An escape tool

1774: 

Communicating our message is made doubly tricky because we have to take a non-pushy, non-violent approach to others, at all times. As vegans we have to deal with potential recruits in such a way that they won’t be put off. And that might mean waiting until they are ready. Ready to ask rather than ready to listen.

We have to wait for permission from them to say anything at all, and have enough faith in people that they’ll tell us when they’re ready. But when they are, it’s easy to blow them out of the water with too much, too complete a story.

The beginning of the ‘story’ starts by going back to basics, back to untangling the misinformation we are given from other sources. But no one wants to be the schoolteacher here and no one wants to be taught like a school kid. There’s so much to learn but so much ego investment is involved in unlearning and passing on new information. But that’s why on-line education is so valuable. Maybe face-to-face instructors are now redundant. We no longer have to go to a teacher or an ‘authority’ for information, especially since they’ve proved incorrect in the past. On-line information is widely reviewed because it is so widely read and therefore more reliable. But because there is so much information out there, we can do our own sifting. We can learn as much or as little as we want to, and do it for ourselves. The Internet opens a DIY door, referencing web sites, blogs, books, DVDs, making information accessible enough for us to be able to find out what we need.