Vegan principle

1418: 

Meaning no harm to animals, is at the heart of vegan principle.  So, when I decided to stop eating all this animal stuff, the main persuader was the animal-harm necessary to produce any of it.  But my reluctance sprang from my pleasure in eating it.  Becoming a vegan, I knew it would mean giving up my favourite breakfast.  No need to mention what it was because it wasn’t anything unusual, but I liked it very much.

The idea of going vegan was a huge step, but actually taking the first step wasn’t as hard as I’d expected.  The hardest part was meal-making.  Without a huge variety of quick-to-cook or ready-to-eat foods, I realised I’d have to make almost everything from source, although now, vegan ready-mades are more available and not too costly.  But still, vegans have nowhere near the same variety and choices that omnivores enjoy.

Going vegan costs time, effort and convenience.  It means missing out on many food items and treats.  So why is it that most vegans I've met, never consider ‘going back to being non-vegan’?  It’s not because they’re extra nice people or especially disciplined.  It's because the plant-based-food-benefits are just too good to be true.  To experience this sort of plant-driven energy each day is indescribable.  So, I won’t try to describe further.

But it isn’t just about food, it's the whole lifestyle and thought process that goes with it.  It’s what Jeffrey Masson calls “a somersaulting-forward process”.  If you decide to try to become vegan, you open yourself up to a new world, and that’s just on the personal side.  In terms of acting on the non-destructiveness principle, by becoming vegan we feel as though we’re no longer acting against our world.

What ‘going-vegan’ implies is global health.  This principle of harmlessness doesn’t necessarily make everything easier for us, but it gives us a taste of what it is like to be dancing with the angels, to feel the power behind inspiration. 

Admittedly, it’s easy to fall to the ground with a thud, as I’m often flung back to the reality of being vegan in a non-vegan world.  I’m sobered by the hardness of people.  But the impact of daily experience of this inspiring way of life motivates me to stick with it and to try to inspire others. 

The all-important human

1417: 

Humans are the most important (read dangerous) beings on Earth.  We have dominion over all other beings, which is how we get away with doing what we like with animals.  It means we can put them in cages, mutilate them and control every facet of their life and death.  It’s to our advantage to be in control to that extent.

In this highly competitive animal-food market, it makes economic sense to keep animals in slum conditions, and to kill them with speed and efficiency, without considering their feelings.

         

How do we justify it?  By thinking that “animals lack self awareness and therefore can’t foresee their coming execution, so they don’t suffer until the very moment of death”.  And anyway, who is to stop what we do to them?  The public is largely unaware and unwilling to know more.  We, the public, never get to see them dying and so we don’t experience their reactions.  Which in turn means that we aren’t haunted by having seen what happens to them, leaving the way clear for us to enjoy eating them.  For those on the front line there’s another factor, making it easier to keep them and kill them - they know that they can get away with it since it’s all legal.  The Law can’t touch them, and since animals can’t fight back, there will be no repercussions.

On a smaller scale, we’ve all experienced a similar detachment and de-sensitisation, when we drown ants in the kitchen sink or crush a cockroach under foot.  We aren’t in danger of being troubled by doing this, because we don’t really experience them dying; they show no signs of suffering because they’re so small and, because of their size, they make no audible noise.  And it’s upon that same sort of principle that slaughterhouses work.  This is the main function of the closed doors of abattoirs; when there are killings of larger and more vocal animals, no one can see, no one can hear, and therefore no one can speak about what they haven’t witnessed.

         

By not having to think about the irritating ‘pest’, it is destroyed without our feeling the slightest qualm, apart from the mess that the squashed or poisoned body might make on the floor.  Similarly, with the killing of any food animal, for example, the no-longer-economically-viable dairy cow, where her execution is not seen. We are kept separate from it, and this helps us to disengage our imagination and neutralise our empathy. In the case of the dairy cow, we see her milk as a benign product of a benign dairy industry. We remain aloof from it all.

The same aloof feelings are evident when we separate from fellow humans, in order to treat them in a way that better benefits us.  Racism helps us to separate from our coloured neighbours.  By regarding them as ‘pests’ we more easily establish our superiority over them.  They become more pliable and easier for us to ‘employ’ on our terms.  We don’t have to be too obvious about it either, because they’ve probably experienced racism before in their lives - so all we have to do is not get too friendly with them.  By showing that we’re not interested in them as individuals, we maintain an advantage over them.

         

Whether it’s animals or humans, by making them feel inferior or frightened of us, they can be handled more easily and made more useful.  The first rule of racism is to never treat our inferiors as our social equals. The first rule of speciesism is never to think of animals as anything other than our inferiors.

         

Vegans, who refuse to enjoy taking advantage of exploited animals, act more sensitively than most.  It’s likely their attitude to exploited animals is transferable, so they’d have a similar attitude when they see a forest as a thing of beauty, rather than a collection of log-able trees.  With people of other cultures or with trees or animals or with children, it comes down to marvelling at their innocence and beauty, without entertaining thoughts of intending them any harm.

Sanctuary

1416:

The next logical step after going vegan is to lobby, to provide animals with sanctuary, but that would be seem like a departure from reality in most people’s eyes.  The costs would be prohibitive, which is what the owners of black slaves, some two hundred years ago, might have said to any suggestion that they should be provided with bedding and proper shelter.  It would be considered unrealistic idealism.

A retirement plan for ‘working’ animals, instead of executing them, is the very least we owe them.  And this is, hand in hand, a move away from using them as food.  Ultimately, this would mean the closure of all animal farms.  Most people wouldn’t seriously consider it.  But some are doing just that.  Along with the uptake of a vegan lifestyle, the idea of ‘farm sanctuaries’ is already being considered.  Some in USA have been in operation for over two decades.

What if we don’t consider this?  We’ll be caught up in an endless cycle of barbaric, polluting and wasteful activities, resulting in the destruction of everything we hold dear.  By maintaining abusive practices and refusing to give up some of our personal comforts, we hand the big problems on to future generations to solve.

What’s involved with establishing animal sanctuaries?  Certainly a change of attitude and certainly some financial investment.  They would be expensive to set up because there are still so many animals alive who need taking care of.  But as the ‘domestic’ animal population decreases, by operating a deliberate non-breeding programme, so the expense reduces as numbers of animals reduce.  Sanctuaries may be the only way to provide safety for animals.  But it presupposes a great altruistic attitude-change from a lot of people.

Those who go this way, who pioneer sanctuaries for farm animals are the true heroes of our age.  They have chosen to become altruistic, and have adopted a non-speciesist attitude by moving their support from imprisoning to sanctuary, from killing to caring.

Symbiosis essential for mutual survival

1415: 

Holding onto the egalitarian ideal is never going to be easy, but here in Australia, with our natural flair for rethinking everything, we’ve made certain break-throughs.  One of them seems to be in forging healthy relationships between each other (compared to the rigid and unfriendly social systems in other economically advanced nations).  Snobbery doesn’t exist to any great extent here.  We’re more inclined to build mutually-benefiting and symbiotic relationships.

It’s not quite the same when animals are brought into the picture though. They are simply part of an exploitation culture - there’s not much ‘symbiosis’ there, and in this respect Australians are the same as any other nationality.  In theory, animals and humans could be mutually beneficial, but that’s a million miles from what we have today - we exploit them and we allow them no privileges.  Even the apiarist, who transports his hives of bees to good feeding grounds doesn’t do it for the bees’ sake but in order for them to make even more honey, which is then stolen from them for money.

Any animals, even after they’ve been exploited and used up, are granted no consideration, for their own sake.  After the last vestiges of usefulness have been drained from the body, or after they’ve put on sufficient weight, they’re slaughtered.  Nothing of them is wasted, and that’s considered to be ‘virtuous efficiency’.  How inefficient then, would it be, to retire the poor exhausted animal to an animal sanctuary, to live out its life in peace - ya gotta be jokin’!! 

The Egalitarian Principle

1414: 

In Australia there’s fertile ground for egalitarianism.  Ever since the beginning of Western occupation, our treatment of indigenous people notwithstanding, there’s developed a strong unifying thread of equality amongst new arrivals.  As émigrés and refugees, often from harsh regimes, most of us or our forebears have pulled together to develop a national identity that is, at its heart, egalitarian.  We’ve developed attitudes of giving one another a ‘fair go’, of tolerating minorities and being interested and not hostile to differences in culture.

         

In Australia we’re in a prime position to show the rest of the world how equality can work.  It could be multicultural toleration of differences, it could even be a general humanitarianism that starts out as a respect for each other.  Throughout Australia, there’s very little class system or intellectual hierarchy.  So we might be in a good position to extend that ‘fair-go’ - to animals.  Why should we continue to imprison and kill them, and eat them?  Why would we arbitrarily exclude other sentient species from that equality we apply amongst ourselves?  It is, after all, based on a principle of showing goodwill towards the disadvantaged and standing up for the oppressed.  And no more oppressed than farmed animals.

Is it too risky to back veganism?

1413: 

The big break-through on Animal Rights will probably come when veganism is taken as seriously as global warming and global food shortages. 

The biggest exacerbation of violence comes with the human support of animal slaughter.  The beginning of the end to global violence must start by ending of the imprisonment and killing of animals.   There’s always going to be a doubt about Animal Rights having anything to do with final solutions, but logically it’s comprehensive non-violent approach is a bit too obvious for most people to digest.

         

Perhaps vegans have to deliver their message nonetheless.  This ethic of not-touching-animals is impossible to water down, since it’s to do with promoting a non-violent attitude to everything we do, and we do a lot of animal violence in our human society.  If veganism is ever to become attractive, it will be for the way it represents the bigger picture and not because it gives us any easy answers.

Public speaking events

1412: 

   

As this subject of Animal Rights gets more traction, people will want to know more about it, and ask if someone will give a talk about it all.  Unlike face to face with friends, with a totally unknown audience one can use a different approach; when public speaking, we have a whole block of time to speak (and perhaps entertain).  The idea of a public address is to inform and have visual aids to help get information across.  We don't have to send them to sleep, so our talks need to be edgy, the idea being that we set ourselves up to be knocked down, so we encourage questions that put us on the spot.  If we are addressing a group, we are speaking to a subject on invitation, airing a whole raft of ideas on the subject we’ve been asked to speak about.

         

When public speaking we are attempting to reach two types, those who want to hear and those who don’t, or at least don't necessarily agree with us.  We owe the first group the best we can offer, but our main challenge is the second group.  They want to catch us out, so we have to know what we’re saying in order to spark their imagination and ultimately swing them around.

         

I'd suggest that we try to paint a picture of a bright future ahead, where animals aren’t being exploited.  Show how to enjoy a plant-based diet and where to find all the other cruelty-free alternatives that are on sale.  The idea here is to inform, be interesting, to up-lift, but not confront.  It is to promote our arguments optimistically.  And to have facts and references at hand, so that we can talk with some authority about health issues, ethics, farming, the environmental angle, world hunger and vivisection.  Also at hand, we should be able to give directions to useful web sites, Youtube footage, leaflets and books.  And to do all this, we mustn't let ourselves be exposed to accusations of being emotional, uninformed or unprofessional, or indeed uninteresting.  A talk on this subject should be worth the time given up to attend it.

         

This is a heavy subject, so a talk shouldn’t last more than 20-30 minutes, so there’s plenty of time for questions and comments from the floor.  Keep a timer at hand so you don’t run over time.