Trying not to be insulting

1795:

If you start to question any ‘standard truth’, you have to challenge it bravely, and if necessary go ahead and experiment with life based upon a different set of truths, values and possibilities.

With this animal thing, when so many people are still following the old paths, truth gets very mixed up. And since this subject is so tabooed, one also meets a widespread refusal to discuss the subject. So, one is never encouraged to speak one’s mind on this subject, since any condemnation of animal farming seems to be provocative and confrontational. As soon as any opening remark is made, one is either shut out or shut up.

You can imagine how extremely confronting it would be to suggest, “Animal farms are providing us with much of our food but they are little more than torture chambers and death camps”. Once you make a statement like this, there’s no chance of getting it to go any further. You won't be listened to if you try to expand on it. So you can never reach the next statement about how animal farming is also a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions and general pollution. Nor get as far as suggesting that by eating so much of this contaminated produce our bodies are going haywire, causing us to lose control of our own health.

The devil is in the detail. Animal-based foods are ‘rich’ and mostly fat-saturated, causing people to become too fat and too susceptible dangerous health conditions. Anything which needs to be said can’t be said, since it is taken as a criticism of people's over-indulgent diets and lifestyles. By making a provocative opening statement, we offer anyone listening an excuse NOT to listen to ANY of the details; the un-listened-to details are in fact what might swing a person over to becoming vegan. All the obvious links, between each of these issues, one leading to the next, are cut off. And then, just as tragically, one may never get far enough with the details to see how animal-food diets contribute to the problem of children in poor countries dying for want of food. 

It’s not difficult to point out the connections, between our own actions and the worst possible consequences. But that’s not the real difficulty here. The problem is second-guessing and running away from the facts. If we're seen to be inflaming this subject, then down will come the shutters. Most people won’t allow themselves to look squarely at this subject since they want to continue consuming animals and all the ‘goodies’ animals can provide. Our consumer desires prevent any condemnation of the food we love to eat, food that can only be made available by dint of farming animals. Omnivores aren't likely to heed the health warnings or the ethical arguments because they refuse to open the debate or allow discussion to continue. Like a rabbit in the car’s headlights, they are transfixed by an inability to deal with this sort of discussion.

         

Here’s the biggest difficulty for vegans, that we might have a lot to say but no one to say it to.