Inconsistency 1

1934:

I want to defend animals, because they so badly need defending. If you are vegan it will involve you in a long to-do list. I’m perpetually overwhelmed by the length of this list. If you are too, is it possible you might, in an attempt to shorten it, prioritise. You would be doing it to keep your goals achievable. But if you make a mistake and non-prioritise something you later find to be important, you might have been a bit parsimonious with yourself.

 

If we try to ration-out our reserves of ‘care’, I end up being partial. Guilty of incompleteness. But by examining our own partiality and incompleteness and inconsistencies (all of which were well-intentioned) there still remains a long ‘to-do’ list. It’s still overwhelming. When you become vegan, something stops you becoming drained, since you’ve lifted the biggest weight of guilt from your shoulders. Simply by being vegan, what needs most care is cared about.

 

Humans are naturals. We know we are caring beings. We don’t mind how much inconvenience we are put to, to help someone in distress. We will do wonderful things, on condition you can dodge a few issues. We know that facing issues takes a lot of energy. We get frightened that we’ll spread ourselves too thinly, and succeed in pleasing nobody, least of all ourselves. Then there’s the danger of putting issues onto the ‘back burner’ and hope your well-earned ‘brownie points’ will excuse your inability/unwillingness to address those issues.

And this speaks to a common fear, of being inconsistent.