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.