1700:
You first hit the idea of it. Vegan
principle is explained and one's first instinct might be to leap to the defence
of animals, because they obviously badly need defending. And then one realises
what that defence involves. To 'put your money where your mouth is' involves a
long ‘to-do’ list. Is one prepared to take on such a list without setting oneself
up for a fall? Giving up items of animal-based food and clothing because of the
animals, and giving them up for ever?
If one feels overwhelmed with such a long
list, then what is achievable? Is it an all-or-nothing situation or do we ration-out
our reserves of ‘care’ in order not to deplete ourselves, and then give up on the
whole 'project'? This is probably a question which consumes many who find it
difficult to move beyond being vegetarian.
The Animal Rights Movement is all about
maintaining high ideals. Many of us feel a bit drained by trying to achieve
them, because just by facing the issues head-on takes a lot of energy. So,
which issues do I take up? For animal activists there’s always a danger of
spreading ourselves too thinly and pleasing nobody, least of all ourselves. But
in prioritizing, there’s a danger of putting too much onto the ‘back burner’,
and then letting some issues become permanently forgotten about. So while we
might want to be consistent, knowing that no animal is more important than any
other, it will grieve us if we can't do the job thoroughly, by finding the idea
of animal-rights beyond our capacity.
Perhaps it’s important to understand other
people’s difficulties, concerning their own use of animals. The whole ethical
confusion of it is about the use of animals in our society. It's important for
vegans to try to understand what empathy involves. If we ever wonder why others
are inconsistent, we need to look at our own other areas of inconsistency. Doing
well in one area doesn't lessen our culpability when we do badly in another.
Beyond animals, beyond food and health and violence, there's a strong
attraction to passion. To be passionate about something, to be passionate about
the greater good - it makes us feel very alive and involved. It gives our lives
meaning. But can that numb our empathy elsewhere, where it is also needed. For
example, when I see the homeless man on the streets at night, I tell myself
that I’ve already got enough to care about, so I can’t take on more; I pretend
not to notice him; 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 suffer badly, and yet they also know they are just like their
dogs and cats at home. Their companion animals have the same sorts of feelings
and suffer the same pain when it’s inflicted, yet they treat one type of animal
as unlovable and the other as loveable.
My dearest friend might be lonely and ill
and I lose sleep at night worrying about her. The homeless man is just as
deserving of love as my closest friend and yet I’m able to ignore him
completely. No sleep is lost! Abattoirs exist, animals going to their horrible
deaths - again, no sleep is lost. Is that just all part of the absurdities we
get used to living with? They say charity starts at home, but so often that's
where it stays. But such a huge act of routine non-awareness and lack of
charity deserves some serious attention, because we prop each other up while
looking away at what we can't face. The fact is that we humans don’t yet regard
all sensitive and sentient creatures as of equal importance to the other. Or,
of course, of equal importance to humans.
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