Blunt Instruments

1890:

Animal Liberation aims to rescue and liberate animals - no more animal slavery. That’s the expectation! It’s not a request or a suggestion, something much stronger. But stronger in what way? Our ‘expectation’ might seems a bit cocky. But that element comes from its obviousness rather than from the moral wrongness of slavery. Slavery is an obvious sign of failure. Obviously, vegan principle is right, otherwise there’d be arguments to suggest it might NOT be right.

The fact is though we’re a bit too small to take notice of. No danger of us tipping the 49% balance soon! But through the thick haze of normality, we’re finding a way in. In any interaction, whether face to face, emailing, phoning, whatever we do together we expect to be doing in pleasure. Conversations aren’t meant to be sermons – what we say together we say in friendship even if we disagree. Our job is to tell anyone willingly listening about what’s going on– in the world of farmed animals, emphasising how none of the products or the suffering behind them is necessary. It’s avoidable. The customer is the key here: once people stop buying dead animals, soon enough abattoirs will stop making them dead, and go out of business. But saying all this isn’t communication – we say it and people don’t hear. Some do but it’s nowhere near enough change to free the enslaved animals. Only by the minority of vegans becoming a majority will there be any change in the law to protect animals. People are afraid of joining a minority, especially since it involves them making great changes to the way they eat and dress. Which is why most people don’t want to be exposed to this subject. Almost any level of communicating this subject is tricky. There are just so many people who are ‘unable’ to agree with us.

Which is why it’s so important for vegans to communicate effectively. By staying on subject while keeping emotions on low. But having been brought up in sport or debate to be adversarial, we tend to speak in order to win-the-argument.  That sort of approach is redundant in Animal Rights, because ours is a far subtler subject to deal with. It’s beyond logic and rational debate for many people who will not empathise with these animals. And, for our part, lets’ always bear in mind that we are in the middle of a conversation not a war zone.

In any conversation, arguments don’t necessarily have to be won by us. On this subject winning is about being given an opportunity to speak freely. But even so, conversing, we are talking together. We aren’t there to convert, or to win, or indeed to joke about serious matters. We’re having a conversation simply to engage in discussing matters without there being anything so formal as a fixed agenda. That’s NO sort of conversation at all, and vegans don’t go around haranguing people, if only because if that fails it fails spectacularly; by not tipping the balance and bring them around to our way of thinking, they could go the other way. So put off by our approach that they’ll avoid us in the future and for that matter steer clear of all vegans too.

Before we get anywhere near justice for animals, we have trust to build and a reputation to repair. We can do that mainly through the signals we give through body language, showing that we’re ONLY information imparters; that we never get personal; that we acknowledge everybody’s right to be at their own level of personal development. And yet, withal, we are giving reasons why we think there’s an urgency in defending these animals.

The sooner the majority of humans become vegan, the sooner the animals will be liberated. BUT, in a free society, good communication is everything, especially since we are lied to and misinformed about the value of animal products. Vegans need to find their own unique way of talking about compassion for animals and about respecting the feelings and stage of self-development of our fellow humans. So we don’t need to condemn. We often think that logically, it’s right to condemn those who support the animal industries, but if logic often works well, in this case it isn’t strong enough to withstand the collective consciousness. There are just so many people using animals for food, clothing and lots more. We don’t ‘condemn’ because the emotion behind it is ugly. It’s an approach vegans could find very difficult to justify.