Veganism is a hideous thought

1636: 

        

Inconsistency is a headache. It's like burning the candle at both ends, trying to get the best of both worlds but ending up with the best of neither. So, if we are sensitive but have to be insensitive when it comes to certain habits, there's a contradiction and that means our being inconsistent.

We want improvement to our lives, preferably by way of following ideals. We try them out to see if they fit. For instance, take veganism - it's an appealing idea but one which is at odds with certain personal habits. One is caught, between the need to end certain habits and the unreality of something approaching perfection; we don't believe life-long habits are changeable; we don't believe there's anything even approaching perfection, so we might as well not consider that as an option. So, we revert to what we know, what sort of works for us.

But never quite satisfied with that, we constantly prod and poke and question. We might become 'semi-vegan' to see how it feels, changing foods, weighing revolutionary ideas. Moving towards consistency is about being not uncomfortable about inconsistency. This sort of change may take time and in the end it has to feel comfortable.

How uncomfortable it must seem to the confirmed meat-eater. But this is about perception and logic and not feeling nervous about making such a radical change to our eating habits.

I quote a 100 year old friend named Mary, who says she admires our vegan principles but the idea of our diet is a “hideous thought”. People, having spent so long eating 'traditionally',  imagine what it could be like, and shudder. There again, younger people are more familiar with new food regimes, and yet they might still shudder - they don’t like the trend, mainly because deep down they know all the stories they hear about farm animals are likely to be true, and don’t want to find out further information, which might serve to confirm what they're still trying to forget.

At ease with equality

1635: 

I think the finding of truth isn’t about attempting perfection or seeking enlightenment or taking a ‘spiritual path in life’, it’s about getting used to change when circumstances demand it, and being at ease with this need to change. Change keeps alive a questioning of those things others aren’t bothered enough to question.

For me, the most bothering thing I can think of, is the routine abuse of sensitive and sentient beings. The reason why it is so bothering is that so many are so innocent and are so badly abused. As a vegan I want to expand my sense of responsibility over this matter, to raise my sensibility, to penetrate as deeply as I can the reason why fellow humans can be so careless and cruel, to such as animals. It makes me want to do anything I can to understand something which, on the face of it, is very confusing.

I think I know how to treat my nearest and dearest - with love and affection. But why would I stop there? I have to ask myself if there’s any reason to stop anywhere, with humans, animals, environment, any of it. Is there anything that doesn’t deserve affection, as it passes within range?

I see myself leaping to the defence of animals, because they so badly need defending, even though this is going to involve me in a long to-do list. My un-ease comes from being perpetually overwhelmed by that long list. In my attempt to shorten it, I’m forced to prioritise my interests and to keep my goals achievable – I try to ration-out my reserves of ‘care’. And that’s how I end up being more partial than I’d like to be, and therefore guilty of inconsistency.

On examining my own inconsistency and then finding my to-do list overwhelming, what stops me from becoming drained by it all is that I've lifted the biggest weight of guilt from my shoulders, by simply being vegan. By being vegan, what needs most care is cared about. That makes everything much more straight forward for me.

I know I’m a caring being, because I don’t mind how much inconvenience I’m put to, as long as I’m not dodging the issues. Facing the issues takes a lot of energy. There’s a danger that I’ll try to spread myself too thinly and succeed in pleasing nobody, least of all myself. Then there’s the danger of putting issues I know I should deal with onto the ‘back burner’. And then I’m ashamed, and my guilt cancels out my best, self-issued ‘brownie points’. I think I’m consistent until I line up my responsibilities. And then I know I’m not.

I know how inconsistent I can be when I disregard the ‘homeless man’ on the streets at night - I see him and ask myself why should I care about him? I don’t want to take on another ‘responsibility’, so I pretend not to notice him. And in the same way, I pretend NOT to notice what I know I have noticed.

It’s the same with the way most people choose NOT to see the animals behind the food they’re eating. They know that chickens and pigs are just like dogs and cats, yet they treat one as unlovable and the other as loveable. The homeless man is just as deserving of love as my closest friend and yet I can ignore him completely. That’s an absurdity I have to live with. It just means that I haven’t developed my 'sense of responsibility' enough yet, in much the same way as the collective human race has NOT made an agreement with itself, about regarding all sensitive and sentient creatures as of equal importance.

Doing without is not so grim

1634: 

What a great asset veganism is, with its empathy-driven approach to day-to-day life. It checks our violence and selfish instincts by the food it guides us towards. Or rather, the food it makes us want to boycott. You can’t argue with the logic of veganism. But, apart from avoiding all of the ‘cruelty-products’, it inspires us towards greater things, in other ways.

When we become less reckless in what we eat, we’re also being more careful in the way we think. And taking this to its glorious conclusion, it suggests that there’s logically not much difference between the sentient and the non-sentient (it’s all some form of consciousness after all). Why behave towards the sentient in a better way than towards those regarded as non-sentient?

By thinking gentle, it affects the way we drive a car or deal with the kids or handle the cat or have respect for the humble cow. When I considered becoming a vegan it was always going to be for broader reasons than just avoiding animal food (life is, after all, more than food and clothing!!).

We are all consumers. We’re all users of resources and every adult should know that, environmentally, we tread heavily on the human-advantaged world we've inherited. Like many others, I want to tread more lightly on the earth. I want to value and better appreciate the power in everything and, to that end, I need to become more sensitive to anything I come into contact with. So, I have to transform myself from clod-hopping brute to sensitive, gentle adult.

I can either grab anything within reach or be more circumspect with my choices. I can exercise some self-control or give in to my cravings. It doesn’t have to be a choice based on morality, though. It could just as easily be the best choice for the least stress. If one of the main causes of stress is an inability to control cravings, then by being vegan (for whatever reason) we simply bypass that danger. Once, I couldn't walk past a cake shop, now I have no reason to go into one. There's nothing there I would eat. By being vegan, by determining how we choose to do or not do according to our fundamental values, we learn to do without. We usually accord with our own values in just about every other sphere of life, but not with food!! By being vegan we simply, but not necessarily easily, make our unhealthy/unethical food cravings unavailable. Chocolate, cream profiteroles are no longer going to be on our menu.

So, with my cravings for cream, chocolate and choux pastry, it boils down to learning to do without. And once we can get used to that, a vegan lifestyle is very satisfying. It's especially so, since it helps us to fulfil that universal wish, to be gentler with things without going crazy for the want of them. Just omitting; not having to compromise our gentle nature and compassionate principles. Insisting inside ourselves, to move away from those desperate urges which, down the line, cause harm to others is at the heart of being vegan; doors open, and we dare to enjoy almost anything if it is governed by the principle of harmlessness.

Good maintenance

1633: 

Many of our most treasured possessions are complex structures, often machines which require maintenance or care if they are to be useful for a long time. Owning something requires our ‘caring’ for it, so we become automatically involved with its ‘well-being’ as soon as we start to make use of it.

Car maintenance, aircraft maintenance, teeth maintenance, each pose a risk if we don’t attend to them appropriately - like the failure to maintain an aircraft, and it all ending in catastrophe.

 But all this caring, maintaining, cleaning, etc. takes time and effort. Each application of care costs us something. The insurance industry is a crude fail-safe for those of us who are slack about ongoing maintenance. We face a dichotomy. We have two choices: either we spend money and feel comfortable or we downgrade the importance of peace-of-mind and save our money. Usually they win - their dire warnings scare us into parting with our money.

Each day, there’s a list of things to do, things to be maintained, and we aren’t sure what to prioritise - a little care here, an insurance policy there, but it can easily become overwhelming. We might spend a lifetime searching for the best insurance but never rid ourselves of a drowning feeling; and we are even closer to drowning if we ever become ill, so keeping healthy often rises up to the top of most people’s list. In searching for the best overall option in life, the least expensive safeguard, we might hit upon veganism.

Being vegan is, at the very least, a good insurance policy. The food almost guarantees bodily health. Some extremely health conscious vegans regard their bodies as temples, but for others of us it becomes even more important to maintain good conscience (cruelty-free foods, environmentally safer foods, etc). On a personal level, veganism builds self-discipline, and in that way, by daily practice, we strengthen ourselves; with certain eating decisions being made many times a day, it builds a strength of character which makes us feel safer than anything else could. And part of this process allows us to avoid being controlled by outside forces, business interests or being influenced by misinformation. As vegans, we can better control our own destinies, and in that way feel all the safer.

Like a well maintained bike or aircraft, the principles on which veganism is based keeps our machinery on all levels, functioning well. We can feel safe using this diet, knowing that the food we eat is not hurting our bodies or the farmed animals which omnivores think nothing of exploiting. It lets us understand the significance of empathy and demonstrates continuously how empathy has a strengthening effect on our very psyche.

The Inanimate

1632:

Once we've dropped the animals-are-useful model, and see animals less as things and more as beings, we can then move on to a world of imagination where we see an 'animated soul' in things, not just in humans, not just in animals, but in every thing. By imagining that there’s a soul (or whatever you call it) in every thing, we start to regard everything as sovereign and worthy of respect. At least, worthy enough for us to grant it some of our attention.

One of the most beautiful objects anyone could aspire to own and use is a flute. One can feel elevated by the wonderful flow of sound produced by the flautist playing this musical instrument - an example of the inanimate becoming animate - flute responding to flautist. The object comes alive, not quite like an animal but in another no-less-convincing way. Objects can be beloved because we’re having, what feels like, a relationship with them - our car, our house, a flute or even a well looked-after, well-cleaned mirror.

Take a mirror for example. It responds to me by showing me my face, and that makes a mirror a useful item worthy of being looked after. Or there are other things we get attached to, like a bike. We might imagine that this useful object 'speaks' to us about its one important safety factor, and if we fail to listen to it, if we don’t maintain it properly, the brake cable thins and snaps at the worst possible moment, and we suffer the consequences - of not 'listening'.  

Our attitude towards our inanimate possessions is a template for how we deal with the sentient beings in our care. If we're careless about the things we own, it’s likely we might not be sensitive about the living beings in our care, be they human or non-human.

Many forms of energy

1630: 

That we believe animals (i.e. food animals) are low on our priority list, and that we think their treatment is not very important, reflects a rather alarming attitude in humans. And yet it’s probably coming from a very basic survival instinct, connected with saving energy. We are brought up to think that animal food is the best source of energy, and that in turn is linked to an attitude about energy itself, and where it comes from and how it can be most usefully produced.

Energy comes in different forms and qualities. I don’t believe that all energy is simply a quantitative resource, like the finite quantity of fuel in the petrol tank of a car. There are sources of energy other than food. But if we only see energy as precious stuff which we can run out of, we might not push ourselves too hard, for fear of draining it. Part of that logic makes us reluctant to squander energy for fear of ending up with none left for essentials - if we risk energy supply, we risk not completing our long list of responsibilities.

But we're between a rock and a hard place here. If we preserve what energy we have, and not risk it or waste it, our energy could be drained by guilt - the guilt which comes from doing nothing. So, we weigh up our options, think about our responsibilities, look after the things we own, ‘things’ we're in charge of, like home, kids, friends and work commitments. We know that each will take a portion of our energy. And after that, we think that there's not much left over for things lower on our priority list.

This brings us to why there is so little concern for animals’ rights, because to fight on the animals' behalf seems particularly energy consuming, and everyone knows that animal issues aren't as important as human issues!!!

If we do choose to promote animal rights, working rather like a ‘guardian’ for them, what will that involve? First up, it will take energy. That brings on a fear of becoming energy-poor, because of it. But many Animal Rights activists soon enough find that's NOT true. By ploughing energy into what one considers to be important, energy doesn't deplete, it builds. And this leads to a review of this whole idea of energy-use.

Energy comes from various sources. Unlike money, it isn't accumulated or used up in the same way, but can be produced out of meaningful activity, doing things we believe in. By serving the interests of animals-in-extremis, one would be acting out of love, which most would agree is the best known source of energy. And that's in sharp contrast to the much cruder means of energy-production, where animals are made to work for us by draining their energy for ourselves.

We’re told that the farmer loves his animals, but in truth any care shown to them is for keeping them alive for human benefit, not for the animals’ benefit; attending to their welfare only means the animals will respond better and grow faster, so that more 'energy' can be extracted from them. 

Priorities

1629:

Edited by CJ Tointon

I love my bicycle! We have a good time together. But to be truthful, I have a rather abusive relationship with it. I don’t look after it. I don’t clean it. I don’t even oil it when it squeaks! But I rely on it every day to get me around. I occasionally pump up the tyres and curse it when I get a puncture. My bike serves me well but I don’t really have feelings for it. It’s just metal and rubber. It isn’t sentient. I’ll probably run it into the ground until it's no longer rideable; then dump it and get another one! It wasn’t an expensive bike and therefore not worthy of much respect! Quite an attitude!!  

But the things I own and the way I look after them, reflects my attitude towards them. Sure, I care about their looks and operation (when it suits me) but bikes don't pose any 'moral' questions for me. I'm not scared of my bike; although I am scared on one level. I'm scared of abusing something because it might 'bite back'. If I neglect the brakes on my bike, it may fail to stop when I ask it to!

Whether it's a child, a bike, a car, a dog or the planet - I have the same fear. If I don't do the 'right thing' by them, somehow I'll be made to suffer. My attitude towards humans is one of either respect or abuse. But what about animals? Why should there be any difference in my feelings towards them? And can I apply similar feelings to inanimate objects? Is this going too far? Do I think this 'attitude' would take too much effort if applied too liberally? And is this the reason why I might adopt the 'easiest possible' attitude?

Attitudes take time. Being a vegan takes time - and effort. Someone like me, with no family responsibilities, has more time to be 'creative' and 'imaginative' in the kitchen. Those with dependants often have less time. Their lives are literally not their own. Added to this (or perhaps because of this) animals may not be something they feel strongly about. After 'work' and 'home duties' there may not be much energy left to consider 'fighting for the animals'. Realising this, the Animal Industries know they can get away with almost anything. They know they'll not be criticised for what they do by already over-taxed people whose priorities are elsewhere.

Abuse of animals

1628: 

Farmers don’t recognise that animals have a life of their own, where human interests play no part at all. To any animal farmer, the very thought of animals being anything other than a resource for human convenience is anathema. To build up a relationship with an animal is unthinkable. After all, the intention is to get it to a point where it can be murdered.

So, animals are there to be profited from. That they are abused is incidental. Any docile animal might be up for grabs. For the human, any useful animal is simply a business opportunity, that’s all. To keep up with competition, and to keep the Industry's shareholders happy, a few principles have to be compromised, and at that point the abuse starts.

Objects

1627: 

An animal should never be just a dispensable, replaceable piece of property. There’s an obvious  difference between various consciousnesses - my table, the living tree, the sentient creature, the human being. It may seem impossible at first thought, but at all levels of consciousness, each deserves respect.

There’s a lot of difference between an abusive relationship and a loving one, between the parasitic and the symbiotic. It seems that we humans haven’t yet learnt how to be symbiotic with those animals which happen to be useful to us. And as for having consideration for other levels of consciousness, forget it.

Valuable resources are lumped in with ‘useful animals’, and all regarded as 'things' for the taking. We think it’s all there for us, all part of the rich bounty to which we’re entitled. And with a mixture of minimal respect, lack of appreciation for what we already have and greed for more, it makes us never satisfied. Anything we want we can have; we acquire, we use-up, and then we keep wanting more. We graduate from indifference to abuse and then to full blown alienation.

The deadliest disease amongst humans is dissatisfaction. We open the box on Christmas Day containing a beautiful puppy dog, and six months later we’re off on our holidays, and taking the puppy (now a dog) to the vets to be put down.

If we tire of something we develop a contempt for it, so that we can distance ourselves from it; in this case it’s the no-longer-so-cute dog. All the dissimilarities, between human and non-human are highlighted, and any similarity is downgraded, so that we can dispose of it or abuse it, and rest easy with a justified conscience. ‘Food animals’ seem to be so dissimilar to us that we don’t need to consider them as beings at all. In fact they are merely alive in order to make them useful to us dead.

As addicts of animal products, like anyone addicted to anything, we must be assured of supply, so the chain of animal to farmer to animal-industry to shop keeper, is set up to maintain our lifestyle. One faulty link and it’s catastrophe - imagine, for instance, a shop being out of ice cream. Unthinkable!

Betraying Future Generations

1626: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

I've just watched a programme on TV predicting two main things: a huge increase in the world's population and a huge decrease in food and water supplies. The omnivorous lifestyle adopted by almost every human on the planet lays ever greater strain on the planet's ability to produce enough food and water to sustain this way of life.

In this TV programme, it was shown that educated women (in this case in India) with their greater access to birth control, would choose to have only two children at most. With our present medical knowledge of how to avoid the main childhood killer diseases, there's no longer any reason to be producing large families. This would prove to be a breakthrough in the problem of world overpopulation. With regard to keeping people fed, it was shown that food technology and water conservation could bring about more food with less waste of water.

But despite this great leap forward in knowledge, the main causes of the present difficulties facing the planet are nevertheless not being addressed. It seems that humans will 'fiddle at the edges', but never fully face up to their responsibilities for bringing about a permanent solution - namely, the adoption of plant-based food regimes.

Individual omnivores are not all stupid, and yet, collectively, they don't seem to understand how wasteful it is to use up valuable plant food and water to feed animals to provide meat and by-products - when none of it is necessary! Nor do they realise just how much animal farming contributes to the production of vast quantities of greenhouse gases.

And then there's today's ethical questions which future generations will probably not understand, namely: why we practised the cruelty of farming animals, why we were so wasteful, why we didn't adopt such obvious solutions to our feeding problems when we had the knowledge and (most importantly) why there was such a conspiracy of silence about it all! They will surely have to conclude that the humans of today were only willing to talk about solutions, not actually implement them. 

It seems we humans are incapable of facing the truth about cruelty and waste. We seem concerned only with our own 'present' - not with the future. After all, we won't be around to witness the consequences of today's lack of concern. It's evident that we like to speak brave words to impress future generations, but our sophisticated speeches are a sham. We are, in fact, still the same old primitive and self-centred humans we always were.

Even if the planet can maintain a zero increase in population growth, there is no way we can sustain our present seven billion humans on an omnivorous diet without causing harm to the planet and human health - not to mention the damage done to the animal population! The solution is simple; but there's a reluctance to 'bite the bullet'. If we can see the obscenity of treating sentient animals like food-producing machines, then perhaps the worse obscenity is our avoidance of the obvious alternatives.

Once we can acknowledge the simplest of solutions - using plant-based foods where less water is wasted and animals are not exploited - we won't need to hide behind the "I'm alright Jack" attitude. If we shirk this responsibility, we doom future generations to sickness and starvation.

Self deception

1625: 

Even if we don’t actually take part in the grisly act of murdering animals ourselves, we give tacit support to those who do, even though we might feel sad for the whole sorry business.

         

It seems that some humans are able to hurt animals without a second thought, whilst most others couldn’t or wouldn’t.  However, most of us ‘kind-hearted people’ are able to stand-by and watch-yet-not-see. It’s a little like watching the school bully beat up a small kid in the playground but pretending not to be looking in that direction. We have to wonder if it’s disturbing because of the pain our empathy causes us, or if it’s the guilt we feel from being passive about it. 

The defenceless child is much the same as the defenceless animal, each needs protection, although the animal is not merely being bullied but, because of its property status, it's in danger of being killed. Imagine a pig at the slaughter house, being pushed into a chute, with its life about to be terminated. Apart from feeling immediate disgust, we feel the nastiest prick of conscience when we try to look away? What can we do for this animal? Absolutely nothing, since it's an owned slave; the owner can legally end its life. But what can we do for the next one? Obviously, the choice is ours - to become a vegan. If we decide to do nothing we're simply weighing up the disadvantages of getting involved - a classic 'non-act' of self-interest.

Which brings us to ‘eating meat’? Such an ordinary event. But now, knowing how immoral it is and how immoral it is to remain uninvolved, everything should change, but it doesn’t. The surprise is that we can still eat animals and their by-products, whilst knowing what we’re condoning, whilst justifying something we know is insupportable.

         

When there’s nowhere honourable to go, we have to retreat into self-deception. It's rather like being ambushed by some horrible mental condition that's waiting to leap out and crush our spirit.  

Sad for ourselves

1624: 

As we get older, as we reflect on our life passing, we might see outcomes of life-held attitudes, as having spoilt our life, not the way great life-changing events do but as a creeping damage from the sheer routine of habit. In particular we’ve eroded something rich in our life by animal-eating, three times a day, every day, year after year. It’s a possibility that, at each bite, we might have been reminded of the diabolical things being done in our name; how we’ve been instrumental in supporting what’s being done to innocent, sentient animals. It’s sobering to think that right now many billions of animals are in prison and that, within moments of 'now', one hundred and fifty thousand animals will be forced into the execution chambers of the world!

Go vegan, and you won't get the heebie jeebies every time you eat. 

Essential for life?

1623: 

Despite our great gains as humans, with a long list of brilliant discoveries and advances, we’ve nonetheless succumbed to a central piece of misinformation - that animals are essential to our survival. We’ve meekly accepted that we need to eat them to stay healthy. If this isn’t true, and obviously I don’t think it is, then the whole human race has invested heavily in one carefully crafted con.

Set against this, vegans are emphasising that plant-foods are perfect for humans to thrive on. Nutrition ‘experts’, in the employ of the Animal Industry and therefore of the opposite belief, advise customers to “eat meat or you’ll die”. Few people feel confident enough to risk their own physical well being, let alone the lives of their kids, to find out if this is true or not.

But instinctively, there’s something profoundly wrong about animal food. Maybe it’s something about the fact that we never see the animals we eat, since they’re always hidden away; we only get to see them dead, as meat. And that seems to suit most people, if only because it’s the end ‘product’ that’s of interest, not where it came from. The omnivore doesn’t want to be concerned with the animal which they're proposing to eat.

At some stage in our adult life we consciously enter into a Mephistophelian contract, by trading compassion for lifestyle . According to this contract we can carry on enjoying our food just as long as we understand and accept that vegans are wrong about the safety of plant foods. And this is extended to suggest that vegan types are conspiring to inflict suffering and death on those who reject a plant-based diet; the assumption is that vegans want to spoil people’s enjoyment of their food because they are, at heart, spoilers. 

The bite-back

1622: 

Food is sensory not spiritual, so it’s usually just a case of ‘eat, drink and be merry, and be careful of your weight’. There is no ‘higher spiritual component’ to it - a stomach full of meat is a mind full of misery and murder.

We put our very sensitivity on the line when it comes to indulging in animal-eating. Both compassion and intelligence are compromised by the use of animal foods, specifically by our conniving with the enslaving and killing of animals for food.

We aren’t out there hunting them or risking our safety since these animals are behind bars and can’t fight back. Everything has been made easy for us. The wildness of Nature has been tamed – we imprison ‘food animals’, force them to be docile and then make sure they remain so. But the animals do bite back in a subtle and unseen way. The eating of their bodies and secretions is a creeping scourge - after eating them continuously we often put on weight and suffer the ill effects of diabetes and heart disease, and worse. If we are tied to animal-based cuisine, it will slow us down and in a subtle way weaken our affectionate nature, so that we no longer care for the beings for which we’d otherwise feel great affection.

The bottom line here is that we can’t resist eating them. So many delicious foods are animal-based. Why should we deny ourselves the enjoyment of them?

Because animals represent such rich pickings for humans, it would seem like madness NOT to take advantage of them. But by choosing to use animals, we bring out the worst in ourselves. The guilt or shame might be heavy enough, but being addicted to animal products and spending so much money on them, we fall prey to the chronic conditions they bring on. And it all adds up to a ‘slowing-down’ - our self development is held back by mindlessly consuming what are always the most ugly products in the shop.

The Animal Industries are happy to do our dirty work for us, rearing and killing and presenting the end product, just so long as we don’t make a fuss about it. The deal is that we do our best to turn a blind eye to the horror of their business while they conceal as much of it as they can - we, producers and consumers, conspire together to objectify the living being. The producer keeps us satisfied and we keep them in business.

Over the years we’ve executed billions of animals, none of whom have ever been guilty of any crime. This wash of cruelty and destruction has forced us to pretend to ourselves that what happens to animals doesn’t actually happen at all. We come to believe that we are not cold blooded killers, when it’s all too obvious that we know we are.

Doing something about it

1621: 

Perhaps as consumers we are not only brainwashed by misinformation but dazzled by the abundance of commodities in our shops. Steaks, rich dairy foods, soft woollen jumpers, elegant leather jackets, complex seafood dishes, simple cream buns, plus many other affordable items, too numerous to mention. Everything is shown to look attractive. It’s like an Aladdin’s cave which we can’t walk by without going in, unable to pass up the chance to buy and consume. None of us wants to miss out on what is so readily and inexpensively available. There is no reason to look too closely at the detail. Everything possible is done to allow us to let the horror story of animal cruelty go unremarked.

But, what goes on in the privacy of the human mind? What does our conscience tell us, regarding the wrongness of it all? Perhaps we can get away with telling ourselves that we simply don’t want to look - what the eye doesn’t see the heart can’t grieve over.  And if we do take notice and even admit that something should change, we follow that up with, “But let it not start with me. I am no leader. I’ll join you once you’re up and running. I don’t want to start the ball rolling”.

But it all came out in the 1930s, every nasty detail of animal farming was being publicised and, with each subsequent year, more was exposed. The ball has been rolling since the advent of the idea of vegan-principle gave rise to an animal rights movement. But still not many are ‘joining’.

As an example: my ‘vehicle’ is lying in a ditch. It has broken down and obviously it isn’t going to repair itself. It will lie there until I do something about it. If something needs to be done in this world of ours, surely I need to start doing what needs to be done.

What you choose to do won’t get my car out of the ditch. What you choose to eat does not affect my own responsibility towards all those enslaved animals. It is my responsibility to do what I must do. It’s a matter between me and my conscience. And I know that the less I take notice of my conscience, the weaker my central safety mechanism is. If I do nothing, I will soon enough reach the point where I’m no longer effectively in control, where I hand the controls to those who are only too eager to take them up.

         

As I might mindlessly wander into a shop and spend my money on questionable products, so then I am doing something I will regret later. If I keep on doing it there’ll come a time when I’m helpless to put any of it right again.

Recently, when the full impact of killing cattle was shown on one of our most popular TV current affairs investigation programmes, it didn’t require much of a leap of imagination to see how all beef-eaters are implicated. We were shown ugly scenes of how cattle were being killed. I heard a lot of talk about that programme, from meat-eaters, who were perhaps trying in vain to absolve themselves from what they were witnessing. But they knew they were part of it and regretted being part of it. And not long afterwards, the beef-eaters were once again eating their beef.

Conscience

1620: 

A numbed conscience lets us get away with things. A troubled conscience casts a dark light on what we do. Does conscience prick when we eat a steak? Can we put our conscience to sleep when we want it to NOT notice something unsavoury?

Either sub-consciously or consciously, we all suffer some sort of ‘conscience pain’, unless we’ve learnt how to switch it off. And if it can be switched off, then habits grow like weeds around a healthy plant, until it chokes, until we lose sensitivity altogether. And that means we can only ever be half awake to the world we live in.

It seems that a big part of our awareness-development relies on our seeing things very clearly, whilst the ability to cauterise our conscience requires us to close our eyes, for fear of being blinded by what we’re looking at.

When it comes to the matter of choosing our food, most people have learned to become desensitised. With animal-eating we say, “Everyone does it so why shouldn’t I?” And just to help us along, we have ads on the TV that help us normalise this habit of animal-eating. We’re helped further by the cooking shows, where the good-looking chef is always seen radiating bonhomie and using lots of meat and dairy when preparing those delicious-looking dishes. We’re encouraged further by the ever-present eating scenes in travel and holiday programmes.

Promoting animal foods is big business. Animals are always portrayed as being here for our benefit. The messy or cruel side of animal life is never shown, only the ‘end products’ which are always made to look ultimately attractive. The animals responsible for all these ‘goodies’ are never known as living beings only as dead constituents of our favourite foods.

It is the mark of a so called 'educated person' that they can convince themselves that, because they haven’t been personally involved in torturing or murdering animals, that they can’t therefore be held accountable for what goes on behind the scenes. Conveniently, they dumb down their conscience, pretending they know nothing, even when they know plenty and enough.

The animal-eaters know, for instance, that whilst their own hands seem to be clean, that they nonetheless support the Industry with their dollars.

None of us want to see ourselves as cold-hard-bastards. So, to that end, we endeavour to keep our untroubled consciences asleep. And in this climate of acceptance, we learn to accept meat and various animal secretions as ‘just normal’. The only time we might feel a disturbance in the air is when we have the misfortune to encounter one of those ‘damned vegans’ who ask awkward questions. Like, “How can you possibly go on supporting the Animal Industry, when you know what they do”? Then the main aim is to avoid vegans at all costs for fear that their loud voices will wake the sleeping conscience. 

Conscience, today’s attitude problem

1619: 

Not caring about what’s happening to all these animals is simply part of our species’ carelessness and lack of empathy. The main reason we should all alter this attitude is that animals are not inanimate. They’re sentient - they feel, move and have many life-functions similar to ours. So, why do we give the farmer the nod when it comes to enslaving them? Perhaps it’s because, for the majority of humankind, there is a belief in the need for animal foods, spurred on by a taste addiction for them and an economic attraction for these highly subsidised, ‘bargain’ food products. For these reasons most people are prepared to condone a cruel system of animal husbandry.

         

We side-step something we wouldn’t normally be proud to be part of. By supporting what they do to these animals, we sell our humanity, which has been largely achieved by developing our conscience. In so many ways, we humans are the inheritors of brilliant and beneficial discoveries. Not only have many of them been useful but mostly they conform to conscience. But as animal husbandry methods have developed we’ve moved gradually away from any semblance of humanity and today the making of foods based on animal ingredients doesn’t conform to the strictures of conscience. We can’t be proud of having any involvement with modern husbandry. The modern farm, where they practice mutilations and confine animals, is the perfect example of what is patently outside the bounds of conscience.

There’s no such thing as conscience

1618: 

When it comes to the maltreatment of animals, our conscience should weigh heavily on all of us - how could it not? It worries many of us that we can be so cruel to animals. Perhaps our callous disposition is nothing more than our conscience struggling with detachment. The guilty look on our faces is something we may not notice about ourselves, but we notice it in others.

Science has no proof of the existence of conscience! Fancy that! Many scientists (as well as non-scientists) believe that ‘matters of conscience’ are secondary to the interests of human advancement. The white-coat brigade wield enormous influence, their knowledge of how things work outweighs both emotion and conscience. And until recently the scientist was regarded as the new god. But the scales have fallen from our eyes today and people are now veering towards 'greener' people, who use an intuition that relies on the wisdom of conscience.

The inanimate

1616: 

If I think the ‘animal thing’ is sad whilst the next person doesn’t, it says a lot about perception. I might know a few more details which makes me closer to the predicament farmed animals face, but today almost every adult knows, essentially, how bad things are in these gulags they call farms and slaughterhouses. And yet it seems that I see things one way and someone else sees it in quite another way.

This is how I see it: animals are not so very different to us, they’re sentient, they feel pain and suffer as we do when their well-being and life are threatened. This is how others see it: animals are NOT sovereign beings and their treatment, by their owners, is no one else’s business – animals are property, and property is sacrosanct according to the law.

         

However, according to moral law, the way we treat them shows us how careless we, as a species, have become. Finding out what’s actually happening to them is a huge wake-up call, or so you’d think. But most people are still swayed by the rights of the owners, rather than any rights the animals might have.  

One of the most useful things I possess is a table, a place where I sit and eat and write. I love my table - I made it. I’m proud of ‘my’ table. I chose the wood, paid for it and did the carpentry. I didn’t grow the tree but I feel I have the right to call this table ‘my’ table. It’s my property. I can look after it, abuse it, even chop it up and throw it in the garbage. I don’t have to wonder how the table is feeling, or what it thinks about my ‘owning’ it because, of course, objects can’t ‘feel’ or ‘think’. Does that mean I can treat my car, my bike, my table in any old way I please? Legally I can.

         

This must be how farmers think about their ‘right’ to treat what’s theirs, in any way they choose, not only their tractors but their ‘stock’ . Essentially, they think they can do what ever they like to animals, because animals are considered property (like my table or my bike). Animals can be loved and nurtured or they can be exploited and even destroyed.

We deal with property just as we please, with impunity and legal immunity. Farm animals are regarded, to all intents and purposes, as inanimate: not without life but without the right to life.

Ah! But the sadness

1615: 

Vegan-living is a big answer to a lot of difficult questions. Our exploring has paid off. But we’re as sad as hell.

It’s not much comfort discovering a solution when there’s no likelihood of others appreciating it, for then it simply remains a comfort to the discoverer but to few others. And if that discovery represents a liberation for enslaved animals, it's no help to them if the humans who keep them locked up haven’t been convinced, as we have.

How do we get over the sadness of the situation of exploited animals? We live amongst people who are so shut off from their own compassion that they can’t empathise with the farm animals, if only because their lack of empathy conveniently allows them to eat and enjoy animal foods.

These days we don’t have to be well educated on the subject to know what happens to those animals. We vegans might feel sad at the thought of this, but we should be equally sad for the human who is shutting off their 'enlightened' side so that they can enjoy those food and clothing products which issue from the dark side.

A time for change

1614: 

There could be many reasons for eating meat, caging animals and experimenting on them. An exploitative approach to animals is certainly advantageous to humans – it’s cheaper and easier all round when you’re a member of the dominant species. Using animals is especially attractive to the urban consumer who doesn’t need to have any close connection with the living variety of animals, only dead ones.

Over the past thirty years (a mere pinprick of time) we city dwellers have come to know much more about cruelty involving ‘food’ animals. But down through the centuries there’s always been some sort of ‘knowing’. It’s a bit like pollution, it’s always been with us but never more apparent than now. It’s been the same with starvation and slavery - these problems are as old as the hills, as has been our guilt about them.

Humans have dominated the environment, including the most useful animals, for perhaps two million years. Now we can see what that has led to. Following our awareness of human ability to dominate has come the long term effects of that – namely a whole variety of unforeseen dangers. But another strand of a growing awareness has given us the chance to repair what we’ve done. And although the repaired state may take some time to take effect, it might be just enough for us to realise the full extent of the damage we’ve done to the planet and its inhabitants. In the meantime, for us to survive long enough to bring about repair, we’d do well to realise the extent of the dangers facing us from the deadly illnesses that plague us today, which have a strong association with the eating of animals.

Eventually we’ll say, “This has gone far enough!!” and we’ll all become seriously herbivorous and non-exploitative. But for the present, the vast majority of omnivores aren’t quite ill enough or guilt-ridden enough to see the need for personal change. And that must happen before a collective change can take place.

Our collective consciousness is still too rigid to brook any real movement. We are collective enough in habit but still so individually driven that we have no faith that there could be a collective call for change. On an individual basis, we don’t really believe we’re safe enough to explore new possibilities on our own. We want others to come with us. And this is the problem facing vegans at present – we have a convincing recipe for permanent repair and change, but we don’t have the means to implement it. We still don’t know how to convince people to give up what they’re used to for what they don’t yet know exists.

The Starting Line

1613: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

Vegans don't want to be thought of as 'missionaries', nor as being too mild-mannered to speak out. We want to be taken seriously and have what we say considered constructively (whilst not sounding too dogmatic). We want to be seen as showing respect for the integrity of any person who is willing to listen to what we have to say. We don't need 'agreement' - especially if that means you go home and promptly forget what you'd agreed to and just slip back into old habits.

Imagine I'd been talking to you about Animal Rights and Veganism. You'd nodded at what I'd been saying (perhaps to give the impression of agreement because that's what you thought I was after). It's not about my getting you to tell me I'm right, however. I don't need to be humoured in that way. In fact, I'd rather have disagreement and a robust debate! I want to 'devils advocate' issues without sounding too high and mighty about your being seriously misinformed or uninformed. But (and I stress) I'm not out to win converts; only to get people to start thinking afresh.

The trick is to tread a fine line between informing you and maintaining an equal footing between us; not about me being the 'know-all' and you being the 'know-nothing'. I don't want you to think I'm pouring much needed information into an empty vessel. I realise you have arrived at your present position (that it's okay to be using animals) after a lifetime of thought. As soon as I rubbish your point of view - I've lost you. In the early stages of our dialogue, I'd be wanting you to think that I'm more interested in guiding information past you, on what might be a long journey over a very rocky and resistant road.

However 'smart' my approach, however 'slick' my arguments, however 'nice' a person I might seem to be; I know that I represent just one side of a debate that has been going on for a long, long time. As much as you might think my only interest is in persuading you to my side; you should also know that I do have an interest in learning something myself by listening to the other side of the argument. We all prefer to be right; but that in itself creates an obstacle to communication. It's very off-putting to be with someone who believes they're right and that any differing view must therefore be wrong and ripe for altering.

I might believe my position concerning animal use and plant food nutrition to be morally correct; but this doesn't give me the right to earbash anyone whom I believe is morally incorrect. So if I'm given the chance to put my point of view across, out of respect to you, I should try to be short and sweet. I doubt that it's at all useful to initially go into any great detail. You might want to hear something about Veganism - but not everything. At first, you'll want to establish a few important matters as to whether I'm a fair-minded person, an interesting person, or indeed if I'm just too boring to listen to!


 My aim would be to show you that I am patient and open and willing to share all my views when you, the listener, is ready to hear them. Much the same way that the reader is only ready to read when the book is opened. At first, I have to concentrate on making sure you know clearly where I'm coming from. My opening gambit has to be the central premise of my argument: that I believe we should not be touching animals at all. This is the start of it all. If this isn't established first, you might think that all I have to say is a lead-up to promoting a vegetarian diet (with something extra thrown in) as if it were a position which has no broader philosophical bases. 

Vegans as reference books

1612: 

Contrasts jolt people - on the one hand we have the fit and vital individuals and on the other the sluggish and dour. There’s a lot of illness around, obviously linked to what we’re eating, particularly animal foods. With so much fresh information coming through, in books and on the Net, we’re maybe shaken by compassion and drawn towards bringing about a fuller consciousness which would see a chance to break free of the animal habit altogether.

         

The more we follow vegan logic and the more it impacts on our own lives, the sooner we get our lives back on track, and then want to pass the whole idea on to others. Convincing ourselves about it all is one thing, but how do we speak instructively to others and yet not sound like preachers?

         

Vegans need to be more like reference books. The contrast between our lifestyle and the conventional lifestyle is at the very least intriguing – it's likely that people do want to know what we’re about; we seem to have some important answers. Ifthat is so, then we’ve got to welcome questions and be willing to act the devil’s advocate. The last thing we want is to be avoided out of fear of confrontation. 

There’s hope, but not quite yet

1611:

I, like many other vegans, am trying to inform people whilst taking care of myself at the same time - I know that vegan principles can enlighten anyone and yet this much valued veganism can be isolating. For myself, I know it’s my own source of inner clarity that lights up many questionable aspects of human life, but at present I often feel alone and effectively silenced.

         

Vegans are more alone than others since we’ve taken it upon ourselves to challenge the status quo. Plus we encourage others to leap into the void with us, which makes people afraid of what we want them to think about.

         

I’d like people to be thinking about how truth is being manipulated. And while, on the face of it, the truth of animal exploitation is so obvious, the Animal Industries are pushing in the opposite direction. They encourage less thinking and more spending. Not surprisingly they are winning, since they’ve been building their advertising networks for many decades and indeed even for thousands of years. They’ve cornered the market, which means they’ve addicted most people to the things they want to sell them. If people were better informed and therefore better united, they’d rise up against the general world of crap commodities, food or otherwise. But we’re each in our own corner. Few are willing to take a lead.

         

Using unscrupulous methods, the Animal Industries get what they want because they know the customers are united in favour of their products; they're hooked on a wide variety of animal products which each person has bought over and over again. But as new information comes to light and the penny drops, sooner or later we’ll come to realise why so many people are becoming so chronically unwell. On a physical level, animal foods act as a slow poison, but on a spiritual level, they gnaw at our conscience about the way our animal foods come to us. And I doubt if anyone is unconcerned at the part they play in animal cruelty.

         

Vegetarian foods and diets are already being tried and as the ethical dimensions become more obvious, alongside health rationales, more people will move that way and then, logically, step towards veganism. Once that happens, a change in what people are thinking about will show up, and the animal exploiting industries will go broke.

Educating the masses

1610: 

Our society today remains specifically un-educated about certain things, and our political leaders prefer to keep it that way. Living in our present world of misinformation feels a bit like living in that famous Faulty Towers hotel, with its grudging reception clerk, who has nothing useful to offer us. It’s often like that in schools, where kids can only learn what’s on the proscribed syllabus; they can only absorb what they’re taught, they can’t necessarily find out what they want to know.

When censorship and misinformation reign, there’s little chance that any useful learning will take place, and therefore no significant chance for change. Society’s chief interest is in social stability, and so it seems to our leaders that the animals’ right to a life (and our right not to have to eat them) represents a subject so sensitive that even discussing the matter is deemed almost threatening. It’s possible that we’ll only be able to slightly penetrate people’s defence shield with alternative information, and then merely hope that we can appeal to their intuitive sense of truth.

What vegans have to say needs, to some extent, to be taken on trust because we can’t prove enough of what we say, at least not to our chief detractors. Our main aim should be to launch ideas that trigger a ‘wake-up’ response in people, so they’ll want to question things and question us.

In order to establish that level of essential trust, we must endorse our questioners' right to make the first move. In their own minds, they have to be sure they’re not jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Even over food, nothing is certain; the plant-only diet has only been tried for a couple of generations, so for most of us who have become vegan, we can't provide proof-positive of the safety of it. But there are no assurances anyway, since even nutrition is still a contentious science. All we can do, to allay any fears we might have, is to refer to the research of mainly overseas scientists, who give the vegan diet their seal of approval. For most people, who are reluctant to listen to us anyway, this wouldn’t be solid enough ground. Instead, they will force their ethics to bend to what they perceive to be personal safety concerns. Hence, ethics become very subjective, rather as if truth can be manufactured from the continuous repetition of any preferred belief.

How then can we shake people out of their complaisant beliefs when the basis of them is so shallow? We’re up against sophisticated, educated, free-willed adults, not a bunch of dummies who are easy to persuade. Vegans and activists in general often sound desperate when we sloganise our cause. It's as if we're trying to break through a belief system by issuing orders -  we say “GO VEGAN”, “Save the Animals, Save Your Health, Save the Planet”, and hope that our conviction will show through. Something will surely rub off. Amongst all the information we put out and the evidence of animal cruelty on farms, there should be enough in what we say  for much of it to be instinctively taken on trust.

But however carefully we deliver our message, people may never be sure of our trustworthiness. We do ourselves no favours if we seem pushy or weird. We should know that sophisticated, intelligent people won’t easily be convinced. And if they don’t trust us, they will invent reasons to dislike us, which is the very last things we want. We might not care about what people think of us, for our own sake, but we don’t want people to be put off from listening to what we’ve got to say because we haven't found a non-threatening way to say it.

Cynicism

1609: 

If we’re hoping to reach people face to face, without the use of computers, we need to come up with a ‘total delivery package’. If we want to connect in a more inspiring way, we need to learn about how new information is taken in and how it might be resisted.

Anyone who sets themselves up as having answers will face cynicism. People have good reason not to trust ‘the soothsayer’. No one trusts a salesman or politician anymore. If we really want to educate one-on-one, we have to wait for the other person to be receptive. In other words, tedious though it might be, we have to wait for permission to speak. Unless we’re preaching to the converted or have an audience of drones, we're not likely to get too many listeners. And surely the Animal Rights movement doesn’t simply want people to tamely agree with us; we aren’t collecting numbers or wanting to gather people who’re bored with their lives and who are willing to accept any old ‘life-recipe’. Our cause needs imaginative, creative people, even difficult-to-persuade people, whose sense of free-will is strongly embedded. We should welcome anyone who wants to put up a fight with us. And if we can’t answer the big questions (to the satisfaction of the cynical questioner) we'll fail to break through their self-protective shell; we won't get the ‘big questions’ asked in the first place, unless we’re approachable as people. Today, an unwilling audience doesn’t exist, since no one can make anyone else listen, let alone agree.