Sad for Ourselves

1924:

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 in the way great life-changing events do but the creeping damage from routines of habit. In particular, we’ve eroded something rich in our life by animal-eating. We do it three times a day and more, every day, year after year. It’s possible that each bite of animal-based food reminds us of the diabolical things we’ve been instrumental in doing to innocent, sentient animals. It’s sobering to think that within the next second, three thousand land-based animals will have been executed! That’s 20,000 deaths since you read that last sentence. The human population of this planet are mass murderers. How can you tell your grandchildren this?

[Animals executed by humans - 50 billion per year divided by 15 million seconds in a year]

Essential For Life?

1923:

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, vegans don’t think it is, then the whole human race has invested heavily in one carefully constructed fiction.

         

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 dodgy about using animals for food, something about the fact that we never see the animals we eat, they being always hidden away. We only get to see them dead, as meat. And that would suit most of us if only because it’s the end ‘product’ we’re interested in, not its provenance, unless its product-quality is involved. We certainly don’t want to be concerned with the animal we’re proposing to eat.

At some stage in our adult life, we consciously enter into a Mephistophelian contract - we trade compassion for lifestyle . According to this contract, we may enjoy our food just as long as we publically recognise that vegans are wrong about the safety of plant foods. This must be extended to suggest that people such as vegans, want to spoil people’s enjoyment of their food. They are spoilers, and are conspiring to kill us by imposing their plant-based diet on us.

What Goes Around Comes Around

1922: Edited by CJ Tointon

Food is a sensory experience. The taste, texture and sense of being full, all contribute to a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction. But if the food is animal-based, there's a spiritual dimension to consider because animals have suffered in its making. If you care for animals, you won't be able to bear the taste of death in these foods. But if you detach the animal from the food, you won't worry about the spiritual side. You'll be able to 'eat, drink and be merry' - unless you have a weight issue. Animal-based foods are notoriously fattening. You might not acknowledge the food's spiritual dimension, but it isn't easy to completely push your mind out of the way. It's impossible to un-know what you already know. So when it comes to a stomach full of meat, your mind must always be full of the murder behind it.

Omnivores must desensitise themselves if they want to indulge in animal eating. Compassion and intelligence have to be thrown out the window. It's neither kind nor clever to connive at the killing of beautiful, innocent beings. We all know that they have feelings and fears, just as humans do. It's not as if we need their carcasses or by-products to survive. It's not as if we're out hunting them or risking our safety in any way. There's no physical danger to us at all. We know they can't fight back. We have them nicely locked up and ready for use. We've made everything easy for ourselves.

When it comes to 'food' animals, we humans have made sure that they've lost the ability to protect themselves. Nature has been tamed and we want it to remain that way. Once the animals are 'behind bars', we mutilate them (without pain killers), confine them to spaces so small they can't move, castrate the males, rape the females (by way of artificial insemination), fatten them and then brutally execute them! And the animals are powerless to stop us. But maybe animals DO have the final revenge. They DO bite back in a subtle and unseen way. The eating of their bodies and secretions presents a creeping damage to our metabolism. We often put on weight and suffer the ill effects of diabetes and heart disease. Animal-based cuisine makes us slow and lethargic and in a subtler way, our affectionate nature is weakened too. We lose empathy for those beings for which we'd otherwise feel great affection. But the bottom line is - we just can't resist eating them! So many of the foods we eat are animal based and we hesitate to deny ourselves the 'enjoyment' of eating them.

Because animals represent such rich pickings for humans, it must seem like madness (for omnivores) not to take advantage of them. But by choosing to use animals, we bring out the worst in ourselves. The guilt and shame should be enough, but we spend such a lot of money on these products. We get addicted to them, causing chronic health conditions which adds up to a slowing-down of self-development. Whatever chance you may have to make any spiritual advancement, is held back by regularly consuming such ugly products. 

The Animal Industries are only too happy to do your dirty work for you, rearing and killing and presenting the end product - just so long as you don't make a fuss about it. The deal is that we   turn a blind eye to the horror whilst they conceal as much of it from us as they can. Thus, we conspire together to objectify living, sentient beings.

Over the space of one single year, humans execute fifty billion land-based animals, none of whom are guilty of any crime. This wash of cruelty and destruction has forced us to pretend that what happens to animals doesn't actually happen! And then we try to convince ourselves that we are not really cold-blooded killers - but that is exactly what we are. There couldn't be a better example of self-deception, nor a better example of shooting oneself in the foot!

Doing Something About It

1921:

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, cute cartons of pretty eggs, elegant leather jackets, plus many other affordable items, too numerous to mention. It’s all so attractive. It’s like living next to an Aladdin’s cave, which we can’t walk by without going in. We can’t pass up the chance to buy products, co-products and by-products of animal origin. We can afford to buy them and can’t afford to miss out on them, so we don’t look too closely at the fine detail. We let the horror story of animal cruelty go unremarked.

But what goes on in the privacy of the human mind, regarding the wrong of it all? We tell ourselves that we don’t want to see it. And if we do take notice, we might have to admit that “Something has to change, but let it not start with ‘me’. I’ll join you once you change. I don’t want to start the ball rolling”.

But ever since the advent of vegan-consciousness, the ball has been rolling. Rolling for some seventy years, and still not many have been seen to ‘join’.

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 repaired in this world of ours, surely, I need to do what needs to be done. What you choose to do is none of my business. 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 will be. Logically, I must come to a point where I’m no longer effectively in control, where I’ve left my car in the ditch, lost control of my own life and am at a standstill.

As I might mindlessly wander into a shop and spend my money on questionable products, so I might have done 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 eaters of beef 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, and by now regretting. I wonder if, by now, they’ve forgotten what they saw.

Conscience

1920:

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? Does it sleep when we want it to NOT notice something?

Either sub-consciously or consciously, we presumably suffer ‘conscience pain’. Unless we can switch it off. But then, if it can be switched off, the habit of doing that might grow, until we lose that sensitivity altogether, meaning we can only ever be half awake.

It seems that part of human development relies on our seeing things very clearly, but a distortion arises where we are determined to close our eyes, for fear of being blinded by what we’re looking at.

When it comes to food we’ve learned how to desensitise. With animal-eating we say, “Everyone does it, so why shouldn’t I?” Just to help us along, we have ads on the TV to help us normalise animal-eating. Cooking shows on TV always use lots of meat and dairy. Dead animals play leading roles in travel and get-away 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 down on the farm is never shown, only the ‘end product’ from dead animals - we never get to see them as live beings being prepared for their starring role, as dead food products. Even well educated people are capable of speaking nonsense about all this. They somehow convince themselves that, because they haven’t personally been involved in torturing or murdering animals, that they can’t be held accountable for what goes on behind the scenes. Conveniently, we pretend we know nothing, even though we know enough. We all know what the Animal Industry does, and we all know how we support that Industry with our dollars.

We try not to see ourselves as cold-hard-bastards. We try to let our untroubled conscience sleep on. And in this climate of acceptance, where meat and animal secretions are ‘just normal’, essential to satisfy our chronic wants, the only time we might be disturbed is when we meet up with one of those ‘damned vegans’, who ask how we can possibly go on supporting all this. The trick is to avoid all contact with vegans!!

There's No Such Thing As Conscience

1919:

The corrupted conscience of all carnivores and omnivores should weigh heavily. How could it not? We’re so cruel to animals, so supportive of those who are on the front line. It makes us hard. Scratch the surface of almost everyone who sports one of these consciences and we find a grumpy disposition. It shows on the face, with that familiar, tired, hardened-by-life, cold, vacant, gobsmacked, de-energised, detached look. You may not notice it about yourself but you’ll probably notice it in others.

         

Science can’t prove the existence of conscience! Fancy that! Many scientists, along with their non-scientist supporters, believe that ‘conscience’ is beholden to the interests of human advancement.

Vegans may avoid the white-coat brigade, afraid of their human-centredness, and take refuge in intuition. There we’ll find a much better truth, living within an always-ready-to-be-awakened conscience.

Conscience, Today's Attitude Problem

1918:

Not caring about what’s happening to all these animals is simply part of the predominant carelessness of humans. The reason we have to alter this attitude is that animals are not inanimate. They feel, move and have many life-functions similar to us. So, why do we give the farmer the nod to enslave them, torture them, kill them and eat them? Perhaps it’s because, for the majority of humankind, we like eating them. There’s a belief in the need for animal foods, spurred on by taste addiction for them and an economic attraction for these highly subsidised, ‘bargain’ food products. For that, we condone a cruel system of animal husbandry.

         

Being blasé about animal treatment begs the question: why does it matter? Simply because we’re side stepping something we wouldn’t normally be proud to be part of. By supporting cruelty, we’ve sold our hard won humanity for a handful of beans, o rather animal flesh. We’re the inheritors of brilliant and beneficial human discoveries, many of which have been useful and have conformed to conscience. But, with the development of animal husbandry methods and the making of foods based on animal ingredients, the voice of conscience has been weakened  to a whisper. We can’t be proud of the modern animal farm, where they practice mutilations and confine animals in cages, all of which is outside the bounds of a healthy conscience.

         

The Inanimate

1917:

If I think the animal thing is sad and you don’t, it says a lot about perception. I might know a few more details which makes me closer to the animals’ plight, but today almost every adult knows essentially how bad things are in those gulags they call animal farms, and in slaughterhouses. And yet it seems that I see things one way and you another.

         

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. But as ‘non-sovereign beings’ their treatment, by their owners is, by the word of Law, no one else’s business - property is sacrosanct.

However, according to moral law, the way we treat them shows us how careless we’ve become. It’s no longer a secret. So, finding out what’s actually happening to them is a huge wake up call. Or so you’d think. But most of you animal-eaters are still swayed by the rights of the owners.      

         

One of the most useful things I possess is a table, my desk, 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. 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’. We’ve just had terrible bush fires, and on the news the sympathy is for the farmer who has suffered ‘stock-losses’, no sympathy expressed for the animals burned to death in their inescapable paddocks.

Essentially, it’s carte blanche – the humans can do whatever they like - because animals are considered property (like my table or my bike). They can be loved and nurtured or they can be exploited and even destroyed. We deal with property 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.

The Dark Side

1916:

Vegan living is the big answer to a lot of big questions. Our exploring has paid off. For us, personally. But we’re as sad as hell for the omnivores. And even sadder for the seemingly ever-lasting suffering of so many gentle, peace-loving, sentient farmed animals.

How do we get over the sadness of their situation? We live amongst people who are shut off from their own feelings in order that they can 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. Or what is happening to humans who are shutting themselves off from their healthy, happy and clear-conscience side, just to enjoy the products from the dark side.

A Time for Change

1915:

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 part of the dominant species, and especially attractive to the urban consumer who knows very little about animals. Only in the past fifty years (a mere pinprick of time) have we city dwellers come to know about the cruelty involving ‘food’ animals. But there’s always been some sort of ‘knowing’. It’s a bit like pollution and starvation - these problems are as old as the hills. And so is our guilt about them.

         

Humans have dominated their environment, including the animals, for two million years. Now there’s an urgent need, and a chance, to change all this. The transition may take time, as much time as it takes to realise how much damage we’ve done to the planet and its inhabitants. It may take time for us to realise how many deadly illnesses have a strong association with the eating of animals.

           

But eventually we’ll say: “This has gone far enough!!” and we’ll all become seriously herbivorous and non-exploitative.

         

However, for the present, omnivores aren’t ill enough or guilt-ridden enough to change. Our collective consciousness is still too rigid to allow change, and most people don’t really believe they will feel safe enough to explore new possibilities on their own. Vegans have explored, and feel safe. And we want others to come with us. But how do we convince people to give up what they’re used to for what, as yet, they don’t know exists?

Getting to the Starting Line First

1914:

Vegans aren’t missionaries, but we aren’t so mild mannered that we are afraid to speak up. It’s all a matter of balance - we want to be taken seriously and have what we say considered constructively. The foundation stone of this is being seen as fair-minded. We listen and we talk, always on equal terms.

         

Whatever we say should be said on a ‘suggestion-only’ basis because we don’t want to sound dogmatic and do want to show respect for the integrity of the person who is willing to listen to what I have to say. We don’t need them to agree with us, in fact it would be surprising if they did, but more importantly we shouldn’t let them go home to be just as comfortable with their old habits as they’ve always been before. Ideally, we can have a discussion, and allow new ideas to come through which enlighten both sides. Better to have disagreement than polite accord. Ideally, we want robust debate, each trying not to sound too certain of being right.

Vegans have an eye to the future. We’re not out to win converts but to get people to think for themselves. If people are conditioned by the mores of Society, they’ll be loyal to the values of their society. We must tread a fine line between informing and maintaining an essential equal footing. It won’t work if we-know-all and they-know-nothing. Vegans need to act as a direction-guide for new information along a rocky and resistant road.

         

However smart our approach, however slick our arguments, however nice we may seem to be, we represent just one side of a values-debate. We may know we are ‘right’ but to show that too dogmatically might not be helpful, with this subject. Because the reaction to dogma is always negative and no one ever has to listen to anyone in the minority.

If we want others to listen to us, we need to show we can listen. There’s always something valuable to be learnt from listening to the other side of the argument. Our eye must always be on the future, not winning little personal skirmishes along the way. There’s a massive mountain range of perception to cross before we ever get on to the fine details of a vegan view.

Since everyone wants to be right, that creates an obstacle. For members-of-the-vast-majority, minority views are easy to throw off. For omnivores, it’s a bit off-putting to meet and talk with someone who thinks they’re right all the time. Over the non-use of animals, and issues concerning nutrition, vegans may be sure we are actually RIGHT.  But however strong my feeling is, it doesn’t give me ‘the right’ to earbash anyone. As much as someone might want to hear something about veganism, they also want to know how a vegan behaves - are we fair? Are we interesting to listen to? Are we boring and dogmatic?

           

The starting line: Our aim might be to act like a launch pad with a rocket full of ideas, yet still latent and un-fired-off. There’s a basic understanding of where we are coming from – just a simple three-worder will do – ‘don’t touch animals’. And by ‘touch’ we don’t mean that literally of course.

If that isn’t initially made clear, then we might be mistaken for health nuts on a vegetarian diet with something extra thrown in for good measure. It’s far more than that. It’s something with a much stronger philosophical basis. If people want to know about that, then we can then think about giving them some more details. And that’s the start of passing over valuable information. If they don’t want to know, there’s no point wasting time ‘guilt-ing’ them into listening.

Vegans are Reference Books

1913:

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, and by being shaken by compassion, we can see a chance to safely 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, helpfully, without sounding like preachers?

         

Vegans can only be reference sources - the contrast we make with conventional lifestyle is at the very least intriguing and it’s likely people do want to know what we’re about. We seem to have a few answers. But we mustn’t have too many, be too full-on. We have to welcome questions, be self-effacing, even act the devil’s advocate, but do everything we can thing of to seem ‘avoidable’ because others fear having some unwelcome confrontation with us.

There's Hope, But Not Quite Yet

1912:

Vegans are trying to inform people whilst taking care of themselves at the same time. Vegans are, by their small numbers, isolated and as individuals we often feel very alone. Compensation for this comes from having an inner clarity about many questionable aspects of human life.

Just because we feel alone yet inspired, we can’t expect others to want the plus and the minus of that themselves. People are afraid of what we want them to think about, especially how truth is being manipulated. The Animal Industries are pushing one way, and we are pushing the other. They encourage less thinking and more spending, and we encourage people to find out about animal exploitation. Not surprisingly they are winning, since they’ve been building their networks for many decades and indeed for hundreds of years. They’ve cornered the market, which means they’ve addicted most people to the things they want to sell them. Vegans are attempting to persuade people not to believe the spiel from vested interests but to become better informed, and rise up (by boycott) against the general world of crap commodities, food or otherwise. But few of us are willing to take the lead.

         

Using unscrupulous methods, the Animal Industries get what they want because they know the customers are united in favour of their products. They know the consumer is hooked on a wide variety of animal products, which are bought over and over again. But as new information comes to light, we’ll come to realise why so many people are becoming so chronically unwell. On a physical level animal foods are a slow poison, and on a spiritual level they gnaw at our conscience. It is happening all the while the consumer avoids learning about the way animal foods come to us, and the consumer’s part played in condoning animal cruelty.

         

Vegetarian foods and diets are already being tried and as the unethical dimensions of lacto-ovo-vegetarianism become more obvious, alongside health rationales, more people will step towards veganism, and wash their hands of the whole nasty business of using-animals.

Cynicism

1911:

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 interesting and inspiring way we have to learn about how new information like ours is taken in. Firstly we’re up against cynicism. People don’t trust ‘soothsayers’. If we really want to educate one-on-one, we need receptiveness, as in permission to speak. Without that we have listeners tamely agreeing with us, but not meaning what they say. Our cause needs to bring in imaginative, creative people, and difficult-to-persuade people whose sense of free-will is strongly embedded.

If we can’t answer the big questions for the cynical listener we won’t break through their protective shield. We won’t even get the ‘big questions’ asked.  Unless we’re approachable as people. Unwilling audiences don’t exist - no one can make anyone else listen, let alone agree, if they don’t want to.

On-line Learning

1910:

Communicating our message is made doubly tricky because we have to observe a non-pushy, non-violent approach at all times. As vegans we have to deal with potential recruits with what looks like passivity, so that they won’t be put off. Vegans don’t always realise this.

We have to wait for permission from them to go ahead, and have enough faith in people, that they’ll tell us when they’re ready to listen. The most efficient way this can happen is to start from scratch.

Vegans, when trying to ‘educate’ omnivores, need to go back to basics, back to laboriously trawling through recipes and fact sheets about what happens to chickens in cages. Omnivores also need to go back to basics in order to untangle the misinformation they’ve been swallowing from other sources. It’s humiliating for vegans and for omnivores. 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 to our rescue has come an unexpectedly useful tool, the on-line education facility.

Maybe face-to-face instructors are now redundant. We no longer have to go to a teacher or an ‘authority’ for information. We can do it for ourselves. The Internet opens a DIY door, referencing web sites, blogs, books, videos, etc. We can do it in our own time, getting information to find out what we need, indeed almost everything we need.

Consistency

1909:

I’m aware (and maybe you are too) of the scale of animal exploitation in our society. Commercial interests normalise animal abuse by concealing the truth of it.

         

All through my formative years there was never any suggestion that keeping animals captive and killing them for food was wrong ... and since it was food, and pleasurable food at that, I never questioned it. There was never a strong enough base of compassion from which that sort of questioning could arise. And today, there’s still not a sufficiently strong ethical base to stir people ... so, almost nobody questions ‘the use of animals for human consumption’. So, nothing changes. And it will never change unless some people can enlighten others to the truth. And that may come about simply by showing others that life is possible without resorting to using animals for our convenience. 

         

If any of us are going to escape the outrageous brain washing our societies put us through, if we can ever escape a lifetime of normalising animal-eating, then it will start by re-examining what we do - our habits, our attitudes and our addictions ... and with a touch of altruism too. And that means we must do it not only for ourselves but for the sake of the animals. By focusing on them we ignite our own empathy. That’s something we’ve had numbed in us (and we’ve complied with) for the sake of acceptance of meat and dairy in our diets.

         

When I eventually considered vegan principles and started to see life through more compassionate eyes and then went on to apply boycotts to all sorts of animal-based commodities, my life did change. It got a bit uncomfortable, at first. But soon enough I looked up and saw what I’d been doing. I saw that I was living in a carnivorous, violent society, and the thought of leaving it behind was a very comfortable thought. But if I wanted to help to change my society there’s be a price to pay. I’d have to face the fact that Society might remain as it was, even for a long time. This would mean, for me, that I’d be on the outer for a long time. As uncomfortable as that thought was I could still hope, and that hope could sustain me, and empathy could do the rest, to hold me together for ‘that long time’, knowing how bad things are for the true victims in all this. It’s a million times worse for the billions of animals (at this very moment of time) who are on death row, in prisons all around the world, who have no reason to hope.

If I and many other vegans try to ameliorate this discomfort I think we can best do it by being grateful that we don’t have to suffer as much as the poor creatures. We may have been born into a violent and animal-abusing world but we do have some chance, however slender, of escaping it. The animals were born with no chance of escape whatsoever. If we can hold that thought it may help us withstand the degradation we feel, being part of this unholy human species.

         

What better thing is there for any of us to do than set a new fashion in compassion, and to let that fashion translate as style. It’s not about being ‘cool’ nor even solely about being ‘vegan’ but about being consistent in our conduct, in all our daily activities. And if we aspire to consistency we do it to set an example, which others may or may not choose to follow. I don’t think we’re here to enjoy the experience of simply living as free beings in a human-dominated world but to offer reasons for radical attitude change which will, down the track, lift humans out of their subservient, violent and weakened state to become the angels of mercy we were meant to be.

The Easy Approach

1908:

There’s a lot going on in the world, so is it any wonder, with the present high awareness of issues, that some of the most uncomfortable problems are pushed aside? We say, “No time to deal with everything”, and that’s it. There’s no time for contemplating ideals. As for listening to vegans, get real!!

         

As animal advocates vegans are supremely ignorable. What we say doesn’t cut it, while those conventional attitudes which are more popular sit more comfortably with people. The world of plenty, promoted by the Animal Industry, is attractive. They seem like admirable people. They don’t preach at us, in fact they seem to have a certain sense of fun about them. Just watch the happy people advertising their products!

         

It’s therefore not surprising that veganism is dismissible. We are disliked for our high moral tone. Other urgent issues will always trump animal concerns. Omnivores are at peace, even when they’re using a few ‘naughty products’. They don’t feel too guilty. There’s nothing much to worry about.

         

However, for the thinking person, this sort of acceptance of how things are won’t wash. It’s because the whole mess of animal abuse is kept secret, behind closed doors, made to look benign, that one should be very suspicious. That we are hoodwinked into believing the conditions under which animals are kept is acceptable, that we are fooled into believing animal foods are healthy - all of this concerns one’s brainwash-ability. I’m constantly amazed that otherwise intelligent people can be so successfully conditioned by the Animal Industries.         

Comfort

1907:

In the West, we live comfortably enough but many of us are confined in an attitude prison where human-centred consideration outweighs any other consideration. We trash the planet and we dominate animals, for our own benefit. We enjoy the fruits of our exploitations. We like what civilisation has given us, but we’re compromised by comfort. We’re too soft to make any principled decisions so we don’t live in harmony with anything especially if it’s outside the human realm.

         

Being trapped by comfort is rather like being born into the bottom of a pit with steep, slippery sides. There’s no chance we can climb out since we’re weighed down by our addiction to pleasure and the measure of happiness it brings. If we’re happy to stay where we are or we’ve given up trying to escape we know we can still survive in a human-biased bubble in which we don’t have to think too deeply about where we are or what we’re doing, as long as it’s comfortable.

         

The most trapping habit is our violence-based use of Animal Industry products, mainly for food. I’m sure people would, in theory, like to be free of it, but they don’t realise how trapped they are, especially by their need for comfort food. They choose to stay with what they know.

         

If I get the opportunity to talk about self-improvement, talk about escape, I might get some people to listen. But for everyone listening far more prefer not to. They don’t want to be told anything which is discomforting and of course if I say anything at all about animals used for food it evokes uncomfortable feelings of guilt and squeamishness. But there’s another factor involved - where, even though some are willing to forgo a little comfort for the sake of self improvement, they don’t want to feel as though they’ve been pushed into change. If they’re going to change they’ll want to do it at their own pace.

Your regular vegan response might be, “What? Leave it to them to decide if and when? Too slow, too slow”. And if any sort of psychological pressure is applied to the reluctant-changer, they’ll dig their heels in and tell us, “There’s nothing worse than being morally blackmailed into 'self-improvement'”.

So, do people really want to change as much as vegans would want them to change? It’s doubtful. If I start speaking to anyone about intensive farming or abattoirs I see their eyes glaze over and know I’m saying too much. At first they might seem interested but it occurs to me that they simply want to improve their life in the pit, not actually escape from it. Probably they fear landing up in the fringes (like vegans appear to have done)  so, they don’t want to learn uncomfortable facts or make too many radical changes, especially concerning their comfort foods. They want the best of both worlds, and in the end maybe they want to preserve their free-will most of all, but it’s a no-win situation for most people, they are torn between holding back and moving forward.

Some, however, will be almost ready to move on. They’ll want to find out, but eventually they’ll see that it’s not as quick a fix as they first thought. A dilemma - they’re attracted to the idea of self improvement, even outraged by what they find out about animals and animal foods … but, all things considered, they may not like the idea of having fewer food and clothing choices. They mightn’t like the idea of so much hard work in changing so many things about their lifestyle.

         

Moving on may not look so attractive. The would-be vegans look about them, their health is okay, their life is okay, they don’t have to confront face-to-face animal torture, so the idea of no-change doesn’t seem so bad after all - the comforts, the social acceptability, the normality. The decision to change is put off or thrown into the too-hard basket.

         

When the vegan missionary leaves and the horror stories fade, they sink back into their old familiar, cushioned pit.

Boycotting Wins No Friends

1906:

Animal rights is about introducing values unheard of before. Most omnivores haven’t even considered that animals deserve ‘the right to a life’. Vegans, busy pursuing their own sense of responsibility, leave their friends behind. Their omnivore friends, more self-protective, aren’t as interested in developing a new value system. But, knowing today what they know, they are faced with a moral dilemma. They can’t convince themselves that what vegans are saying is not true.

         

Some animals are well known to be exploited - the hen, laying battery eggs in a cage; the chimpanzee, going insane in a science lab; the breeding sow, held in an ‘iron maiden’ sow stall; the dairy cow, turned into a milk-making machine. Today we know things about animal cruelty that weren’t widely known about forty years ago, and most people are distressed when they do get to know about it. But how strange, it doesn’t seem to change their eating habits. Perhaps this shows just how strong the impulse is, to not alter our food regime unless it’s to our own advantage, or not to choose a lifestyle which will separate us from others. But the more we learn the harder it is to be comfortable about our choices.

         

The whole idea that vegans are putting forward highlights this dilemma. We seem to inflict guilt just by bringing up animal issues, which is why most people want to avoid us.

         

So, we vegans might be lonely because we’re avoided and lonely because we deliberately disassociate from the lifestyle shared by almost everyone else - we not only boycott many products sold in shops (to our own considerable inconvenience) but boycott social events like barbeques, dinner parties and restaurants, and for this we’re likely to be disliked ... which is why we need to find a way of dealing with this loneliness and vilification.

         

We all suffer (the omnivore from guilt and chronic illnesses, the vegan from alienation) but for us there are special advantages - it’s great that we’re into self-improvement, great that we stand up to the hypocrisy in Society ... but we have to take into account our need for other people. And this comes down to our approach and how we advocate for animals - how do we advocate strenuously whilst not necessarily going on the attack, how we remain friendly with those we’d much rather be in judgement of.

         

The big question for us is surely how we stay emotionally neutral and not feel depressed when the people we know avoid us or avoid talking about this subject?

Ethics Calling Us In

1905:

The public may have ways of not responding to our horror stories. We don’t lay enough stress on the need for the consciousness-raising of the culpable public. It’s their shopping choices which keep the whole horror thing rolling.

         

Our target must be the omnivore, the ordinary Jo who doesn’t think of herself as an omnivore, who has never given much thought to where her meat or milk comes from. The ordinary Joe who doesn’t think about his egg being laid by an enslaved and abused hen. All they know is that there are a few people who feel strongly about animals and eating meat.

         

The main confusion is over meat being unhealthy or not. But I think it’s up to us to make sure that people know that meat is unethical. We all have a conscience and if vegans come along and tweak it, the omnivore feels insulted. Most omnivores can handle doing something that’s not healthy but can’t accept they’re doing something morally wrong, in eating animals. They’ll agree that vegans are healthier, to divert their attention from the caging and killing side of things. But surely, this is where we will start to make an impact, when we move on from health issues and get down to emphasising empathy and sensitivity and softening of attitudes. Surely, as vegans, we are waiting for the penny to drop, waiting for them to see what we’ve seen, and respond the way we’ve done.

The image of a struggling, howling young orphaned lamb being manhandled into the killing chute at the abattoir, or the chicks being thrown live into a blender (for being male instead of an egg laying female) is enough to stop us in our tracks. Whether we continue on again, with our normal diet indicates what strength of character we have; if we can accept such cruelties we won’t bother to find out about all the other cruelties.

Cause and Casualties

1904:

Let’s face it, a tiny, tiny minority of people are vegans. We are outsiders and will remain so until substantial numbers of people start to take veganism seriously. It’s debilitating to be alone, so we form groups to give us a better chance of survival. A movement builds and everyone talks about how-it-could-be, but we never talk about the loneliness of individuals who are holding a radical viewpoint, and being alienated because of it. There’s a danger that we, as individuals, put aside our social isolation and get side-tracked by ambition for status within the group. In my own experience, I’ve found that groups narrow down to committees which then lose sight of the group’s original aims by getting bogged down in group politics. Or it becomes all about exposing some of the most terrible animal abuses, while the individual activist gets forgotten about. Then the emotional support network becomes weaker while there’s a frantic search for finance for on-going projects.

However it goes, it could have its own rewards, if there were successes being notched up, but often there is no sort of success, and the individual feels their loneliness more acutely.

Alone

1906:

What’s it like being an animal activist, someone who wants animals to have a life but whose words fall on deaf ears? With almost everyone chomping away on their meat and various animal secretions, nobody seems to be listening, because we are the enemy, for denying them their simple pleasures.

As vegans, we know how it feels to be alone, but perhaps it’s essential, because it lets us empathise more closely with animals. It helps us not forget that domesticated animals are not only alone but at the mercy of violent humans. It’s no consolation though, for us personally, when we realise the apathy and silence of most people around us. I can’t help seeing this hardness of outlook, even in dear friends. I can see them desperately trying to shield themselves from taking the ‘soft’ view. They’re harder than I want them to be, harder than they want to be. But they won’t communicate with their soft side for fear of what they might become.

         

I want to be an advocate for animals but I do want to feel close to my friends. However, at this point in time, it seems one must be sacrificed for the other. The louder I speak up the sooner my friends seem to turn off and walk away.

         

I don’t underestimate the pain of being marginalised. I know it could be dangerous to feel so alone. It may drive me crazy but I also know that, more dangerously, my need for acceptance might tempt me back to my old idiot-ways.

         

I have to tell myself that if I’m serious about ‘the greater good’, I have to find ways of NOT feeling alone and not feeling that it’s all pointless. It helps to know other vegans, it helps perhaps to meet up with a whole bunch of animal rights activists. But in reality, we all live apart. We’re on our own. This is one big personal challenge for most vegans - not in the changing of our diet but in the facing up to a diminished social life and a shortage of simpatico companions.