Misperceptions

2055:

Except for those who are vegans-from-birth, all of us during our own lives have compromised our principles over the foods we’ve used. And we’ve justified it with some rather shallow thinking. Here we see vegans accusing omnivores of one central fault - that they couldn’t care less. But that’s not how omnivores see themselves. To them it sounds like unfair criticism - omnivores think they do care. They care about many things. “But there are limits”, they say. Using-animals just doesn’t register on the omnivore radar.

Most omnivores know very little about how vegans think and probably don’t take us too seriously anyway. But from our perspective, eating meat and dairy shows contempt for animals and therefore proves a lack of concern about what is happening.

There’s no common ground here in this misperception of each other. It’s complicated.

Apart from the strong cultural traditions holding habits in place, there’s a new culture emerging, establishing new habits. For those of us who are vegan, it’s our passport to an altogether different view on life – based on vegan principle. There exists now, a looming clash of cultures. Omnivores perceive that vegans are making terrible accusations: that “meat-eaters” are ethically dumbing down so they can enjoy their animal foods with impunity. In reply, omnivores accuse vegans of being the new morality police, intent on spoiling the pleasures of living, namely the partaking of readily-available animal products. We abstain and they partake.

There’s a gulf between the two ‘cultures’ and that gulf widens or narrows according to whether we aim to be hard or admit that we are incapable of being hard.