Dealing with certain preliminaries first

632: 

Vegans who promote Animal Rights need to understand the size of our task. And the manner of it. Many people have already changed, quite radically, over these past 50 years. But alongside, technology has advanced dramatically, so that we now find ourselves living with a younger generation, amongst the Children of the Information Age. If they are discriminating it’s because they have access to more information with which they may ‘discriminate’. Ironically, there’s now too much information and we don’t know what to take notice of; today it isn’t enough for us to simply pass on information to others and expect to wow them with it, today there’s more cynicism and suspicion. So, it comes to this - no one can take in all the new information available, so they choose just the bits they want. We are information-saturated. As communicators of ideas nothing is very straightforward, especially if ‘the idea’ isn’t immediately appealing or if it’s an inconvenient idea like veganism.

            Today, bombarded, softened up by the sheer volume of information being put out, ordinary people are thought to become pliable (or so the vested business interests hope anyway). The Animal Industries, who do so much advertising, aim to install beliefs into the minds of their potential customers, and in doing so shut down individual thinking. They succeed only when people begin to follow the crowd and do as they’re told. Once people have settled into lifestyle food-habits they’re captive. These habits are not much different to any chemical addiction, since most of the addiction to animal products concerns the powerful taste-sensation of them.

            The vegan’s attempt to convince people that they’ve been duped isn’t easy, for why would people believe us? Why would they trust what we say? There’s so much misinformation in circulation today that anything too new, too radical or too inconvenient goes into the too-hard basket of ‘unbelievability’.

In our attempt, we need something special to break through all of that, something all-encompassing. It’s likely that most people will see the vegan diet one-dimensionally; that it is simply good for slimming. Or they’ll see it as good for other self-benefits. But veganism is more than a diet for personal food-advantage. On a deeper level it suggests a wholly different way of thinking.

Everything about being vegan, and everything stemming from it, gets the brain cells moving faster. It lets us see stunning potentials and transformations, and it addresses a lot of allied issues too. Now if, for whatever reason, you’re drawn to it, if you’re receptive to the reasoning behind it, then it’s likely you’re also hearing what vegans are saying about animals and their ‘right to a life’. Whilst not necessarily agreeing with us at first, the thinking-person might be ready to consider giving our arguments a fair hearing. And that will lead to a better understanding of non-violence and all the benefits of that accruing to our own species, let alone other species.

But there will always be those who are most decidedly NOT drawn to this. For them, everything about veganism is either unclear, unbelievable or unattractive. As animal advocates we have wear that. For us it’s probably the hardest part of all, juggling the responsibility of explaining it with the trickiness of dealing with such heavy initial reluctance.

How do we expose the misinformation? How do we get people to believe we’re telling the truth? How do we deal with our own unapproachability? Somehow we have to find our own way to weave a path through this undergrowth, so that we can encourage greater empathy, to get people to think first about the plight of exploited animals before they consider their own convenience.

Respecting our own intelligence

631: 

This is the age of relationships, between me and you, between ourselves and ideas. Relationship gives rise to a feeling of loyalty, to what we’ve been given, where we’re grateful and willing to acknowledge the best of things. If we make a friend we want to be a loyal friend. If we’ve been given intelligence we want to show loyalty to this intelligence by doing intelligent things.

By taking on a plant food regime we’re acknowledging the intelligence of it, whereas eating animal foods is exploitative and we probably feel foolish for letting those who produce it (and who don’t have our best interests at heart) to convince us it’s safe  to buy and then to winkle money out of our pockets.

Eventually by thinking for ourselves, we take notice of information concerning the everyday commodities we buy. Intelligence lets us see what is rubbish and what is not. One day we’ll look back with amazement on the days when we felt so attached to empty foodstuffs.

When we realise the poisonous effect of so much poor food going into our bodies we’ll realise what danger we’ve been in, as well as the conscience-crushing crime of it all; to do this to ourselves every day is against the integrity of our bodies and the integrity of food itself. As we realise the attractive qualities of organic fruit and veggies and plant-based foods in general, we’ll come to see them as the only food  worth eating. We’ll move away from ‘kiddy’-food and cruelly-produced food and move towards a more adult taste in food; plants will be seen as the obvious energy-food and come to be the food which is more enjoyable to eat.

The story so far: the animal thing (using them) is a habit entrenched over a long time. Now that habit needs to change. If this isn’t obvious, then vegans need to find a way of telling this story without sounding patronising or boring. We have to find a way of telling our story attractively, and if we throw a lifeline to people, we mustn’t hit them in the face with it.

The diminishing value system

914:

We might think that by morally disapproving of animal-product users, we’ll be able to stop them in their tracks, and get them to discover the facts for themselves. We reckon we can shame them, set them off in the right direction, and after that it will be a piece of cake.

If only it were that easy! People might be much better informed today but values have become so warped that wrong can seem right, especially when enough people say so. Eating meat and therefore abusing animals, for example, might be contrary to our core values but we have a way of making it okay to eat these same abused animals anyway. And if there is ever any threat that something, like a favourite food, might be taken away, that is when people are seen at their most implacable.

The human dilemma is whether certain values should be judged important. Who is to say that one value outweighs another? If most people, if almost all people, contradict a value, then it becomes a diminished value, as if the principle behind it can be turned upside-down according to popularity. It’s as if there’s a choice in how we see right and wrong. It’s as if we can choose to endanger ourselves (and others) by letting vested interest sway us.

So, here we are, going along with life, thinking we have a handle on truth, until that truth begins to feel inconvenient, and then it’s as if we have no choice in the matter; we have to simply follow a new truth, to see where it takes us.

Is this what has happened, where people have been persuaded en masse, to accept the unacceptable?

A tough job for vegans

913: 

Veganism isn’t just about food, it’s an idea, only part of which concerns food. Getting people to adopt a vegan diet isn’t an end in itself, it simply allows us to look at vegan principle without being knocked back by our own food practices.

This principle, logically, gives rise to the diet. It gives rise to a boycott which is based on a shift in the way humans interact with the animal kingdom. If we only give people advice about vegan diet, it isn’t necessarily going to change them as people. Diet advice on its own won’t give people something that is inspiring or completely rational enough to convince them to get rid of certain ingrained habits.

Almost all of us have been omnivorous at one time in our life. We’ve been brought up with specific ideas about food, regarding the safety of it and the ethical acceptability of it. We’ve been brought up to think it wrong (disgusting in fact) to eat cats and dogs. Most of us wouldn’t eat horse. And we probably wouldn’t eat whale meat. Many people today would refuse to eat pate de foie gras. But all the rest of it (that is available animal food) is still fashionable to eat. We are habituated to eat flesh and by-products from a whole range of animals, and many of these foods are eaten so often throughout our lives that we become addicted to them, and then it’s the constant supply of them that becomes more important than anything else.

For those of us who are keen to see the end of animal farming (and therefore the drying up of supplies of all animal foods), we must never underestimate how much of what we say pushes sensitive buttons. We need to understand the logic of an omnivore mind and why they believe in these, their favourite foods. We have to understand what it is about these foods, the taste and texture of them, the feel of them as they slip past taste buds and move through the throat and into the stomach - this is how food is supposed to feel. It’s a daily fix. It’s the thing which fuels our life. It makes a person feel physically satisfied. The food they like best is essential, and their very life depends on the supply of it.

Vegans are up against all of this. It is the greatest and most entrenched reality of life. Until we fully appreciate the extent of the omnivore’s reluctance (to tamper with their meat-based diet) we might never be able to swing enough of them over, to change Society’s violence-based attitudes.

Un-shaming the omnivores

913: 

In practice we can’t force people to think differently. And we know that without some substantial attitude changes becoming the fashion-of-the-day we’ll get nowhere with omnivore mentalities … however we do have  some pretty water-tight arguments.

            No one can say it’s foolish or wicked to be vegan. Our insistence that plant food is good for you and that animals have a right to a life is impressive. If they can’t put up a counter argument it’s probably scary for them, therefore no omnivore wants to talk about it, because the whole subject makes them feel uncomfortable.

            As vegans we can capitalise on knowing that vegan principle is a bigger, more powerful weapon than anything ‘they’ can come up with. Every human on the planet (but for a handful of vegans) would be uptight about losing the argument; they’d simply want to avoid it and hope it goes away. It all really boils down to shame. And if that’s so, then what is the price of shame? Surely anything one could do to ‘un-shame’ oneself would have to be seriously considered.

            Being free of shame is worth everything, and, indeed, that’s a freedom vegans have to quite a large extent. From our point of view it’s surely understandable that we’d want others to feel that way too.

An omnivore’s definition of a friend

912: 

If an omnivore said that ‘animal-food’ was okay (despite knowing what happens to animals and what eating it to excess is likely to do to our health) they’d look foolish or heartless, or both. Most people like being known for their casual, anything-goes, easy-to-be-with personalities. None want to be made to look stupid. And most want to keep up with progressive thinking, and be abreast of the latest information; it’s how we form opinion, based on that.

Fashions are changing. For all the popularity of animal based fast food, people are realising that it is not good food at all. Meat is suspect, dairy products are suspect, the writing’s on the wall with the trend away from animal protein. And perhaps there’s an understandable fear for many people, that if they don’t steer clear of all of it, they’ll be left behind.

With that in mind, the food industry’s chemists are being pushed to make animal-based food taste good and look good. They are backed by clever advertising and special deals on price. But, the harder they try the more suspicious is the customer. Since there’s not much more to be fiddled with, to make their foods more attractive, the Animal Industry is starting to get nervous; the novelty of artificially-flavoured, processed foods is wearing thin. The more sophisticated customer is demanding foods which are less highly salted or sweetened or enhanced by the use of mono sodium glutamate. Our over-stimulated taste buds will not tolerate food that tastes like cardboard. So foods are no longer what they seem.

As faith in popular food wobbles it might occur to the more intelligent person to move towards foods which come from better quality raw materials (organic, home grown). And if these foods are more highly priced and out of our reach, then we will go for plant-based foods in general. Simultaneously, the move to eating more plant-based products coincides with more alert taste buds, which adapt to a new type of food sensation. As this occurs, so the allure of meat and dairy fades. Healthier foods become more attractive than rich foods in much the same way as children’s toys lose attraction to grown ups.

Maybe you have already considered this sort of diet change. But it’s the initial stage of the change-over that’s hard, leaving behind a familiar food source and taking up with another. And the difficulty is compounded by the social implications of no longer eating what most others are eating.

In order to successfully abandon animal-based foods, we need a leap of faith. We need to build up a new type of relationship with our food. Instead of the more immediate yet ephemeral satisfactions and explosions of taste, instead of short term stomach-filling satisfaction, we might prefer something else; the satisfaction that whole plant-foods bring.

There are all sorts of psychological and physical challenges to face here. Not for the faint hearted. For many people, these challenges are too difficult to face, and those difficulties can act like brakes on an otherwise willingness to change.

Perhaps the final straw that breaks our back comes when we realise how animal food betrays us, when we see how it fails to keep us strong and healthy. It’s only then that we have good reason to move away from the unquestioned habits of the past.

Nursery teas

911: 

What confronts the vegan activist most powerfully today is a mighty army, formed up against our puny push. It’s no wonder they can ignore us, since we appear to have no weaponry worth worrying about. We just seem to be a few nervous advocates on soap boxes, calling out to passers-by. And when no one stops to speak to us it puts us in a bad mood.

What weapons do we have, to fight ‘the good fight’? Perhaps we have only one - that veganism is unarguable. Put to the test, it’s what omnivores dread most of all. It’s surely why they avoid all talk, about this subject of animals. If you’re talking ‘vegan’, and if you find yourself short of confidence, remember how low in confidence the omnivore is, despite there being so many of them.

Our vegan philosophy hangs like the Sword of Damocles over their heads, and probably annoys the hell out of them, because they can’t talk about this subject without sounding foolish. It’s a good reason for keeping well away from it.

But it must be galling, for them to have think like the mob. It might be quite embarrassing, wanting to be seen as normal but on this matter incapable of independent thought. What holds most people back is their love of their food, their treats and their nursery teas.