Planning for the far future

1350: 

Needless to say, animals are different to us.  They possess no hubris, no superiority and they know (mainly wild animals) how dangerous humans can be (domesticated animals being too punch-drunk to know anything).  Their senses are impeccable, but they can’t judge everything about us because we are so very different from them.  However, they do realise we have power over them.

Unlike animals, we try to improve things and with that comes the violence of maintaining our position-of-dominance, over Nature and especially over animals. The damage we’ve done has come from trying to improve things by wit, strength and ruthlessness. We’ve never learnt to ‘be content with our lot’. And now, at the eleventh hour, our manipulation and bullying have brought us to the brink of catastrophe. The animals we've become dependant upon are the subject of whole economies.  They are raised in ghetto conditions, pumped with chemicals and medications to prevent disease outbreaks in the huge flocks and herds. They then provide humans with toxic food products that are nevertheless still attractive enough for humans to use to excess and be poisoned by. We are caught in the grip of cheap and harmful products which we can no longer do without.

         

Now, some of us want to turn in a completely different direction.  We want to move away from animal products because the industry which makes use of animals is no longer regarded as even remotely ethical.  But it’s like steering an ocean liner 180 degrees.  It has so much momentum that to swing it around is a slow process.  So we look beyond our own lifetime, to future generations of responsibility-takers and life-enjoyers, who we hope will, by that time, be unselfconsciously non-violent.  And let us hope that it will come naturally to them to never even contemplate taking advantage of animals for food, any more than it would occur to them to take advantage of a woman or a child for dominant sexual gratification. 

Harmlessness

1349:

We need to have confidence in order to say what we have to say.  We need to be exemplars of non-violence, and we can show that by sticking to non-violent food, which symbolises the principles by which we live.  Harmlessness is the basis of our eating, shopping, thinking and talking.  But it also must underpin our approach to other people.

But it’s here where we find ourselves in a tricky position, over our ‘approach’.  We need to be assertive and not indecisive, but we also need an obviously non-violent approach.  One way of being effective is to go against our impulse to preach, and become not closed-off to opposite suggestions from the ‘outside adversary’.  As animal advocates and activists, we don’t always have a good track record with our 'approach', simply because of our unwillingness to listen to opposite arguments.  But this is surely the key to effective communication.

         

We most of us still have a lot to learn about ‘the non-violent approach’.  Is that because we hate violence but still have some of it in our own lives?  And do we still have it because we entertain some doubts about non-violence itself, in the manner of, “Nice idea but too ineffective”?

By being neither one thing nor the other, we might move forward far too slowly.  So even though we set a good example in our eating habits, we might not, otherwise, be that different from our omnivore friends.  In our society, non-violence isn’t taken too seriously, because we think it seems a bit whimpish, and by doubting it we emasculate it.  This is why we never get to discover its true usefulness.

It should be more obvious to vegans than anyone else, that in something as simple as one's choice of ethical food, the non-violence as a principle is very powerful indeed.  Very inspirational!

The unthinking approach

1348: 

The original principle of non-violence is behind everything Animal Rights stands for.  With that in place one can’t justify hurting them. And withholding freedom from any sentient being by force comes under the heading of 'hurt'.

No one wants to hurt, but we humans are not used to resisting things we want.  We know we can overpower animals to get what we want.  Most animals aren’t protected by law, so we prey on them.  “Hang it, I’ll do what I’ve always done.  Everyone else does it so why shouldn’t I?”

Straight talking

1347: 

Some of us vegans rely so heavily on speaking with great emotion that we forget how we sound.  This subject ignites passion in us but it ignites warning signals with others, like being about to be drowned.  Straight talking is essential, but we must leave space for opposite opinions to be aired.  And then listen to them as openly as we expect others to listen to ours.

We’re most of us amateur communicators - we aren’t trained to see ourselves as others see us.  We speak from the heart and don’t adjust what we say according to people’s limits of acceptability.  Hopefully, people might show that they genuinely admire the stand we make.  And perhaps they half want to take our side.  But mostly, they want useful information from us, and definitely don’t want to be lectured.

         

If we outline our arguments, we should at the very least supplement them with handy tips on the vegan diet. We need to tell people how to fix a tasty meal, how to find alternative ingredients and cruelty-free products. Then we can explain why we have gone out of our way, and gone this far away from traditional food regimes. And then we can tell them about what's happening to animals on farms.

We have to be careful with details and verifiable facts, to get them right. For example, if we say that all animal products are unhealthy and cruel we need references to back up these statements.  We can’t get away with making associations between animal-based products and certain illnesses, like saying “Meat causes cancer”, unless we can back this up with sound references.  And it’s the same when speaking about animal cruelty, where we need to provide details.  We should have at hand all the important details concerning the sow stall, the battery cage, the biology behind milk, and what happens at abattoirs.

Animal Rights is always going to provoke a strong reaction - we’re telling people why we are outraged, implying that they should be too. We’re telling them that their trusted foods are not to be trusted. We’re commenting on morals and health issues, and no one likes listening to straight-talk from vegans, when it reflects their own compliance with their poor nutrition and animal torture.  All this we can talk about freely, but we need to keep subjectivity and opinion low key, and be able to fill in all the gaps with objective information.

Debating Vegan Principle

1346: 

Why are we so keen to talk about Animal Rights, altering attitudes and changing habits?  Is it to make people feel guilty or is it a wish to implant a sense of optimism in others - “Go Vegan and Save the Planet”?

         

If, in fact, we do see this much potential in vegan principle we’ll probably be busting to talk about it.  Are we then surprised when we find no one wants to know, when we get cold-shouldered?

It seems that so fiercely do people NOT want to know, that everything is thrown at us, to either shut us up or to convince us to return to the fold.  At bottom, the majority of people are suspicious of ‘minority types’, like vegans.  They think we are deluded and perhaps less sincere than we seem.  They see us speaking about kindness to animals but being not as kind towards people. 

Whether this is true or not, the rejection vegans get often makes us try all the harder to come across as sincere people.  And ultimately that is not such a bad thing, since as vegans we may have to learn the hard way, because on this matter of being utterly sincere and not having any ulterior motives, it is central to our credibility.  And credibility is the key to effectiveness.  

Promoting Vegan

1345: 

Once I've established a vegan lifestyle, when it's all in place then I'll want to get political - I’ll be urgent to speed things up on the Animal Rights front.  I'll want to start a small revolution in my corner of the world.  I’ve gone from a wannabe-vegan to wannabe-vegan-warrior.  Now I’m ready to take on the world.  And yet, this isn’t reality, is it?  Or is it?

         

However passionate we are, we should bear in mind we aren’t seasoned politicians with a tough exterior, ready to rip into adversaries.  We’re just ordinary people talking to other ordinary people.  And our ‘adversaries’, who are they?  They’re probably sensitive, free-willed beings, who will decide things for themselves, no matter what we say or how forcibly we say it.  Once we start actively advocating Animal Rights, it’s hard for us not to get pushy about it.  It's easy for us to forget that people can simply walk away from us.

         

However good we think our ‘vegan’ idea is, the whole non-violence approach, etc., it can’t be forced onto people.  Any of our uninvited contributions will seem like intrusions, which might even look like an attack, especially when we snidely ask, “You don’t still eat meat?”

         

However passionately we feel about our views, if they are ‘fired’ at people, they'll sense discomfort.  They'll be put off, even swear off the idea for ever.  And no one wants that.

If you can’t stand the heat ...

1344: 

Becoming vegan is like buying a beautifully engineered car with its engine ready but still cold.  It needs a kick start.  It needs more than fearlessness - it needs understanding.  It needs confidence that the kick-start will overcome inertia.  Going vegan is like falling in love and then having to learn how to live together.  We grasp the big idea well enough, but how do we get our brain around it?  How do we spark the great engine into life and keep it running?

         

We’re just humans with normal frailties and fears, so when we ‘go vegan’ we get energy wherever we can find it.  We talk about it, even boast about it.  But then we have to make it work.  Perhaps we squeeze it too hard.  We try to make it take on too much importance, too soon, because we don’t want our good idea to lose momentum.  We know this idea deserves our best shot, but if we get stressed about it we have to examine where the problem really is.  Maybe food isn’t the problem, maybe the problem is people’s opinions of us or the problem is about the slowness of people to come around to discussing the subject with us.

         

For all vegans, young or old, when the scales fall from our eyes (seeing just how many people who will NOT see) things become stressful.  The conventional world, which is so reliant on animals, so psychologically fixed on animal-use, is hard to live in.  But we vegans have to learn to live with the stress of that. It might be ‘hot’ in here, but heat or no heat, let’s not ‘get out of the kitchen’.