Transitional stages

1544: 

Being part of the Animal Rights Movement is an advantage, not just for the vegan lifestyle it suggests but for developing a certain lightness-of-being.  If ever we can achieve that, we’ll find we make people feel less afraid of us.  On some level, people will always be able to recognise a non-violent person, and see in them someone they can trust, or at least not fear, or who’d be unable to even inadvertently do anything hurtful to others.

It’s hard to talk about this without seeming cute, but there are some distinct advantages in being non-threatening.  For a start, it lets us speak more freely, particularly about the subjects we want to talk about, without all the shutters going up at the outset.

Being Animal Rights-oriented, we might fail to appreciate how delicate the balance is between their refusing to know and their wanting to learn.  If we can see just how difficult this subject is for people to talk about, we might be less impatient, especially when people are obstinate or they don’t seem to understand what we’re on about.

In the end, we do have to care where others find themselves over all this, because we're all of us aware of the global problems to which we all contribute, just by the lifestyle we’ve chosen.  The one indisputable truth behind veganism and animal rights, apart from our access to robust health, is that it fosters working with Nature rather than against it.

The human race has been struggling to dominate Nature for a long time, and that’s probably the main cause of the global problems plaguing us today.  If we can find a way to use present systems harmlessly, we'll be in a far better position to consider others before embarking on harmful action; we'll make a break-through for ourselves and go on to want, more than anything else, to communicate to others what we’ve found.

Passion, enthusiasm and what sounds like altruism requires morale, good mood and a genial disposition.  And, in turn, that means we’ve got to be able to overcome the odds against us, including the lack of support from friends, family and even fellow vegans.  If we ever get disappointed by people, there might be value in that disappointment.  As others draw away, we become less reliant on encouragement from those we’re closest to.  Morale has to be largely self-generated.  And if we’re going to be promoting Animal Rights, morale is going to be important.  The biggest challenge, after all, is to take whatever comes our way and feel the link to other vegans who’re facing the same sort of challenge.

         

Vegans are still very few in number and pro-active vegans even fewer.  As rather lonely advocates for animals, vegans may feel unsupported, vulnerable and at times depressed by the lack of interest.  But if we get affected too badly by that, we won’t be able to maintain momentum - and that means we aren’t much help to the imprisoned animals.  And it means we’ll have less chance to inspire others, or encourage or inform them.

Animal Rights is not like a contemplative religious order.  It isn’t based on prayer or wishful thinking but on the trialling of ideas.  It starts out as a break-through of old attitudes - helping animals, converting people to vegan food, etc.  But also it’s about making our hard work enjoyable.  If we can do that, we won’t be pulled down by how others think, and then our own motivation won’t then be an issue.

Vegans are up against a huge barrier of resistance.  It’s not easy to be part of such a tiny minority.  What we don’t need is being dragged-down.  What we DO need is solo flight, where exploration takes on a momentum of its own.  Then discovery is its own reward, after which the transitional stage can be completed.

Passionate talk

1543: 

If vegan activists are in the business of talking about animals, it might be a great personal challenge, eventually becoming a main reason-to-be.  It involves our diet, our conscience, our very intelligence, but not least it allows us to talk about matters of great importance and relevance to the future.

The whole Animal Rights thing has to be one of the greatest challenges we face, whether we’re struggling to change our own eating habits or struggling to get the vegan message across.  Unless we can deal with these struggles and find them meaningful, we’ll never be able to get anywhere with people who are still largely oblivious to it.  That in itself will be a great source of frustration for us.

The subject is broad, its implications touch every branch of life, if only because the human condition is always darkened by that one terrible habit so many have - resorting to violence to solve our problems.  There’s hardly anything we do (that involves others) that is not in some way improved by considering violence.  Even in mild cases, we can find ourselves using some sort of force to bring about the outcome which will be to our own benefit. But the 'drug' wears off, and we find that the solutions (that we thought we had) evaporate, leaving us back where we started.

If we try to make Animal Rights/Veganism just an ethics or health issue we sell it cheap.  It IS that, but so much more.  It gives us peace-of-mind, opens up our compassionate instincts, and brings us to daily actions which harmonise with our very soul.  Now, if you find that a bit hard to swallow, then you might settle for something a little less grandiose.  Perhaps it’s just more interesting to be a vegan. The principle of non-violence offers solutions that are inaccessible to those who are still eating violence-based animal foods, or make use of abused animals in any other way.  And these solutions start out as discussions about the strengths of non-violence, as they pertain to ethics and the reform of the human condition.  But they go on to effect our attitudes towards nutrition and therefore health, towards the environment, and lots more.  By simply being vegan, many optimistic possibilities open up to us.  Our thoughts can fly free, our considerations broaden and our conversations become so much more meaningful than discussing house prices.  Once we can consider a life without the enslaving and killing of animals for food and clothing, a whole range of possibilities tumble out of the clouds like rain.  One's only regret might be that none of these possibilities were understood earlier, whilst one was still an eater and user of our animal slaves.

Hurting animals

1542: 

When representing Animal Rights, it's good to steer clear of sounding ‘right’.  Despite having no doubts about that, we might avoid being too dogmatic about animal cruelty and animal food, if only because there’s something else important to establish - the need for empathy between each other.  It’s this idea of doing unto others what you would have done to yourself. With that in mind, we have a chance to ignite empathy for animals.  If we can apply that principle to each other then why not to animals too?

By taking the emphasis off ourselves (the 'follow me, and aren't I wonderful' line) we can introduce the importance of empathy. The most obvious and widespread practice of empathising is seen with our dog at home.   By comparing and contrasting the empathy shown to our dog with our lack of empathy for other animals, we can illustrate the obvious contradiction in values.  The last thing we’d want to do to our companions at home is hurt them, because we know them as individuals.  Just because we don't know the pig or the lamb as an individual animal, doesn't mean that we don't need to show empathy.  It’s the same with other people’s dogs - we don’t have to know them, because each dog has its own personality and we can feel that, and empathise with them, and we can be duly proud of ourselves for being able to do that.

Animal Rights emphasises these strong empathetic bonds that we have between ourselves and ‘creatures’, and it’s likely none of us could purposely de-individualise any animal in order to put it into a special category whereby we feel free to inflict pain on it.  For most of us it would be absurd to try.  Nor could we help to end its life when not for compassionate reasons.  But that’s exactly what animal farmers force themselves to do and we, as customers, condone.  This, after all, is how they make their living.  This is what we expect of them, as we do of many others connected to the ‘Animal Industries’, so that we can benefit from their actions.

When I was young, I was hiking in the country overnight.  In the evening I found a pigeon which had eaten poisoned bait.  I looked after it overnight but it was in such obvious pain the next day I took a knife to its throat.  I often think of that bird.  I always hoped that, at the moment when I had to end its life, that it understood the reason I did it.  But for an animal to face the knife without that sort of reason, that’s quite a thought!  And yet billions of animals face just that.  They experience no kindness and no sedative to ease the terror, nor any anaesthetic to ease the pain.  When they are about to be executed there’s the smell of death all around them.  There's the machinery of death along with the all too familiar ‘ubiquitous human’ who is forcing them towards it.  To think of just one animal suffering like this is haunting, let alone billions of them.

Humans, who love animals (as they do their own children) have a strong sense of empathy.  But even a felled tree is empathised with more than a farm animal.  Humans are good at pretending.  They pretend they can feel empathy because they love their dogs and cats (and children).  They’re able to empathise, and they feel rightly proud of that.  But then, having won a few points in their favour, they then go on to afford themselves ‘special circumstances’ applied to farm animals, for the sake of ‘essential food’.  So, by providing a market for animals, they connive in the terrible treatment of them, and their even more terrible deaths.

Explosive material

1541: 

What we say must, in part, be attractive.  And then the punter will be able to bear the weight of all the other important things we’re telling them.  Maybe this is the first time Animal Rights has ever entered their heads – the possibility of a totally plant-based food regime involving no meats or by-products and therefore no cruelty to animals.  Whatever business we have with other people, kids or adults, we are but ghosts in their thinking, until they're ready – it’s they who eventually decide to join the growing number of impassioned animal activists, BUT only when they are ready.

This subject is so emotionally charged, so deeply connected with daily habits, that any talk of ‘animals’ and ‘cruelty’ can make people feel immediately embarrassed, for being in the wrong.  Although they may feel proud of being sensitive, cool, intelligent and likeable, what vegans are saying can explode their self image, by alluding to double standards.  “Ouch”.

As vegans, we need to show that we understand about this particular vulnerability. We need to take it into consideration every time we try to provide information.  Vegans aren’t supposed to be shame-merchants. 

Winning the un-convinced

1540: 

It’s relatively easy to get a person to listen who is ready to admit that Animal Rights is a serious issue, but the vast majority are stubborn.  They’re nowhere near addressing their deep set prejudices about animals.  They want to believe that animals were ‘put here’ for humans to use.

         

If we, as vegans, are asked a question we may have our answer off pat, and be quite sure it’s accurate.  But for them it’s not enough.  They really want to know, by the way we answer questions, what we are like - they want to know about us as much as they want to know the answer to their question.  They need to know whether we're nut-cases or not.  So, for our part, to straight-answer a question is not enough, since we have to remember how our answer might sound to the questioner.

Before we answer questions, we have to ask ourselves how someone is going to feel when we tell them what they've asked about, but which they’ll probably not want to hear about?  In answering, it’s easy to twist the knife, to remonstrate, to garnish our answers with a little barb of guilt.  And that usually works in our favour for about two seconds, until they realise they’re being lectured at, at which time they react - it's not what they expect and it's not what they want.  They kick back, not just to protect the little luxuries of their lifestyle but the other things which affect their relationships, opinions and beliefs.

This is why whatever we want to say should be at least halved.  Surely the trick in talking Animal Rights is not only remembering NOT to twist the knife but to tread carefully over the red hot coals we’ve slipped under their feet.  If they feel offended then we must be able to sniff that out so quickly that we take that into consideration; saying less than we intend, even to the extent of ‘throwing away’ a line or two, just to keep things on an even keel.  I think the best way to hold people’s attention and keep them on-side is to deliver some of what we want to say, and then pull back in time to avoid them turning-off, first.  If that means putting our case more casually than we’d like, then it might in the end be more effective that way.

We can’t afford to forget how justified people want to feel, how much they want to disagree with our basic premise and how much they want to stop listening.  We’re trying to inhibit each of these reactions at the same time as passing across useful information.

Ambassadors for animals

1539: 

For me, being vegan and going public is a bit like how a legal advocate must feel, representing a client.  I like to think I’m following the instructions of the animals themselves, acting with their approval.  Only, I have to guess at that since they are 'voiceless'.

As animals themselves aren’t gratuitously violent, I imagine they wouldn’t encourage me to be hostile with my adversaries.  I like to think animals know the human better than humans know themselves, since they’ve seen the very worst of human behaviour and learnt how to survive it.  I like to think they’d advise me to work on my fellow humans in a slow and steady way.  To win them over with my demeanour rather than my smart arguments.  

Without our going to the extremes of Animalitarianism, which assumes that animals are endowed with superior moral qualities to human beings, I think we can learn a lot from animals.  They don’t draw attention to themselves so neither should I, especially when I’m dealing with hardened meat-eaters.  I would try to wait, as animals do.  I'd prefer to encourage dialogue by letting others have their say first, if only because I need to learn how they see things, and then earn their go-ahead to have my say.

Why be so indulgent?  I’d say, because they constitute 99% of our population, most of whom need to be brought on-side, as soon as possible.  Most of them still love their animal foods, and their leather shoes and many other animal-based goods and services.  Omnivores aren’t going to roll over easily, and are even less likely to if we try to corner them.

It’s easy to forget just how aggressive otherwise-peaceful people can be when it comes to this subject.  But it’s understandable.  None of us likes being placed ‘in the wrong’, which is precisely what we are doing, however careful we are with the words we choose.  I find myself doing just that whenever I’m trying not to, when talking to non-vegans about using animals.  I feel I have no other option, although to be absolutely truthful, ‘putting people right’ is partly me showing off, implying that, in this one way, I do consider myself ‘superior’. 

Even though I’m sure I have watertight arguments, it’s so easy to speak too fluently, too intelligently, too passionately, and therefore to put peoples’ backs up.  It’s likely they’ve never even heard of ‘abolition-ism’ before.  When I explain, it takes them about two seconds for the penny to drop and for them to feel uneasy. Inevitably, they react negatively, as a first line of defence.  I have to understand why this is, and get past the shock of this, and try to understand the insult they feel - we are, after all, turning what has been, up to now, an accepted part of their life.  We are turning a large part of their lifestyle into something wrong.  Their reaction shouldn’t surprise us, since for them there’s nowhere else to go.  They can’t get past the ugly facts, and there are very few good arguments with which they can defend their position.  So, they feel uncomfortable and cornered, and often they take umbrage and storm off.

If this happens, we might think we’ve won the day, but in truth we've done the greatest damage, and added to the likelihood of losing them altogether. 

Being well informed

1538: 

Animal Rights is a broad subject to learn about.  It touches on so many things including ethics, nutrition, environmental concerns and modern husbandry.  Animal advocates are expected to be knowledgeable about all of this if they want to speak intelligently on the subject, well, at least have a working knowledge anyway.  It isn’t enough to cite cruelty to animals as the one reason to be vegan, although that’s likely to be the primary reason.  There are in fact so many other reasons, and it’s good to be able to speak about each of them.

         

But, however many arguments we put up and however many details we might offer, we always have difficulties overcoming the initial shock of what we suggest - “What, no more animal products at all, food, clothes, shoes, zoos?”.

         

It’s a long list of 'don’ts'.  It makes boycotting all things with animal content sound too much to take on.  At first you think you'll never manage to do it, because it's obvious that becoming vegan is one huge decision and not to be taken lightly.

Understanding this mind barrier helps us not to become too self-righteous.  On the one hand, for most vegans who are 'there', it’s seems so simple - we don’t use anything with animal connections and we're by now used to that.  But to others, contemplating it, it’s daunting.  And because of that, it is also embarrassing to be confronted with something that seems too difficult, when normally brainpower or willpower will let us take on almost any reasonable challenge.  So this matter of ‘becoming vegan’ has to be thought of as UNreasonable.  It calls for some means, any means, of putting this challenge down as being anything but real.  The proposition to 'be vegan' has to be opposed at all costs, if only to defuse the embarrassment of being shown to be in the wrong or too frightened to try 'doing it'.

When we encounter this sort of opposition, it’s rather obvious that it’s an emotional response rather than a well thought-out intellectual position being taken up.  So we have to be confident about what we’re saying and not get too easily rattled.  We have to be able to deal with being put on the spot.

Whatever we feel inside, whether it be passion, anger, well-informed, frustrated or a failure, we need to take care not to show it, especially if we’re talking with red necked, vegan-haters.  Or even with people who are used to being able to win their philosophical arguments, and who don’t take kindly to anyone who can make them look less-than-clever.

Whatever we think about the person we’re with, if we can maintain a neutral exterior and listen without reacting, and keep our own talk calm, we’ll maybe win some grudging respect.  And that is all that’s needed for us then to be given the go-ahead, to speak more openly and more fully.  Once we’re allowed to voice our opinion and flesh out our arguments, we’ll have a better chance to reach people.

I think the trick is not to too obviously win the argument.  In many of these sorts of encounters, understatement is our best  friend.