consumers lie in wait, ready to be nourished, but only eating what 'they' want them to eat. 

We earn our money and spend much of it on rubbish food, without thinking, without discriminating. It's as if we adults are almost rushing to lose our acuity; just as sex-driven teenagers rush to lose their virginity. In forfeiting the use of our fine minds and sharp senses, we settle for any old pleasure experience that's on offer. Instead of opening doors to consciousness, we close them, with the excuse: "Everybody else does it, why shouldn't I?" Being seduced by the feeling of 'safety in numbers', makes us comply too easily. We just 'go along with the crowd'. Even when we're swimming against the tide of the coming age, we know we're still in step with the march of the day. 

For those of us not so easily seduced, we may have jumped ahead already, changed direction, disassociated ourselves from the crowd. Understandably, any such 'unauthorised change' is a threat to manufacturers of animal-derived foods. Perhaps they already fear the coming age, realising that it might be 'VEGAN' in nature, more expansive, far less violent and heading towards a greater consumer awareness. 

Today, this 'expansive awareness' might still seem a million miles away. The vast majority of people are still poisoning themselves by eating the corpses of animals. Bearing the weight of huge bodies and double standards. And they're still largely unaware of the danger of their diets. Vegan food doesn’t eradicate this entirely, but it helps to dissolve the 'lump' of it. It helps to break down the mindset that we need to eat meat for strength, that we can kill animals without repercussion, or that we can deaden our own fears by complying with the norm.

By becoming vegan, we turn all that around - or at least we become more alert to other possibilities. We can even wake the rebel in ourselves and aim to bring about change; since the rebel stands up to Authority by asking some of the tricky questions that others won't ask. If we let the rebel in us remain sleeping, we allow these frightening people to continue controlling us. If we aren't sapping their strength by boycotting their commodities (animal-derived foods and clothing) then we’re actively helping to boost their spirits. When we open our purse or wallet for them, we also open our hearts to them. We do it by pretending we aren’t aware. We tip them the wink, we turn a blind eye and we downplay our own involvement in their grubby business. By going along with them, we give away our rights to an honest life and in effect, embrace our own early (and probably painful) deaths. We build our own coffins and let our dollars hammer down the nails of the lids.

I wake up one morning ...

1580

As soon as I got used to a plant food diet, I realised it was good for energy but even more importantly it was good for the brain. It let me feel more alert, and consequently more suspicious of traditional food regimes, more awake to the conspiracy of the acceptability of animal-based foods. It awoke the rebel in me.

The rebel asks tricky questions, challenging the so called ‘food authorities’ - when I woke up to that, I wanted more than anything to help sap their strength by boycotting every commodity connected to the Animal Industry. The more I did that the more I came to realise how subtly they wheedle animal products into their ‘hidden’ ingredients. They are masters at making food items, laden with unethical product, seem benign. I began to realise that once you open your purse or wallet to them, you automatically turn a blind eye to your own involvement in what they're doing. And whichever way you look at it, what they do, their exploiting of animals, their killing machine, their manipulation of consumer's buying habits - none of what they do is very nice.

Seduced by second class pleasures

1579: 

When it comes to food and keeping up our lifestyle, almost all of us are controlled by the carrot and stick. The ‘carrot’, our preferred-lifestyle including the many animal-derived foods we love to eat. The ‘stick’, our fear of losing out - perhaps we're threatened by the thought of a reduction in our disposable income, and that will directly affect our ability to buy our favourite animal products. The 'good' things in life are abundant for those who can afford them but meagre for poorer people. It’s all controlled. It’s all part of a neat system.

         

Everything which comes from the Animal (food) Industries is meant to be pleasurable enough to make us toe the line, but usually it’s second rate stuff – nothing more than a few taste thrills at restaurants, or a pleasure-booster when eating such things as ice cream, chocolate, cakes, meat and all the food luxuries we think we couldn’t do without. It’s a sort of ‘seconds world’ of cheap and cheerful commodities, and our wanting them keeps us working and consuming and conforming. We fear missing-out so we give very little thought for the animals producing the stuff.

         

Lifestyle is everything, and when you get used to one style of life you don't want to lose it. Giving consideration to ethics or developing our consciousness is not considered so important. Most people will settle for any old ‘pleasure experience’, especially where food is concerned. Instead of individual thinking and the opening of consciousness, we opt for group-think - “Everybody does it so why shouldn’t I?”

         

With safety-in-numbers, going along with the crowd, buying whatever one wants, we become agents of 'the popular way'. But vegans go against the popular, opting for a life governed by a strict no-animal-use principle. In a very major way, vegans by disassociating from the crowd start to think for themselves.

         

Understandably, this is something which could worry the Animal Industries. They probably realise that the world is coming into a more expansive age, and that could include many of their customers being ‘vegan-inspired’ or 'non-violence-inspired'. This wouldn't be so good for the future prospects of the Animal Industries. But they also know that it’s still a million miles away, and that today the majority of people are still happy to be poisoning themselves with animal foods. Thankfully for the Industry, their customers are addicted to their products and reluctant to give them up, even though the stuff makes people overweight and pushes them towards diabetes and heart disease.

         

Vegan food, being so much more nutritionally sound, might not protect us from this entirely, but it does help dissolve the addictions to these harmful foods and at the same time strengthens our liking for plant-based foods. The big plus for plant-food eaters it that our diet relieves us of the grumbling fear of these deadly health conditions. 

Comforts

1578: 

The controllers of the Animal Industries probably do know the consequences for the creatures they abuse, but do it all the same. For them, empathy and profits don’t mix, whereas most of us do genuinely feel empathy for the enslaved animals. If we aren't living as vegans then we are either suffering from guilt of knowing what we know or ignoring the guilt and instead giving up on the subject (succumbing to our own helplessness to change our food habits).

         

Those who profit from animals are forced to numb their sensibilities - they’ll say “If it works, go for it, whatever it takes”. They choose to make a problem of it - using animals as a resource. For the rest of us it’s not quite that simple. There’s a ‘moral’ struggle between what's right for oneself and what's best for others. The struggle may not be conscious, but somewhere bubbling away in the background, is an awkward feeling about the animals who produce our favourite food products.

         

Almost all people like the meats and pastries and rich creamy desserts, the cheeses and eggs and all the many marketed milk-made products. Tucking into them relieves the monotony and stress of life, and for that reason most people are omnivores. Even when the omnivore can afford to eat ‘comfort’ foods, they know they mustn't look too closely at the ingredients. Perhaps, by eating these foods we briefly make ourselves feel better and stronger. In some way comfort foods are well named since they are guaranteed to replicate the pleasure experienced when last eaten, some items being as familiar throughout our lives as life-long friends. For this reaso, for fear of leaving one's 'friends' for ever, that is NOT on. So we have to ignore the ugly origins of our favourite foods. Even for a moment, if we allowed ourselves to consider the truth behind our animal-food habits, then our sense of morality would be badly shaken; if we dared to look at the part we play in the ongoing animal massacre, our heads would be bowed with shame.

Whichever way you look at it, it's a massacre, even though we pretend it isn’t. And by pretending that we’re NOT engaging in the act of ‘hurting’ (hurting ourselves, hurting animals, hurting the planet, etc) we disengage our inner eye; we refuse to see what is see-able. If it weren't so serious it would be laughable, to think that we can kid ourselves about this, when it's been thought through already, many times, in the privacy of our own minds.

         

Whether we are a producer or consumer, whether one of the elite '1%-ers' or amongst the other 99%, here's a question for all: if the opportunity arose for us to make a small fortune from one single enterprise, we’d go for it. We'd sell our souls for the chance of making some real money. After all, we spend half our life dreaming of what we'd do with it. Money cushions so many of our big fears. It isn’t just 'the wicked' who want to make big bucks. All over the world, humans fear poverty, fear being forced to ‘do-without’ the things they need. We middle-income-ers indulge in the fantasy of ‘high’ living, most often by eating and socialising around rich food washed down with powerful intoxicants. We do anything to relieve the constant fear of insecurity and having to experience the grinding tedium of living as all poor people have to.

And where are the animals in all this? Entirely exploited, entirely forgotten, entirely abandoned. No one is thinking of them since the focus is so entirely on ourselves and our own fears. If we had the chance to make our pile, and escape poverty by way of making use of animals, would we think twice? Surely, we wouldn't be think much about the ethics of animal-using.

The Wicked

1577:

The way big business has made money out of animal farming and the terrible suffering they inflict on animals must be said to be truly wicked, but the way they’ve manipulated their human customers is possibly worse. And there again, the customers aren't innocent; most know about farmed animals. 

Not too many people will admit to playing a part in the tragedy of animal abuse, but they’re involved nonetheless - the customers are buying the stuff and the producers are reaping the profits. No one has clean hands.

The producers have built empires on the backs of animals. With the support of generations of customers, they’ve provisioned us both at the survival level and the luxury level. The Animal Industries have taken control of so many of our spending habits. Their influence is everywhere - in clothing, in shoes, in food, and countless useful or fashionable products. They give the customers what they want and conceal from them how the products are produced. They’re allowed to tell lies, especially regarding the nutritional value of the foods they sell, and the customers, unable to imagine that so much untruth or greed can exist, believe what they really want to believe, however shonky the assurances given. It's obvious to anyone who looks closely, that the producers will stop at nothing to make profits.

         

I’d be very surprised if even 1% of humans are truly wicked or so mentally ill or desperate that they’d sell their soul in order to increase their wealth. But many wealthy people will, because of their desperate fear of being impecunious They'll abandon all moral constraint to guarantee their own material security. They inhabit the board rooms of agribusiness and allied industries. They force small farmers out of business and establish the intensive farms and processing operations, and get richer and richer.

For the remaining 99% of us, we’re different in as much as we never have the chance to be tempted this way. But if we did have the chance, would we be like them? All of us probably have a few really deep fears – fear of failure, fear of poverty, fear of abandonment, fear of death etc., but most of us don’t have that monster-gene that allows us to destroy things or make others suffer in order to make things better for ourselves. We might flirt with the devil sometimes, we might be less than fully conscious of what we do, we might deliberately refuse to know, but most of us are still in touch with our own feelings. We just wouldn’t exploit our fellow humans as they do. But how about animals? If we are consumers of any animal foods or wear any animal-derived clothing or footwear, we are complicit in the whole sorry business. With what we know about animal husbandry today, one has to have a very low empathy threshold to carry on eating (and wearing) the body parts of these poor creatures and not to feel anything for them.

Perhaps most people don’t realise the significance of what is happening behind the scenes. Perhaps they have no idea how badly farm animals suffer or on what scale they suffer. The customer, wanting to eat what they want to eat, turns a deaf ear to information. They act blindly, as if they didn’t know. But in these well informed times that can be a pretty lame excuse.

Brave

1576: Posted Sunday 20th December

To stand up for animals you have to be vegan, and to be vegan you have to be brave. Not grim, not bitter, not angry, just quietly brave. No tickets on yourself, no sense of being better than anyone else, just calmly brave. Being vegan is not for the faint hearted.

         

Often vegans have to say “no”. No to meat, no I won’t go with you to the zoo, no to a simple ice cream on a hot day. To us it’s straightforward why we say no. But to others we may seem anti-social, as if we don’t want to join in, as if we’re stand-offish. Being vegan is a bit like shooting yourself in the foot, socially. Soon enough we get a reputation. And if we do get invited round to dinner it’s likely we say “no”, because of the problems it will cause.

         

Whenever I do mix and my ‘vegan status’ is known, it’s apparent that people say things to me they don’t always mean. I hear them tell me they admire what I stand for. “Well done” and “I wish I could do it myself”, but beneath their praise their alarm bells ring – “Avoid this one, he’s a tree-hugger” (or whatever they see me as). After a while, I’ve noticed that dinner invitations dry up. Why would anyone want a vegan to come round for dinner? Imagine the problems of cooking special dishes for a vegan who doesn’t appreciate the effort or worse, who tries to discuss with others at the table ‘the principles behind a plant-based diet’. “Booorring”

         

By standing up for animals, very often I’ll be going it alone. No friends to back me up, and I can’t expect cows and chickens to give me much encouragement. It’s all got to come from within myself. I have to be able to withstand people’s lack of sympathy but also the market’s lack of suitable replacement products. Food and clothing depend so heavily on the Animal Industries that alternatives often don’t exist. So I have to search for products and pay more for them too, because there is such a small market demand for them.

         

On top of all this, I need to support the efforts of other vegans who are trying to raise public awareness. And that’s a problem. The pressures of society are so great that just to be vegan is hard enough without needing to be supportive of other vegans. But it is essential – I may be on top of my diet (and clothing choices) but we all need the sort of help that can only come from fellow vegans. The energy I get from my vegan mates helps me keep up the pressure of being an animal advocate.

         

There is little discussion here in Australia about the necessity of moving away from animal use. Animal activism is generally concentrated on the worst abuses of animals on factory farms and in vivisection laboratories. It doesn’t address the wider problem of fundamental attitude change. And yet if this were established, if it became the fashion to boycott anything coming out of the animal industries, we’d see everything else follow on from that. Once vegan principle is established in the hearts and minds of the consumer, the markets would accommodate that - the abattoirs would close and the animals farms would go bust, the animal labs would be defunded and the zoos would be shut down. We’d even be less inclined to acquire pets, become less needy for companion animals and therefore help to dry up the pet trade and the pet-meat trade. But at present we have a very piecemeal approach to the whole problem. There are still too few people willing to rally to the call for a thorough uprooting of animal exploitation. And so, true to human form, things stay much the same.  

Smile Easy

1575: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

Vegans are accustomed to people having a go at them. Usually it's a half-hearted attempt to make our oversensitivity (in their view) towards animals look foolish. When in company, an insulting comment is often enjoyed by everyone. All the more reason why we shouldn't let ourselves be provoked. We don't need to show outrage; but we must be sure our arguments can ride out these minor annoyances. At the very least, we should be able to say something which makes us appear competent.

Meat eaters, from their safe, majority position, always like to put-down the righteousness of non-meat eaters. They often attempt to show how easy it is to make us angry. My response? I bring on the 'smile-easy' look - just to confound them! What's really happening, however, is meat eaters winding up non-meat eaters as an excuse for NOT having to listen to what they don't want to hear.

If we start to show anger at them, it gives them the green light to shut the door in our faces. When we do get some sort of a hearing, we’d better be prepared to be regarded as fair game for attack.  They reckon they have the right to attack us, because we’ve dared to question their most private lifestyle habits. Most carnivores don’t care about animal suffering and don’t want to talk about it - but not all. Some want to take us on. So, as vegans, we need to be ready for a dose of 'dinner table attack'.

When I find myself the butt of a carnivore’s joke, I know I can put up a good fight; but I don’t achieve much if it simply makes them more keyed up than they already are. Their initial aim, with their sharp-edged 'joke', is to attract attention and gather support, in order to overwhelm me. If I take umbrage or withdraw into silence, then it seems that I can’t come up with a sharp enough retort. Then they smell blood and go in for the kill!

These are still early days for Animal Rights. We’re building foundations and encouraging new attitudes towards animals. We’re outlining law reform that will illegalise abattoirs and animal farming. This includes the keeping of birds in cages (whether they’re budgerigars or hens) and fish in bowls (or fish-farming tanks). What we are proposing annoys most people hugely. And we’ll be either ignored, joked-about, or remonstrated with. My point here is that it’s futile to spend too much time fighting with everyone who disagrees with us.

For my part, I don’t want to waste my life fighting every local skirmish. Maybe those who laugh at us do need to be ignored, if only because jokers and 'people with vested interests' are still in the ascendant. Many of them are just busting to put us down if they get the chance. Discretion might be the better part of going in 'boots and all'.

Our compassion for animals is right - of course it is! It’s the logical outcome of anti-slavery. Obviously it feels right to us. It’s a waste of time getting upset that so many don’t agree with us. It’s a waste of our emotional energy. Having a sense of humour about it all is the healthiest and most logical response, even if we have to handle a heckle or two. It’s ridiculous for us to wage war on every puff of smoke. We don’t need to take on every redneck we meet, or parry every joke. We don’t even have to be intimidated by the smooth operators representing animal farming corporations. In fact, we don’t have to be afraid of any of them! We know all too well that none of them have the mettle to take us on in serious debate. 

The world is in a transitional stage at present. There’s so much openness to so many issues and yet, on some matters, there are still too many questions remaining unasked. For instance: how is it that some of us are passionate advocates for animals and others are indifferent or hostile? I’m always asking myself how come vegans are so relatively enlightened and omnivores so backward?


The fact is, our differences are specific and not general. Vegans have more self-discipline and we are, in some ways, much more fearless by way of applying such a comprehensive boycott. We’re constantly investigating and thinking about ethical issues and we’re more used to questioning and arguing our case. This probably makes us somewhat frightening to our opponents and if I’m right about that, then it follows that our adversaries might feel nervous whenever we’re around. So, we don’t need to wind them up. We don't need to engage them in a fight. We just need to try to allay their fears - that's all. And remember to smile easy! 

Only jokin’

1574: 

When I meet an adversary and discuss my opposite views, concerning the eating of animals, I’m at a disadvantage because I know that I hold such a minority view. It’s almost impossible to win the ‘animal argument’ if my opponent feels supported by the dominant culture.

         

For me, not blessed with a brilliant wit, if I try making a witty response I usually blow it. I see the attack coming out of left-field, I see it has a distinctly personal tone and that it looks like a challenge. In other words I don’t see any signs of us heading into a fair-minded debate, quite the opposite in fact.

Maybe I detect a simple comment, couched as a joke, and that it’s meant to give a benign impression, whilst behind it there's a sharp thrust. It comes in and out in a flash, with no room for any detailed discussion. The sharp comment, fired off at ‘joke- level’, is not meant to be shrugged off. But it’s difficult to respond to it without firing back an aggressive reply. And in that split second, as I bite back, I know I’ve trapped myself. I’ve been manipulated into the very thing that's needed – an aggressive response. This is the coup de grace of their ‘joke’, and it’s this that finally ‘turns’ the atmosphere.

I’m made to look bad, as if I took things further than necessary. The joking carnivore is outraged at the thought that their comments could be taken so personally. “It was meant as a joke. Haven't you got a sense of humour?”

By taking umbrage, by being hypersensitive to a bit of light hearted banter, I show how ready I am to quarrel over this issue. It’s proof (to my adversary) that I’m neither cool nor collected, nor a compassionate person, nor as non-violent as I’d like to appear to be. I look like a loser who seems to have gentle views about animals but not about people.

They win!!

Heavy attitudes

 1573: 

The two different attitudes surrounding the animal debate. On the one side, there is the anger felt by vegans towards people who brag about their meat eating and don’t give a damn about animals. On the other side are people who resent being forced to consider animals when they don’t want to. There’s a huge gulf between people over the subject of animals.

Animals are eaten by the million and the billion, not the cute, cuddly ones of course but the so called ‘edible’ ones. Until a couple of decades ago no one gave much thought to how animals were being treated on farms and abattoirs, or that it might be possible to survive without using animals, or that it was wrong to kill them for food. Then, in the early eighties, The Animals Film and the book Animal Liberation hit the scene. They shocked a lot of people.

People began to realise for the first time how much of our food relied on animals and were horrified by what was actually happening to them. Slowly these home truths seeped into public consciousness and a momentum started to build. Then, surprisingly, it came to a standstill. At least it did in Australia. The general public were no longer as outraged, the media didn’t take up the stories (of routine animal abuse), and the meat trade injected lots of cash to make sure meat and dairy continued to flourish. In the general community there was a reluctance to face up to animal issues - probably because people were feeling too guilty to think about it. But the main reason animal issues slipped from public consciousness was that they were so unpalatable. People like their animal foods too much to want to examine the subject too closely. People are addicted to the thousands of animal-based food products on the market. People are afraid that even by discussing animal issues, it might endanger supply or lead to an increase in prices.

Public attitude is now set in concrete. Discussion is subdued and the situation for farm animals is even more dire than it was thirty years ago. Taking a heavy hammer to that concrete isn’t the answer, I’m sure of that, but I’m not so sure there is another obvious way to even bring the subject up, let alone get people discussing it constructively.

Anthropocentrism

1572: 

You may be vegan but if so, how do you keep your opinions to yourself when you're busting to speak to everyone about it, to expand the consciousness of your fellow beings? At the same time, you want to help feed starving children, only to find that milk and meat products are being donated, or live animals are being provided for farming. Again, you want to speak out about this. You think it's outrageous! But your disapproval might seem as though you want to see the kids starve.

We are up against some very entrenched perceptions. When we are dealing with people who have made certain sacrifices to help others, it's especially difficult to get them to see why, as vegans, we have such a different view on life. Humans are very human-centred, and often can't or won't see past anthropocentric concerns, in order to catch a glimpse of another vast world of suffering which exists beyond our own. Pragmatism interrupts idealism at every turn. Malnourished children always come before abused animals. Relieving symptoms always take precedence over chasing cures. The deeper we look at the problems facing us, the harder the decisions we have to make, when we go vegan.

I Refuse to Become Vegan!

1571: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

Meat seems to have become symbolic of 'rich' living (despite the fact that most people in the West can afford to buy it) and along with other rich and exotic animal by-products, it is regarded as 'quality' food. Animal products are attractive (apparently) to taste and expensive enough to be associated with good living. Vegans (who eat none of it) set out to show how unhealthy these foods really are and to make people feel guilty for wanting them. Consequently, most people dislike vegans and the type of food they recommend and prefer to stick to what they know.

What stops a person becoming vegan? I suppose they would miss those foods they associate with 'pleasure' and which give a person social acceptance. Even though they may realise that what they're eating is not good for them, it's still what they want. They figure they would be hard done by, missing out on 'roast' dinners (and a whole lot more). The very thought of a life without the huge range of animal-based foods and items of clothing is unthinkable. In contrast to the omnivore's acceptance of everything, a vegan's non-acceptance appears stoic, to say the least. We seem to have taken the plunge into very chilly waters. We've taken the big step towards non-violent foods and some have taken it further by aspiring to non-violence as a modus operandi. We know that this package is much bigger than just diet. We want to interest others in both food and ethics. But that's far too much for most people to contemplate, let alone take on. Non-vegans are usually contracted to their daily food habits, which have to be supported by holding speciesist attitudes towards animals.

As part of the 'vast majority', most people just do what others do. I'd like to list some of the main reasons why people do NOT "Go Vegan":     
Initially, the idea of taking on a vegan lifestyle would seem outrageously restrictive. Since people can get very toey about losing their freedom of choice (especially when it come to food) little things start to take on big proportions.

v    With animal-derived snacks being available on every street corner and in every retail outlet, one gets used to the immediate burst of pleasure afforded by the simple confectionary item or stomach filler. These are the first-aid station in our daily war zones.

v    There's a fear of losing the sophistication association with 'cuisine'. One might like to eat out, to experience the exotic dishes on offer by eating French, Chinese or Indian foods. The thought of eating only their plant-based dishes (IF there's any on the menu that is) would seem very limiting. Omnivores consider it a shame not to be able to experience ALL the great dishes of the world.

v    For the fashion conscious, there's not much choice of footwear outside the leather range of shoes. And for those who want sturdy, water-proof footwear, they think nothing is as reliable as leather.

v    For entertainment, animals are a source of endless fascination. Children love to see animals. The zoo is a perfect day out for the kids and interesting for adults too and a good day out precludes admitting anything is wrong with keeping lions in cages or 'exhibiting' animals just for show!

v    For teenagers (always in need of money) there's often work available at McDonalds. They wouldn't appreciate Mum or Dad suggesting that hamburgers were not only unhealthy, but unethical as well.

v    Young people who identify with Master Chef and who are attracted to a career in the kitchens of restaurants, would have to be enthusiastic carnivores at the very least. They'll inevitably need to prepare animal-based dishes, since virtually every popular dish makes liberal use of animal body parts or secretions.  

For those who are already vegan, we have several limitations to deal with.

v    The chef career path is out of the question, along with any career preparing or selling food.

v    Vegans are at a disadvantage socially. It's no pleasure being invited to eat at someone's place, or being invited to any celebration where food is served. The smell of cooked animal flesh is hard to bear and our inability to eat any of it presents a problem for the food providers, when they feel obliged to cater specially for us.

v    We stand out like a sore thumb at Christmas when we're given a woollen jumper and refuse to wear it!

v    We might even object to sitting on a leather lounge

How far do we take it, before we start to sound obsessional? How do we deal with our lover's kiss when it tastes of meat? How do we cope in a kitchen shared with meat eaters, or a fridge full of bits of flesh or smelly cheeses or waste bins containing stinky fish left-overs with flies buzzing around it? The list goes on. There are so many habits of a non-vegan's daily life which disgust vegans and makes living with non-vegans difficult.  And the odds are against us if we want to establish a long-term future with a non-vegan. If you are single and out there looking for a partner, how many suitable vegans are there to choose from; bearing in mind that it's almost impossible to live with a carnivore?  With colleagues at work, the vegan is often the butt of jokes.  At school, vegan students are lucky if they can find anything to eat from the lunch canteen. And amongst the great causes we might join, like an environmental group or the peace movement, we'll probably encounter some disturbing contradictions. The Great Cause can be dedicated to non-violence and sustainable living, but we might find ourselves attending a fund-raising sausage sizzle! The Greens might think they have enough to handle with deforestation, pollution and global warming, without getting upset about animal farming as well.


There are many reasons for not becoming vegan. But we'll always find problems when we do something different. There will always be too many flies putting us off going to the countryside, or too much fear of sharks in the water putting us off swimming in the ocean. If we avoid life's hardest choices for the sake of an easier life, then what is life other than a feather bed? By choosing to become vegan we make a bold statement of principle over practicality. We make a strong commitment to the future. The idea of a world in which the greatest and most inspiring principles characterise the human thinking must be our goal. That is perhaps the most exciting prospect of all. If we can overcome the difficulties (some of which are mentioned above) then we are part of a package that offers opportunity to those who have little meaning in their lives - other than the second-rate pleasures associated with eating or using animals.

Vegan police

1570: 

Some vegans, whenever they think there’s an opportunity, try to take over any conversation in order to put the case for veganism or animal rights. When we intrude into people's lives, uninvited, we can sometimes act like ‘thought police’. So, it’s not surprising that people react negatively, saying “Leave me alone. I feel okay about what I do, what I eat and what I wear”.

We can’t fight that sort of reaction because the perception is that there's nothing wrong going on. Eating animals is what others do, and it’s quite legal. Which leads to most people not wanting to even discuss it. But that shouldn't lead to vegans getting heavy.

As an example: I’m a guest in your house. I've bought some beers and they need to be in the fridge. But then I go snooping in your fridge, and start to voice my disapproval of what I find inside. Of course, I’m no better than a peeping tom. I’ve stepped over the line. More importantly, I’m showing a fundamental misunderstanding of your freedom-of-choice. You react badly, but perhaps you're too polite to object too strongly to my face. I might think I’ve got away with it because you haven't really expressed how deeply offended you feel. But later, privately, you get quite upset about my intrusion into your private life, and decide not to invite me around to your place again.

You are quite justified, but this could also be a smoke screen, on your part. If you are quite up-front about your omnivorous diet, and can see no good reason to find fault with it, then what vegans are saying might feel offensive in itself. You may pick on almost anything we say or do to feel offended by it, which is perhaps your way of self-defending, and justifying ‘not listening’ to what is being said.

But there might be others who are readier to listen, who are at a different stage of acceptance. Perhaps they take what we’re saying seriously, and even have good intentions to change. They’re pleased to see the ‘awful truth’. They have the intention to do something about it. They are considering altering their food-buying habits, even their clothing, according to the principles of harmlessness. But what is their core reason to change? Is this a true shift of awareness, a new sense of compassion, or is it just political correctness, or guilt or their wanting to win approval by doing 'the right thing'?

Time will tell. And we may ask if today’s intentions are a fad or do they lead to a permanent state? Taking on veganism is a big step. If the intention is good but fails, there’s a danger that the failure will weaken the very idea of ‘good intention’. It’s like wanting to get fit, taking up a punishing exercise routine and then finding it all too much, and never then trying again to get fit. You failed once, so you think you'll fail again.

Being a couch slug is easier than running round the park. And food’s much the same – the wrong foods are so tempting, it seems a shame to have to give them up. One might like the idea of being vegan, but really want to sneak into MacDonalds for a sly hamburger, when no one is watching. It’s like kids having a smoke behind the bicycle sheds.

We need to explore self disciplines at our own pace, and not be pressed by the outsider who’s trying to push us around. With a demanding vegan regime, one should be careful not to take on more than one can continue with.

If there’s someone giving me good reasons why I shouldn’t do something I’m used to doing, it’s likely I’ll continue as I am, because I’m offended that my private space has been invaded.

Free-will

1569: 

When young people are growing up they develop reasons and justifications for what they do. They get drawn into an ‘adult world’, which has already been set up. They must accept most of it just to survive. Maybe they want to make changes but if they do, there might be too much personal loss involved. If they start to enjoy their newly acquired free-will, it’s only because it's been granted by the adult world. As they become adults and are allowed to exercise free-will, and now have an ability to earn serious money, there come adult privileges - they can drive, vote, stay out late, use intoxicants, eat foods of choice, dress in clothes they choose, etc. From having been controlled during childhood, now, with free-will, they have a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card. They can determine things their own way. But they can’t necessarily change the world they live in. They more or less have to fit in.

         

Unfortunately many adults use free-will to experience pleasure but they don't use it to face up to their responsibilities. They miss the subtler opportunities to construct an individual code of values, and instead become followers of others' values.

If we, as vegans, try to push our views too hard we fail, because we don’t take into account people’s determination to protect their free-will, their ‘right-to-choose’ or indeed their right to follow. In most instances, self interest trumps the chance to act for the ‘greater good’. It undermines the really inspiring challenges-of-life, making them appear more difficult than they really are. Self interest warps the appearance of things. Normality appears convincing. Change seems dangerous. The rut feels comfortable. Once we feel the dash of youth passing, we assume an aging mentality, towards conserving what we have and looking no further.

As radical thinkers, as active vegans, as pioneers of non-violence, we might come to realise that certain great challenges, based on what seem to be high-sounding ideas, are not so very problematic after all. Vegan living doesn't threaten a peaceful existence, quite the opposite in fact. As vegans, we know what we stand for might be anathema to those who don't feel as passionately as we do. So, we are lucky to feel that passion, to see things so clearly, to pass across the difficulties in order to reach a point of peace. But does that give us the right to persuade others when they might not be so fortunate? When we don’t take into account their love of free-will, to act in any (legal) way they want to? We can try, we can be a resource for anyone who feels as we do, but free-will is double-edged - it can help drive us forward but can equally hold us back when we dig our obstinate heels in.

Thinking harmless

1568: 

Vegans hold to principles concerning the use of animals and eating them, but some of us don’t apply them to our relations with each other. Veganism must embrace a comprehensive view of non-violence.

It’s easy to dislike uncaring people, but that probably includes almost every human, when you think how uncaring every animal-eater must be. It would seem futile to morally disapprove of everyone. My own moral judgement is a case in question by disapproving of those who spend their money supporting the very people who directly attack animals. So the question is, am I capable of harmlessness (thinking-without-aggression) as well as being non-judgemental?

         

If we are trying to set a standard for non-violence, we surely have to be more generous with our judgements, without being a Polly Anna. It means looking for the best in people and giving them the benefit of the doubt, whilst not necessarily okaying what they actually do.

         

We surely have to separate the deed from the person. And then we might be better able to investigate what makes people tick. I often (so often!) ask myself why so many people aren’t concerned about ‘the animal problem’, and why they aren’t impatient to become vegan. I want to put my fellow humans under the microscope, to find out why they don’t protest at the routine killing of creatures, and why they are, in fact, enthusiastic supporters of it, or rather the end products of the whole shabby business. I realise that many people have never given it much thought. I realise many people don’t know what’s really going on. But I also realise that many people do know and refuse to budge. It's difficult to understand how their minds work, and therefore it’s easy to be judgemental. So, they provide the best test for people like me, who are trying to keep up some level of harmlessness-thinking.

Quakers

1567: 

If killing animals to eat them is condoned by the majority, then I want to disassociate from that, to say that I don’t condone violence and specifically violently-extracted foods and commodities. I reckon making a 'vegan stand' will encourage others to join our boycott. But what I really want to emphasise here is that it isn't just about food and clothing, but a very different way of seeing our world. For a start, it points the finger at human domination. Vegans prefer an equal footing with other species, otherwise we have to ask why we should regard ourselves as more important. If we are of equal importance, then it implies certain behaviours and rules. And anyone who is part of a particular discipline, whether it’s in sport, religion, academic study or personal relationships, abides by their own self-imposed rules. We adopt these rules not just to be different or to make life more difficult for ourselves, but because they provide a structure for our own life and which could prove of benefit to others. So this sort of ‘discipline’ is a proof that something can be done if it is deemed necessary.

         

Take the Quakers. They avoid war and don’t let themselves be conscripted. They believe disagreements can be better handled by engaging in dialogue rather than confrontation. For many years in the eighteenth century, in Pennsylvania, they maintained friendly relations with the indigenous Americans, and governed a whole state on the basis of non-violence. Their government eventually collapsed, because the use of violence and force was thought to be more effective for 'solving' problems.

But maybe the Quakers were doomed by their own inconsistency. It wasn’t that they’d gone too far but that they hadn’t gone far enough. They didn’t embrace the idea of being non-violent towards animals, since they still farmed, killed and ate them. But they still represent today a precept of acting non-violently and perhaps also non-judgementally, and we can all take something from that and appreciate its value.

It would be a more complete expression of their central principle if they espoused veganism. They've laid some valuable groundwork regarding all humans as being on an equal footing. Vegans and Quakers each offer an important principle to the world. One discipline from one group could perhaps benefit the other group, in a sort of principle-exchange.

Strategy and knee-jerk judgements

1566: 

Strategy and knee-jerk judgements

Does Animal Rights need a communication upgrade? Maybe I do, anyway. As a vegan I may be guilty of judgementalism, just as other animal advocates might be. This is a run-away problem that needs to be addressed, if only to keep it in check. It’s similar to its opposite - the self-defending obstinacy of the animal-eating masses, in their insistence on killing and eating animals. It’s a weakness, and that’s all it is, just as my judgement-habit is a weakness which I'm obstinate to shake off. But it is ONLY that.

My recommendation to myself is to show no rancour, no disrespect and no value judgement. It drives me nuts that so many are still doing what they're doing, but I know I won’t win anyone’s long term commitment to vegan principles by my disapproving of them or inducing guilt or fear in them. Only by showing that I respect them and am interested in their welfare can I ever hope to keep them on side, or at least taking me seriously. Let’s say we are talking together, you and I - it’s to my strategic-advantage to go about my business without any ‘finger-wagging’.

If you look at my face, you’ll pick up how I’m feeling – either I’m relating to you non-judgementally (signalling that I like you or I accept you) or that I’m being judgemental (serious-serious voice, signalling disapproval). I'm between a rock and a hard place. I may not want to be judgemental but at the same time I need to show you my ‘high standards’. If I’m foolish enough to try to impose my standards on you, I will, in effect, be risking our whole relationship, just for the sake of letting you know how ‘clean’ I am (implying, how ‘dirty’ I think you are). Perhaps I’ll gamble on this: hoping that my honesty trumps my attempt to deceive you about how I really feel. But maybe that's a risk not worth taking, since it's almost guaranteed to poison our relationship.

If I’m being judgemental it’s all about values, mine and yours. It’s about me needing to establish my credentials and showing you that I have something to say. I'm thinking too up-ahead to apply to you, for my right to say it. If I express a moral judgement (aimed at you) it’s quite likely you’ll take offence and refuse to allow me any right to speak.

Judgement. What is it? The hot flame touched by the young child is judged to be hot – it’s an evidence-based judgement, and to a more experienced child it's self evident. Value-judging is different. When I assess your values, my subjective values are regarded by me to be absolute and therefore better than your subjective values; it’s likely to come across that way.

My judging of you may not necessarily be fair or carefully researched, but I may feel compelled to show it all the same, in order to make my position clear. In a clumsy way, I’m hoping that the shock of showing the strength of my judgement will ‘wake you up’, and that you'll be grateful for the wake-up. That's very doubtful!

In the school playground the same thing happens. You insult me and I punch you in the face before I’ve thought it through. It’s a powerful moment. My judgement might seem so quick, clear, almost primeval - I dislike what you do and I’m showing it before I’ve given myself time to make a more considered response. And I daren't not-respond since it might come across as my being weak and ineffective. Judge - be quick - act - don't delay it with even a moment’s hesitation.

When I’m judging you it might be almost automatic. Each day we make decisions without taking the trouble to consider them more carefully. Perhaps that’s because we don’t have enough time or patience - I know that I sometimes think and act almost simultaneously, instinctively liking or disliking, to suit the occasion. No harm surely - it's only in my head that this judging takes place. And what's the harm if a little bit of judgement slips out; when it comes to straight-talking, it might not be such a bad thing if my friends come to know me as a straight-speaker. But, talking about such a sensitive subject as our right to use animals? If I haven’t thought about it carefully enough, I may still be trying to use the shock-and-attack approach. By my not caring about others’ feelings, it adds up to a big strategic mistake.

So where does that leave me? Perhaps, strategically, needing to be very careful about straying into the mine field of making value judgements.

Being non-judgemental

1565: 

When I’m talking about Animal Rights it’s impossible NOT to show my inner feelings. Try as I might, if judgement’s on my mind it’s going to appear in my voice. My words may be carefully chosen, but if I harbour any negative personal feeling it’ll show up in the tone of my voice. Whatever the subject of passion might be, alarm bells start ringing whenever the voice rises - the passion and urgency always show. So you say to yourself, “Avoid, avoid”. When a vegan starts talking Animal Rights, it’s almost impossible for us to win people’s hearts if we don’t seem to be on their side, or at least making a serious attempt to understand their side.

The biggest challenge for vegans, who are explaining their views, is knowing how to win people over on some level, in order to get them to stay focused for long enough to listen to what we have to say. Somehow we must convince people that we are not judgemental types, and if necessary make a direct point of saying so. Then it’s up to them whether they will believe that about us or not.

To get anywhere near to being convincing, I first have to BE non-judgemental, truly so, and be convinced myself of the futility of making moral judgements, whether it’s about the abuse of animals or about anything else I consider to be wrong. Instead I need to see it in much the same way as a doctor sees a disease, without rancour or disrespect, but simply as a failing in a very complex system. The cause of the failing needs diagnosing, so a good doctor won’t disparage the illness but simply look for a cause and something to strengthen the immune system's ability to counter the destructive element.

They say there’s cancer in everyone’s body and that we’d be wise to stay healthy and keep our immune systems robust, to lessen the chances of cancer taking hold. In much the same way we need to keep a healthy resolve ‘to avoid making judgements’, so as not to fall into all the classic trap of being 'too right' for the taste of ordinary people, and thus turning them away from what we’ve got to say. When it comes to big-time reluctance, any excuse will serve to avoid taking responsibility for one’s own problems. The favourite avoidance technique involves ‘shooting the messenger’. Vegans, who present as arbiters of moral judgement, are asking for trouble. They are standing in the firing line and doing neither themselves nor anyone else any good.

The Animals are for Cooking????

1564: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

There’s little comfort for vegans when we read or hear about animals in the Media. They're portrayed as the necessary victims of human lifestyle: 'ingredients' or 'centrepieces' in various cuisines which make great use of animal body parts. Cooking programmes are all about new taste sensations with our star TV cooks showing no care whatsoever for the animals they so liberally use. Their emphasis is on the 'art' of creating exotic dishes; something they tell us we all deserve - "Go on, spoil yourself".

By creating these savoury dishes, rich in tender flesh, set off with creamy sauces, these cooking gurus make full use of both land and sea creatures. And their big show-off dishes (without which a meal would be incomplete) are desserts, rich in creams, eggs, flavourings and various artificial additives. No thought is given to the harm these ingredients do to human health - let alone to the animals who produce the products! Television cooks are primarily spruiking their latest cook-books. They perform as entertainers. But if we look a little deeper, we find them to be leading agents of the Animal Industries who do very well out of these TV 'celebrities'. 

 Our omnivorous society has no desire do anything to endanger this industry, which is entirely legal and never admits to harming health. Because the vast animal-based food industry is so entrenched in our various lifestyles and is such a vital part of our economy, there’s barely a whisper of concern as to the methods used in modern animal husbandry. The animals themselves are forgotten. They are made to appear as units of production, peripheral to the products taken from them.

 We are so familiar with the names given to the most popular meat products, that we've come to know them as pork, veal, poultry or beef; diverting us away from any association with the real, live creatures. The animals themselves are pushed into the background, unseen, unmentioned and forgotten about. This is why most vegans are keen to show these euphemistic renamings as a perfidious sleight of hand. The word 'beef' doesn't bring to mind a picture of a steer any more than the word 'pork' does a pig. This smokescreening makes it all the more difficult to encourage awareness or change public attitude. We have nothing coercive with which to fight! 
But this might eventually be to our advantage. We have no power to stop the cruelty and the killing. All we can do is expose it for what it is - and offer suggestions. We can teach, but we can’t touch. Down-the-line (when people are ready to change their attitudes) at least we won’t be accused of using violence or emotional blackmail to promote change. By then, our compassion both for animals and humans will show up as a single, all-encompassing  principle - that of well meaning non-violence. The impact of this single principle will be seen to be of paramount importance. Animal liberation will eventually be seen as a logical consequence of non-violence.


These days, we vegans are part of a tiny minority, surrounded by the vast majority who believe animals are put here on Earth to be used (by humans). Perceptively speaking, confronting such a core belief will get us nowhere because the odds are so heavily stacked against us. However, our powerlessness ensures that we take up only non-violent forms of persuasion. Although this might seem too slow and frustrating, it’s certainly good training for being non-judgmental. That 'hold back' feeling is probably going to encourage us to better tolerate those who disagree with us. Non-violence (not to be confused with passivity or apathy) gives us an edge. It that might not be immediately obvious, but the implicit strength in observing the principles of non-violence can greatly impress and become a prerequisite for opening deaf ears to our 'difficult-to-listen-to' vegan views. 

The Looming Judgement

1563: 

My attitude to you as a meat eater, when I seem to show antipathy towards you, guarantees things will going badly between us. As soon as you feel I’m judging your values, you become defensive. You’ll probably neither like me nor what I’m saying. You probably won’t trust me. You’ll want to catch me out.

When I start (talking Animal Rights) I should fix up this trust thing straight away, almost before I open my mouth. I need to assess where you stand, and see if this might be a touchy subject for you. I need to listen, to sense your mood, in order to give the impression that I'm a proper listener not just someone pretending to be interested, waiting for my turn to counter attack. Neither of us might know if we're about to jump down one another’s throats.

Whatever I think about your point of view, even if I already know it or can guess it, mine doesn't need to be stated outright, there and then, because it will soon enough be obvious.  Something I start to talk about, if it pertains to animals, is sure to give me away. You'll know soon enough where I stand on the issue, or can guess, and you'll look for an excuse to end any chance of a potentially confronting dialogue. For our part, we can't help these hidden messages being guessed at.

My strategy would be to edge towards outlining our arguments and values but NOT too soon. If I speak up too directly (save the animals, no-killing, vegan-or-nothing, etc.) and give myself away first up, you'll assume I'm busting to convert you. Or at least, I'll be wanting to make you feel 'wrong' and to make me seem 'right'. Possibly you'll think I'm out for revenge, like one of those true meathead-haters who needs to make you feel guilty. It might come across as if I'm thinking-at you, “There’s nothing else I can do to stop you doing what you do, unless I impose my judgement on you”. But to you, that wouldn’t make sense. Perhaps, it's barely crossed your mind that food could be an ethically contentious issue; what you do is nothing much different to what everyone else does. Eating meat is quite legal, and you'll be thinking-back-at me, “Everyone’s ‘exploiting animals’, in one way or another, so why pick on me?”

So that's where things stand: these two opposite judgements loom over this subject of ‘using animals’.