However much we learn about this subject, we’re always disappointed by what’s being picked up by others. In our society for all the ugly human dealings with animals, we still won’t recognise animal rights. It’s as if omnivores (animal-users) either know nothing or care nothing about this subject. It is evicted from thought so that most people don’t even know they don’t care.
Either way, we animal advocates are missing our target. We’re not convincing people about the need for the liberation of animals. Until vegans reach-out rather than push-away, nothing will change. By becoming more professional (less oikish) in our approach we become more reliable. Then we seem safer as people and what we say more likely to reach them. Obviously, if we just let things work out how they will, if we simply leave it to them to find out, they’ll be side-tracked by other issues (which are nonetheless important issues).
As activists we vie for attention-space. Every advertiser and sloganeer shouts for attention. We need to be different. We need to stand out as that much more responsible, professional. Unless we stop waving our arms about, until we move past the shouting stage and get closer into hearing range, people will look the other way. They’ll be seduced by those who ‘do it’ better than we do.
Admittedly, we start with a distinct disadvantage in the first place. Unlike the save-planet-save-children causes, which can appeal to self-interest, ours at first can’t (perception-wise). Ours just looks like hard work. It’s a tough message.
We need all our skill to help it along. Erm, we don’t need to capsize it by alienating omnivores. We’re supposed to help them along, ease their perception-worries, so they’ll be able to pick up on what we’re saying.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Getting good and judgmental
Monday 30th August 2010
In 2010 there are many decision-making people acting irrationally, worsening the mess we’re in instead of improving it. Vegans must address the rationally-intentioned, having faith in them, having faith in the effectiveness of en masse boycott to end the Animal Industries.
Vegans are proposing a straightforward solution … and, of course, either non-vegans are unaware of it or they’re continuing to ignore it. For us it’s frustrating. We know people have the intelligence to grasp the logic of our argument but something is not connecting. So we wait. During which time we hope to find out why it isn’t happening. After all, some ordinary people, stimulated by the horror decide to act. Other ordinary people aren’t similarly affected by the same stimuli. Why?
There’s trouble in the ranks down at the Vegan Detective Agency. Some want to look for clues to the crime, others just want the culprits punished. Some of us never give up our appeal to the average omnivore’s intelligence, others just get annoyed and judge them negatively. I’d say this is the major divide at the Agency, between one type of vegan and another, between those who issue “fatwas” on people they don’t like and others who want to educate them.
The first sort of vegan gets angry – it makes them feel good to get it ‘off their chest’. They judge “the animal eater”. It sounds good, strong, decisive and empowered. A very amateur attempt at shifting the paradigm, but by condemning others, directly or by implication, we separate from them. We see ourselves ‘apart’, even ‘better-than’, and that ends up in tears, especially when we quarrel with people we’re close to. The gulf between vegans and non-vegans grows deep and wide very quickly; within seconds, we can separate from someone, just by ‘making a stand’, just by getting a bit personal about it.
In post-quarrel land, it’s an uphill slog in trying to restore balance. ‘Angry’ goes to judgement goes to unnecessarily complicating issues between us. First up we need some mutual respect, then comes some imparting of information.
The reason our ‘mutual separations’ occur, over this animal question, isn’t just because of food, health and cruelty issues, it’s also about our attitude towards judging. Value judging, the negative sort, concerning the non-vegan’s “contempt” for animals. Nothing makes a vegan angrier quicker than hearing the phrase “They’re just animals”. It implies that animal are dumb and we can do as we please with them. Let them suffer. And vegans do passionately care about the suffering of animals. We want to let non-vegans know how deeply outraged we are.
But usually our arguments do no good because reasonable discussion is made almost impossible by their reading our ‘outrage’. Judgement clothed in a show of sensitivity on the vegan’s part. The atmosphere is never clear enough to shift the dark cloud hanging over proceedings; you can almost smell the value judgment in the air. It’s always more threatening than inviting. We vegans just can’t seem to resist the temptation to knee jerk reactions of shock and disappointment … in that reasonable people can be so unreasonable. But the feeling is mutual – they see us as “self-righteous do-gooders”. Both myths need to be exploded. Partly true, partly untrue.
The more we learn about animals, the greater the gap grows between the perception-world of the average omnivore and the average vegan. As outrage deepens amongst us, we begin to take umbrage, offended by the dismissiveness of animal eaters. And anger brings on the ‘knee jerk response’ of disliking. If we don’t like our ‘adversaries’ we show it.
If there’s no anger we won’t waste precious moments when we might be using that time to assess the sort of person we’re talking to. It’s important to spend these few microseconds to gauge where to pitch our remarks, and decide which (if any) facts we going to bring to their attention … avail them of NOT assail them with! And that gets us past wanting to be judgemental.
In 2010 there are many decision-making people acting irrationally, worsening the mess we’re in instead of improving it. Vegans must address the rationally-intentioned, having faith in them, having faith in the effectiveness of en masse boycott to end the Animal Industries.
Vegans are proposing a straightforward solution … and, of course, either non-vegans are unaware of it or they’re continuing to ignore it. For us it’s frustrating. We know people have the intelligence to grasp the logic of our argument but something is not connecting. So we wait. During which time we hope to find out why it isn’t happening. After all, some ordinary people, stimulated by the horror decide to act. Other ordinary people aren’t similarly affected by the same stimuli. Why?
There’s trouble in the ranks down at the Vegan Detective Agency. Some want to look for clues to the crime, others just want the culprits punished. Some of us never give up our appeal to the average omnivore’s intelligence, others just get annoyed and judge them negatively. I’d say this is the major divide at the Agency, between one type of vegan and another, between those who issue “fatwas” on people they don’t like and others who want to educate them.
The first sort of vegan gets angry – it makes them feel good to get it ‘off their chest’. They judge “the animal eater”. It sounds good, strong, decisive and empowered. A very amateur attempt at shifting the paradigm, but by condemning others, directly or by implication, we separate from them. We see ourselves ‘apart’, even ‘better-than’, and that ends up in tears, especially when we quarrel with people we’re close to. The gulf between vegans and non-vegans grows deep and wide very quickly; within seconds, we can separate from someone, just by ‘making a stand’, just by getting a bit personal about it.
In post-quarrel land, it’s an uphill slog in trying to restore balance. ‘Angry’ goes to judgement goes to unnecessarily complicating issues between us. First up we need some mutual respect, then comes some imparting of information.
The reason our ‘mutual separations’ occur, over this animal question, isn’t just because of food, health and cruelty issues, it’s also about our attitude towards judging. Value judging, the negative sort, concerning the non-vegan’s “contempt” for animals. Nothing makes a vegan angrier quicker than hearing the phrase “They’re just animals”. It implies that animal are dumb and we can do as we please with them. Let them suffer. And vegans do passionately care about the suffering of animals. We want to let non-vegans know how deeply outraged we are.
But usually our arguments do no good because reasonable discussion is made almost impossible by their reading our ‘outrage’. Judgement clothed in a show of sensitivity on the vegan’s part. The atmosphere is never clear enough to shift the dark cloud hanging over proceedings; you can almost smell the value judgment in the air. It’s always more threatening than inviting. We vegans just can’t seem to resist the temptation to knee jerk reactions of shock and disappointment … in that reasonable people can be so unreasonable. But the feeling is mutual – they see us as “self-righteous do-gooders”. Both myths need to be exploded. Partly true, partly untrue.
The more we learn about animals, the greater the gap grows between the perception-world of the average omnivore and the average vegan. As outrage deepens amongst us, we begin to take umbrage, offended by the dismissiveness of animal eaters. And anger brings on the ‘knee jerk response’ of disliking. If we don’t like our ‘adversaries’ we show it.
If there’s no anger we won’t waste precious moments when we might be using that time to assess the sort of person we’re talking to. It’s important to spend these few microseconds to gauge where to pitch our remarks, and decide which (if any) facts we going to bring to their attention … avail them of NOT assail them with! And that gets us past wanting to be judgemental.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Boycott the bastards
As soon as the penny drops, that we’re un-supported, we get scared - vegan, animal rights, activist advocates I mean. There’s a “sad me” for vegans. It’s perhaps how we feel about our own situation. We want that sadness though to be constructive, directed towards others who need it desperately, who live in the realm of tortured animals and poisoned planets. The sadness we should all feel is for the walled in humans who have wrought this havoc. Our sadness is in realising the thickness of the omnivore wall. Their attitude-wall encloses them and their jailers alike - the leaders and their leaders, the magnates.
Although the magnates aren’t entirely to blame for the mess we’re in, they have initiated the recent escalations and been emboldened by the support of sycophantic ‘leaders’ and subservient consumers. Hey, but forget ‘blame’. Look to clues, to unravelling this mess. Put up the antennae. Feel in the wind. Don’t get lost! Divine the source of wise-choice. Be drawn … obviously I’m going to say ‘go-vegan’!!
What I feel drawn to are magnets, I mean ‘magnates’. They’re the ones providing all the clues to where we are. If we’re lost, look to the largest corporate magnate - the multi-stranded Animal Industry. It’s the most diabolically cruel and greatest greenhouse emitter of all the industries. It needs boycotting.
Although the magnates aren’t entirely to blame for the mess we’re in, they have initiated the recent escalations and been emboldened by the support of sycophantic ‘leaders’ and subservient consumers. Hey, but forget ‘blame’. Look to clues, to unravelling this mess. Put up the antennae. Feel in the wind. Don’t get lost! Divine the source of wise-choice. Be drawn … obviously I’m going to say ‘go-vegan’!!
What I feel drawn to are magnets, I mean ‘magnates’. They’re the ones providing all the clues to where we are. If we’re lost, look to the largest corporate magnate - the multi-stranded Animal Industry. It’s the most diabolically cruel and greatest greenhouse emitter of all the industries. It needs boycotting.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Gut service
However omnivores see themselves they’re pulled in two directions at once. Vegans have relieved themselves of that pressure.
For omnivores, it always comes down to their own safety and comfort. Convenience calls the shots. It’s my comfort versus the animal gulag down the road. 2010 promises every luxury you can imagine … but at what cost? Many animals must die to provide for our safety and comfort, and before that they’re imprisoned in ultra-slum conditions.
The very thought of that could be enough to keep the omnivore awake at night, and that’s just for starters. Our brain tells us one thing and our gut feeling another. Gut says be careful. This all smells of pernicious danger. Our gut feeling says we aren’t safe. On the one hand we’re being poisoned (with animal stuff, as well as other things) but we’re used to it … and yet as we get older we notice the slow effects of our diet over the years. We aren’t comfortable. Our stomach is full enough but something has gone sluggish. We have safety and comfort. But it’s all up in the mind not in the gut.
“Gut” is the digestive tract. But it’s also the word for instinct. Also the word for courage. Maybe our brains are in touch with the gut. Warning us of danger, calling up bravery. Gut gets us out of the danger. But gut also means to rip the innards out of a living being, as in gutting a fish. It means hanging-drawing and quartering the animal. It means one of the worst violences we’ve ever dreamt up - cutting into a suffocating victim. Humans don’t suffer gutting but we use the word to stand for shocked – “gutted”. And vegans are gutted by the unreported horror story going on all about us so we are at the opposite, safe, comfortable and without having to feel gutted every time we open our digestive tract and drop violence into it.
At the opposite ‘vegan’ end is guts. What we need to answer a call for self-sacrificing courage. We reckon this promises us “comfort” – that’s the finest foods plus a much sought after fearlessness state to live in. But omnivores beware, one act of vegetarian ‘goodness’ does not solve very much at all. Fearlessness there isn’t. A fridge full of little comforts don’t fall off trees, they come stamped with execution too. Although animal products give comfort they’re haunting us (and silently poisoning us at the same time).
But guts does not a fine person make. Life has tension and within ‘gut’ there’s conflict - temptation, guilt, a fattening-food fear of a growing gut. How do we deal with each of these and still lie straight in our beds, erm … I mean get all the sleep we need.
I suspect vegans sleep well at night, relatively un-plagued by fatness or guilt about animal cruelty … b. b.bbut, the stakes are high. For vegans. Instead of guilt we take on a responsibility for a whole planet. A big job.
Vegans would love you alongside – your support is the most valuable thing to establish vegan principle, as a going concern. Animals need your support as much as vegans want to be of service to omnivores, in this matter.
For omnivores, it always comes down to their own safety and comfort. Convenience calls the shots. It’s my comfort versus the animal gulag down the road. 2010 promises every luxury you can imagine … but at what cost? Many animals must die to provide for our safety and comfort, and before that they’re imprisoned in ultra-slum conditions.
The very thought of that could be enough to keep the omnivore awake at night, and that’s just for starters. Our brain tells us one thing and our gut feeling another. Gut says be careful. This all smells of pernicious danger. Our gut feeling says we aren’t safe. On the one hand we’re being poisoned (with animal stuff, as well as other things) but we’re used to it … and yet as we get older we notice the slow effects of our diet over the years. We aren’t comfortable. Our stomach is full enough but something has gone sluggish. We have safety and comfort. But it’s all up in the mind not in the gut.
“Gut” is the digestive tract. But it’s also the word for instinct. Also the word for courage. Maybe our brains are in touch with the gut. Warning us of danger, calling up bravery. Gut gets us out of the danger. But gut also means to rip the innards out of a living being, as in gutting a fish. It means hanging-drawing and quartering the animal. It means one of the worst violences we’ve ever dreamt up - cutting into a suffocating victim. Humans don’t suffer gutting but we use the word to stand for shocked – “gutted”. And vegans are gutted by the unreported horror story going on all about us so we are at the opposite, safe, comfortable and without having to feel gutted every time we open our digestive tract and drop violence into it.
At the opposite ‘vegan’ end is guts. What we need to answer a call for self-sacrificing courage. We reckon this promises us “comfort” – that’s the finest foods plus a much sought after fearlessness state to live in. But omnivores beware, one act of vegetarian ‘goodness’ does not solve very much at all. Fearlessness there isn’t. A fridge full of little comforts don’t fall off trees, they come stamped with execution too. Although animal products give comfort they’re haunting us (and silently poisoning us at the same time).
But guts does not a fine person make. Life has tension and within ‘gut’ there’s conflict - temptation, guilt, a fattening-food fear of a growing gut. How do we deal with each of these and still lie straight in our beds, erm … I mean get all the sleep we need.
I suspect vegans sleep well at night, relatively un-plagued by fatness or guilt about animal cruelty … b. b.bbut, the stakes are high. For vegans. Instead of guilt we take on a responsibility for a whole planet. A big job.
Vegans would love you alongside – your support is the most valuable thing to establish vegan principle, as a going concern. Animals need your support as much as vegans want to be of service to omnivores, in this matter.
Friday, August 27, 2010
250 capital crimes
At some point in a discussion we need to establish the scale of the crime we’re talking about. (To us it’s a really appalling crime but it isn’t yet, necessarily, to omnivores). Animal exploitation - once the ‘crime-status’ is established there’s no need to go back over it again and again. Our main job is to establish why we think it’s a crime, that’s all. That’s the main difference between an omnivore and a vegan is their evaluation of the situation.
First, before discussing if it IS a crime, we have to settle in the ‘collective vegan head’, that people in general are not idiots. We must credit them with enough raw intelligence to understand what we’re saying to them. And no, they mightn’t react the way we want, but they may take it in. If we use something like a shock fact, the ‘250’ deaths, (see yesterday’s blog) the impact is powerful. It arrests people in their thinking, because it’s a surprisingly large number and it implies that each omnivore is responsible for many animal executions every year (amounting to 25,000 if get to be one hundred years old!!).
Once this ‘crime’ is mentioned, we’ve effectively laid our cards on the table. And then, at least, we can have a sensible discussion. Hopefully without too much heavy value judgement. Our emphasis should be on gullibility - how people have been bamboozled by The Animal Industry. How otherwise beautiful people have been drawn into the clutches of an ugly world (parallel to the beautiful one we also know).
If 250 deaths are carried out on our behalf, then there’s no other statistic necessary - the whole cruelty thing is terrible but if we weren’t eating them (killing them) we wouldn’t be breeding them in the first place … and no horror would be happening.
First, before discussing if it IS a crime, we have to settle in the ‘collective vegan head’, that people in general are not idiots. We must credit them with enough raw intelligence to understand what we’re saying to them. And no, they mightn’t react the way we want, but they may take it in. If we use something like a shock fact, the ‘250’ deaths, (see yesterday’s blog) the impact is powerful. It arrests people in their thinking, because it’s a surprisingly large number and it implies that each omnivore is responsible for many animal executions every year (amounting to 25,000 if get to be one hundred years old!!).
Once this ‘crime’ is mentioned, we’ve effectively laid our cards on the table. And then, at least, we can have a sensible discussion. Hopefully without too much heavy value judgement. Our emphasis should be on gullibility - how people have been bamboozled by The Animal Industry. How otherwise beautiful people have been drawn into the clutches of an ugly world (parallel to the beautiful one we also know).
If 250 deaths are carried out on our behalf, then there’s no other statistic necessary - the whole cruelty thing is terrible but if we weren’t eating them (killing them) we wouldn’t be breeding them in the first place … and no horror would be happening.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
‘250’ for me
Imagine how it would be if people DID respond differently to what vegans were saying - rather than getting defensive, suppose they came over to seeing things from the animals’ side. Imagine how it would be if vegans approached omnivores without wanting to attack them. Imagine how we’d sound without the din of judgement in our voices.
It’s up to vegans who want to talk on this subject to have a couple of shock facts in the bag, but no more. They’re stun grenades after all. They’re there if things turn illogical. Just having them at hand helps us feel confident in the face of group opposition. And with that confidence we can free range in conversation with anybody. We can follow what they want to talk about. Then let them pick up on a link to more profound matters. Most importantly, we should learn to trust the discussion, to go where it may. But as a trump up our sleeve, it’s incontrovertible facts that we can use if necessary. Like this one: that in the West we each eat 250 animals a year. Let people chew on it. Why go further? The rest of the argument, about ‘why vegan’, is merely detail.
It’s up to vegans who want to talk on this subject to have a couple of shock facts in the bag, but no more. They’re stun grenades after all. They’re there if things turn illogical. Just having them at hand helps us feel confident in the face of group opposition. And with that confidence we can free range in conversation with anybody. We can follow what they want to talk about. Then let them pick up on a link to more profound matters. Most importantly, we should learn to trust the discussion, to go where it may. But as a trump up our sleeve, it’s incontrovertible facts that we can use if necessary. Like this one: that in the West we each eat 250 animals a year. Let people chew on it. Why go further? The rest of the argument, about ‘why vegan’, is merely detail.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Oiks
I know a most pushy vegan, loathed and loved. He has great compassion within a rough, take-no-prisoners nature. I know the most ineffectual vegans who are really nice people but aren’t identifiable-with.
In the end it comes down to being able to identify with another … and, with fellow humans, that comes down to resonating with what a person says. And that rests with the person themselves - are they genuine in what they say? It may take years to be sure of this. In this case, is the vegan we know actually true to what she says. But even if we’re sure about her sincerity, are we that interested?
So vegans have got to be true, obviously, but they need to spark something in others. Must we impress them? Yes, but it’s the subject and all that it ignites (or doesn’t!) that’s important here. We aren’t in a wanna-be-liked competition, vegans just need to inspire interest, empathy, compassion, with and for the poor creatures presently languishing in their prison cells. Must we inspire their interest? Yes, and without alienating them. We don’t want them to ‘close the book, never to be opened again’.
We’re more likely to get omnivores interested (er, I mean inspired!) in what we have to say about animal issues, if we can show how significant it is and how it pertains to today’s Whole Global Problems which haunt every single aware-ised adult on the planet.
So, how to interest the as-yet-uninterested? What is the universal ‘touching point’ to which all people can relate? And here we come to the Universal Human, that human who is conscious of the significance of humanity.
That unusual family down the road, the Universals, they see a glorious future for the race, a future which comes about after we wipe the egg from our face and start again … but ughh!! … ‘start-again’ sounds awful. Ugh, no.
“Food? What? Me change my breakfast routines, ugh, sandwiches made of what? Ugh! Dinner is how? … And what is it you wear on your feet … to be in fashion with other dudes?” …“Me start again? And take up what?” … “Ya gotta be jokin” … Food. Oh hell, and shoes too!!”
… and yet
There are travellers through these regions. They’ve come out of the wild lands and seem unharmed, vegan for ten years. Everyone looks at them for signs of collapse. Since all they eat are lettuce leaves, these vegans are surely about to collapse, perhaps most of them have died off already. Thank God!
Vegans, fellow travellers, do have enough to spark curiosity. Within veganism there’s a clue to the future, and that’s the ultimate attraction. With that in mind even fashion is downgraded, even favourite ice creams and chocs can go. We can do extraordinary things (with both food and shoes) to show we take ourselves seriously. Seriously enough to eat an unusual diet and wear basic footwear, seriously enough to be sure what we say isn’t bunkum.
Vegans must be sure of their information because it is so different to the standard stuff coming out of the Science, Education and Propaganda Departments. It is, after all, a whole other way of seeing things, a way of seeing ahead to a ‘glorious future’. For this we need something well delivered - if we take a little trouble with our presentation (showing ‘them’ we’re not oiks, just out for a cheap shot) we’ll be seen as ‘a possibility’. That would be brilliant. That would be all. That would be a start to getting people to respond to us differently.
In the end it comes down to being able to identify with another … and, with fellow humans, that comes down to resonating with what a person says. And that rests with the person themselves - are they genuine in what they say? It may take years to be sure of this. In this case, is the vegan we know actually true to what she says. But even if we’re sure about her sincerity, are we that interested?
So vegans have got to be true, obviously, but they need to spark something in others. Must we impress them? Yes, but it’s the subject and all that it ignites (or doesn’t!) that’s important here. We aren’t in a wanna-be-liked competition, vegans just need to inspire interest, empathy, compassion, with and for the poor creatures presently languishing in their prison cells. Must we inspire their interest? Yes, and without alienating them. We don’t want them to ‘close the book, never to be opened again’.
We’re more likely to get omnivores interested (er, I mean inspired!) in what we have to say about animal issues, if we can show how significant it is and how it pertains to today’s Whole Global Problems which haunt every single aware-ised adult on the planet.
So, how to interest the as-yet-uninterested? What is the universal ‘touching point’ to which all people can relate? And here we come to the Universal Human, that human who is conscious of the significance of humanity.
That unusual family down the road, the Universals, they see a glorious future for the race, a future which comes about after we wipe the egg from our face and start again … but ughh!! … ‘start-again’ sounds awful. Ugh, no.
“Food? What? Me change my breakfast routines, ugh, sandwiches made of what? Ugh! Dinner is how? … And what is it you wear on your feet … to be in fashion with other dudes?” …“Me start again? And take up what?” … “Ya gotta be jokin” … Food. Oh hell, and shoes too!!”
… and yet
There are travellers through these regions. They’ve come out of the wild lands and seem unharmed, vegan for ten years. Everyone looks at them for signs of collapse. Since all they eat are lettuce leaves, these vegans are surely about to collapse, perhaps most of them have died off already. Thank God!
Vegans, fellow travellers, do have enough to spark curiosity. Within veganism there’s a clue to the future, and that’s the ultimate attraction. With that in mind even fashion is downgraded, even favourite ice creams and chocs can go. We can do extraordinary things (with both food and shoes) to show we take ourselves seriously. Seriously enough to eat an unusual diet and wear basic footwear, seriously enough to be sure what we say isn’t bunkum.
Vegans must be sure of their information because it is so different to the standard stuff coming out of the Science, Education and Propaganda Departments. It is, after all, a whole other way of seeing things, a way of seeing ahead to a ‘glorious future’. For this we need something well delivered - if we take a little trouble with our presentation (showing ‘them’ we’re not oiks, just out for a cheap shot) we’ll be seen as ‘a possibility’. That would be brilliant. That would be all. That would be a start to getting people to respond to us differently.
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