Good manners!

467a
Just suppose I’ve been asked a question - why am I vegan? I wonder to myself why the question has been asked. Maybe the other person is genuinely interested but just as likely they are ‘showing an interest’ out of good manners. NOT because they’re ‘fascinated to know’ but to show me I’m not disrespected by them.
When I’m not sure who I’m talking with (on this oh-so-sensitive matter) it’s not until I actually start talking that I can sense why they asked, and therefore know at what level I should be ‘pitching’ my words.
Soon after they respond. They might heckle, put in a quick dig at me, even bring on a full scale moral punch-up. And I have to ask myself why would an omnivore want to discuss ‘veganism’ with a vegan? It’s such a central question for vegans and a frequent situation I find myself in.
Sometimes it’s a genuine question, as if they’re giving me the all-clear to answer. Then I look back at myself - I ask why am I so keen to talk - perhaps this is another valuable rehearsal opportunity, to practise my ‘pitch’ - to see if I can deliver my argument without upsetting anyone. I find myself experimenting, testing the waters or taking risks to see if they snap. Perhaps I want to get to the point where I’m saying “Take it or leave it”. But in my heart of hearts I’m also feeling very grateful that this good person has shown an interest, given me the chance to say something, allowed themself to be used as a punch bag.

Wanting to talk

467:

You might disagree with me on the matter of animal use, but we should all try to rub along together. I insist on it. The potential of this ‘omnivore-vegan interface’ lies in our talking together and understanding where each is coming from. Possibly, for the omnivore, they haven’t thought much about ‘animal issues’ before, and as a vegan it’s likely I’ve forgotten how I came to ‘it all’ in the first place.
What brings in their interest now and what brought mine - what was my own trigger at the time?
When talking happens, things come alive - perhaps right out of the blue this ‘subject’ comes up in conversation. The issues spring up perhaps a little too ‘loudly’ and when they do you can sometimes cut the atmosphere with a knife. I notice how the resistance-shutters come down. And so quickly. Especially if it’s already known that I’m ‘a vegan’.
I find it’s weird when, suddenly, the spotlight falls on me. “Speak”. And the big question is, at that precise moment, how I pitch what I have to say. I want to say this ... but perhaps I’d better say less? Some will genuinely want to find out about it, but it’s likely others will be hoping NOT to cop a lecture.
On the safe side I’ll say less than I’m being allowed to say – I want to establish trust even more that I want to get my ‘message’ out. Anyway, for me it’s a guessing game, as to how genuine another person’s interest is.
If I’m given the go-ahead to speak I don’t necessarily feel obliged to plough on but always to assume my right to NOT comment or to even drop the subject if I sense I’m being compromised or if I smell some aggro in the wind.
I remember the time I was talking on a box at Hyde Park Corner in London, giving a talk and answering questions about the kangaroo situation in Australia. I was heckled badly by one person. He made enough noise that I couldn’t be heard. I had to give it away in the end because all I could do was become even more aggressive with him than he was being with me, and that would put into question why I was talking there in the first place, about violence. Admittedly this is an extreme situation but it showed me how desperately some people don’t want to hear anything on this subject of animal abuse.
If I’m an advocate for animals I might simply want the chance to knock other people’s views on the head. That’s one approach. Another might simply be to assist … to raise general consciousness, but only when there’s permission. Otherwise whatever I say will ‘put people off’.
Omnivores have the right not to engage, but it’s maddening to see them ducking and diving and for me to pretend not to notice. I try to get a fire going even with damp wood so our conversation might eventually roar like a fire up a chimney ... and yet, when finished, still to leave on good terms.
If it doesn’t work between us, if it turns into a bun fight over who is right, then it’s my fault initially - it’s likely I’m forgetting to monitor your feelings, as if they don’t matter. And if my ‘riding roughshod’ is sensed, conversation becomes heated ... neither is being allowed to say their piece. At some point, mutual respect was thrown out the window. At some point both sides lost interest in communication. Clear signs of an unintelligent and unsuccessful meeting.

‘Seriously?’

466:

The vegan advocate ultimately sets out to impress and inspire … without the use of emotional blackmail or any kind of too-clever persuasion.
The subtle process of influencing others (to get them to think more the way I think) involves acceptance on all fronts – at some stage I need to show an acceptance of opposing views that disagree with my own. This is ‘acceptance’ rather than approval, and within that specification is my implicit promise not to get aggro over anything. Anyone representing an ‘opposition’ view needs to be assured of equality of status, between us both. Until that is clear, there can’t be any launching into deep waters. If my assurance isn’t there, and if I don’t reinforce it frequently, my ‘opposition’ friend will always be reluctant to enter into meaningful dialogue with me.
Look at it this way - my well-thought-out position is likely to contrast with the less-well-thought-out position of my ‘adversary’. And for that reason alone I shouldn’t get heavy about a subject which is, for them, relatively little known about.
All I’d ask of the omnivore is that they agree that ‘Animal Rights’ is a subject worthy of being taken seriously. If they don’t think it is, THEN I believe I have the right to ask why ... in order to avoid wasting my time discussing this subject if it’s only going to be seen as a frivolous matter. Only then, on both sides, can something profound come out of our discussions.

Same-old, same-old

464:

How can we ensure that, within the protest movement, we won’t become ‘forceful’, even violent? When we’re talking to people on this Most Important Subject, do we, as vegans, attempt to force people to agree with us? If we do, how can we justify that? Perhaps we use the animals as an excuse to be a bully, to get our rocks off and to vent our spleen?
That pushiness comes across as boring – everyone has heard it all before, same old-same old. If I have something to say I try to make it sound useful and original, as if it comes from the heart and not from the vegan text book.
Even if my polemic is justified, the bottom line is that I never want to seem ‘pushy’, not with this subject, because people still don’t attach ‘wrong’ to it. Animal use is still ‘acceptable’ to most people – they’ve never really questioned it. And more to the point, I know we all live in a democracy where (thankfully) no one is compelled to listen to anyone else or agree with them. If I start to preach I know I’m going to lose audience.
This subject of animals having rights - it seems to me utterly logical and right, and of course I want others to know that. But as soon as I make anyone feel uncomfortable by taking the moral high ground I’ve lost them. In contrast as soon as I poke fun at myself you can see the relief in people’s faces. I can’t describe my whole manner in a few words, this is just part of it. Each of us is different in style. Overall though, perhaps it’s a gentleness of approach we need. I sometimes want to scream peaceful-ness, because there’s something about this notion of ‘vegan harmlessness’ which has a nice ring to it. Maybe it can be cheeky but it never has to go anywhere near becoming offensive.
My aim would be to be ‘non-confronting’, to go in softly, gauge a person’s actual interest and perhaps their touchiness. I try to be friendly because that’s what I want from them. Yes, I do love a good fight, but a ‘good’ one. It’s in the tradition of how we are together, whether arguing or playing - most of us have grown up in relative peace, never expecting gratuitous hostility from anyone we meet and talk with. Here, advocating for animals, I like to think I’m representing a significantly important movement, but it’s not really about me-activist but about them, about liberating animals. I am as much setting standards of behaviour as I am disseminating information.
I like to think of myself as a self-appointed ambassador for the voiceless. If they could speak they wouldn’t speak with any violence, I’m sure of that. They’d want to keep the peace (knowing from experience how to deal with highly volatile and potentially dangerous humans). I would argue that even in the most heated exchanges with other people, over the question of animal rights, I should never need to lose my cool, over anything? Why would I spoil my day?
As a vegan I want to be trusted on all sorts of levels - my information, is it correct? Am I a nice person? Can I be trusted NOT to fly off the handle when issues become sensitive? Can I be not-boring? Am I interested in others’ points of view?
If I can convince people I mean them no harm I’ll do it through my tone of our voice and body language. And for those of us who’ve got a few violent tendencies we must swear three thousand promises NOT to set out to hurt. After all, if vegans call for harmlessness on one level they must respect it on all levels, surely. There’s so much hurt in the world, why add to it? It’s like a vasectomised man in an overpopulated world who doesn’t want to add more kids to it. In a nutshell, I try to never get involved in emotionally attacking anyone, especially if they’ve asked me what I think … about this issue. How rude would that be?

Being ‘right’

463:

For vegans, we have such cast iron arguments that I find it difficult to believe that we don’t have some sort of magical powers. Certainly our arguments are powerful but, hey, maybe not magic. However, that’s our job - to bring the issues into focus, bring them to life and bring this whole hidden-away subject out into the open.
To omnivores who, food-wise, are generally animal-addicted, our arguments don’t sound at all magical. To most of them we are a nuisance. Omnivores build cast iron barricades to guard themselves from people like us. To vegans, we know omnivore logic is faulty but the trap for us, with our better arguments, is that we exude feelings of being ‘right’. It’s our smugness that puts people off. When we give off that air of “look at me, at how terrific I am, how healthy, guiltless … etc”, nothing’s more unattractive than this. It’s what they call here in Australia “big-noting oneself”. I know I do it, I put others ‘off’ in this way … and ultimately screw things for the Animal Rights Movement.
Vegans, like me, have to control our passions and make sure we don’t give off the wrong signals, as if we don’t care what others think of us, as if we’re willing to forfeit friendliness for the sake of making a point.
The safest style of approach for me is to think court jester; think of the jester’s style which is always respectful, always affectionate but always stirring.

Being wary of the vegan advocate

463

I don’t flinch at watching footage of animal cruelty. I hate to see it but I’ve seen so much of it - I know it shows up the worst aspects of human behaviour and it depresses me because of that. But its use for me is that it strengthens my motivation and holds my focus where I want it - on my ‘outrage’. But I also know that’s a trap. When I start to talk about ‘all this’, if I sound too outraged I’ll frighten people. It’s important to show how I feel, yes, but also to show how I respect humans, not just animals.
When I get speaking (on my favourite subject) I either create great waves of trust or a threat. For me it’s important to REMEMBER to drop any aggro attitude, since first impressions are so important, and why I don’t need to show my hand as a matter of course.
But vegans like me are natural talkers (about animal rights) and I do a lot of emailing, writing, telephoning and speaking, to put out this vegan message to people. But face to face communication is hard - hard not to sound preachy and evangelical. So, my point here is that omnivores need to trust us. In particular they need to know that we won’t ‘turn’ on them, crush them or attempt to make fools of them. Once they trust us about this then they’ll listen or at least let us put our points forward. We all have to contribute to establishing this trust so it becomes known that this is what vegans are like, not just extremists but people who are gentle extremists.

Turning nasty

462a:

In public some of us vegans protest in the streets (or in the media) for Animal Rights, but are we aware of how we come across? In our fierce fight for ‘rights’ we might not have any room for fancy ideas like ‘having all-round-respect for animals and humans alike’.
In my daily interactions with people, when I bristle if people don’t agree with my point of view, I try not to show it. I usually make a pathetic attempt to smile warmly, as if I’m above being offended. It never works. And then when I don’t try at all it’s just as bad - I just snap at something they’ve said. And this, I think, screws my attempt at animal advocacy. Amongst those of us advocating this difficult subject, the ‘approach’ we choose to take is the big controversy in the Animal Rights and Vegan movements - how we appear to the general public.
I’m not always proud of the way I come across when I ‘lose it’ with someone. When I don’t take enough care how my words are couched and deal badly with the issues. Is it just a matter of my being more sensitive? I’m not sure. Some say “go in soft”, others like to throw their weight about. But in the end it comes down to communicating effectively - surely that’s what it’s all about? Getting people to want to hear what we have to say, as if it might be interesting, informing.
I try to imagine an omnivore listening to me talking about my interest in Animal Rights. You can almost see them waiting for my punch line, my inevitable, thinly veiled insult. And I can almost hear them thinking how impossible it is to identify with me and with what I’m saying. Vegans and activists in general already have a reputation for their high moral platform, and whether it’s valid or not there’s a gut reaction to vegans. The concern is not usually about the food we eat but as to whether we are violent or non-violent in our nature. People are often on the lookout for the first signs of our ‘emotional blackmail’ or for us to be trying to prove them WRONG, or to say something meant to humiliate them.
How does any omnivore feel confident that ‘our views’ will be expressed in a reasonable way? As vegans, if we come across as fierce, we may reinforce that evangelical image some of us have, and end up losing our listeners for ever. And what that bequeaths to other vegans who might come along later is anyone’s guess!
Whatever the subject, when I get steamed up about it, it’s my emotion, my passion or my outrage, that shows up first. If I succeed in making someone feel uncomfortable then any logic or fact or argument I might have been using is drowned out by my ugly approach - vegan shouts: listener cringes. What the listener so often does NOT do, is say “that is so true and from this moment on I’ll give what you say a go. I, just like you, feel outraged”, and yet this is what we intend them to come out with.
Animals: they’ve invested in one way of looking at this animal issue and held that view all their lives. They’re not going to agree with me lightly, especially if they have a ham sandwich in their lunch pack!
If my outrage doesn’t come across as being quite cool then what will? I’m not so sure about ‘cool’. I think I’m too old to appear cool, but for younger activists it is a crucial part of acceptance that they are ‘cool’, which means their base-line is something others can work from. I suppose it’s a style of behaviour which would, in this case, be showing an attempt to answer questions whilst keeping emotions under control ... and NEVER turning nasty with people when they disagree with us.

Shoes

462

I know an 18 years old who is into vegan food, but she’s stuck on shoes. She loves shoes. What woman doesn’t? But there isn’t much of an alternative to leather fashion shoes yet. Here’s where she may want to NOT touch animals, but touch them she does, by way of her shoes. Why does my ‘vegan’ friend wear leather on her feet? Maybe it’s the fear of social suicide - a beautiful dress, a magnificent everything else and it all falls to pieces with canvas on her feet.
Of course this usually isn’t so much of a problem for men, well not for me certainly but then I’m not 18 and not dating. And of course it doesn’t matter eventually because as soon as there’s enough demand for a different line of shoe, then a whole range of magnificent plant-based footwear will appear … and at competitive prices. But that isn’t now is it.
The Chinese might be doing it already, and if so, then they can do it not just because of lower labour costs but because plant fabric is cheaper than leather.
The world is moving towards cutting unnecessary costs by ‘going-plant’. It’s going that way and fashion will shift towards both non-animal foods and fabrics. However it all depends where we spend our money. If you join the boycott and sponsor alternatives, fashions will change. And it’s the fashion market which determines whether we get shoes of the plant-based variety.
But back to my friend. It must be annoying to her, because of the shoes she chooses to wear, that she can’t actively promote vegan principle or Animal Rights. And in every other way she’s a real genuine hot-shot vegan and animal advocate.

Protests looking ugly

461:

As vegans we may be convinced of our own non-violence, but have to doubt it when we find ourselves ‘doing’ an angry protest. To people who see us getting angry it’s off-putting. When we set out on a high moral platform it might give us confidence, since we are so obviously right … and yet we don’t see how, drip by drip, our protest can come to seem too harsh, even violent.
To be non-violent, I think, we activists (so-called!) do need to consider developing a level of control, where words are strong but not frightening and where voices are loud but not screaming. Collectively we can seem too big for our boots, over confident or even brash. The vegan public face is sometimes off-putting. We don’t recognise it in ourselves because at home we aren’t like that at all. At home, where everyone knows us too well, we’re not trying to impress anyone. Lifestyle-wise, vegans are pretty much fine examples of non-violence. It seems a shame to wear our dark side in public just to look as though we are serious and dedicated.
Privately of course, a more wonderful ‘at-peace’ spirit you’ll never find, and that’s because vegans have low levels of ‘spending-violence’ They don’t buy animal-stuff or guns or do violent crime. At home vegans are cool and it’s only when we’re trying to be effective outside the home that we hit trouble, like when we want to be ‘hot’ (passionate) ... and then it’s our appearance that lets us down.
Vegans should of course feel utterly safe when we go up against the ‘big-bad-world’ to advocate for the animals. So, when we have to face some opposition, face some curly questions, how do we handle it? How do we come across? “Bring it on” sounds brave, and it is brave, but we still don’t have to sound aggro to prove that we are fearless.

Force

460:

Experimenting using force is little more than advantage-taking. Once we take out the ‘force factor’ in what we do, what are we left with? Perhaps we’ll seem less pushy, even ignorable but we free ourselves from the grip of the usual activist’s violence-based approach. At least people won’t have to be afraid of us, that we might attack them or humiliate or judge them. They’ll be more inclined to give us a hearing.
As humans we’re capable of wonderful things, not the least of which is our ability to ‘act on principle’ rather than from the ‘me-first’ position. One of the greatest principles is non-violence, not the do-nothing- passive approach but the active-provocateur-spirit that stirs without causing any harm. I think there’s such a thing as the non-violent wake-up call that mixes well with our own sense of rebellion. If we can find a balance in that we can be a little provoking or questioning without using any force. We can couch what we say in humour, where we are gently taking the piss out of those who have no argument to support their position. We can give them a serve but keep it light at the same time.
Take an omnivore for example. I’ll tell them they couldn’t boycott anything even if they tried, since they are so hooked on yummy food. No, they might not like that but they can hardly get too upset by my saying this to their face. They have to agree that we should all be working for a better world. Our suggestion is simply that we should all boycott the ugly stuff that makes the world a worse place.
By boycotting we withdraw our support of a world-that-need-not-be. Our pressure, as vegans, brings this world into focus, making compassion the new fashion. In whatever way we put that to other people, as long as we don’t get too heavy about it, they can hardly disagree. We know, first hand, that what we are suggesting can be difficult, and omnivores believe it’s probably too hard to live happily being a boycotting vegan. Our job is surely to awaken them to the possibility of overturning a notion that’s been planted, as part of the ‘conspiracy of misinformation’, by The Animal Industries. And just to give vegan eating a go.

Standing upright in a ‘me-first’ world

459:

When we look into the ‘me-first’ world, obviously food features large. When it comes to food we are largely controlled by it. Maybe our food habits haven’t been changed since childhood? It might never have occurred to us to change them.
Maybe one day it hits you. It did me, but I wasn’t ready, so I turned away. Or maybe I was nearly ready and I did change, but not enough. But eventually I did the thing properly, went ‘vegan’, sacrificing some of my ‘me-first’ for ‘me-second’. I never looked back. What exactly impels one to take this plunge is different for everyone. It’s a ‘coming-out’, a breaking-through.
Once you do go vegan and feel okay about it, things do move on quickly. Once the food change-over is established and it feels comfortable then maybe comes the time to move on a little further, to a veganism not only food-oriented but to one which affects much more of our daily behaviour, especially when we feel like getting involved in activism. Then the question arises as to how we conduct this ‘advocacy for animals’. Will our activism be inspired by complete non-violence or be driven by force and all the techniques of heavy persuasion?
For me there seemed such an obvious urgency. I wanted others to change my way, and that drove my activism, until I started to consider how effective I was being. I thought that if our food was non-violent so should our thoughts be and so should our attempts at persuading others. I thought - how can vegans be useful to our non-violent animal friends if we aren’t advocating and practising non-violence like them. I like to think that animals aren’t corrupted in the ways we humans are and therefore they live in a state of peace and harmlessness, a superior state of mind we could all aspire to.
It’s quite a challenge to routinely practise non-violence in this violent world. If we don’t attempt to be non-violent in our approach to others then our self-esteem will surely suffer. And we won’t do much good for the animals who we are supposed to be standing up for. Who will identify with an angry activist who is trying to advocate for peace? People are more likely to follow our example of using ‘peaceful food’ if we’re peaceful people.

Crazy

458:

Imagine the embarrassment in years to come, when we remember how we participated in animal enslavement. This is no casual, accidentally picked up habit, but a daily routine complicity to imprison, murder and then eat the poor creatures we’ve been abusing.
Today, when plant-based foods are known to be so nutritionally good for us, the ugly business of farming and killing animals seems crazy. In this respect, vegans live amongst weird-habited, primitive fellow humans. Omnivores are locked into a ‘me-first’ attitude in so many ways, the most dangerous of which is in their inability to see things from any other vantage point but their own, when it comes to having the food they want to eat as opposed to the food they need to eat.

Animal Rights by law

456:

Animals, especially when they’re around humans, certainly need their rights to be legislated. The story of domesticated animals is all about loss of dignity and loss of life. We should atone for what we’ve done to them, or at least leave them alone … but, as it happens we’ve damaged them so badly for so long that we can’t simply let them out of their prisons. We need to protect them. Domesticated animals wouldn’t be able to survive on their own. Importantly we owe them ‘safe passage’, to live out their lives in a sanctuary or refuge … to be retired in other words. At the very least they are entitled to an unmolested rest-of-their-life.
Since we know that neither animal muscle tissue or animal by products are essential for a healthy life, there are no arguments left to support non-vegan living. In fact these animal items are detrimental to our health, so all the more reason to let them go.
Existing animals should have their lives given back to them, but certainly we can’t allow the billions alive today to breed indiscriminately, since we need to have their numbers (whole populations of them in fact) drastically reduced, and as quickly as possible. If we keep large numbers of animals alive and then let them breed without fertility control we’d defeat the whole purpose of rescuing them. Their numbers wouldn’t reduce … and we know what would happen then … as the number of ‘useful animals’ remains high or even increases the more their dollar-earning potential will tempt the unscrupulous human back to using them again, at a later date. Most humans are not to be trusted around animals any more than paedophiles are to be trusted around kids.
Without fertility control the animal-liberation-solution is untenable. Even as it is, the cost of caring for our present-day’s animals could be an intolerable burden on the public purse. But retiring the animals still alive today is probably a relatively minor problem in the greater scheme of things, since people do love being around animals. Any government could find potential animal-refuge workers, ready and willing (and probably for low wages) to work at animal retirement centres. These sanctuaries could be set up on land no longer used for animal farming.
The details, however, concerning reproduction, must include the possibility of denying the animals reproduction rights. We would have to, in some way, control birth rates. But free them we must. We can’t use our energies better than in the work of dis-enslaving these presently incarcerated animals.

Loss

455:

We’ve got to get used to losing if it’s a matter of losing-something-to-get-something-else. Whichever way it feels for us, we have to take on the world of loss.
For instance, what does it mean to lose friends? Or lose friends’ acceptance? (Two characteristically difficult losses for people who are moving towards becoming vegan). Perhaps the up-side is the loss of addiction, even loss of weight (if one is overweight). Whatever we lose, in order to make changes, at whatever level or cost or discomfort, the consequent change might be worth it. Anything’s better than inaction or doing something that lowers self respect.
There are a lot of ‘good causes’ to get involved with. This particular cause of Animal Rights will need very many people if the major job of liberating animals is to succeed.
Vegans want to get domesticated enslaved animals out of gaol … and rehabilitate them. We want them to have a life free from their slave masters. We believe they have a right to a life and, as with the issue of human slavery, it must be written into law for future generations. Some people will lose out, by no longer being able to exploit animals to make a living. But their loss is really their gain, since they won’t any longer have to ignore their compassionate feelings in order to make money.

Thinking about ‘going vegan’

453:

As a vegan I try to pass on information. I know what I want to say but don’t necessarily understand how to say it nor take the heat off me for saying it. I’m always looking for keys to communication so that I won’t seem preachy or self-righteous. Yes, I want to be stirring questions and making others feel a little troubled, hopefully in order to get them to think on their own. I want to be a bit edgy … but too, to get the balance just right.
I have noticed when I speak ‘vegan’ to omnivores that it can fire their ‘contemplation zone’. They’ll be maybe reacting, maybe computing how it would be if they did change, contemplating how it would feel if they did. (Assuming I don’t put them off at the outset)
Contemplating going vegan ranges from revulsion through to interest and sometimes onto inspiration. For me, at first, it was somewhere in the middle, where I was able to quieten my racing-ahead dread of change for long enough to hear encouraging signals from my ‘heart’ - picking up advice to try out ‘that particular change’.
In the process of change, I knew I had to feel confident enough not to land myself in serious trouble. That ranged from the mild inconvenience of missing certain things right through to fear of losing my health, my ‘normality’ and my friends. I was certainly weighing ‘me-first’.
There was a person at the time who was suggesting I ‘go vegan’ and I noticed disturbing signs in me. I’d have listened with interest on any other subject but this one. She was touching the most raw, most sensitive buttons. The ‘me-first’ in me was defending my pleasure and comfort zones. I was thinking, “Don’t touch my food, anything but that”. But she wasn’t interfering for idle reasons. She was suggesting that the most ‘me’-centred activities, like eating delicious but harmful animal foods, needed to be changed. Her concern was for me, that my very potential as a human was currently being wasted like rotting fruit fallen from a tree. I began to realise that I was a victim of a self-perpetuating, harmful habit.
Simply by way of ingesting foods extracted forcibly from the bodies of sentient beings, I was self-harming. I’d already given up meat but now, giving up these ‘secretions’, was upsetting to think about ... until I came to see that changing ‘me-first’ doesn’t have to make ‘me-last’, more like ‘me-second’. I started to see the need to step back from the current paradigm related to the ‘dominator species’ attitude, until I could see the weaknesses - a whole string of needs, wants, addictions, insecurities, vulnerabilities and peer pressures.
‘Me-second’, I realised, was a sign of growing-up. Not selfless, in fact something very selfish because it was enlightening – that this one habit change, if I could make it stick would make me a herbivore. And from there I’d get the balance right, allowing me to be edgy, take a few risks with people and give me a chance of meeting people head-on, without giving them the chance to see through me.
Being herbivore starts with undoing, that is boycotting – eating no more animal stuff, in order to no longer encourage their incarceration. This was to become a sufficiently strong statement to suddenly give me something profound to work for. And for all vegans alike, to save our own souls and let what we say be taken seriously.
I’ve never expected people to pay attention to what I have to tell them. They are free-willed enough to take it or leave it, but at least it shifts the emphasis off the personal. They aren’t trying to find the hypocrite in me. And that allows me to shift the emphasis from ‘me’ to ‘the other’, to talk about the sort of world I dream of. To project a world that will be nice for our kids and nice for freed animals who are no longer imprisoned.

The fluidity of change

452:

Vegans have made one or two quite dramatic changes in their lives. For a start, they’ve replaced many of the items in their fridge. They’ve changed their lifestyle from one they’ve always known. (Now, of course, the exceptions are ‘lifers’, who’ve been vegan from birth).
Vegans may have made certain changes but there’s still a need not to be afraid of further change. Change breathes life into creative self-discovery. As vegans we need change to keep us on our toes. We have a determined, clever, vocal ‘opposition’ out there, and we need to show we’re not sitting on our laurels, complacent or afraid to change ourselves in accordance with our wish to be ‘fair’. We need to find out what the differences are between omnivore-mentality and vegan-mentality, that stands in the way of human development. Change is the key here, not always a dramatic change but a bubbling sense-of-change, which should be going on all the time, an opening up of the receptors to whatever is coming in.
Vegan animal advocates have the responsibility not only to promote plant-based products but to advocate change, if only because there’s such a deep rooted fear of it. Everything benefits from the heat of change. But it’s not an easy sell. Opinions, which have been formed and rehearsed over our lifetime, solidify and get stuck, and often it takes a dramatic illness or near death experiences to jolt us into change … and then it’s done reluctantly.
It can also take vegans a long time to realise their own need to keep moving on. We can be so focussed on food as to think there are no other dimensions to veganism … like the practice of non-violence in our general day to day behaviour. I’ve found I can be so busy putting the world to rights that I forget that I’m not separate from it just because I eat a certain type of food and have certain attitudes about animals.

Change - I can hardly wait!!

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If there’s something I want to see change, something big I’d like to see changing in my self and, by extension, in our society, I’d like to know what I’m getting into.
Change can mean having to go the long way round, being patient, thinking along the lines of “better to prevent than cure”. Ideally change would be motivated by a sense of great-improvements-to-come. It would be something I’d enjoy doing at the time, and enjoy it because I’d marked it with a stamp of my own personality (the style-merchant doing something important but with some style). If I’m going to be making changes I want to feel optimistic, creative and enthusiastic about it. Then, as far as I can see, nothing much can possibly go wrong. I’m wondering though if everyone would see the prospect of change that way.
I know I’ve often made changes in the past out of fearing-for-the-worst, having a compulsion to change, gritting my teeth, being full of determination. The potential enjoyment of change has been spoiled by procrastination, especially when a deep-set habit is involved. Changing certain types of habits is daunting. They feel unchangeable. Even the intention-to-change depends on my being in the right mood. But it isn’t always like that! In another sort of mood I might only consider changing habits to save my own skin. (Like giving up red meat after suffering a heart attack).
Whatever my mood or motivation I should be asking myself if I think change is attractive or a turn-off? It depends on what it is that I’m changing, but say it’s one of the classic habits, the addictive habit or a rigid attitude. Changing these habits is hard despite the promise of good returns in the future.
All this crosses my mind when, after becoming vegan, I wanted to sell it to others. In the vegan drive towards ‘humanising humans’ I was wanting to persuade others about the importance of change, but then I realised how important it was for me to be absolutely clear about what I was saying. Anyone can understand the message I am trying to put out but it’s the ‘how’ of saying it that tips the balance - if I can do it firmly but gently it might just catch on. If it does impact, it won’t be because of any finger-wagging or make-‘em-afraid approach. So how do I get it across?
All I know is that the prospect of becoming a more humane human should make the necessary changes to habit seem attractive. Ideally, the very idea of enjoying a ‘vegan-principled life’ should make such a great contrasts to the rut most people are in that they’d welcome the chance to change. Oh, if it were only that straight forward!

Enjoying creative change

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I want to say something about change. Is it worth all the effort? That’s what I asked myself some years ago
This is what happened. How I began to argue the case to myself. If I saw something wrong with animal farming I would have to pull out all stops to do something about it, and first up I’d have to stop supporting it. When I found out what was happening to animals on farms I suddenly I saw the need to change a whole heap of food habits. Already a vegetarian, now I saw there’d be no more eggs, no more milk or cheese or anything with milk in it, otherwise I’d be supporting something I didn’t agree with. That would mean an enormous change.
I liked all those foods. I’d been raised on cream cakes, chocolate and yoghurt and a million other yummy products. Most meals were made tasty with cheesy or creamy additions. For an adult deciding to no longer eat all these familiar foods, that would be quite a change. It would have been better if all this had been fixed up when I was much younger. I hadn’t realised how addicted to all these foods I’d become. Mars Bars – how could I live without them? I did change. It was a long time ago.
Recently I suggested to a friend who was putting on weight that he might consider changing some of his eating habits. “It’s a bit late now” … and I heard this from a 25 year old! Already he weighed too heavily, but already in his own mind his habits were too fixed.
The great advantage I had had was that my change was sparked by ethics – I had an ethical reason for change, not a cosmetic one. I was concerned for the animals. My friend was more concerned by the bathroom scales.
He reckoned that the effort needed to change was greater than the results he expected to get for all his efforts. In his case it meant giving up favourite foods, it meant problems socially when eating out. There was a long term health issue too. If he failed to change it would show up his lack of resolve. And even then it is quite likely that he underestimated the scale of change needed to lose weight. For me too, change was daunting. But I had inspiration on my side. I was standing up for a principle, to uphold an ethic, to take on a great challenge. For him it was just about weight and maybe his overall health, for me it was all positive, passionate and to do with how I wanted to be.
But the process of change, for whatever reason, tests our resolve. At whatever age we try to change, it can improve things, but often it’s too little and we expect too much too soon. There’s a whole unreality about how change works. With food habits being changed, from omnivore to vegan, if we do leave it to adulthood it feels like one great uphill struggle. There’s a lot of undoing to ‘do’, a lot of replacing foods. There’s the impact on routines of lifestyle including our social life, where we are used to eating with others, what others eat.
To counteract the difficulty we might do a ‘go-mad’ change, that is a change that’s so radical that we don’t stand a chance of keeping it up. Because we regard self development as a competitive sport, success becomes important - it kills the actual enjoyment of change. We never feel the full sense of achievement, especially if we do succeed by sheer willpower.
There’s so much competing going on in every field, not just over diet - we race against each other to be more special, more wealthy, more well known, more revered, and so on. We’d like to think that the process of change could be enjoyable but instead we believe it is just a matter of teeth-grindingly hard self discipline. If that can be turned around we stand a chance to change and not be traumatised by the difficulty of it.
Change keeps us creative and on our toes. It gives life edge. The best change always recognises mistakes and misjudgements, and lets us be less judgemental and more forgiving of ourselves and others. If ‘creative change’ is our best teacher it teaches us patience, enough to appreciate even our smallest movements forward. It lets us never take ourselves too seriously or grieve over mistakes or backslidings. Change and creativity energise us whether we succeed or fail. If we are capable of embarking on a course of change, especially one that is based on ethical principle, and if we can get into the habit of making-change, we’ll get more used to the reality of experiencing Life’s biggest events. We’ll feel the satisfaction of true self development.

Radical change

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How can radical change work for us? The thought of making big changes in our life, especially when they may not be understood by others, frightens us. Ethics frighten us. Our habits and addictions frighten us.
I grew up taking no notice of the animal body parts I was eating, yet I knew the sausages and ham and chops were once part of a living, breathing animal. Even as a child I knew they’d been killed for food for me ... but I decided to ignore it. Everyone knew it and everyone ignored it. We all ignored it together.
Ethical principles, when they become important, make short work of our old behaviours that we grew up with. Over the years I, like everyone else, acquired habits that made life easier and more pleasurable. The shops sold meat, cheese, chocolate, socks, shoes, jerseys, ice cream, hamburgers ... the list goes on and on. As far as I was concerned the ‘cost-to-me’ was all that mattered - was it too expensive, was it unhealthy? It never occurred to me that there was any other expense - that it all came at huge expense to the animals who were losing their lives, so that their bodies could be made available to humans, by way of humans persecuting them and executing them.
Even as a child I knew that it was all unethical but I did it, I ate them. I hid behind the fact that I didn’t know much detail. But when I did know the detail I still did it. I valued lifestyle above everything. I knew the theory - that there were no human-survival reasons why everything on that long list could not be dropped. But I wanted more than survival, I wanted a varied lifestyle. And that, by definition (I knew) was unethical. Giving up all of that would not be easy. I could either live unethically or with difficulty.
Now that difficulty was specifically a radical alteration of a daily habit, especially a habit concerning three-times-a-day food plus the doing-without very many items of daily use. That would need determination because there are just so many useful and wonderful things I’d be avoiding. Projecting how it might be - it’s almost as if my whole idea of pleasure must be sacrificed, as if only a dull life could be ethical. And yet these animals (I would say to myself) - can I let the atrocity continue?
But I still wobbled. “By going vegan I will probably fail, and can I afford to take that risk? For a start, I don’t think I’ve got the self-discipline to voluntarily kick a favourite habit. Truth to tell, I probably don’t want to kick it, I prefer to continue being as I am, especially since no one is pushing me on the matter”.
The human will project, hedge bets, try to play it safe. One day when things start to go wrong with the body we think about change. We remember way back, when we said to our self, “When the time comes I’ll change. I will change … but in my time”.

As our body fails and we see, for instance, that our eating habits are making us ill, even then we’re still reluctant to change. It’s the pleasure-association we can’t let go of. The body fails nonetheless and we wonder what we’re facing for the rest of our life? Not only can we not ignore symptoms (of the ageing body) but we can’t face the upheaval of ‘change’ and we have a nagging toothache-of-a-conscience which keeps telling us that we should have changed long before things got so out of hand.

We’re mad for plenty

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We probably all dream of having plenty, indeed that there should be plenty for all. We dream that eventually humans will fix things up for the planet and all our violence and oafishness will dissolve like Scotch mist.
Ironically, this is more or less the justification for today’s bad behaviour, in the convenient tradition of ‘being cruel to be kind’. By becoming truly dominant over lesser life forms (including lesser ‘human’ life forms) we see ourselves as the ‘benevolent despots of Planet Earth’. Call it evil, call it crazy, it matters not a jot since dominators always self justify according to their end-aim (it being to ‘save the world’ or to ‘save our souls’).
It all goes wrong since too much happens along the way that we don’t bargain for. We’re seduced into cutting corners and outsmarting the opposition. We practise violence because it brings us a certain type of advantage with which we can win things and get what we want. It’s too easy to forget when we cross the line in our rush to establish our position of humans-staying-in-charge. We have to do it - violation, violence, stealing and exploiting. It all seems straight forward and legitimate since the world seems ripe for the picking. There seem to be no adverse outcomes … so, we put on hold our lofty aim of saving souls or saving the world and instead enjoy being on a roll. It’s only later that the awful consequences of what we’ve done become apparent, and by then it’s almost too late!
You look at almost anyone, at dinner, tucking in to the muscle tissue of a dear sweet executed animal. There’s not a thought given to that animal, anymore than any mass murderer thinks about his victims. And yet we have the capacity to think about the whole sordid process of bringing animals to their death so that lump of tissue can rest on the dinner plate. The human is superior to other animals, we are the dominant ones and we believe there’s no need to consider our victims.
The people responsible for great empires have always thought they were God’s chosen people. The belief that we are superior gives us our right to rule. Each empire fails and it’s central weaknesses show up in the endgame, when they collapse. Humans who’ve ‘made it’ don’t learn from the past mistakes. We think we can only learn by re-experiencing the whole cycle of ‘succeeding then failing’, so we go through the same lessons, lifetime after lifetime, until eventually we learn. But only eventually.