Our sensitivities are poles apart

1321: 

There’s an enormous difference of opinion between the protectors of animals and the users of animals.  Many of us who are animal activists have been involved for so long, that it’s possible we’ve forgotten how we once felt, when we accepted living as an integral part of mainstream society.  We ate as others did, wore leather shoes, wore the same fabrics, etc.   And now, all that has changed and we’re used to feeling part of a minority.

For non-vegans, they’ve always been part of the majority, who eat anything on offer.  Just to take one example of a routinely used product, cheese. To most people cheese is just cheese, and they've never given a thought to the origin of it. So when we say “no dairy products” (which includes cheese), the cheese-eater doesn’t connect that with something unethical. We can talk all we like about animal slavery, but to them cheese will just be cheese. Arguments about how it is produced, the treatment of the dairy cow, the killing of calves and the genetic modification of the cow’s mammary glands all sound a bit too complicated to listen to.  It’s easier to NOT investigate too deeply, and continue to enjoy cheese, and of course the hundreds of other popular food products of which milk is an integral part.

It’s easier to think of vegans just as weirdoes. 

Ethics starts with Non-Violence

1320: 

Apart from the vegan diet being nutritionally sound, it’s also an ethical diet because it is based on non-violence, meaning that animals don’t ever have to be killed or exploited or violated.  Vegans can therefore live with a clear conscience.  We aren’t involved in the daily violence that all non-vegans are party to.

But if we say this in so many words, it will be seen as an aggressive attack, however true we might think we are being.  If we accuse someone of being violent, because they eat meat or dairy products, that accusation will be construed as a ‘violence’ in itself.  For this reason alone, we should avoid these sorts of accusations.  By pressing our opinion too hard in this way, we hint at aggression, and lose our best chance to discuss things rationally.  Once someone feels they’re being attacked, they’ll counter attack, and then the discussion goes round in circles.  The central arguments will be forgotten and their hostile attitude to Animal Rights will become more deeply entrenched.  And in future they may only see us as wanting to subvert society by liberating all the animals which, put that way, sounds like anarchy.  Which opens the way to some particularly insidious legislation - it being only a matter of time before ‘food-denigrating’ becomes illegal, as it is in some parts of USA.  The animal industry, supported by almost all consumers, already has enough political clout to bring this about.  We face a dilemma here - we stand bravely for what we believe and aren't afraid to say it as we see it. On the other hand, we can alienate everyone with our brave words and end up having communicated nothing at all

Nutritious arguments

1319:

In any sort of discussion on animal-use we need to keep our cool because there are always two points of view, each opposite view valid to one person more than the other.  Before getting to matters of ethics and cruelty, we must deal with our own survival, so the issue of food must be dealt with.

Vegans who are dealing with matters of vegan nutrition are challenging a food tradition which is accepted as gospel: that animal foods are essential for health.  By promoting a vegan diet, we are making a case for the safety and healthiness of a plant-based diet.  At the same time we’re saying that meat and animal products are actually unhealthy.  This latter proposal doesn’t make sense to healthy young people, since they’ve been eating meat and dairy all their lives and they feel okay.  They’ll probably suggest we “Go tell it to our sixty year old friends, not us”.  Their fear of illness seems to them to be a lifetime away.

It’s easy for us to get bogged down in nutritional arguments and yet we do need to be sure we can address safety issues.  If we can speak confidently about food, we’ll show that best by inviting genuine questions, so that we can show that plant-based diets are safe and all nutritional needs may be met from plant food.  There are safeguards we need to mention in some detail, in order to answer all questions of safety.  But, food is used as a diversionary tactic, where it becomes easy for them to bog us down in nutritional argument.  It becomes a peg on which discussion hangs its hat – the talk is all about ‘diet’, anything to get away from the dark side, the cruelty of animal farming.

Our ‘return-point’ in any discussion is ‘ethics’.  This is where compassion is ignited and where we can win people over. 

Bring on the debate not the quarrel

1318: 

If there were a debate on Animal Rights I imagine there’d be two opposite positions, and all very ordered.  But in the real world outside the debating chamber, stereotypes, prejudices, half truths and misinformation abound.  I struggle to get even one decent point across without being interrupted.  I’m handicapped by what’s gone before.  So, to turn things around, I establish that I’m an okay-person, fair-minded, not aggressive and respect both human issues and animal issues.  I realise it’s an up-hill job, to draw the majority towards our minority view, and because I’m the one wanting to debate animal issues, not the other way round, I’ll be the one taking the initiative to be civilised about the way we speak.

Before I get anywhere near the business end of discussing animals, I'd be setting the standard for non-violent interaction, logical argument, and never going on the defensive.  Animal Rights has a powerful argument so there’s no need for us to lose our advantage by demanding our right to speak.  We have to get others to want to take us on, and if they seem aggressive it’s often a cover for their weaker position.

So, how much do we dare to provoke and how much do we try to sweeten people into taking us on?  Why try to pick a fight when we can instead bring out people’s sense of their own truth?  We shouldn’t force them to respond to us or try to emotionally blackmail them.  This wish to talk about the issues must come from them and, at first, the issues they choose to discuss might not be the really big issues.  It will likely be food and health and animal welfare.  It’s up to us, then, to carefully introduce cruelty and slavery and all the really heavy stuff, but with an eye on the impact we’ll be making.

However hard they try to defend animal use, however hard they try to argue that it isn’t cruel, however adamant they are about meat being strengthening, their arguments weaken on account of the unethical violence and violation involved in all stages of animal farming. 

As soon as there’s a willingness to talk, we can say what we have to say, simply and without too many words.  We don’t need to labour the point.  Things can be left hanging since these weighty issues need time to be thought through.  When we've all had our say, we must show every genuine attempt to part company with each other as friends, not as quarrelling enemies.  If we’ve ‘had words’, then that is what will stick.  And it’s likely that everything that has been discussed about ethics and health will be swept away in the emotional discomfort of having quarrelled about it.

The no-brainer

1317:

When I comment on animal food, the already-converted will say “Yes”  but with others, especially if I’m not invited, talking about Animal Rights or vegan issues sets off alarm bells.  Omnivores just won’t listen when I sound as though I’m criticising their food!  Especially since they might already feel a bit guilty about their position on the animal connection.  Understandably, they regard what I say as excessive chutzpah.

         

But for some activists it’s okay - these people deserve to be confronted.  But the danger is that free-willed people who walk away may be so put off by our confronting approach that they're forever lost to us.  So, who wins then?

         

The alternative to this bulldozer approach is for us to show a particular sensitivity when talking about Animal Rights.  Face to face we can judge whether there’s an interest in hearing what we’ve got to say, or if they’re building a brick wall against us.

         

Some think animals deserve to have a life of their own.  The vast majority haven’t thought about it - the question is never brought up and if it were it would be considered an absurd question.

         

But where the question of animals having rights is discussed, no other subject hots up quite so quickly.  For the confirmed carnivore this whole subject is a no-brainer.  What happens?  The activist tries some moral bludgeoning, the adversary denigrates them and nothing useful is achieved.  For the carnivore, using animal-food is as natural as breathing; a meat-meal is never seen as an act of condoning violence.  If there’s any curiosity at all, it’s academic and not applicable to everyday living.  Maybe what we say is a shock when we say it, but it passes from memory as quickly as a night’s dream when you wake up.  There's just no reason to remember what we’ve said.

How to save our souls

1316: 

Violence would have been dropped long ago if humans were less quarrelsome.  Our thirst for war stems from our need to be safe and to place ourselves at the top of the heap – to do that we have to dominate ‘inferior’ humans and ‘lower’ species.  Humans might see themselves at the top, but we also know our ambition to get there has been our undoing.

The thirst for power is the province of those people already near the top of the heap, but for the rest of us, we’ve been content to exploit the lower orders, most prominently the non-humans; for us, it hasn’t been so much a matter of dominating and feeling powerful as being able to guarantee food supplies and, with that ensured, the pleasure of eating certain types of foods.  By becoming hooked on pleasure-giving foods and many other little comforts associated with products from the animal kingdom, we’ve landed ourselves in both a physical and ethical mess.  If we’d learnt how to survive and thrive on plant based foods and materials, we wouldn’t now have to face up to reducing our carbon footprint or ending mass starvation or fighting obesity or struggling with the shortage of clean water.  Each of today’s major problems can be related back to centuries of advantage-taking, of taking more than we need and leaving others, notably animals, to their unenviable fate.  We are now so used to a decadent lifestyle that we can’t face the habits we’ve developed, which make us dependent on the enslaving and domestication of animals.

         

If we do eventually come to our senses and save our world in the nick of time, then we’ll have effectively saved our souls.  But we still have a long way to go to reach this stage of human development.  And if circumstances of ill-health and climate change are forcing us face the music, we can either get there easily or get there kicking and screaming.  It’s up to each one of us.  We can be insensitive and suffer for it, or we can start to respect our planet, look after our bodies and empathise with our victims.  The we can set about repairing the damage we’ve done.  And with good grace, we can become vegan.  It's our choice as free-willed individuals - we can step onto the vegan path now or go vegan at the eleventh hour when there’s even more damage done and even more to repair.

Idealism goes a long way

1315: 

If our main aim is to get people to listen we must first ask - why would they WANT to?  Perhaps they'll be intrigued by our different angle on things.  On this subject of food and animals, maybe they want the sort of information they’d normally never get to hear about.  At first, we might not know what their real interest is.  We must be prepared to cater for whatever they want and be prepared to back off from anything they show they don't want to hear about.  It's always their call.

Let's say I am talking with a friend, and they know I’m vegan, they know I’m pro-animal and anti-abattoir.  They might even know why I include milk and egg products on my prohibited list. If all this is NOT unacceptable to them, they might, nevertheless, be expecting the Ten Commandments from me.  So instead, I'll try to mention all the attractive reasons for being vegan.

I’ll try to paint a picture of a non-violent future, a different attitude to animals which could bring about a shift in human nature.  And I’ll attempt to link that to food choices, clothing and commodity choices, all of which for vegans are choices directly connected to harmlessness.  I’ll talk about a world without a slave trade in animals or abattoirs or animal farms.  And my aim would be to ultimately show that this ideal-world isn’t unattainable.  As soon as we start to develop empathy and altruism we automatically drop violence, selfishness and the main self-destructions.

Without any hint of fear-mongering, I would prefer to speak optimistically, and imagine how normal and natural it is to become more mature as human beings.  The harmlessness principle not only brings us personal health and happiness but it allows us to walk the earth without a nagging sense of guilt.  It allows us to breathe easily.