Long Term Peace

1997:

If we have no system of personal restraint it’s likely we don’t care about behaving badly. If we see no REASON to be restrained, it may be because we don’t expect to be confronted about what we do. If we can get away with it, if it’s done discretely, so that we don’t draw attention to ourselves unnecessarily, we can behave badly. And with the minimum of judgement from others. Religion tells us that God notices, and that may be superstition, but it is one form of restraint. Superstition itself is possibly stronger, in that it’s much more up-front - it tells us it’s all down to luck and that it’s ‘luck’ that we sow, bad or good.

         

Of course, none of this matters, if we already have a system that prevents us making fools of ourselves. Vegan, non-violence ethic is just such a system.

Slavery

1996:

We’re each trying to ease our load in life. That seems to lead to a me-first attitude which can be benefited by keeping slaves. This tendency makes us take full advantage of the weak. Humans have enough brain power to take advantage of any resource.

Why wouldn’t we have a slave to clean our house if we could own one. Why wouldn’t we own a car if we could? From where does our restraint come? Why wouldn’t we enslave animals if we could. Use them, eat them? What’s to stop us?

Tempting Towards Exploitation

1995:

If we are a mixture of good and evil then most of us, who are sensible enough and kind enough to be in favour of ‘good’, can smell the ugliness in the ‘bad’ – we try to tune our ‘vibration’ away from it. We resist temptations when they are insidious and harmful. If you aren’t thinking ‘vegan’, if you’re at the opposite end holding a ‘to-hell-with-it’ attitude, then the temptation is too great and there’s a risk of danger. And that brings us right into the midst of being involved in ultimate exploitation.

People Are Still Behaving Badly

1994:

We set up an attitude along the lines of “what we sow, we reap”. We create our own reality, bringing down upon our heads either disaster or bliss or variations of each. We want to come down on the ‘bliss’ side but we ignore the warning signs and land up in a mess. I like to think superstition moderates our behaviour more than good sense. And on this matter of taking advantage, if we’re careless of the ethics of what we do, we risk things unnecessarily. Superstition sees the pitfalls and lets us respond in the best way, keeping us honest. If we’re careless about an idea which might make us a profit but which doesn’t feel right, then superstition taps us on the shoulder. Perhaps superstition is merely instinct with a warning bell fitted to it. A nasty attitude brings bad luck. Superstitiously ‘good luck’ flows towards people who are trying to clean up their act. Sense doesn’t necessarily come into it - superstition helps us to feel badly about behaving badly.

The Mental Block

1993:

Prioritising - we see what’s most important, the issues which need special effort, but then there’s the danger of putting off other important issues - omnivores who are environmentalists and working for social justice may decide to put ‘animals’ on the everlasting backburner.

The process of assessing and reassessing priorities may be tedious but it forces us to look deeper, and the deeper we look the more obvious ‘the conspiracy’ seems. We prefer to call it a ‘conspiracy’ since issues, which are deemed not to be in the public interest, can then be down graded by vested interests. They denigrate the ‘bleeding hearts’. They ridicule the ‘lettuce leaf eaters’. That becomes as much part of the promotion game as pushing chicken nuggets. Put it any way you like (wicked 1%’ers crushing the rights of the proletariat), the idea of conspiracy helps make important links - health issues linking to food, linking to the animals, to the environment, to unfair food distribution around the world. The links are obvious enough once you dare to look at them, and each of us are drawn to a particular ‘worst issue’.

If it becomes too much to take on board we need to have an angle on almost all issues, by seeing them as outcomes of the violence within society. By seeing the thread that links so many specific issues, it helps us develop habits that are NOT destructive (not-violent). We set up a train of habits we know we can more or less handle. They’re aimed at our having minimal negative impact on the planet. Eventually we heal our own reputation, we think better of ourselves. Collectively, we then see the human race atoning for what we’ve done to the animals, who are the MOST abused of all our resources and the most damaged part of Nature.

Example-Setting

1992:

Whether vegan or omnivore, we are a powerful ship steaming into the future in the form of example-setting. It’s our only chance to stand up against Goliath opposition. But the opposition isn’t only over food but myriad issues facing us all, right now. It’s a tad overwhelming – vegan food one day, organic food the next. Health issues, animal issues, environmental impacts, where does it all stop? Can I afford to be that spread out?

I suppose it comes down to the way we look at things. When I get a flier in the mail about the latest tragic event, asking me for a contribution, it feels like plugging a hole in a leaky bucket. Where does one stop?

But why not start? Slipping a fiver in an envelope won’t solve the world’s problems but it’s a start, and every gesture we make helps. The pressure is always on us to conform, to take the easier way, to go the cheaper way and that translates into our own consumer habits. Our involvement in waste is as regular as our involvement in cruelty. Being profligate with paper isn’t much different to ruining the land or hens being ’wasted’, or abuse, cruelty, or taking advantage of resources -  it’s all much the same thing. We do it and we don’t believe we can STOP doing it. We don’t think we are good example-setters.

The trick is surely not to be overwhelmed by all the issues but to do what we feel comfortable about doing. And in the doing, realise the potential for us to keep on going deeper. In that way, the world will eventually benefit from what we give out but more particularly from what we’ve understood, about ourselves.

Chicken Nuggets and Compassionate Communication

1991:

Vegan principle needs to be spelt out, if only to stop the rot amongst omnivores. If we can overlook something as obviously wrong as factory farming (immobilising animals to make them work more like machines) then this needs a bit of deconstructing. It’s too horrible to ignore.

Vegans might seem like people snatching the chicken nugget out of the hands of children, so we need to turn that around. We need to show how the alternative can be more fulfilling, breaking the attachment to the ubiquitous chicken nugget.

‘Not-wanting’ is a long step away from ‘addictive-wanting’, especially when guilt is so heavily associated with the wanting of, say, chicken nuggets. The omnivore will want to keep quiet about the wrong of it, and will do almost anything not to have to face facts. If we consider the damage we do, in the light of what everybody else is also doing, it might not matter if we think we can or can’t get away with it.

Vegans themselves might avoid certain truths too - that our vegetables and fruits come from a monoculture which destroys the land, and yet we buy these products because they’re cheap. These vegetables, produced by ‘intensive means’, are grown by farmers who want to stay in business. Competition is the main reason intensive methods are used so, whether it’s animal farming or arable farming, these operations provide us with our food, which gives us our very energy and life. If we move away from our own standard food product (whatever it might be), aspiring to do something better, we enter a world of ideal conditions and high prices. At some time, we’ll have to deal with the ‘wrong’ of it. That might mean vegans themselves might have to eat less so that they can eat better, which means we’ll have to change some of our habits and deny ourselves what we want because of the price.

This is a bit of a dilemma perhaps, but all these difficulties we vegans face helps us to understand omnivores better. If we can experience what they are facing, we’re in a better position to help. And that involves a compassionate communication of vegan principle when resistance is already high. All we can do, in the end is set a good example, with food, especially food, and with our vibrations. If we really do want to communicate, nothing much else matters.

The Vegan Sell

1990:

What happens to the people who become rich off the backs of animals? Or take advantage of any other resource to the detriment of the ‘greater good’? Perhaps they suffer for it in their own way, but this is the story of the human species itself, where we use resources in an unsustainable way, not to mention sometimes a cruel way. The arguments for restraint and acting for the ‘greater good’ don’t seem to be very convincing to us. It seems that ‘bad’ might just works better for us.

But laying all that aside for the moment, if we are one of those people who can’t forget the part animals play in our lives, who want to drop their own use of them and persuade others to join them, we must sell the alternative. A vegan approach is not perfect but at least it deals with non-violence and doing things for the greater good rather than out of self-interest. That in itself is an inspiring position to take up. A vegan diet doesn’t solve everything, for instance it doesn’t address how plants are grown and how arable farming in the form of monoculture destroys the land, but it’s a start.

Who Are The Animal Farmers?

1989:

If we were strangers to the ways of this world we’d see a farmer as an unsavoury gaoler who tortured animals for a living. There’s no kinder way we could possibly see them, unless we also saw the equally cruel people who urged the farmer on, to do what he or she is doing so that they, the customer, could benefit.

We are not strangers to the ways of farmers, in fact every child on the planet will be made aware of the role these people play in ‘bringing food to our table’, an obviously useful and essential service to the community – thus, the child thinks well of the animal farmer and carries that opinion on for the rest of his or her life.

Business people like animal farmers use animals to make a wage for themselves, especially in country regions where there are few other employment opportunities. If living off the land is difficult it’s even more so on marginal land where crops won’t grow, where farming animals is the only way to make ‘a living’. It seems that human survival will always trump any detriment to animals, and as it happens also to human health.

It's there and I want it

1988:

It’s there, it’s for sale and I want it.

Vegans are out there being different. I, for one, want to communicate to people why we aren't people who want-must-have.

This is not something too many others do. It’s not how they spend their time. The way a vegan thinks is so radically different to how most people think. We think a lot about those poor helpless animals in prison, and we would do anything to stop what other humans are doing to them. This is contrary to the way Society has always regarded the usability of farm animals, and also contrary to attitudes about using animal foods.

When I start to speak to anyone face to face, about an ethically driven diet-change, it’s as if a curtain falls. I’m met with un-interest or worse, a casual dismissing of the whole subject. But despite this, or rather because of it, I know I need to work out how to move ahead, to communicate despite the collective resistance.

I think people in general have been got at. I like to emphasise that, and show the blind ‘following tendency’ humans have - that we basically do as we’re told as kids and never actually grow out of that obedience. I would stress that we rarely reflect deeply enough on what appears to be our benign eating habits, for if we did we’d soon enough see how we’ve been duped.

Just look at the obvious: eating animals, wearing them, using them - we do it so much. Our voracious appetite for their products is encouraged by the Animal Industries, and we, the customer spend so much of our money on their products. We do it even though we know it’s wrong (that is, wrong for the planet, for our health and of course for the ‘health’ of the animals themselves). Nevertheless, we do it.

The Animal Rights movement has tried to swing people over, by pointing out the cruelty and health angles, but it doesn’t work, and we need to understand why. But in the meantime, vegans need to present themselves as a solid resource, a service to those who are ready to wake up to the trap they’ve allowed themselves to fall into – a trap made almost invisible by the volume of traffic passing into it. The fact is that almost every human on the planet has been lured into a state of unawareness. Vegans are the wake-up call, and we’ll always be there in the community, applying pressure on people in whatever way we choose to do it.

But, for some activists, we need to foresee how things are going to change. We need to see the sequence of things and where the tipping point will be likely reached. To see where what we’re on about is going to be finally grasped. It really is simple, almost too simple for people to even notice what’s in front of their very eyes.

Why is animal cruelty happening? Why is there this mad addiction to animal products? Why are good hearted people with fine minds immune to what is really going on?

It’s possible that they feel there’s really no choice – it’s all there is. It’s their reality. Food. Eating it is what we do to make energy, to keep warm, to live a normal life - we use animal. This is the habits of a lifetime, it’s how we eat, it’s the food that’s on sale, it’s how Society operates.

Our habits are fed into the common psyche, from birth. We only know of those products which are promoted, which are very often rich with government subsidy. The foods are made to taste good or, in the case of clothing, look good. They’re hard to resist and not easy to find alternatives to.

In almost all countries, core foods and core items of clothing are made from animals - the non-animal choices are negligible. In all cultures affordability has been the determinant of what can and can’t be purchased. If it’s legal and we have the money for it, we are brought up to assume there’s no other obstacle to having what we want. Our pockets are full of expendable cash, and we are so used to getting what we want, that we buy whatever’s on offer. It never crosses our minds that there is an ethical component to shopping. We don’t give a thought to the wrongness of supporting the Animal Industries. By buying their goods we encourage the producers in what they do. And since they’re economically driven, they just can’t help inflicting cruelty on animals, to keep pace with the competition. Profit takes precedence over ethics, and it always ends up that the customer is the patsy.
         

Nudging Un-realism

1987:

What sort of people are vegans speaking to when they do get the chance to speak? We always hope people will be compliant or, better still, eager to learn all the stuff we want them to know. But it’s likely they’ll be bogged down with other priorities, and reluctant to listen to us.

         

We have to consider that many people DON’T feel badly about behaving badly. For instance, if they do know about the suffering of animals it might not matter to them, and therefore eating these animals won’t concern them.

         

What would get people to pull back on their animal eating? I’d suggest that such a radical move only ever happens if people want it badly enough for themselves. For their health? For their conscience? Their reputation? At first, it doesn’t matter what sort of ‘wanting’ it is.

As vegans we need to appeal to this wanting, if it exists. If people aren’t ready to change, we won’t stand much chance of appealing to their sense of right-behaviour, to their health or to their compassion. They’ll resort to saying, “If it’s legal and if most other people do it, there’s no argument in the world that will persuade me to change”. If they’re not ready they won’t even let their minds rest on the subject of Animal Rights, let alone change their diet. They’d say to us: “This is my favourite food we’re talking about here. No way am I going to give up the pleasure of a Sunday roast” (and all the social traditions surrounding that ritual). “Giving up meat and ALL the rest of it is out of the question”.

It’s such a powerful substance, food. It’s the one consistent and familiar strand linking all the days of our lives, right up to the present day. To expect that we can alter any part of that might seem unrealistic. But we can make the attempt. Even though we fail, we might plant the first seed of thinking-differently. We may add a jot of forward-moving.

Being Loyal To My Own Interests

1986:

Why are the ‘right’ so very right? People’s sense of right and wrong is determined by the culture they’re born into and maybe it changes very little until one actively takes time to examine values afresh, as vegans have done by looking at animal exploitation and the unhealthiness of animal-derived food. But whether we have or haven’t re-examined ‘right’, we nevertheless have a sense of what is fundamentally wrong and, in theory, try to avoid it. But the trouble is that vegans and omnivores are poles apart, concerning this particular ‘wrong’.

Vegans have thought it through one way and omnivores another way. Or perhaps, for them, there’s been a deliberate avoidance of thinking. Do they lack imagination when it comes to the suffering of animals? Is it that they stop themselves using their thinking faculty to shield themselves from an awful truth?

When I found myself challenged by a new way of looking at animals I immediately thought of all the ramifications. It would touch food and touch on everyday habits and pleasures, enough to want to shutdown that ‘line of thinking’ and scramble for justification (which, as everyone knows, doesn’t have to be too logical, since everyone else is justifying similarly).

If no one can afford to think things through too carefully, the majority ends up with different values to vegans. And that needn’t matter much because, as yet, there are few vegans to make significant complaint. It’s in the omnivores’ interest to continually reinforce the majority view, for fear of the minority (vegan) view gaining ground.

         

Most people try to make what they think is ‘right’ to be Right. They can’t afford to do what is wrong, because anyone deliberately doing wrong will suffer from attempting to go against their ‘better’ instincts, by not trying hard enough to rise above their own knuckle-dragging, primitive impulses. And yet they do cut ethical corners and know they do. Maybe they do it out of convenience and for an easy life. And the Devil take the hindmost.

         

I’d say that vegan principle teaches us to act with restraint. We try to avoid the easy way out as well as the downright ‘evil’ way, and try to have the courage to do the right thing. We don’t intend to ever benefit from animal misery.

         

So, for example, when I’m tempted to play my music loudly late at night, if I restrain myself because people are sleeping next door, that would be the ‘right’ thing to do. If, on the other hand, I say, “to hell with the neighbours”, that wouldn’t be right. When I know it’s wrong and yet do it all the same, I’m refusing to forgo my pleasure. That attitude is just plain ‘primitive’.

         

Humans have learnt to put self-benefit above the welfare of non-humans, exploiting animals who can’t fight back. And that might extend to exploiting the environment for personal gain, with the reasoning being that if I don’t exploit the situation someone else will, stealing my opportunity.

         

I suppose that’s the central attitude that needs changing, so that empathy kick in before we can spot self-advantage in not caring-about-others.  

The Divide Between Us

1985:

I find it’s difficult to remain passive when I’m speaking about ‘food’ animals with a meat eater. But I try to keep quiet and listen. And then whatever I do say, I try to say off-beat. As if I realise the values I want to present might be too strong, and too contrary to theirs; my point of view might only be ‘taken-in-able’ on a subliminal level, otherwise, my coming on too strong, and too fast in what I’m saying, will seem like an attack.

Everyone can sense a value judgement when it’s being made. If we judge, it shows up, however clever we think we are in hiding it. Best not to make the judgement in the first place, even in our own minds, so that we can better observe their point of view. “But surely”, you say, “It’s obvious what that is”. But there are important reasons for why they will not contemplate any departure from their diet. Once we can get familiar with those reasonings, we’ll understand them better and be of more value in helping them, if that’s what they want, to move towards new attitudes to these particular animals.

People Behaving Badly

1984:

There are those who don’t feel badly about behaving badly, nor about condoning the abuse of animals for food and clothing, as if it’s of no significance. It’s as if they are impelled to cause damage, to take a full part in the whole cruel system of animal abuse, but don’t know how to pull back. Better behaved people can see better the part they play, moderate their urges, and try to minimise their damage.

         

As advocates for the animals, we get disappointed by those who are pulling in the opposite direction. We might want to give up on them, exasperated.
         

When I get talking to people who behave badly, but may not seem to care, I nevertheless find they’re worth getting to know, if only to find out how they justify their views on animals. I try to talk to them, ask them how they feel about ‘all this’. At the same time, I try to make them feel at ease, by eliminating any hint of judgement from what I’m asking. I try never to show any trace of disapproval. Not that I don’t feel it, but I don’t want to show it, since I’m curious to learn about them.

If we can ask questions of them, as if they were asking themself the same questions, then we have a better chance of influencing a change of attitude, without igniting ego-resistance.

If we can spend time with people who not only disagree with us but adamantly oppose the whole concept of ‘animals having rights’, we might get closer to the general point of view shared by very many others. On this subject of ‘carnism’, people put animals in a special category. Their own companion animals are much loved whilst ‘food’ animals must be completely un-loved. However illogical their arguments may seem to us, our job as animal advocates is to get deeper inside this way of thinking. And that’s made easier the more we become familiar with their arguments. It’s easy for vegans to forget the rationale we ourselves might have used, to justify our own eating and clothing habits in the past.

Meeting Resistance

1983:

What sort of people are vegans speaking to when they do get the chance to speak? We always hope they’ll be compliant and eager, wanting to learn all the stuff we have to tell them. But, it’s likely they’ll be ‘reluctants’.

We have to remember that many people don’t feel badly about behaving badly. If they do know about the suffering of animals it might not matter to them, and therefore eating these animals won’t concern them either. Nothing will get them to pull back on their animal eating. They will only change their food if they want to badly enough.

We can appeal to their sense of right-behaviour, to their health, to their compassion, but if it’s legal and if most other people do it, there’s no argument in the world that will persuade them to change if they aren’t presently frightened of the harmful effects of their usual food. They won’t even let their minds rest on the subject of Animal Rights, let alone consider changing their diet as radically as we are suggesting. We’re talking about food here, our favourite foods. Our eating pattern is the one consistent thing we’ve been doing all of our lives, right up to the present day. We are what we’ve eaten. To attempt to alter any part of that would be disturbing to our home life and might even seem like committing social suicide (by eating differently to other people).   

Vegans, as most people realise, are in a different reality; we are ‘out there’ wanting to talk contrarily about people’s usual food regimen. When a vegan starts speaking, people’s eyes glaze over. We are met with either inertia or dismissal. This is the collective resistance, but despite this, vegans need to work out how to move people on, or at least stimulate some form of communication on the subject of animal-eating.

Judge and Jury

1982:

Young people are better informed these days, and they're starting to make the links between ethics and personal judgement. With a computer and a few mouse clicks, we can get all the information we need. We can then be our own judge and jury on these issues. Then it's just a matter of prioritising things to make our own life easier and become effective animal advocates.

An ethical life means switching away from poor quality and animal-based foods to whole, plant-based foods. It puts us in a better position to take up the work of communicating animal rights issues to people, and stay healthy while we do it.

Horrors

1981:

Surely the Western educated and well-informed person has twigged by now that the decline in people's state of general health is related to conventional eating habits. We are far less healthy and far fatter than we need to be. Surely the connection is obvious, between the large numbers of sick humans and the ‘sick’ food coming out of abattoirs. And what with the cruel farm-animal practices, it’s a mix of chemical chaos and ethics interfacing with health consequences. All a result of obstinacy and free-willed decision making.

Food

1980:

If vegan food seems grim, if it has that image, then our job is to show that it is not. But this means we have to learn how to prepare it, cook it and discover ways to ‘wow’ people with it.

Alongside that, we should find ways to restore our own personal image, to become someone others would be happy to look up to. Animal Rights must start with kindness, not anger, revenge or force. With animals we have a certain sense of kin-ness. We are dealing with both animals and people here, so our approach to both should be warm, instructive and protective. But with those who can understand us, we should be bold and challenging at the same time. Perhaps there’s room to stir things up, just to get people thinking about the absurdity of what they do. And part of that, so there are no misunderstandings, we ought to clear up the misunderstanding about vegetarians and vegetarian-ism.

As vegetarians, we may want to talk about food, healthy bodies and killing animals to eat them. But there are deeper reasons for being pro-animal. Slavery.

Most humans have let things get badly out of hand. They seek to preserve health and enjoy their food and leathers, but they sell their souls. By helping to enslave animals for eating.

Rushing To The Rescue

1979:

Obviously boycotting animal products isn't easy, especially at first. Our addiction to many products on the market is entrenched. And yet we know, as a species, we're highly adaptive and that particular change isn't really as hard as we might think.

Vegans, already over their cravings and are activist-inclined, want to be rushing to the rescue - we have big ideals to be realised. We know this will mean making a big statement, to be clear that as a vegan you really are in it for the long haul. Then, we can back up our words.

What is it that the idealist is most up against? Perhaps in our  case it’s the majority attitude of pitilessness; the lives of domesticated animals are as important as our own. We can only show this  by making certain, personal lifestyle changes, to show solidarity with them. Hopefully it will lift us up to be kinder,  'greener', and irreconcilably vegan. But this 'vegan' thing, even if it weren't focused on animals or human health, it would still be the most logical and intelligent way to go.

By being vegan, we are, to some extent, in a state of self control over our food habits. That in itself is empowering. But there’s the pay-back too, in the food itself; highly energising plant food is an aid to thinking, it’s a ‘lighter’ brain food. And that let’s us see what most needs repair.

We may be saving forests or saving starving children or saving exploited creatures, but the initial emphasis is always on a need for urgent repair. Of course, we can't start any big, new initiative without first repairing the damage already done to ourselves. In the business of saving animals, we have to do first-things first. Be vegan at the very least, so that effective personal repair can be made possible, before advocating repair to others.

But ‘repair’ sounds like such a dull and unrewarding business. That is, until we see it as the ‘new creative’. Creativity is perhaps what we need most, since without it our repairs will just be for show. They won’t catch on. They won’t last.

Once you ‘go vegan’, you do it for life. If repairing our own attitudes (concerning the use of animals) slides backwards, wouldn’t we feel foolish and shallow? It would be as if our ideals had simply been wishful thinking or boasting.

Once our attitudes shift and become vegan, then there’s no reason to abandon ship, and return to the old, primitive ways.  

Animal Sanctuaries

1978:

In the long term, the animals, what of them? What’s to become of them? Do we retire all of them? Do we restrict their breeding to prevent their numbers expanding? It would certainly be costly even if there were a decline in meat eating and if animals were no longer being bred into existence.

At first, I imagine, the move to retire and protect the ones still alive be done in the spirit of atonement. There would need to be special funding, perhaps a special tax to pay for it all. But how would people respond to such a tax in these economically and ecologically straightened times? It’s hard enough to stir people into agreeing to a carbon tax, to help reduce global warming, but an animal tax to save animals from exploitation!!! That would need a whole different attitude to our animal charges, who are presently treated with no consideration at all.

Attitudes will change as people no longer have an interest in the farming of animals or the provision of meat and dairy products. Then and only then will our attention be trained on doing something for these poor animals.

Perhaps it’s quite hard to imagine this brand new human being, inspired by a new set of ethics. But with enough real vegan eating becoming the norm, people will naturally come to detest exploitation. They’ll want to disassociate from their primitive forebears, and make a point of saving animals, in much the same way that we do today, with abused cats and dogs.

The setting up of safe houses, or rather animal sanctuaries, might not be such a money-burden after all. Imagine the savings made and all the other advantages of a meatless society. Apart from ending the killing, the advantages to our health would be dramatic. For young people especially, to have a renewed contact with animals, to work voluntarily for them, to enjoy their company on the nearby refuge - the turning of attitude would coincide with a strong wish for a more intelligent and peaceful world. As ‘refusniks’, who no longer eat meat, and no longer ‘do’ war, our society could break through to an altered state of consciousness, the results of which we can hardly imagine with our concreted-in mind-sets of today. But how the human is already dramatically changing, making the idea of creating sanctuaries for farm animals not as far fetched as the idea at first seems.

Information Is Optimism

1977:

So much becomes clear when you see it through a vegan’s eyes. On the one hand, we see all too clearly the horror of animal abuse and, on the other, the brilliant breakthrough plant foods represent. It’s worth becoming vegan just for that one insight.

Young people (and a few older ones too) might already be there, and already be getting some insights, by looking for them and finding them. The raw information is certainly available, and for those who can use technology the essentials can be picked up in a matter of moments. Even very young people may already know more than we older ones, about certain important things.

Here we have people already networking information, in readiness for that day when really important information is the essential ‘clueing-up’ we need, if we are to take more control of our personal lives and our future. And that, like nothing else, brings a sense of optimism into our lives.

Once we become surer of our ground, self-confidence grows. Our optimism increases, we become happier and we aren’t afraid to let that show in our general demeanour.

Fixing Dinner

1976:

Animal Rights is the ultimate confrontation. It is social justice put to its test, arguing why animals deserve rights and why we no longer need to be imprisoned with animal issues stirring up our guilt.

So, people are reluctant to discuss it. Surprise, surprise! You can understand why though, because there’s nothing to discuss. The society we know, accept, and have become used to, has been built on our right to exploit animals. Dismantle that ‘right’, by giving animals rights, and immediately the abattoirs are closed, and meat, milk, eggs, and cheese automatically disappear. Is it any wonder that people are reluctant to lose these ‘goodies’ and the thousands of edible items made with animal derivatives?

Plant-based diets seem so radical and, one might presume, difficult. The very thought of restricting one’s eating habits to foods from the plant kingdom is probably unnerving. But from our side, it doesn’t seem that way at all. Once the safety of the diet is established, and some of the ‘replacements’ are discovered, ‘going vegan’ isn’t such a big deal. We hope many others will do the same, because it follows that the more who go vegan the greater the variety of vegan products that will appear in shops. Then it will all become that much easier for people to make the transition from omnivore to herbivore.

That isn’t going to happen until vegan food stops looking like war-time rations, especially these days when food has become such a comfort. The health-only vegans might mean well, but their emphasis on whole foods, raw foods and plain-eating might be off-putting, whereas ‘wicked’ vegan food, which emphasises good-tasting food, might serve as a better transition.

In this highly-pressured society, where we do seem to need so much comforting, our security blanket is food. And that’s why is has to be attractive, look attractive and be attractive to the taste. That can be quite a challenge for home-cooking. It’s not just at the restaurant where we can enjoy our food, it’s at home where food must be able to rival the omnivore’s so called ‘cuisine’. Many of us can’t afford to visit restaurants however good they are.

For most of us food means preparing our own, and that means every night’s dinner, which has to have a looking-forward-to feel about it. Only then will ‘being vegan’ be something to look forward to.

The Other Side of The Wall

1975:

Young people (and a few older ones too), using technology to access information, start to take control of what they learn, and learn different values for a different lifestyle. Traditions and conventions and authorities and mass media will scream the opposite values at us. In answer to that we have instinct and logic, and that helps us to disassociate from the old, familiar, dark, and violent world. We can be optimistic about our own future and want the best for the planet and, by simply eating plant foods, we can help defend the innocent, exploited animals.

On the other side of the wall, we swop foods, swop attitudes and eventually notice we’ve also swopped body chemistry. I found even my own small brain functions better when not weighed down with animal foods. I’m no longer feeling unwell, catching colds, or having too little energy.

For young people especially, the great advantage of having read about animal rights and vegan diets is that by having this new perspective on life, they’re more self-confident and feel better educated - less manipulated by having been kept ignorant of important issues.

As ‘the wall’ crumbles behind us, we’re already half way to solving Earth’s main problems, by being less wanting, less selfish, and less manipulated. We’re already half way to repairing damage, and leading our society towards becoming  more optimistic.

The Wall

1974:

When you see our society through vegan eyes, so much becomes clear about our habits - the selfishness, violence, stupidity and weakness of humans. Early habits lock us into later ones. Selfishness urges us to eat what we like, which means a whole lot of animals are killed for the food we want. This settles into a lifetime of eating habits, which leads to ill health and all the ‘old-age’ diseases. The doctor might say that it’s just a matter of us getting older, and we can expect it. We believe the doctor. No-change is prescribed. We spend a lifetime eating poisonous foods and developing a guilty conscience for conspiring with animal violators. Vegans may suffer far less than others because they are eating plant foods.

Learning the vital information about plant foods is done quite easily today. Nothing can be kept secret. The animal industries are exposed. But, we might not even be looking. We may be content with the way things are. We may be intimidated by the massive propaganda wall – too big to climb over. This wall has been built in our minds during our formative years, and most people accept the attitude that animals are safe to eat, and that it isn’t wrong to imprison them and kill them.

         

Once we dare to climb that wall, the mind starts to change. Instead of avoiding information we begin to look for it. And then we find it’s surprisingly easy to see what life could be like, on the other side.

A Search on Eggs

1973:

Because we can ‘Google’, we don’t necessarily need to learn from other far more long-winded sources. Anyone’s access to the Net helps to shed light on big and small issues as quickly as it occurs to us to want to find out about something.

Take the subject of ‘egg’ for example. We can Google it and find out about its nutritional qualities, how it is produced and what foods contain egg. With that information at hand (if we use eggs) we can learn how to use them and if we don’t use them we can find why we don’t need them and of course ethically why we shouldn’t use them. This ability to gather information relatively painlessly makes us better informed and more self-reliant. We know it’s ridiculous to trust what political leaders or corporate advertisers say (they never tell the truth!) and we can’t necessarily trust our teachers and priests.

If a lot of what we’ve been taught is no longer believable, we have to start again, to search for information and come to rely more and more on ourselves. Via our computers, we can re-examine things for our self instead of accessing inside information by joining up with an organisation whose beliefs we might not completely agree with and whose information we may not entirely trust. Institutions and organisations often have reason to skew the facts to win support, and truth goes out of the window.

To gather information from a variety of sources, to become our own judge and jury, one needs to search widely, and all this is possible by using our computers intelligently. It’s not fool-proof but it’s a whole lot easier and far less time-consuming for getting what you want. And if we need basic information, the Net is more forthcoming than trawling through books, attending specialist courses or making do with limited information.

Because the Net is a world wide network, fed and read by many millions of people across the world, it’s information is scrutinised by many people and made available for anyone who wants to know. And it’s free. Once you’ve Googled the egg you can know all there is to know about this item, sufficient to make a carful judgement about it.     

Access to Information

1972:

Having ready access to reliable information changes everything. Vegan information makes for new possibilities. We can use a search engine for anything, and with practice, we can weed out the sound information from the rubbish. There’s no excuse for ignorance. Decades ago, we would spend all day in the library, scratching around for vital information. Now, it takes no time at all and most information is reliably sourced. Learning via the Internet has been made possible because imaginative people have set it up for us, the engineers, programmers, web site writers. 

In the area of Animal Rights there’s a lot we can usefully learn. Each day another vital gap is filled, on a subject that’s so important. Say we were after information about veganism. We can go to information banks set up by altruistic people who’ve dedicated their time to setting it down, since they know it can be so useful. In the past, there was too little reliable information, and easier for the Animal Industries and their friends to keep information from us. They simply mis-informed. But where once we had information kept from us, now we’re swamped by it! But now at least we have the choice - to take it on board or ignore it.

In the future we’ll ask ourselves how we could have swallowed so much misinformation and why it all went so unchallenged. In the future we won’t be able to recall just how information-starved we were, back then.

But there’s panic in the house. It’s a race against time. Our education has gaps. We’ve been taught virtually nothing about how our body works concerning nutrition. In practical terms, we haven’t been taught how to prepare food or how to be equipped to live without making ourselves ill. Our conscience is vulnerable too because we’ve never learnt about the living conditions of ‘food’ animals or how animal foods are poisonous to our system. Additionally, we’ve only recently learnt about the environmental impact of producing animal foods.

Today's easy access to information equips us with all this potential for finding things out - for designing our own entirely new lifestyle.