For vegans we see a hugely ugly world of animal abuse everywhere we go, we smell the cremated remains of once-living animals from every kitchen window we pass. We run the gauntlet in the supermarket between racks of meat and shelves full of animal by-products. But beyond kitchens and shops there’s another, more optimistic reality. This reality shows potential for change. It lets us see things from another perspective as our best chance to save this frightened planet.
Mind over matter. We all create our reality. Especially we get what we want when we do things co-operatively. Together … ah! But how do we get agreement?
What we see is (approximately) what we get. If we see ugly we’ll get ugly. If we see ugly our mood is gloomy. If we’re negative about the ‘future of humanity’, the planet, etc., we’re doomed. The future awaits us.
Science fiction has a lot to say about the future. We’re entertained by it but that’s all. It doesn’t actually help us ‘get to’ the future. Nor does it say anything about the ‘humanity of humans’-to-come. The emphasis is nearly always on the cruel future, with its cruel people. That’s the stuff of sci-fi. The fear of these worlds-to-come presses down on us. We’re sucked into negative stuff and even though it hurts we can’t get enough of it, for it relates back to present day habit trends We revel in our own inevitable degradation.
Science-fiction never shows how it all may change positively if we could drop the habits of short term pleasure and ‘stuff the future’. Older people, especially, find habit change near-to absurd. “Not productive enough to alter the world”!! Their own dwindling years are for them to ‘enjoy things’. “Change” is not fun! To them changing habits seems close to madness – changing the habits of a lifetime for the ‘sake of humanity’ does NOT appeal to the rational thinker. For them there’s no time for all this. “Nor do we have the patience” (to address any of this, right now!)
So the cycle continues. Earth, they say, is the university planet, where we learn the rules of the game, or more precisely, re-learn what we’ve forgotten. And if that takes many lifetimes to achieve, then so be it.
Eventually the penny has to drop, where we learn about tolerance and how to “live” together, where we do the least possible damage to each other (which of course includes all life-forms). In other words we learn to recognise the ‘significance of humanity’.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Intellect
Amongst the ‘still-asleep’ (the majority, the omnivore group) there’s something good. There’s wonderful acceptance and beauty and kindness, but nevertheless they are made dull by complicity with animal cruelty. The omnivore always wears the badge of the ‘animal club’. They may seem relaxed about things but those with the loudest inner voice are pushing it down against reflux, pushing down against the devil in us. That voice. That ‘unacceptable attitude-within’. That struggle. It wears people down. It puts life on hold. It has significance in the development of our personality.
Humans solve problems and invent gadgets and, for pragmatic reasons, set the mind to take control. We worship intellect and use it to control things; we attempt soul-control, mind-control, body control … until it all breaks down and we take on a bias. We settle for partiality, where logic rules (‘okay?’) but with exceptions. Like we know we’re capable of love by showing love to dogs but then we have to realise we’re also capable of not-loving pigs. Kind to dogs: murderous towards pigs.
Here’s where the word ‘love’ rings a bit hollow. And it’s where humans, with their fast cognition, are held back by their own thought processes, habits and fears. Essentially we are all held in contract to habit. Self-made and strengthened habits are something of which Western lifestyle is redolent.
Habits call for walls to be built; so omnivores are mainly held back by food walls. Habits are what we don’t want to be reminded of … since we’re afraid of the ‘unspecified dangers’ associated with them. To maximise peace of mind we draw up a contract, something like this:
If we can keep our habits we’ll accept a certain unquestioning attitude to Present Day Reality – a little nonsense mixed into our truth-pie. When we enter a ‘no-thought-zone’ we go for what looks real. Reality trumps intellect. For habit-driven people, in that zone, life is doing what we want without “thought”, ‘thought’ being associate with pain, and self-brought-on pain at that. If we’re in the grip of the ‘no-think-world’ we won’t see the potential of humanity.
Like our friend Mother Nature, this very potential invites us to the dance tonight. R.s.v.p.! This is the dance of balancing “thought” with “no-thought”, in which we aren’t afraid to be ourselves. Not afraid to unafraided-ly THINK about certain things and use intellect for the purpose to which it was intended.
Humans solve problems and invent gadgets and, for pragmatic reasons, set the mind to take control. We worship intellect and use it to control things; we attempt soul-control, mind-control, body control … until it all breaks down and we take on a bias. We settle for partiality, where logic rules (‘okay?’) but with exceptions. Like we know we’re capable of love by showing love to dogs but then we have to realise we’re also capable of not-loving pigs. Kind to dogs: murderous towards pigs.
Here’s where the word ‘love’ rings a bit hollow. And it’s where humans, with their fast cognition, are held back by their own thought processes, habits and fears. Essentially we are all held in contract to habit. Self-made and strengthened habits are something of which Western lifestyle is redolent.
Habits call for walls to be built; so omnivores are mainly held back by food walls. Habits are what we don’t want to be reminded of … since we’re afraid of the ‘unspecified dangers’ associated with them. To maximise peace of mind we draw up a contract, something like this:
If we can keep our habits we’ll accept a certain unquestioning attitude to Present Day Reality – a little nonsense mixed into our truth-pie. When we enter a ‘no-thought-zone’ we go for what looks real. Reality trumps intellect. For habit-driven people, in that zone, life is doing what we want without “thought”, ‘thought’ being associate with pain, and self-brought-on pain at that. If we’re in the grip of the ‘no-think-world’ we won’t see the potential of humanity.
Like our friend Mother Nature, this very potential invites us to the dance tonight. R.s.v.p.! This is the dance of balancing “thought” with “no-thought”, in which we aren’t afraid to be ourselves. Not afraid to unafraided-ly THINK about certain things and use intellect for the purpose to which it was intended.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Avoiding vegans
These days the lifting of awareness is fast, for those who choose to lift it. Fear holds others back, and that’s mostly down to misinformation.
Vegans need to dig out the worst lies and the best truths and mark them down. We need to lay them out, but without weighing down the table with too much information. First we need to work out which truths to emphasise. Today we’re greedy for knowledge, reacting perhaps to recent days of information-shortage, and now we have to sort the important from the less important, whilst at the same time juggling every argument that makes some so and other matters less-so.
At the moment many people (in almost all countries) are accessing new information and finding things out for themselves. Isn’t that wonderful? But “many” people? Are there many? Even today, there are too few who’re digging deep. The vast majority hasn’t grasped the situation (especially about the causes of animal farming, health and environmental melt-down). If it is grasped one might prefer to ‘sleep it out’.
The majority are still snoring upstairs, asleep and unaware, sleeping to take away the pain of knowing. By having to confront the latest information when awake we associate ‘being awake’ with an unpleasant need to turn a blind eye all the time. Sleep is a refuge from the daytime pain of having to be partial. Being partial is accepting some things but not others. Our society tells us what is important and what other important things are to be deemed NOT ‘important’.
Oh dear! How it’s all changed today. Now, in this information revolution we’re experiencing, we’re putting two and two together. So much has been withheld. So much taught wrongly. So much misinformation has been confirmed by people we’ve believed in, who were our staff of life, who are the authorities; now we’ve swung right across and perhaps too much is presently being undermined – again perhaps a reaction to another shortage from recent years, freedom to speak out.
Today we are able to attach importance to matters that were recently considered unimportant. Yes, of course, the animal thing springs to mind. But other matters too, concerning the environment, malnutrition and illiteracy, have recently blasted their way into our consciousness. Many people are still too stunned to act. They’re mainly stunned by the brazen way authorities have so callously misinformed us. And they’ve pulled this off by getting to know us, that we’ll believe any old nonsense when everyone else believes it. Everyone eats animals … so it must be true! Emperor’s clothes syndrome!
The new information (I say ‘new’ in the sense of unsullied), which we pick up from the Internet, might be disturbing. It may make people want to go back to sleep … because they see no future. (Even intelligent people I know, kind, good people, subscribe to this ridiculous ‘give-up-on-humanity’ mentality. They say they prefer to ‘sleep it out’ … the human race being “fucked”. Finding out new stuff only adds to the general frustration of living.
Omnivores, if they knew anything about ‘vegans’ might consider us to be part of The False Hope Brigade. They reckon meeting vegans depresses you. I’m painting omnivores here as ‘not very happy campers’. Omnivores want to keep smiling. They prefer NOT to create more depression for themselves - so they avoid meeting vegans. In some ways I can’t blame them. Vegans can be such a bunch of whingers sometimes. But don’t tell anyone I said so, okay?
Vegans need to dig out the worst lies and the best truths and mark them down. We need to lay them out, but without weighing down the table with too much information. First we need to work out which truths to emphasise. Today we’re greedy for knowledge, reacting perhaps to recent days of information-shortage, and now we have to sort the important from the less important, whilst at the same time juggling every argument that makes some so and other matters less-so.
At the moment many people (in almost all countries) are accessing new information and finding things out for themselves. Isn’t that wonderful? But “many” people? Are there many? Even today, there are too few who’re digging deep. The vast majority hasn’t grasped the situation (especially about the causes of animal farming, health and environmental melt-down). If it is grasped one might prefer to ‘sleep it out’.
The majority are still snoring upstairs, asleep and unaware, sleeping to take away the pain of knowing. By having to confront the latest information when awake we associate ‘being awake’ with an unpleasant need to turn a blind eye all the time. Sleep is a refuge from the daytime pain of having to be partial. Being partial is accepting some things but not others. Our society tells us what is important and what other important things are to be deemed NOT ‘important’.
Oh dear! How it’s all changed today. Now, in this information revolution we’re experiencing, we’re putting two and two together. So much has been withheld. So much taught wrongly. So much misinformation has been confirmed by people we’ve believed in, who were our staff of life, who are the authorities; now we’ve swung right across and perhaps too much is presently being undermined – again perhaps a reaction to another shortage from recent years, freedom to speak out.
Today we are able to attach importance to matters that were recently considered unimportant. Yes, of course, the animal thing springs to mind. But other matters too, concerning the environment, malnutrition and illiteracy, have recently blasted their way into our consciousness. Many people are still too stunned to act. They’re mainly stunned by the brazen way authorities have so callously misinformed us. And they’ve pulled this off by getting to know us, that we’ll believe any old nonsense when everyone else believes it. Everyone eats animals … so it must be true! Emperor’s clothes syndrome!
The new information (I say ‘new’ in the sense of unsullied), which we pick up from the Internet, might be disturbing. It may make people want to go back to sleep … because they see no future. (Even intelligent people I know, kind, good people, subscribe to this ridiculous ‘give-up-on-humanity’ mentality. They say they prefer to ‘sleep it out’ … the human race being “fucked”. Finding out new stuff only adds to the general frustration of living.
Omnivores, if they knew anything about ‘vegans’ might consider us to be part of The False Hope Brigade. They reckon meeting vegans depresses you. I’m painting omnivores here as ‘not very happy campers’. Omnivores want to keep smiling. They prefer NOT to create more depression for themselves - so they avoid meeting vegans. In some ways I can’t blame them. Vegans can be such a bunch of whingers sometimes. But don’t tell anyone I said so, okay?
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The vegan detective agency
Vegans talk about feeding the world, saving the animals, health, environment, all the big things. But we’re not selling soap powder we’re selling dynamite, for use in unearthing the truth and exploding myth.
Our credentials might be clean and our message clear but nothing in life is going to be straight forward. For us it’s like trying to solve a murder mystery. We work for a detective agency, helping people spot who’s crooked and who’s innocent. The vegan detective agency is on the trail of the ring leaders, of course, the fear-makers and crap sellers. But we’re also showing where Fear lurks. We demonstrate how to be safe.
To fulfil our commission we’re alert day and night, ready to shine a torch on all dodgy motives and fear induced decision-making. Safety is what we sell. Our message: vegan food is safe, vegan conscience is safe, vegan reputation and relationship is safe. For vegans this is a safe universe we live in.
If we are in conversation with someone, whatever the subject and however sensitive it is, our job as animal advocates is to stress that we live in a perfectly safe universe and it’s only fear that makes it not so. If we’re ashamed of something we do it’s made that much worse by the fear of changing against our will. We fear the suddenness of circumstance and our inability to adapt sufficiently or quickly enough.
In this drama called ‘life’ there’s fear, but there’s also boredom. They come as a pair. Everything is happening and nothing happens: there seems to be nothing we can do to fix things, we’ve nowhere to go. We fear circumstances will take over, imposing economic constraints and other difficulties. But we could be talking about veganism and all the consequences flowing from that. Our job as vegans is surely to reduce the fear associated with radical change. To explode that fear, to identify the cause of it, to help others feel better about the way things are moving is to emphasise the positive signs of change.
Our ally is the computer, for this is where we solve the crimes. This is where, today, we use our imagination and creative skills. There’s access to information today. And information is the key here. It’s food for the brain. It’s our creative powers restored to us. It gives us an invaluable overview. It gives us clues and shows us where the bodies are buried. But we have to act on information, for until we take up the leads the crime doesn’t get solved .
Our credentials might be clean and our message clear but nothing in life is going to be straight forward. For us it’s like trying to solve a murder mystery. We work for a detective agency, helping people spot who’s crooked and who’s innocent. The vegan detective agency is on the trail of the ring leaders, of course, the fear-makers and crap sellers. But we’re also showing where Fear lurks. We demonstrate how to be safe.
To fulfil our commission we’re alert day and night, ready to shine a torch on all dodgy motives and fear induced decision-making. Safety is what we sell. Our message: vegan food is safe, vegan conscience is safe, vegan reputation and relationship is safe. For vegans this is a safe universe we live in.
If we are in conversation with someone, whatever the subject and however sensitive it is, our job as animal advocates is to stress that we live in a perfectly safe universe and it’s only fear that makes it not so. If we’re ashamed of something we do it’s made that much worse by the fear of changing against our will. We fear the suddenness of circumstance and our inability to adapt sufficiently or quickly enough.
In this drama called ‘life’ there’s fear, but there’s also boredom. They come as a pair. Everything is happening and nothing happens: there seems to be nothing we can do to fix things, we’ve nowhere to go. We fear circumstances will take over, imposing economic constraints and other difficulties. But we could be talking about veganism and all the consequences flowing from that. Our job as vegans is surely to reduce the fear associated with radical change. To explode that fear, to identify the cause of it, to help others feel better about the way things are moving is to emphasise the positive signs of change.
Our ally is the computer, for this is where we solve the crimes. This is where, today, we use our imagination and creative skills. There’s access to information today. And information is the key here. It’s food for the brain. It’s our creative powers restored to us. It gives us an invaluable overview. It gives us clues and shows us where the bodies are buried. But we have to act on information, for until we take up the leads the crime doesn’t get solved .
Monday, July 26, 2010
Violence Mark II
If a submarine can’t withstand the pressure, and it can’t be taken down deep enough to reach the sea bed, another machine has to be built to go down deeper. For us, trying to get to the bottom of people’s thinking, we have to have a subtler and stronger machine. An approach full of creativity and engagement. We’re not converting the heathens we’re simply attempting to get to the bottom of this warped attitude about animal-use in our society.
Omnivores hold animals in contempt …
“What? I love animals! How dare you say I hold them in contempt?”
The omnivore sees animals as inferior because they can’t feel or think as we can and can’t defend themselves against us. How this impacts on animals isn’t important – they deserve our ‘contempt’. Perhaps deep down we humans have contempt for any weakness, like the inability to defend oneself, like the animals. Would that be a typical predator attitude warped by humans? Have we leapt from the pastures of survival to the palaces of cushions and did the spring in our step come by way of violence? (that’s the warped-by-human variety, the ‘violence mark II’ version of violence, which came about after the mid 1940s in the West.)
The holding of animals in contempt allows us to exploit them in order to enjoy all their good-to-eat qualities.
This warping of the basic predator instinct may be the result of a very deliberate flouting of rules. Gassing Jews and caging hens happened at about the same time and is a good example of Mark II violence. There was a major outcry when people learned about the Holocaust. At the same time what was beginning to happen to farm animals was so diabolical that it alerted early vegans to risk all to prove the point - that we need no animal products to survive and therefore we can make our peace with them.
Vegans did, and still do, mark that switch from how we felt as kids to how we feel now as adults. (As kids we use naked love to relate and as adults we use contempt to get what we want). This solid attitude barrier is put into place, it’s our passport to adulthood. It’s an initiation which is deep-set throughout the whole of human society.
Those who break this culture, vegans, might approach omnivores with some trepidation. We may seem to come in as outsiders who’re trying to be a good influence – who need to be sharply turned away. People are not stupid; they know how to push us away. (They may be mad enough to be omnivore but they aren’t completely daft). Whether we’re talking about kids being in danger from weirdos or adults being alert to dangerous ideas, all people, whether adult omnivores or children, know when they’re “being approached in an inappropriate way”. If vegans come on too strong they’ll be pushed away. This is why we, as vegans, should try to communicate “animal rights and veganism” as if we’re offering up the keys to the kingdom. We hardly need to come on with the attack approach.
Omnivores hold animals in contempt …
“What? I love animals! How dare you say I hold them in contempt?”
The omnivore sees animals as inferior because they can’t feel or think as we can and can’t defend themselves against us. How this impacts on animals isn’t important – they deserve our ‘contempt’. Perhaps deep down we humans have contempt for any weakness, like the inability to defend oneself, like the animals. Would that be a typical predator attitude warped by humans? Have we leapt from the pastures of survival to the palaces of cushions and did the spring in our step come by way of violence? (that’s the warped-by-human variety, the ‘violence mark II’ version of violence, which came about after the mid 1940s in the West.)
The holding of animals in contempt allows us to exploit them in order to enjoy all their good-to-eat qualities.
This warping of the basic predator instinct may be the result of a very deliberate flouting of rules. Gassing Jews and caging hens happened at about the same time and is a good example of Mark II violence. There was a major outcry when people learned about the Holocaust. At the same time what was beginning to happen to farm animals was so diabolical that it alerted early vegans to risk all to prove the point - that we need no animal products to survive and therefore we can make our peace with them.
Vegans did, and still do, mark that switch from how we felt as kids to how we feel now as adults. (As kids we use naked love to relate and as adults we use contempt to get what we want). This solid attitude barrier is put into place, it’s our passport to adulthood. It’s an initiation which is deep-set throughout the whole of human society.
Those who break this culture, vegans, might approach omnivores with some trepidation. We may seem to come in as outsiders who’re trying to be a good influence – who need to be sharply turned away. People are not stupid; they know how to push us away. (They may be mad enough to be omnivore but they aren’t completely daft). Whether we’re talking about kids being in danger from weirdos or adults being alert to dangerous ideas, all people, whether adult omnivores or children, know when they’re “being approached in an inappropriate way”. If vegans come on too strong they’ll be pushed away. This is why we, as vegans, should try to communicate “animal rights and veganism” as if we’re offering up the keys to the kingdom. We hardly need to come on with the attack approach.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Truth and time
Truth lies sprawled flat on the sea bed, resting like a camouflaged octopus, awaiting the next disturbance, to get things moving along. Truth in Nature has a different time-line to ours (she having lived longer than the ‘poor’ humans!)
Nature, like any other predator, strikes when she sees an opportunity. She however, unlike any other predator, doesn’t need to eat her prey. All she needs is protégé. She needs our company. She’s mum downstairs waiting for us, upstairs, to wake up … we ain’t that much fun asleep … and previously she’s only had the animals to play with (humans having been such dull playmates for centuries now).
Upstairs she can hear our grunts and shiftings, and guesses it’s time to ‘get up’. Nature calls her invitation up to us, to come down for breakfast. R.S.V.P.
Humans have sat on their cushions too long without getting up, standing up for the greater good. Is it sleep or was it drug-induced? Anyhow, it was a long period of dark, muddled thinking – humans not seeing the dangers and wonders, and having therefore no reason to wake up. And only when disaster strikes, as presently, do we review the situation. Thoroughly … when, unfortunately, the sun has been up for hours and the day’s nearly over. We’re late to repair. We see the problems, see the repair and then with all-brain-no-sense we make the whole job complicated and long winded.
We have the potential to fix things, we always knew that, and yet it eludes us. We know that humans, when the chips are down, do adapt and can plan ahead, but the trouble is we’re always running late. We should start repairing things earlier than we do - why are we so ‘eleventh hour’ about things? Surely this shows (in all of us) an astounding level of insecurity and selfishness.
Surely we each have insight, foresight, ‘sight’ for heaven’s sake. We can see up ahead, we can spot the looming train-on-the-line and get out of its way. Not difficult. But we’re mesmerised by something, and “we know not what it is”.
We’re perhaps in the grip of post-modern madness, or rather “post-nursery” juvenility. We don’t take to repairing things, kids never think about that. We leave it to others. Post-nursery adults can’t quite grow up in that we can’t even make an intellectual response to this one serious adult suggestion - to be nicer people. We can’t seem to get around to improving our relations with whomsoever we need to (and we now know by going vegan we can with animals). This is the goal of Animal Rights and Veganism. Indeed this may be the only substantial goal the human race needs.
What about our relationships? Perhaps we’ve all the right equipment to be a good lover but we just need to be nicer with it or more aware of what we do with it. Our next step is always opening of consciousness.
It’s not as if we don’t frequently project an image of ‘the highly-sensitive-human-of-the-future’ but we just never get around to applying ourselves to work on it.
Until we do, Nature won’t trust us, mainly for not owning up to what we’ve done. She doesn’t need to know about the whole crime but she needs to see in our eyes that we have a new intention: not to do it again. To know that we’ve learned our lesson.
She looks ahead and looks forward to see the truth coming out in us. She’s over all our mea culpas (admitting all those “things we ought not to have done”), she’s a waiter. She waits for us to wake up properly before coming downstairs for breakfast. She’s been up all night, kept from rest by the incessant noise we’ve been making. Even if Nature has been sorely injured by humans she’s a patient patient. No hurry-hurry. She’s been here before!
She knows how to wait for us to become self-generators.
Nature, like any other predator, strikes when she sees an opportunity. She however, unlike any other predator, doesn’t need to eat her prey. All she needs is protégé. She needs our company. She’s mum downstairs waiting for us, upstairs, to wake up … we ain’t that much fun asleep … and previously she’s only had the animals to play with (humans having been such dull playmates for centuries now).
Upstairs she can hear our grunts and shiftings, and guesses it’s time to ‘get up’. Nature calls her invitation up to us, to come down for breakfast. R.S.V.P.
Humans have sat on their cushions too long without getting up, standing up for the greater good. Is it sleep or was it drug-induced? Anyhow, it was a long period of dark, muddled thinking – humans not seeing the dangers and wonders, and having therefore no reason to wake up. And only when disaster strikes, as presently, do we review the situation. Thoroughly … when, unfortunately, the sun has been up for hours and the day’s nearly over. We’re late to repair. We see the problems, see the repair and then with all-brain-no-sense we make the whole job complicated and long winded.
We have the potential to fix things, we always knew that, and yet it eludes us. We know that humans, when the chips are down, do adapt and can plan ahead, but the trouble is we’re always running late. We should start repairing things earlier than we do - why are we so ‘eleventh hour’ about things? Surely this shows (in all of us) an astounding level of insecurity and selfishness.
Surely we each have insight, foresight, ‘sight’ for heaven’s sake. We can see up ahead, we can spot the looming train-on-the-line and get out of its way. Not difficult. But we’re mesmerised by something, and “we know not what it is”.
We’re perhaps in the grip of post-modern madness, or rather “post-nursery” juvenility. We don’t take to repairing things, kids never think about that. We leave it to others. Post-nursery adults can’t quite grow up in that we can’t even make an intellectual response to this one serious adult suggestion - to be nicer people. We can’t seem to get around to improving our relations with whomsoever we need to (and we now know by going vegan we can with animals). This is the goal of Animal Rights and Veganism. Indeed this may be the only substantial goal the human race needs.
What about our relationships? Perhaps we’ve all the right equipment to be a good lover but we just need to be nicer with it or more aware of what we do with it. Our next step is always opening of consciousness.
It’s not as if we don’t frequently project an image of ‘the highly-sensitive-human-of-the-future’ but we just never get around to applying ourselves to work on it.
Until we do, Nature won’t trust us, mainly for not owning up to what we’ve done. She doesn’t need to know about the whole crime but she needs to see in our eyes that we have a new intention: not to do it again. To know that we’ve learned our lesson.
She looks ahead and looks forward to see the truth coming out in us. She’s over all our mea culpas (admitting all those “things we ought not to have done”), she’s a waiter. She waits for us to wake up properly before coming downstairs for breakfast. She’s been up all night, kept from rest by the incessant noise we’ve been making. Even if Nature has been sorely injured by humans she’s a patient patient. No hurry-hurry. She’s been here before!
She knows how to wait for us to become self-generators.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
No thanks - not if you’re vegan
“Someone at the door”- and another voice from inside, “Tell ‘em to piss-off if they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses”.
It’s not much different for vegans trying to get a toe hold on the private beliefs of omnivores. We know they want us to piss off and indeed can see why - we vegans are distasteful people. We stir. But as people we needn’t be distasteful nor in fact give them any excuse to dislike us. They may dislike the message but not the messenger.
We all feel distaste but perhaps we should reserve it for the animal industry - for their cruelty but mainly for their use of sophisticated methods to hook people on their ‘stuff’. Misinformation is everywhere, poured out in messages on air and in the print media. This distaste we all feel, it may be undefined but unless you’re moving towards becoming a vegan you won’t want it to be defined.
We’re putting things off in a very weird way, we humans. It was never just a matter of “not knowing” about this - we’ve known about it since the 1970s. And it’s clear to everyone that things have gotten much worse since then. It’s diabolically worse now than it was a quarter of a century earlier, and then it was worse than the post 45 war period. We knew a vegan diet could work, we therefore knew from then, especially since the seventies, all about it, but still we’ve delayed. Over fifty years.
The question is why? If we can discover the answer to this we’ll know what we’ve always been afraid of. And then presumably we can vanquish the demon.
Vegan diets, post mid-1940s, were soon enough scientifically approved. Now, half a century later, we’re still not getting it. We’re still ignoring it in the vain hope that it will go away … or something. If in our daily life we do get round to thinking about it we might do well to look deep. To see beyond the superficial.
This whole Animal Rights and Vegan thing was never going to be a list of platitudes from a whingeing mob, but an intelligent argument presented by caring-, thinking-people. In our heart of hearts I think all people realise that this is a major statement of our time. But we’ve a way to go.
Before all this can happen there’s a trail of communicators, advocates and activists who make it their business to process information. But, for them it was never going to be straight forward. After hammering at the door and wrapping at the window and never getting inside we know it’s more than just disseminating information. It includes the settling of old scores and generally re-learning how to get on with people, people who disagree with you (which is just about everyone!!). Our job, as vegans, is surely to fix this approach-thing first. And funnily enough we may be in the best position to do just that. By trying to communicate bits and pieces of our ‘message’ with the emphasis on being NOT PUSHY, we allow the no-use-animal idea to take shape in people’s minds.
It’s not much different for vegans trying to get a toe hold on the private beliefs of omnivores. We know they want us to piss off and indeed can see why - we vegans are distasteful people. We stir. But as people we needn’t be distasteful nor in fact give them any excuse to dislike us. They may dislike the message but not the messenger.
We all feel distaste but perhaps we should reserve it for the animal industry - for their cruelty but mainly for their use of sophisticated methods to hook people on their ‘stuff’. Misinformation is everywhere, poured out in messages on air and in the print media. This distaste we all feel, it may be undefined but unless you’re moving towards becoming a vegan you won’t want it to be defined.
We’re putting things off in a very weird way, we humans. It was never just a matter of “not knowing” about this - we’ve known about it since the 1970s. And it’s clear to everyone that things have gotten much worse since then. It’s diabolically worse now than it was a quarter of a century earlier, and then it was worse than the post 45 war period. We knew a vegan diet could work, we therefore knew from then, especially since the seventies, all about it, but still we’ve delayed. Over fifty years.
The question is why? If we can discover the answer to this we’ll know what we’ve always been afraid of. And then presumably we can vanquish the demon.
Vegan diets, post mid-1940s, were soon enough scientifically approved. Now, half a century later, we’re still not getting it. We’re still ignoring it in the vain hope that it will go away … or something. If in our daily life we do get round to thinking about it we might do well to look deep. To see beyond the superficial.
This whole Animal Rights and Vegan thing was never going to be a list of platitudes from a whingeing mob, but an intelligent argument presented by caring-, thinking-people. In our heart of hearts I think all people realise that this is a major statement of our time. But we’ve a way to go.
Before all this can happen there’s a trail of communicators, advocates and activists who make it their business to process information. But, for them it was never going to be straight forward. After hammering at the door and wrapping at the window and never getting inside we know it’s more than just disseminating information. It includes the settling of old scores and generally re-learning how to get on with people, people who disagree with you (which is just about everyone!!). Our job, as vegans, is surely to fix this approach-thing first. And funnily enough we may be in the best position to do just that. By trying to communicate bits and pieces of our ‘message’ with the emphasis on being NOT PUSHY, we allow the no-use-animal idea to take shape in people’s minds.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)