The vegan facilitator

513:



I want to know how I’m seen by others and I want to know, from me, if others are seen by me in a non-judgemental way. If a vegan is to be a role model they must set pretty high standards. It’s because we’re setting the example (over food and clothing) and because we’re the ones wanting to initiate debate, then it’s entirely down to us to take intelligent initiatives.

First-up I know for myself I have to get over the superiority thing - I mustn’t, even for one instant, consider myself better than anyone else. If I do, it shows.

Life is not a competition, I’m sure of that. I’m a vegan, that’s all. Big deal. In many ways each of us shines and we all have lists of embarrassing faults. Our virtues and faults roughly match anyone else’s. When all’s said and done (and when all the brownie points have been added up) none of us can afford to feel ‘above’ anyone else.

Even with the best arguments in the world (and of course vegans have the Rolls Royce of all arguments!) we shouldn’t flaunt any advantage. Shouldn’t it all be an egalitarian business, not being competitive, life not having to be ME versus YOU.

I certainly know everything is not about ‘me’. Nor about me persuading you or provoking fights. For my part I’d only ever want to try to encourage you to crank up your brain cells. I might even like to touch your heart. Everything is really about you. My concern for you is confined to a wish that you begin to take ‘animal-issues’ seriously. I personally only want to facilitate discussion not to convert.

You do it, so shall I

512:


In the face of greatly differing views, we each seem implacable; vegans are ‘in judgement’ of non-vegans and they are in judgement of us, for whatever reasons. We have fixed views of each other and, today, perception rules, so views stay fixed.

In all matters of food, omnivores support the status quo, and more or less have to; they fear stepping into the dangerous waters of boycotting things … which leads to a huge daily inconvenience. “Where does it all stop?”

Omnivores are not far wrong – it is inconvenient trying to be consistent all the time, about what and what-not to boycott. But of course it gets easier as time goes on. But that’s not how it’s perceived by non-vegans. For them it all sounds too difficult to even contemplate.

By the time we’re adults we’re used to life and decision-making; we know life’s a matter of fitting-in; if we don’t fit in with the way others do things we’re soon enough cast out by them (often, in the nicest possible way). We’re benignly regarded as being slightly too whacky to be taken seriously. “They take things too far”

It’s evident, to most people, that vegans want to alter things in a quite incredible way. It’s likely we’re people who deny others the simple pleasures of life. “You can’t talk to a vegan”. We’re seen to be obstinate to common sense. To non-vegans we’re the ones who “just don’t get it” – “I mean, how can you object to cheese, when it’s something so familiar to daily life? What’s so wrong about a cheesy pizza or a quiche?”

That’s the accepted line, and it’s based on a flimsy perception!

So, for starters, vegans need to point out (if we ever get the chance to open our mouths) that the collective consciousness, regarding animal food, is based on an ill-informed or misinformed perception of vegan-thing and the herbivorous-diet. Ultimately, it’s down to us, as vegans, to better inform people.

But not to frighten them. That’s the tricky bit. It’s always my intention to research the connection between animal products and ill health. If any questions are going to be asked, this is where they’ll start. But not to dwell too long here - it’s so easy for people like me to scare the bejesus out of people, to get them to go vegan. My telling my friends they’re all going to die horrible deaths isn’t such a good idea. However I know I must know the vital stuff, about ‘the connections’ and about basic nutrition, even if I don’t actually get to mention it.

This connection between eating animal protein and contracting heart disease, cancer, diabetes, poor circulation, loss of leg power and (with the worry of all this) dementia, is the nuclear arsenal of our arguments. I think we should lock it safely in a cupboard and use the material sparingly.

Instead of a fear-impelled change I’d rather see some energy going into perception-eering. I prefer to see myself (and my fellow vegans) looking for useful clues on how our omnivore friends perceive things; how we trick ourselves into seeing what isn’t there; and how we appease our taste buds to ease our addiction-worries. I want to understand how some humans take up great ideas which others push away. And instead of speaking with ‘vegan fire’, I want first to learn why some people with brains think for themselves and why others with equally good brains hardly think at all, about important issues; nor act at all.

I imagine the more insecure one is the more one wants to fit in. It’s almost primal complying with fashion - “Because you do it, so shall I”.

Food

512a
Food comes from supermarkets – grapes, potatoes, apples, lemons, oranges, excellent. The trolley is filling already. In the next aisle are the cheese-ball crisps, to keep the kids happy. And in the next aisle is the rich food, to keep the grown-ups happy. Especially welcome is the time-saver, the ready-to-go cardboard dinner.

I’m over in England at the moment, and I was in a supermarket the other day, which had about fifty metres of coolers ranged down the whole side of one wall. They were full of every conceivable combination of meaty, shove-‘em-in-the-microwave‘ meals. They obviously sell well.

You’d think humans would be after the best fuel, not the very worst. The food most people eat seems like a death wish. And you’d think we’d look after our magnificent machinery, and feed it the lightest, most easily digestible foods, not heavy stomach-fillers full of sugar and fat. Fast food is surely slowing-down food.

The Animal Industry produces all this heavy, clunking fuel, full of animal protein. Am I going too far to suggest ‘conspiracy’ here? Is it a plan to poison people whilst, at the same time, taking money from their pockets? Isn’t this like the dairy-farmer’s attitude to dairy cows – humans being subjected to a keep-em-alive, -milk-em-dry and -keep-em-dull policy?

Everyday we’re bombarded with junk food – we can’t avoid it. We accept the situation because shops have little else to offer. We stay silent. No one acknowledges that animal foods are dangerous or, by extension, acknowledges the holocaust of cruelty inflicted on them every day: and it all happens so that we can consume junk food whilst feeling no shame for the animals going under the knife.

That’s what humans do today, en masse. They kill. It’s happening all the time, now, yesterday, tomorrow, all day, every day, everywhere in the world. In a nutshell, as long as ethics are threadbare and our minds remain weakened (bodies poisoned, etc), the Animal Industries will continue to have a field day. They are not devoted to our welfare but to the making of profit and the poisoning of everything they touch.

So, what to do about it?

My life’s busy. I’m always in a hurry. I’m wasteful. Life’s stressful. I haven’t got time to contemplate ethics. It’s much easier to comply with A.I.

But vegans won’t comply. They look first to ethics. They don’t like what they see. They decide to eat ethically, thence to live ethgically.

Now, you might see ethics as a threadbare garment, unlikely to keep you warm. I regard ethics as a contract I sign, as a condition for entry into human existence. Maybe signing contracts is beyond me when I start life, so I have to wear my elders’ threadbare coat. It’s all I have for survival. But as I grew up I acquired my own coat, a new ‘inner wrapping’, to keep me warm. Almost warm but, in a way, much warmer than I’ve been before. So, the question is - warm enough in what way?

As a vegan I need plenty of motivation, just to survive in a cold, hard omnivore world. So, plenty of warmth I need. And that’s where ethics and passion and resolve combine, to keep me warm in a violence-addicted world (I mean, in human society).

For those who aren’t yet vegan, perhaps ‘warmth’ means something else. Anyway, your temperatures are already quite comfortable – there’s no disassociation to deal with, or any ‘fighting of Society’s values’. The moral values of our society might be taken for granted, and so ‘warmth’ might mean something different. Probably, for most people, it means getting more personal satisfaction. Dysfunctionally, it means wanting ever more warmth to satisfy raging greed, discontent and insecurity - if my life isn’t satisfying enough I’ll want more of everything, insatiably. I won’t want to be questioning the propriety of things either. I’m a grown up now. As an independent cashed-up adult I can afford to have the stuff I’ve always wanted. If a few ethics stand in my way I’ll brush them aside. Not think twice, for if I did my ethics might start asking awkward questions. What we love about morality is that it doesn’t even bother to try to answer the curly questions.

Out of personal convenience we humans have invented an anthropocentric values system. It just about governs all of our daily lives. The downside is that it incorporates double-think. It says, on the one hand, that murder and stealing and lying are wrong but that in certain circumstances they’re okay. A double standard is applied to our fellow sentients in the animal kingdom. Every country in the world promotes this logic-shift, in order to guarantee food supply. (To a vegan a supply of un-essential food).

A supply of all this attractive-but-violent food which is animal-derived is the make or break of Society. Every society in the world ignores ethics when it comes to food. Every country has their own code of moral conduct and all are corrupted by double-think. Morals - these useful little chaps - have allowed people everywhere in the world, to do whatever they want to do, to animals. Everyone knows animals can’t fight back – it’s just too easy for gun-toting humans to exploit them. Each society issues ‘animal-harm licenses’, so that farmers and scientists won’t be afraid of prosecution under their Cruelty-to-Animals laws (if they have any). Each society formulates its own anthropocentric code, embodied in ‘The Establishment’. Bishops, imams, rabbis and elders enforce it. We ordinary people let these people ‘look after’ our morals, in order that we can forget our inborn ethical codes of conduct.

Blind obedience is a worry, less so in children, more so in adults. Our lame compliance with our Poisoning Compliancy Laws is sad enough, but it holds humans in passive sway. We stay weakened and let our outrage fade. People are so hooked on such little (material) things, that addiction and temptation ensures that everyone stays compliant. Specifically, it stops us wanting to protect the animals, who are currently on Death Row.

Animal Rights is urgent and radical, and it has to be because, now, our leaders are greedy, fat, ugly and duplicitous. Not all, of course, just too many.

The protection of animals has to start with a new moral understanding: that humans aren’t to be trusted near animals, any more than paedophiles near school playgrounds. We’ve sunk to these depths because we’ve been persuaded, by established moral codes, and complied. You must agree, surely, that we all deserve the reputation we’ve made for ourselves – the most dangerous animal on earth, the poisoners of the planet. And when it comes to those fellow sentient beings we like to eat, it seems we’ve reached an end-point in self-degradation, and we eat now mainly for psychological reasons. For pacification. And in consequence we’re getting fatter and older quicker. And still satisfaction isn’t reached.

And then perhaps we have to face up to something really nasty in all of us – our insatiable urge to experience every sort of satisfaction possible, in a vain quest for contentment. As violence-addicted humans, we aren’t content with killing animals and eating them, we set out to drive them insane before we eat them. And then we do lots of others things to ourselves and, in consequence, eventually drive ourselves crazy.

Of course the big fear, amongst the most well-informed and educated people is their own march towards eating more vegan food in the future. They reluctantly see the writing on the wall, and hopefully not too late.

67:

The toxic human

Humans are the great poisoners; We poison the land, the water, the animals and plenty more. We take without constraint, and always by force. So what’s new?

I would like to see vegan principle applied to animal farming, to end it altogether. There’s food aplenty from plants. It’s what humans are doing to ‘food’ animals, and all the waste of energy in producing food from animals that is so tragic. It has been estimated that by efficient farming of crops we could feed twice the population of this planet, and with no animals involved at all. That’s the route, as far as I can see, to a happy planet.

By becoming vegan we harm no animals – that attracted me completely. I found that once a plant-based food-regime was up and running I could see more clearly what I’d been doing; I realised how I’d been poisoning myself and, by extension, the land; I ate poor food made with poor food-production methods. I was gung ho about it all, and eventually the animal cruelty thing got to me. I acted, as other vegans have done, and the older I get the more thankful I am, that I didn’t stay on the poisoned road.

Once upon a time, I couldn’t go past a cake shop. And so, hundreds of products which, as a cashed-up adult, I could now indulge in, all had to go. In consequence I hope I still enjoy relatively good health.

Epidemiological studies show that ill health is closely linked to animal-based diets, especially when animal protein is indulged in. Today, there’s a high incidence of deadly diseases. Obesity is rampant, as is loss of mobility and heart problems. In fact many people live in fear of illness linked with their poor diet.

The attraction or addiction to so many animal-based foods is a worry – we all worry about what we stuff into our mouths each day. Most of us think about early death, and we fret about our weight and wrinkles. On top of that, there’s that ‘other weight’ on our mind: fear that we aren’t in control of our lives. Perhaps I know I must “give up things”, but I’m afraid I can’t.

Vegans generally don’t have to worry about putting on weight or ingesting too much junk. Thank-god it’s all off limits – I always pass cake shops now - maybe with a slight nostalgic glance at the window?

Vegan food is far lighter than omnivore food, but so what? If I look chunky or thin it’s just body image. And who cares, relatively speaking? I suggest that the real killer isn’t body but conscience. With shaky ethics there’s stress and guilt, and worry about overall mental health.

We have this brilliant machine, complex, subtle, sturdy, made to last a hundred years, and we do our best to break it down.



To be continued … next blog

Our friends are not for shocking

511: Because animal exploitation concerns me so deeply, as a vegan, I’ll talk to anyone on this subject; it’s me who wants to get a conversation going so, if I bring up the subject, then, effectively, I’ve upped the ante and I must be responsible for what happens next Living in a free country, I can say what I like, but there are dangers. I can’t always trust myself when it comes to ‘turning nasty under provocation’. When I feel one of my ‘violences’ coming on, I know it’s time to leave, or to change the subject. I feel my ‘almost-violence’ come on when I push my veganism in people’s faces. My ‘passion’, my ‘beliefs’. “I’m vegan you see ...”, and that can easily look like bragging or seem to be deliberately confronting. Being in the company of a vegan shouldn’t be dreaded. But as soon as I start getting passionate about things, it shows in their faces, a fear I might mention ‘that subject’. Being confronted by a zealot, who only wants to tell people what they may or may not eat, is disturbing. But there are practical reasons too why people, like me, shouldn’t confront meat-eating friends without their inferred compliance. If I ever do talk-turkey I’m cautious not to give out too much. I like observing first – see what happens, wait, hold back a bit. I know it might take some time for the penny to drop, to realise what I’m moving towards. Such care? Why? Because as soon as it’s obvious to them what I MIGHT be heading towards, down come the shutters with all the familiar resistance-attitudes. I guess it’s something akin to a primal distaste for the idea of ‘going vegan’, a distaste for the impact it would have on one’s social life, for a start. Communicating with friends on any serious subject has to start somewhere, and for me, I want to start out normally, where I meet, kid around and maybe do or say something just to confirm we’re friends, as opposed to a less intimate acquaintance. Then, if it feels safe, I slip into more ‘serious talk’. Hopefully, you and I will try to keep it ‘together’, for the benefit of our friendship and mutual edification. Isn’t that how things should be all the time, about anything, with anyone? And isn’t that surely why different humans, from different cultures, have largely stopped trying to do – to tear each other’s throats out in war? And are we not now discussing our differences instead? And isn’t that why, today, we’d be better off ‘workshopping’ issues and talking through our differences? Anyone, even the most ardent carnivore, is speakable-with. No one has to be ‘impossible’ to talk to. Even me!

More about bridge building, less about shocking facts

510: If Animal Rights hasn’t touched enough people, it’s time to re-consider our approach. I’m into easing up on giving people ‘shocking-facts’. I’d rather concentrate a bit more on bridge-building. I say that not because the truth needs hiding but because we need to reform our the vegan image. Back in the 1980’s when the horrors of modern animal farming first came to light everyone was shocked, but soon enough it was ‘business as usual’. In 2012 things, down-on-the-farm, are worse and the horrors more widespread - there are more species of animal being abused and more individual animals being subjected to cruelty and indifference than ever before. The brainchild of modern factory farming, in the 1940s, was the idea of confining the movement of ‘moving animals’. It was a brilliant, if demonic, idea – to treat animals as if they were simply production machines. The phrase ‘hens in cages’ came to represent the extent to which humans could ‘beat Nature’ and get the most out of Nature. The cage came to be the very symbol of animal cruelty. And from there, where? The facts have not frightened, inspired or induced people to boycott cruelly-produced, animal-based commodities. And that says something fundamental about human nature ... and yet, how concrete it is is arguable (And therefore, how big a job vegans will have trying to change it). This is how it seems to me: Yes, people are genuinely shocked when they hear about cruelty. Yes, people shake their heads in disbelief . No, people will NOT inflict self-punishment, food-punishments especially. And yes, people still think that if they boycott animal products they would ruin the quality of their life. It is true that being vegan reduces choices in the supermarket food department by about 40%. (In a survey I once did, in a supermarket, out of 7000 shelf choices some 4,000 contained animal ingredients). You might be firmly against hens in cages but the question is whether you are ready to drop your favourite biscuits because they contain caged-hens’ eggs. It seems that we humans are not yet willing to change the habits of our lifetime, unless we’re in personal health danger. We say, “Be kind to animals”, but that’s where it stops. It doesn’t extend to farm animals. And that, to me, is inexplicable. For vegans that is the point from which our whole different lifestyle begins. And from that stems my suspicion that humans are not to be trusted around animals, since we have such a rich history of abusing them. I’m on a visit to England at the moment, and I was walking along a magically beautiful river bank today, and in a paddock next to the path was a herd of black cows. They live in one of the prettiest places in England BUT they can’t experience any of it - they’re imprisoned in a field surrounded by barbed wire and below the levee bank. They can’t actually see the river from where they stand. It occurred to me that these cows, these carbon-based lifeforms are soft. They can never overcome the mineral-based steel which imprisons them. Steel, cold, hard, sharp – Nature has no defence against the fence. Steel was invented by humans to help them dominate, and in this case to enslave their soft carbon-based underlings. Steel is the undoing of the farm animal – there’s no escape past it. No cow can contend with steel wire with sharp piercing points. So these cows are forced to wander like lunatics in an asylum, feeding solely on one crop, grass, with very little dietary variation. The sole purpose of their being is to fatten and await a cruel execution, which is, surely, no reason for living. We dominate the animals, efficiently and in a cold-as-steel way, which is why animal advocates start from a ‘rights’ point of view and not one of welfare reform. I, like many vegans, only promote a no-use-animal policy. This view, however, is a long way from how most other people see things. But here’s the funny thing. I often hear people say, “I agree with you … and that’s why I only eat free range”. Should I point out to them that ALL farm animals are executed cruelly, these ‘free’ hens the same as battery cage hens? Well, no ... maybe yes, maybe no. Building bridges towards understanding might be more useful than rubbing salt into guilt-wounds. I utter the word ‘battery-hen’ and people think I’m only talking ‘eggs’, while I’m aiming towards talking far more broadly. The ‘hen’ example is only part of a much vaster picture of animal exploitation. At some stage in human history, every omnivore will either be so sick from eating animal stuff or the animals themselves will be so sick, or both, that they’ll be forced to come to terms with (what we know today as) ‘vegan principle’. And, in all fairness, they may find the finding-out interesting and eventually the most valuable information they’ve ever picked up. However, at present any information a vegan might impart will only ever seem like a propaganda rave. Eventually people will be interested enough to want to understand the difference between vegetarian and vegan ... and when they know more, who knows, they might see the light ... or not! Very often it’s “Thanks very much but that’s as far as I go”. And the next time I’m spotted, walking down the street they cross over, to avoid being ear-bashed; being bailed up by an evangelising vegan is never nice. And that’s my main point. We have to be able to shake off our earlier stultifying image, otherwise Animal Rights will seem to have deteriorated into a cult. The protection of animals should never become a church, which is why vegans should never preach. (It simply doesn’t work, in my opinion). And also, vegans shouldn’t confuse being vegan-proud with boasting about it. Preaching and bragging go hand in hand here. If a vegan isn’t allowed to preach at people they might just settle for bragging, by finding excuses to tell the world, “I am a vegan …(implying they are ‘second cousin, once removed, from Jesus Christ’)”. Righteousness, I mean self-righteousness, is ugly. If omnivores want to dislike us for being ‘up’ ourselves they have every right. I’d rather be known for igniting dangerous discussions. Perhaps, as vegans, we are radicals, revolutionaries and reprobates, but I think we can be forgiven if we’ open (I mean open as in ‘soft-open’, as in not radiating any aggro). Before I step through your front door, before I enter your living room, before I launch an ethics attack on your heart, I must be acceptable to you. I want you to like me and accept me for who I am and what WE stand for. Without that, I can’t expect you to let me put my foot in your door. This is why I prefer NOT to be the purveyor of shocking-facts (tempting though it is, in the face of so much ignorance). I try, instead, to be thought of as a sort of handy-corner-shop-cum-library, a conduit for ideas, a purveyor of information-on-request. From my point of view, if YOU don’t know what’s going on, you can’t be expected to question the animal-food you eat, and I’m starting from that basis ... until I know otherwise. It’s possible that you DO know but don’t care anyway, but I’d need to be sure about that before I leave my little information booth. At this point in time, still so relatively early in Society’s Animal Rights consciousness, I think some caution is needed from us. As an advocate for animal liberation, I try to restrain myself. Although I’m never short of something to say, I often keep schtum. It’s not that I’m embarrassed or ashamed or shy or short on argument. In fact I’m happy to speak freely, as I would with any other social issue ...but this particular subject is a ticklish one. We, all of us, literally eat our words every day, and that determines our view on these animals. Whilst vegans are free to be open on this subject, non-vegans are probably not. I often expect people to be as open with me as I think I am being with them, but let’s be honest, we vegans can sometimes act like attack dogs. I have to learn how NOT to drop bombs on people. As soon as I start to turn the screws I can see the effect it has on others, within earshot. What they hear isn’t necessarily what I’m saying – they often feel me getting ‘personal-by-implication’. They see me getting snippy about ‘differences of opinion’. They hear familiar words they’ve heard before, which sound like scriptural quotes. So they feel bored by me and I get frustrated with them, and then, effectively, our time’s up ... any chance of a useful dialogue is over. If I can keep non-judgemental in my exchanges then I probably can’t go wrong; I’m more likely to be accepted as an approachable person, along with what I wanted to say. Somehow, god-knows-how, we need to establish mutual respect by promising not to judge each other’s values. I want to ooze non-judgement. I never want to be seen lunging at anybody with my spear of truth.

Shocking facts

509: I wonder how a ‘known animal activist’ comes across – as when I meet a mate in the street. How do I seem to a non-vegan? I smile and even hug, and say, “How are you?” and do it without thinking. There’s talk, conversation, nice vibes ... until I allow the talk to wander into dangerous territory. You know what they say about sex, politics and religion. Well, we could send the same warning to me, when I try to talk Animal Rights to anyone. The atmosphere changes. And when it does, I walk into the same trap every time - I think to myself, “I’ve got a lot to say on this subject”. And I wait for the right opportunity to say it. But should I? I might say something controversial, and see how they react (notice how I’m already assuming our light hearted chat in the street is becoming a ‘deep and meaningful’). Let’s just imagine that I say something. The subject is aired. My main job is not necessarily to deliver my Animal Rights spiel, but to watch my tongue. And attend to how I seem, what mood I seem to be in. I’m asking myself if I can say what I have to say and yet stay calm, and yet speak strongly, but not too strongly ... it’s a balancing act. The last thing I want is for them to change the subject. So, this is what I try to do: avoid sermons and any hint of personal attacking. I avoid slogans. I calm-talk in order to cement my good intentions and peaceful priorities. And I keep it short and neat, because I think more is communicated by understatement than diatribe. I also notice when my favourite ‘shock-facts’ are brought out, they can seem stale if they’ve been heard before. So, all in all I’m trying NOT to be a Bible-basher quoting scripture. Whenever I try to persuade people I fail. I always make it look like a conversion rally. I doubt if I’ll ever succeed in getting anybody to think deeply about what they don’t want to think about. But here’s a thing. Let us assume conscience is strong in everybody. I might be wrong about that. If vegans have a more comfortable relationship with their conscience it might be that animal-eaters don’t so much because conscience no longer call the shots. My point is this, that conscience might be easily overridden whenever it interferes with ‘important comforts’ (like acquiring necessary animal food and clothing). Remnants of conscience are always present and even more so when it’s just a sleeping conscience. Vegans attempt to stir the collective conscience by encouraging people to think for themselves and, I would say, letting them find their own way minus our conversion tactics. If I were to say to you, “What is your main problem in life?” It could be that we simply can’t stop ourselves overriding our conscience. Doing wrong when you should be doing right, etc The best example of this overriding of conscience is shown when we buy eggs. Everyone knows about ‘Hens in Cages’, even kids. But it’s not necessarily ‘thought about’, and so it’s not acted upon. In main stream media hardly anything is ever mentioned about animal issues (because almost everybody is too busy eating them to want to make it an issue in the first place). Most people are nowhere near boycotting animal products, and in reality, they buy things every day that, upon closer examination, they wouldn’t possibly approve of. But if that’s so, then nothing can be gained by me going around exposing peoples’ guilty habits. The only thing I can do is to get people used to thinking for themselves. And all this I have to try to do surreptitiously, since the last thing we need to do is embarrass our adversaries. It only causes them to dig their heels in deeper.