It's Not Meant To Be Easy To Talk

2037:

What we, as ‘the initiating-communicator’ shouldn’t feel obliged to do is betray our own position, by seeming to go along with views we don’t actually hold, just to keep the peace. If we do that we’re going nowhere.

On some level, for vegans, there must be an acceptance of the omnivore (for heaven’s sake, most if not ALL of the people we know are practising omnivores!). And because there are so many of them, we need to accept them and be pro-active in showing that – that’s if we want to have any chance at all of touching their hearts. It won’t work the other way around, by attack and confrontation. We’ve got to work out how to ‘dialogue’ with people, even when they disagree with us vehemently.

This vexed question, of whether our subject is regarded by others as ‘important’ - animal food and animal cruelty - is the foundation for all dialogue on this subject.

If this subject were talked about as freely as, say, environmental matters, we’d come across as less frantic. But this subject is unlike almost any other subject – it’s highly, personally sensitive. Food, and animal-based food especially (and therefore animal husbandry) touch a raw nerve, which makes it that much more difficult to talk about. It’s far harder for any casual discussion of it to crop up, in the natural course of  conversation than, say, Environmentalism.

First up then, vegans need to ease up on the attack mode. Then we need to find a way to relax into the role of ‘information-imparter’. But of course, it’s never going to be easy. God forbid that it were!