Healers

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There are two different approaches, marching alongside each other, almost under the same banner – they each have something important to say about the state of human health and ethics. The rationale behind each approach might be all very interesting, but who amongst us has the time to contemplate ideas when, apart from health & ethics, there’s so much else to learn about, like the state of the planet, the quarrels between nations and the current state of one’s relationships?

            If I consider the animal abuse issue to be central I will prioritise that and want everyone else to lay aside other issues to prioritise that too. As a proponent of these issues, knowing as I do, quite a lot about animals and farming and the general wickedness of people in relation to animals, I will heavily promote veganism. But in the opposite camp there are some very bright cookies who promote something distinctly different. They are the healers. No, not the vegan healers, the non-vegan ones who are advocating from an entirely different basis, as proponents of ‘healthy’ diets or spiritual practices. They have wonderful wisdoms to impart. All of us could gain so much by listening to them, but by their not yet being vegan themselves they expose themselves to being taken not entirely seriously. They speak highly of peace and love, of sustainability and eating good quality foods. They are admired for their holistic and gentle approach but unfortunately they are laughed at for how they are in private, their habits and the way in which those habits run counter to the principles they espouse. Just by what they spend their money on they show that they aren’t as completely convinced of the peace and love principle as they say they are.

Consistency and fun

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Our primary act of ‘consistency’ is in our own vegan-living, obviously. You can’t be much use to animals if you still ingest them! But the next consistency is in taking on the world, over this one thing – not-using-animals. Being highly consistent in this, vegans are in a very good position to take on and outwit ‘the exploiters’.

Outwitting them should be easy enough since omnivores find it hard to justify animal abuse. But we have a reputation to overcome, that of taking ourselves too seriously and being needy for approval. Obviously, waiting for recognition from omnivores is a big waste of time.

But assuming a vegan does hold respect for people no matter who they are. That doesn’t disempower us – we can still tease them mercilessly with the minimum of harm being done. It’s actually fun advocating the animals’ case, if only by seeing the bewildered looks on people’s faces when we spell out the simple reasons that give ‘vegan’ sense.  

Food fashion

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If the food fashion ever moves towards plant-based foods it will be a catastrophe for the market, or so the fear goes. There will be price-rises, unavailability of products and all we’ll be left with are plant-based products. If that is the trend the vegans of today may feel silly for having too little confidence in how things were to work out.

I’m hinting optimism here. What if the native intelligence of fellow humans changes? Shouldn’t we give them ‘the benefit of the doubt’? For we vegans there’s a trap within a trap; it’s shaky self esteem. We’re in need of personal recognition and we won’t get it by pounding the public psyche.

We’re trying to do two things at once - informing people but still needing them to ‘take us seriously’; we want encouragement from people who’re in no position to give the sort of encouragement we want.

Vegan activists don’t like it when people won’t listen. We get touchy. We don’t balance our duty of care, providing the public with information’, with our own ‘need to be noticed’. Of course we want to be respected but we want to act in loco parentis too. If, as activists, we can’t balance these two needs we’ll remain feeling furious at the whole of humanity.

At root, vegans hate the obstinacy of people because we know that they know. But we can sometimes be like a three year old child stamping his foot when he can’t get his own way. I might  want to ride rough-shod over all the people against me.

We need to realise that any ‘rough’ approach always fails. People don’t like being railroaded. Any kind of bullying feels intimidating. It must be resisted.

For us, we need to remember that because there are so many omnivores out there, that they won’t let themselves be pushed around by a minority of vegans. All I’m saying is that no one knows how things will turn out in the future, but that things CAN and DO change dramatically. It’s a handle to hold onto during these early days of emerging animal rights consciousness. When things do change they will probably change quite rapidly. So, if we want particular changes to occur we need to play our part by actively ‘expecting’ change. For optimism to ‘work’ we must maintain consistency - our own personality is the key. The big trap is in letting the idiot public slow us down, with all the tricks they play to preserve the status quo.

Traps for the vegan activist

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For those who eat animals the most precious thing would be to have a clear conscience about it. But, for the thinking person, that is impossible. The guilt of one’s eating habits corrodes self image as well as destroying the best of our health. Short of abstaining there’s nothing that can help.

For those who do take up a plant-based eating regime their conscience is, to a large extent, cleared, and if they then become active as animal advocates their creativity is sharpened by the nature of the challenge they face.

Being creative as well as compassionate can bring the best out in a person, because we’re addressing one of the most important and difficult questions facing humanity today – human dependency on animal flesh and by-products and the consequent involvement, by proxy, with animal cruelty. A vegan is relieved of both problems by using only plant-based products. I’ve said this already a thousand times.

But there’s something else important here for the well-being of our psyche. There’s a certain benefit and satisfaction in having something meaningful to devote one’s life to beyond solely self-interest – whilst ensuring a longer, healthier and more energy-filled life we’re able to focus attention on animals from whom nothing is reciprocated. That opens us up to altruism, but there are traps along the way.

At some stage vegans may have to decide what sort of activist they’re going to be. It’s a matter of not falling into the obviously-tempting trap of going-to-war-against-every-non-vegan. The trick is to learn to keep our cool.

While it’s tempting to give up on people (especially those who criticise us) it’s better not to lose the ground we’ve made so far, that others have made, before us. So far we might have prized open a tiny crack which might close up if we get trapped by our own anger and proceed to blow the peace-loving reputation vegans might have built.

If we attack those who won’t agree with us, if we try any sort of persuasive violence, we’ll discover a dead end. Protests that become violent are good media fodder and yet another opportunity for them to ‘blacken’ us. The ‘angry image’ is a convenient one for those who dislike what we are saying. When we appear angry it’s self-defeating. But, despite all that, protest is important – it can be inspiring. It can sow the seeds of truth in people’s minds. Naturally we want to speed it up and be seen to be doing something about ‘cruelty’, and bring it to the public’s attention.

Activists go out on a night time ‘raid’, to a factory farm, to take video footage of conditions there. They aim to provide visual proof, thus to strengthen their powerful argument against these places. People watching the news see pictures of shocking things happening. It’s undeniable, and the viewer can no longer say they don’t know. They can’t indulge their ‘no-one’s-noticing-so-what-the-hell’ attitude. For them, it’s impossible to forget what they’ve seen.

But they go straight back to eating the very animals they’ve just seen horror footage of. To the animal rights advocate that’s so unbelievable that we can’t help showing it.

Which brings us back to this problem of approach – whether it is effective to show shock, anger and disbelief or take a more careful, patient and overtly non-violent, non-judgemental approach.

You might say that peaceful protest has won nothing for animals. The anti-vivisectionists, swearing non-violence, have been fighting peacefully for a hundred years and still animal experimentation goes on. One might think that nothing is gained by being reasonable. But were these protesters themselves showing a double standard? Were these well-intentioned peaceful people abusing animals by still eating them? If so, how could anyone take them seriously if they hadn’t been able to ‘put their money where their mouth is’?

Now, today, there’s a more sophisticated protester, a better-informed, totally non-abusing animal advocate, who can appeal to logic, health and compassion, who lives according to the highest principles; and this non-violent protester wouldn’t be rubbing their darts of criticism with the poison of judgement. But that is a hard logic to follow for any impatient protester. Each of us has to find out how we can show disapproval without causing unnecessary injury to others. That’s something we each have to work out for ourselves.

The ultimate cause

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In many ways if the food switch-over can be handled, veganism has a lot to offer. It attracts adventurous people who are looking to build a reputation for integrity and who want to become energetic activists.

There are a lot of good causes to get involved with today but none more urgent than the plight of food-animals. The food industry uses and abuses vast numbers of animals in every country of the world, and almost every single human on the planet connives in this abuse of animals. No other crime is committed against so many, so coldly, and no other crime is so hushed up. Animal Rights is largely an unreported issue, because so many are deeply implicated and it’s therefore convenient if people can still plead ignorance of it.

For most people showing any sensitivity to the plight of food animals isn’t seriously considered. It is not discussed, not thought about, not acted upon; animals are there, we farm them, we eat them, end of story.

Caution when approaching the omnivore

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Being non-violent isn’t the same as being passive or polite; it is a system of approach that is largely untried or untested. Which is why is needs to be discussed in some detail.

Force is the way of the world, and all of our systems are kept in place by force. As animal activist vegans we can’t fight force with force. We have to be more subtle than that.

If enough activists are committed to other approaches, if we are willing to consider and try them, we’ll see how powerful non-violent action can be.

If there are ways to approach this omnivore mind-set, using less ‘in-yer-face’ methods, as soon as they begin to work we might hope for a snowballing effect. It’s a long shot, accepting that violence in any form is ineffective and putting all our effort into altering attitude rather than just people’s eating habits. By taking a punt on ‘truth-force’ we’re sure to find it slower, seeing as how we’re a tiny minority dealing with a vast majority. But the results in the end will be more permanent and have the power of setting a new attitudinal fashion. We can either set fire to fur-farms or explore less destructive ways of exerting a much more subtle pressure.

Violent direct action

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There’s a disconnect between those who care about the animal situation and those who don’t. It is much greater than we want to admit. And if we don’t have a plan to improve that connection, where lots of people switch attitude, then we’re left with our dreams and little else.

We might look forward to a great leap forward in consciousness, pray for it, wish hard for it, but we might see nothing much happening. So far the momentum isn’t building enough for a fashion to emerge. We make dolly steps towards the liberation of animals, but the cause doesn’t noticeably seem to thrive. We see the meat trade doing well and people blissfully unaware of anything being wrong with their eating habits. It’s all quite depressing.

Vegan activists might be wanting some action. They up the ante. They do something outrageous, to get the ball rolling. On a farm where mink are caged, the animals are released and the farm torched. The press have a field day with the story, and of course skew it in favour of the mink farmer.

What actually happens is that the animals are released. But being ‘domesticated’ they’re unable to survive in the wild. They raid local farms and kill chickens. The locals hunt them down to prevent losing more poultry. The mink die. Then the media hunt down the arsonists. Soon everyone has forgotten why the activists raided the mink farm in the first place - no one’s interested in conditions for fur-farm animals. As a result, the public remains ignorant and grows even more hostile towards animal activists. The activists are caught, jailed and fined.

The overall effect of a direct action like this might well be opposite to what was intended. Violent protest stirs the blood of both the activist and the activist-haters. So, how can we up the ante, without going to the extreme of doing damage or setting fires? What will bring our message home and make it sink in? How can we bring to the public’s attention about the hell holes in which so many animals are suffering?