The animal issue

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There’s a great gulf between people’s attitudes to animals. The difference lies between the cute, cuddly ones and the ‘edible’ ones. Until a few decades ago no one thought much about it - farm animals were just different types of animal which we needed to eat to stay alive. Then the myth was exploded - animal protein was NOT essential to good nutrition ... and then the rest of the story came tumbling out, about how animals were being treated on farms and what horrors were happening in abattoirs.
In the 1940s and 50s the idea of a vegan diet was being tested and found to be not only adequate but healthy - plant-based nutrition was coming of age. By the early eighties The Animals Film and the book Animal Liberation were released and together they had a shocking effect. They shocked me, certainly. I realised for the first time how much our food relied on animals and what actually happened to the animals reared for food. Some of us were galvanised at the time. The information seeped into public consciousness and suddenly everyone seemed to be talking about it ... and then, surprisingly, it all came to a standstill. At least it did in Australia. Why?
That has been at the centre of some discussion in Animal Rights publications … but nowhere much else. In the general community there’s been a reluctance to face up to animal issues - probably because people who eat animals feel too uncomfortable to think about it too deeply. In private, if there’s any talk of it at all, it centres on health issues rather than the ethics of imprisoning and killing animals. People like their animal foods too much to discuss the rights and wrongs with any sort of intellectual rigour. In any supermarket there are probably thousands of choices of animal-based edibles. In any one day the meals and snacks we eat probably all contain some animal ingredient, because it adds richness, flavour and bulk to foods. The food industry have worked hard to make us crave the animal content. And since we now want it so badly we’re reluctant to discuss the subject seriously.
Those who are against the ‘eating of animals’ are usually the butt of jokes. Those who are likely to want to talk about animal issues are usually avoided or discouraged from even bringing up the subject in conversation. The subject is generally tabooed.

Starting to pay back

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Once, when we were younger, when the world was less damaged, abundance seemed to be everlasting. Oceans were clean and teemed with fish. It was incomprehensible that whole river systems could ever die. Land was fertile. Our surroundings were attractive. It was unimaginable that the world could be turned into a slum. But over a relatively short period of time, with each person saving their own skin, we’ve nothing left to pass on. The damage is done and we haven’t been able to stop ourselves from continually taking, and taking more and taking faster.
Instead of learning from our mistakes the human race has refined cruelty, increased slavery, wrecked forests, polluted the air and land, and generally become addicted to an increasingly unsustainable lifestyle. Now we’re in all sorts of trouble.
From a state of plenty we’ve built up a debt burden. Our collective debts won’t easily be paid back. But we must try to make a start. It isn’t impossible, surely?
Debt mentality gave us the false impression of being richer than we were and, like any bubble, it had to burst. That realisation dawned on us slowly at first, then we caught up with reality and then it gathered speed as we took more and more for granted. Now, with less clean air, less fresh water, less bird song in the morning, we’re learning the big lesson about debt – that it is benign at first but becomes inevitably toxic. It’s a bit like animal food itself or anything else we’re not entitled to - it kills the best in us.

Blog ends here until after Christmas

Inherited debt

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Debts affect the generation which follows. Young people wake up to the mess left them by their elders. They have no trouble putting two and two together to see what has happened and why. They’re familiar with self interest, they understand how forests are being destroyed, they see how animals are being factory-farmed. They realise why poor nations are being made to starve. And they know we older ones are to blame for perpetuating all this destruction and cruelty and waste.
I imagine the young get quite angry when they think about what they’ve inherited. But to be completely constructive about the mess we older ones have left them, we need to look at human nature ... to see what it is and how it really hasn’t changed much over the centuries.
Unless we want the next generation to do exactly what we’ve done we must stop adding to the collective debt. Unless we want today’s kids to spoil their own health, ethics and environment as we are doing, we can’t afford to sit around passively, twiddling out thumbs. If we do, they will continue stealing as we did, until there is nothing left to take. The first and most constructive step we can take is to become vegan and encourage them to follow suit - it will have a dramatic effect on their health and the legacy of non-violence they leave to their own progeny.

Advantage-taking

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The example set by young people who ‘go vegan’, is noticed by those near them, whether it’s at work or at home. The general effect is that the omnivore can be embarrassed by the self discipline they (often their juniors) show. Their example is perhaps a most powerful influence on the entrenched omnivore who might make their own first step in considering three things, their habits, their attitudes and their capacity for altruism. The impact (of meeting a vegan) on anyone who is still using animal products is to underline their own contribution to the upholding of Society’s animal-exploiting conventions.
Veganism is just one idea that counters the wrongness of stealing from the powerless. Colonial powers steal from poorer nations to enrich themselves, and humans in general steal from animals for much the same reasons. And isn’t it true that our thefts comes back to haunt us? Once-powerless countries grow up and strengthen themselves, and then commercially begin to outstrip their former masters, becoming a danger to their economies. Similarly, powerless animals used for food now become dangerous to their masters, but indirectly, via their impact on human health. There are harsh consequences to stealing and taking advantage of the weak.

Greater good can be self-benefitting too

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The criticism of both young and older people, for their indulgent lifestyle, seems partially true but partially misplaced. Older people might argue that the trouble with the world today is young people’s profligacy. They, in turn, argue that the trouble today is with the older people for causing all the major world problems … and so, whoever we are, we pass the buck.
For me as a cyclist I blame the car driver, for me as a wage slave I blame the rich, and so on. But really it’s a whole complex of issues that rise to the surface to make us cranky. We feel impotent because we are part of the collective mind-set. We drive cars and we fly in planes that pollute our world. What can any individual do to stop it apart from not driving or flying? In today’s world how can we NOT take part without disadvantaging ourselves? I know if I tighten my belt and act responsibly I’ll feel resentment that others aren’t doing likewise.
Perhaps the one way each of us can get started (doing the right thing) is by acting constructively whilst avoiding resentment – that is taking a stand without making a rod for our own backs – that is doing something for the greater good which also happens to benefit ourselves.
Which brings us back to the need to save the environment, our health, the animals, the economy and most importantly save our own sense of meaningfulness … by going vegan. By not exploiting animals, by eating plant-based foods and by wearing non-animal clothing and shoes, we do something to make us and our world feel better. It helps pay back the debt we’ve collectively run up. By boycotting very many of the products on the market (which are unethical) we can affect the collective lifestyle habit. And that might appeal to young people who don’t see how, otherwise, they can be constructive with their own lives. They almost certainly do want to build a future. They most certainly do not have to adopt the ruined pleasure dome they’ve inherited from their elders.
By going vegan, young people can show, by this one major gesture, how individual action can start the ball rolling.

You just can’t win!

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If vanity is the big trap in life, you’d think after some decades of life we’d learn about it and stop ‘doing’ it. All I’m saying here is that for older people, who could be setting an example for the young, if they want to avoid neuroses concerning their lost youth and missed opportunities, they might need to stop running up their ‘vanity debts’. We should get used to paying-back as we go along, doing without some things, exercising a little self-restraint plus a touch of responsibility-taking. If we don’t go that way then we risk not being able to restore balance later in life ... and then it all ending in tears.
I can remember starting out in adult life eager to experience abundance and enjoy effortless, sensory experiences. But as I got older, and taking all this for granted, I tried to recapture some of the pleasure of past years, only to find that that pleasure required more investment. I was losing my capacity for pursuing it.
As age creeps on and our health goes and then our strength we have to measure what we do - we no longer run just for fun. Our body creaks so much we can’t even run for a bus! If you speak with very old people they’ll say how important it is to ‘keep your health’, because once lost it’s very hard to get it back. For them, so they say, there’s pain every day. Whereas younger people don’t get much body pain and whenever they do it isn’t so ominous - health isn’t an issue because they haven’t lost it yet. But they do know that good health and good looks go together, and energy, sexuality and a slim, athletic body also go together, and this somewhat pulls them into line. But up against this there’s a powerful need to extract from life everything possible.
On an everyday basis we try to excite the taste buds and satisfy food cravings. So here, on these familiar battle grounds, we tear ourselves apart, torn between pleasure and good sense, stuffing our faces with good-tasting but body-destroying foods ... and it becomes such an all-consuming occupation that we forget that the rest of the world is going on around us. Many are starving.
Here in the West we are so privileged and have such opportunities to live life NOW … and that’s great! But in the process we forget about the need to pursue ‘the greater good’. It’s a shame about that because something vital is spoiled in us because of that, and it’s likely one deserves to be criticised for living an indulgent lifestyle.
Huh! You just can’t win. But was it ever just about winning?

Animal co-products

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“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ( …that’s any fun at all for humanity)”. Ogden Nash.
We live for pleasure and acceptance, young and old. Appearance is important, for young people especially. Fashion is important and particularly for young women their shoes have to look right ... but for vegan women there’s often not much to choose from. It puts them in a very difficult position, as regards fashionable footwear. And so to the general matter of shoes. When I look around, downwards, I don’t see much on people’s feet other than leather, whether it’s hardy walking boots or part of formal footwear. It doesn’t cross people’s minds to think about this co-product of the abattoir. Animals’ hides are often more valuable to the shoe industry than the carcass is to the meat industry.
So it comes to this - we’re more likely to go for attractive or hard-wearing shoes than consider the ethics of leather. We’ll maybe eat non-animal foods for health reasons but not rule out wearing the skins of animals, because a shoe will not adversely affect our health.
Even with health itself we may consider that the eating of junk food is okay because, especially when we’re young, health isn’t an issue … that is until we put on body weight … and even then we only tinker with foods that fatten us, which is close to vanity and far from good health practice.
Whatever commodity we consider essential to our lifestyle, whether we are young or old, we try to squeeze what we can from what’s available. We spend big, risk debt, ignore warnings and mainly consider our own interests. We want to live for the moment. Above all we try NOT to become like those sad people (usually older people) who don’t live life or seem to have any real fun at all.
A young person’s instinct will be to paint their life with brush strokes from a brightly coloured palette. And to make it all look more exciting than it is, it’s best not to think about things too deeply, so as not to undermine self confidence. At a certain age young people, who’ve been controlled throughout their childhoods, are suddenly free to experience every possible stimulating experience. And why not? “We only live once, so live life while you can” …that is until the shutters come down and we are forced to change (usually in later years) ... by which time we’ve lost all the fun of life and become the victims of our own vanity. And in all that time we’ve maybe never considered the animals whose lives have been sacrificed to make our own colourful life possible.

Indulge to your heart’s content

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Materialism is rampant. Our thirst for the material satisfactions of life is insatiable. To get the things we want, we take trees out of forests, put people in slums and factories and enslave animals. The rich have made fortunes - wherever’s a benefit to them they’ve taken it, without restraint.
Perhaps we’re all complicit since we humans dominate all other species, so that we can do as we please. Apart from a few viruses that we don’t yet control all other life forms are subject to human whim …. anything useable is used and anything in our way is got rid of. If any human population falls out of line we bomb it. If any useful animal, like a kangaroo, can’t be farmed, we hunt it. If any life form becomes an uncontrollable pest, like the rabbit, we spread disease amongst it to eradicate it. Humans will stop at nothing to be in control. And whatever we do is done with violence and without a second thought.
Control through violence is passed on, from generation to generation, and initially this appeals to young people who only see the advantages to themselves. They don’t know any different. Their mantra is “Live now”. They adopt a carefree approach to all things … that is, until they begin to see through it all.
Who is there to guide them? Older people are intimidated by youth, finding young people’s vitality and spontaneity so exciting they hardly dare to criticise them for any lack of responsibility or lack of independent thinking. Conversely, young people don’t usually find their elders inspiring or exciting at all, and turn to their peers for support, which exposes them to peer pressure, group thinking and a lot of unthought-out behaviour. Thus we are as we are, and will remain so, unguided and prone to the quick, violent ways of our elders.
The Animal Rights movement is hopefully brave enough to make a bold stand against one of the great irresponsibilities of our time - the message, concerning the abuse of food animals, may just be enough to reverse today’s indulgent trend and bring back some sanity to our increasingly uncivilised society.

Involvement

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Most people today are involved in a live-now-pay-later culture, believing that debts incurred will never have to be paid back. As with money so with every other material advantage - we accumulate useful stuff and don’t care about the damage caused in getting it or wasting it when we no longer want it. We celebrate the abundance of things because there seems to be so much for the taking. We believe there’s nothing to pay back because it’s all free - the air, the water, the soil, the flora, the fauna - we take it all for granted and throw away what we don’t use. We either live high on the hog or we aspire to it. Our wastefulness and narcissism imprints on each succeeding generation ... until we come to today when we hardly notice that our ‘smash and grab’ attitude is out of control. We no longer pass on to the young a sense of responsibility and frugality, instead we show them that life can be lived almost entirely for pleasure.
Probably the greatest pleasure comes at the expense of exploiting animals. There are rich pickings here. The supply of animal product has become endless, although there’s been a hidden price to pay - animal farmers have had to inflict ever greater cruelty on animals, to keep costs down, to keep prices low in response to fierce competition.
Our society lays-to-waste on a grand scale - throughout the animal-eating world vast numbers of defenceless animals are massacred (at a rate of 1500 deaths per second), and we do it because we can, because they can’t fight back, because the customer wants cheap food and because there are always unethical operators willing to undercut less-unethical operators. It’s a fact that all omnivores are caught up in this ... and vegans aren’t.

Attachment and detachment

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What does it feel like to ‘respect’? When I’m deciding who or what to respect, or when to develop a relationship or when to trash things that are no longer useful, I find it’s easy to like the likeable. Show respect. I can show amazing loyalty and affection for the loveable. Conversely, with the ugly or used-up, I notice how I can move away and eventually come to a no-longer-wanting feeling.
I see how it happens with things I acquire but then get bored with, even friends I make who I’ve lost interest in. I know it even happens with companion animals, who don’t have the same fascination as when they first appear on the scene. But whether it’s possessions, friends, cats or even gardens, they each have the power to benefit us or bring us down, depending on how we treat them.
I’ve found (rather too late in life) that in order to stabilise my relationships with anything or anyone I mustn’t try to maintain respect and guard it. Easy enough with dogs and cats, because they don’t pretend to be other than they are, and that’s so endearing. I’m happy to be around them - they’re always ready to play, and dogs especially are so loyal and affectionate, cats so intimate. They make me aspire to be close and affectionate myself. So, I’d say that animals can bring the best out in me.
The influence of a cat or a dog lets me see my sensitive nature but not necessarily my goodness, because with the less-dear or the less-loveable, human or non-human, I don’t act so honourably. That smelly homeless man, asking me for money, I ignore or that not-so-attractive animal I might have eaten at dinner ... this is where I’m sorely tested. They can easily be forgotten and since they pose no threat I can say, “They can’t possibly hurt me even if I ignore them or hurt them. They have no power or hold over me”.
It’s easy to show my kindness to a cute puppy or a family member, but I don’t have the same inclination towards a stranger and feel even less to an anonymous farm animal that’s going to be turned into food.
But all that is changing. Now, in this age, I’m becoming more conscious of a shift taking place, where the hard-nosed human is starting to look ridiculous and the once reviled soft-hearted (“bleeding heart”), gentler, kinder character is winning favour. I can see the balance point changing here - moving away from dominance and force to a subtler, gentler approach. We’re still in transition, things still blow hot and cold, but something is happening - a move towards the kinder and compassionate is looking like the intelligent way to go. The loyal, mature, sophisticated approach fits better with this ‘age of relationships’ - we’re learning how to relate to things, to people, to the disabled, to minority groups, to farm animals, to forests, etc. I suppose we are beginning to see the advantages of acting more interactively, symbiotically and more altruistically. It’s no longer such a big deal to think in terms of sustainability being a vital necessity.
And before I get carried away with speculation on the ideal present and future, there’s another important binding factor trending its way into my psyche. Doing the right thing? Nah. A new morality? Nah. Perhaps I’m beginning to see that which was once a duty or a strictness or a discipline is now becoming an enjoyment. Perhaps I don’t have to earn merit points and get your approval for what I do. Maybe it comes with the territory, of becoming more sensitive ... and more resilient ... and less in need of outside encouragement. I see possibilities where before I saw obstacles.
If we are about to rescue our species from ignominy it will surely be by way of a willing change, an attractive change, shifting the ‘conceptual framework’ of ‘right action’ ... I see it as a mixture of helping to repair the damage we humans have done as the most fulfilling thing we could ever possibly think about doing ... enjoying doing it in other words. Work as play as work.

Enjoying that extra dimension to life

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If ‘vegan’ means more to us than just food then it might be a new basis for our thinking. If you can ever see yourself as a guardian, as being protective, independence-encouraging and with few over-dependencies, then you’ll be moving towards the ideal.
As a sort of patron-saint of lost causes the vegan animal activist is on the side of the most vulnerable, the ones who no one else thinks about. There are no rewards, no praise, no encouragement, no notice taken of what we do. But if approval doesn’t matter much then we might just make it - to become one of the planet’s natural caretakers.

At ease with equality

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I think the finding of truth isn’t about attempting perfection or seeking enlightenment or taking a ‘spiritual path in life’, it’s about getting used to change when circumstances demand it ... and being at ease with that need to change. Change keeps alive a questioning of those things others aren’t bothered enough to question.
For me, the most bothering thing I can think of is the routine abuse of sensitive and sentient beings. The reason it’s so bothering is that so many are so innocent and are so badly abused. As a vegan I want to expand my sense of responsibility over this matter, to raise my sensibility, to penetrate as deeply as I can the reason why fellow humans can be so careless and cruel, to such as animals. It makes me want to do anything I can to understand something which, on the face of it, is very confusing.
I think I know how to treat my nearest and dearest ... with love and affection. But why would I stop there? I have to ask myself if there’s any reason to stop anywhere, with humans, animals, environment, any of it. Is there anything that doesn’t deserve affection ... as it passes within range?
I see myself leaping to the defence of animals, because they so badly need defending. This is going to involve me in a long to-do list. My un-ease comes from being perpetually overwhelmed by that long list. In my attempt to shorten it I’m forced to prioritise my interests and to keep my goals achievable – I try to ration-out my reserves of ‘care’. And that’s how I end up being more partial than I’d like to be and therefore guilty of inconsistency.
On examining my own inconsistency and finding my to-do list overwhelming, what stops me from becoming drained by it all is that I have lifted the biggest weight of guilt from my shoulders by simply being vegan - what needs most care is cared about. That makes everything much more straight forward for me.
I know I’m a caring being, because I don’t mind how much inconvenience I’m put to, as long as I’m not dodging the issues. Facing the issues takes a lot of energy. There’s a danger that I’ll try to spread myself too thinly and succeed in pleasing nobody, least of all myself. Then there’s the danger of putting issues I know I should deal with onto the ‘back burner’ ... then I’m ashamed, and my guilt cancels out my best ‘brownie points’. I think I’m consistent until I line up my responsibilities ... and then I know I’m not.
I know how inconsistent I can be when I disregard the ‘homeless man’ on the streets at night - I see him and ask myself why should I care about him? I don’t want to take on another ‘responsibility’, so I pretend not to notice him. And in the same way, I pretend NOT to notice what I know I have noticed.
It’s the same with the way most people choose NOT to see the animals behind the food they’re eating. They know that chickens and pigs are just like dogs and cats, yet they treat one as unlovable and the other as loveable. The homeless man is just as deserving of love as my closest friend and yet I can ignore him completely. That’s an absurdity I have to live with. It just means that I haven’t developed enough yet, in much the same way as the collective human race has NOT made an agreement with itself, about regarding all sensitive and sentient creatures as of equal importance.

Doing without

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What a great asset this idea is, veganism, with its empathy-driven approach to day-to-day life. It checks my more violent and selfish instincts by the food it guides me towards ... or rather the food it makes me want to boycott. You can’t argue with the logic of veganism. Apart from avoiding the ‘cruelty-products’, it inspires a greater non-violence in other ways. Since I’m no longer quite so reckless in what I eat I’m less so in the way I think. And taking this to its glorious conclusion, it suggests that there’s logically not much difference between the sentient and the non-sentient, it’s all consciousness after all. It affects the way I drive a car or deal with the kids or handle the cat or respect the cow. When I considered becoming a vegan it was always going to be for reasons bigger than just avoiding animal food (life is more than food and clothes!!).
We are all consumers. We’re all users of resources and all adults should know that, environmentally, we tread heavily on the roses ... and I for one want to tread more lightly. Like many others, I want to value and better appreciate the power of things ... and to do that I have to first know that I have the power to transform myself from clod-hopping brute to sensitive, gentle adult.
I can either grab whatever I crave or be more constructive. It’s my choice. I can exercise some self control or be profligate. And once I’m less attached to ‘my stuff’ I can reduce the stress and dissatisfaction associated with it.
“Life is stressful and the cause of this stress is craving, or thirst”. Many of the things I would crave are simply no longer available to anyone who is vegan, so I have to learn to do without. And once I get used to that, a vegan lifestyle is very possible and very satisfying ... and fulfils my wish to be gentler with things without having to compromise principles.

Good maintenance for the inanimate

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Many of my most treasured objects today are complex structures. Machines. And something special is involved in ‘owning’ one. Owning something suggests ‘caring’ for it – I’m automatically involved with its well-being as soon as I start to make use of it. I ‘care’ for my cat, care for my car. Car maintenance, aircraft maintenance, teeth maintenance, each highlight the risk of not attending to them - like the failure to maintain an aircraft ... and it all ending in catastrophe. But all this caring, maintaining, cleaning, etc. takes time and effort. Each application of care costs me something. The insurance industry encourages me to be parsimonious and indecisive, and profits accordingly (from my wobbling between ‘just-in-case’ & ‘it may never happen’). They offer me two choices: either I spend money and feel safe or I neglect my safety and save my money. That’s a nice dichotomy. Fear wins, scaring me into parting with my ‘hard-earned’ cash.
And so I get up each day, worrying and frowning, carrying a list of things to do, things to be maintained, and I feel ‘overwhelmed’ – all I hear is my groan at not being able to prioritise - a little care here, an insurance policy there … safety, safety, safety … but it’s never ending. I spend my life searching for the best insurance ... which eventually led me to veganism.
At first, this was my first thought. It was my best insurance policy (even though later on it became so much more). The food almost guarantees bodily health and some vegans are extremely health conscious, respecting their bodies as temples. Not me. I follow not-the-most-intelligent vegan diet, but it serves me well enough, physically. It ensures a clear conscience (cruelty-free foods, etc); it’s cheaper to eat this way too and obviously I soon enough realised that it’s less environmentally damaging. Over the years I realised it was building in me (a bit) better-disciplined character and, most importantly, it serves as my rock. It makes me feel safe.
That’s what makes me care so much for it. For that particularly. Like a well maintained bike or aircraft, I feel safe enough using this diet. Coincidentally it opens up my compassion ... for the poor tortured animals. It lets me into the depths of understanding this empathy-centred, vegan-principled-philosophy on whose tracks I can run a good part of my life.

The inanimate

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By dropping the animals-are-useful model, I am stepping into a world of imagination … where there’s an animated soul in things, not just in humans, not just in animals, but in every thing. By imagining that there’s a soul (or whatever you call it) in every thing I conclude that everything is sovereign and worthy of respect … at least, worthy enough for me to grant it some of my attention.
One of the most beautiful objects anyone could aspire to own and use is a flute. A human can be ‘risen up’ by the wonderful flow of sounds produced by the flautist and this musical instrument. I like to think that this is an example of the inanimate becoming animate - flute responding to flautist. The object comes alive, not quite like an animal but in another no-less-convincing way. Objects can be beloved because we’re having what feels like a relationship with them - our car, cat, kids, even a mirror. Take a mirror for example. It responds to me by showing me my face and that makes a mirror a useful item, and seven years bad luck if you break it, ha, ha. Or other things we can get attached to, like my bike. The object speaks to me and if I fail to listen to it, to feel its workings, if I don’t maintain it properly, the brake cable quietly rusts away and snaps at the worst possible moment, and I suffer the consequences.
Our attitude towards our inanimate possessions is a template for how we deal with the sentient beings in our care or in the care of those we commend to the task of providing our food. If I’m careless about the things I own, it’s likely I won’t be too sensitive about the living beings in my care, be they human or non-human.

Multidimensional energy

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That we believe animals (i.e. food animals) are low on our priority list, and that we think their treatment is not very important, reflects rather an alarming attitude in humans. And yet it’s probably coming from a very basic survival instinct, connected to saving energy. We are brought up to think that animal food is the best source of energy, and that in turn is linked to an attitude about energy itself, and where it comes from and how profligate we should be in its use.
I don’t believe that all energy is simply a finite resource like the finite quantity of fuel we may have in the petrol tank of a car. There are surely other sources and qualities of energy, other than food, as there are other energy drainers. But it’s precious stuff this energy. It’s not a good feeling to run out of it ... so many of us are led to believe that it’s essentially a physically-produced substance and that we should resist the begging-bowl pressures, to push ourselves too hard ... for fear of draining this valuable stuff.
I’m led to believe that if I go too far that way I won’t do anything, like taking the initiative or leading a new fashion. If I risk my energy supply and interfere with my long list of nagging responsibilities something will go horribly wrong ... so I think I’d rather keep what energy I have ... and not risk or waste it … but there again, this very energy might be drained by my being guilty about doing nothing. So, I weigh up my options. I think about my responsibilities - looking after things I own, things given to me, ‘things’ I’m in charge of, like table, bike, food, kids, house, friends, knowing that each will take a portion of my energy. And then, after that, will I really have very much energy left for things lower on my priority list? ... like protecting animals’ rights? Working for Animal Rights sounds particularly energy consuming.
If I do choose to act for them, promote their rights, work like a ‘guardian’ for them, what will that involve? Energy. But energy comes from various sources. I think a lot comes from knowing I’m doing what I believe in. I think by serving the interests of those animals in extremis I’m acting from love (a well known source of the highest form of energy) and that will be in sharp contrast to the much cruder energy-manufacture going on in the much harsher world, where animals are made to work for us and are drained of their life to provide some sort of energy for us.
We’re told that the farmer loves his animals, but in truth any care shown to them is given to protect human interests, not the animals’ - attending to their welfare means the animals will respond better and grow faster and, in theory, more will be gotten out of them the less we are abusive towards them.
Is that cynical or what? I don’t think energy is quite that one dimensional.

My bike, my priorities

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I love my bike. We have a good time together. But to be truthful, I have an abusive relationship with it. I don’t look after it. I don’t clean it. I don’t even oil it when it squeaks! But I rely on it every day to get me around. I occasionally pump up the tyres and curse it when I get a puncture. My bike serves me well but I don’t really have feelings for it. It’s just metal and rubber. It isn’t sentient and I’ll probably run it into the ground and when it’s no longer rideable I’ll dump it and get another one. It wasn’t an expensive bike and therefore not worthy of much respect!!
The things I own and how I look after them reflects my attitude to them. Sure, I care about the look of them and the operation of them (if it suits me) but bikes don’t pose any moral question for me. I’m not scared of my bike. I am scared on one level though. I’m scared of abusing something because it might ‘bite back’. Neglect the brakes on my bike and it may fail to stop when I want it to.
Whether it’s a child, a car, a dog or a planet, it’s the same fear I have about them, that if I haven’t done the right thing by them somehow I’ll be made to suffer. My attitude is either one of respect or abuse, and it applies most obviously to my respect or abuse of other humans. But what about animals? Why should there be any difference in my feelings about them? And taking it a step further why can’t I apply similar feelings to objects? Is this going too far? Do I think this ‘attitude’ would take too much effort if applied too liberally? And is this the reason why I might adopt a blanket, easiest-possible attitude? And this is me, single, not many duties and responsibilities so I’ve got more time to be considerate. Most people have less time. Their time is not their own and, as it happens, it may not be animals they feel strongly about. They may not be prepared to contribute their energy that way since, after ‘work’ and home duties, there’s not so much energy left over to splash about on ‘fighting for the animals’. So, in our society animals generally are not given much consideration. Realising this, the Animal Industries know they can get away with almost anything, knowing they’ll not be criticised by their over-extended customers, whose priorities are elsewhere.

Abuse of animals

341:
Farmers don’t recognise that animals have a life of their own, where human interests play no part at all. To any animal farmer the very thought of animals being anything other than a resource for human convenience is anathema … to build up a relationship with an animal is unthinkable. After all, you do intend to have it murdered.
So, animals are there for profiting-from. That they’re abused is incidental. Any docile animal, any useful thing is up for grabs - it’s a business opportunity, that’s all. To keep up with competition and to keep shareholders happy a few principles must be compromised. At that point the abuse starts.

Objects

340:

An animal should never be just a dispensable, replaceable property. The difference between various consciousnesses - my table, the living tree, the sentient creature, the human being may be obvious but each level of consciousness deserves respect.
There’s a lot of difference between an abusive relationship and a loving one, between the parasitic and the symbiotic. It seems that we humans haven’t yet learnt how to be symbiotic with those animals which happen to be useful to us. And as for having consideration for other levels of consciousness, forget it.
Valuable resources and useful animals we take. We think - they are ‘there for the taking’ ... it’s all part of the rich bounty to which we’re entitled. And with a mixture of minimal respect, lack of appreciation for what we already have and greed for more, it leads us to never be satisfied. Anything we want we take. We use it up and keep wanting more ... so we graduate towards indifference, then abuse and then alienation.
The deadliest disease amongst humans is dissatisfaction. We open the box on Christmas Day, containing a beautiful puppy dog ... and six months later we’re off on our holidays and taking the puppy (now-dog) to the vets to be put down.
If we tire of something we develop a contempt for it so that we can distance ourselves from it, in this case the no-longer-so-cute dog. Any similarity between human and victims is downgraded so that we can dispose of it or abuse it with better conscience and justification.
As for so called ‘food animals’ we see no similarity at all between ourselves and them – they become so downgraded in our minds that we don’t have any need to consider them as beings at all. In fact they are merely alive in order to make them useful to us dead.
As addicts of animal products, like anyone addicted to anything, we must be assured of supply, so the chain of animal to farmer to animal-industry to shop keeper, is a line of service set up to maintain our lifestyle. One faulty link and it’s catastrophe - imagine, for instance, a shop being out of ice cream. Unthinkable!

Betraying future generations

340

I’ve just watched a programme on TV predicting two main things, a huge increase in population and a huge decrease in food and water. With the ability to avoid the main childhood killer-diseases there’s no longer any reason for big families. In that programme we saw how educated women (in India) with access to birth control chose to have only two children, indicating that this may be a breakthrough to the problem of world overpopulation. As to keeping people fed, we saw how food technology and water conservation was providing more food with less waste of water. But this is a stop-gap solution. The main problem lies elsewhere and isn’t being addressed at all.
It seems that humans will fiddle at the edges but never face up to the need for each individual to take responsibility for the whole - in this TV programme there was never a mention of the more permanent solution - the promotion and adoption of widespread plant-based diets.
The world of today is made up of omnivores who can’t seem to understand how wasteful it is to use crops and water to feed animals to provide meat and by-products ... when none of it is necessary. And still there‘s no mention of the animals’ part played in producing vast amounts of greenhouse gases.
Future generations will ask why the cruelty, why the waste and mostly why the conspiracy of silence against such an obvious solution to today’s feeding problems ... and they’ll have to conclude that humans of today could only be seen talking about solutions without actually implementing them. It seems we are incapable of facing the truth of cruelty and waste, and only ever concerned with the present and not with the future. And the reason for this - that those alive today will be dead before the world undergoes the worst of the consequences of today’s neglect. We are speaking brave words to the people of the future, but showing them that our care and concern and sophisticated thinking is a sham, and that we are really rather primitive and self-centred.
Even if the planet can maintain a zero increase in population growth, there is no way we can sustain our present seven billion on an omnivorous diet without causing harm to the planet and human health, not to mention animal welfare. The solution is simple but there’s a reluctance to bite the bullet. If there’s obscenity in treating animals like convenient food-producing machines then a worse obscenity is the avoidance of the obvious alternative.
Once you’ve acknowledged the simplest of solutions, concerning the use of a plant-based diet, but have then gone on to ignore it, you’ve adopted an ‘I’m alright Jack’ approach to life. If we shirk responsibility here we doom future generations to starvation.

Self deception

339:

Even if we don’t actually take part in the grisly act of murdering animals ourselves, we give tacit support to those who do, despite feeling sad for the whole sorry business.
It seems that some humans are able to hurt animals without a second thought, whilst others can’t. However, most of us ‘kind-hearted people’ can stand-by and watch-yet-not-watch - it’s a little like seeing the school bully beat up a small kid in the playground and pretending we’re not looking in that direction. I see an ugly news item on TV and see it as if it’s a fiction. I can’t afford to empathise too closely or I’ll be depressed for the rest of the day just thinking about it. Is it disturbing because of the pain of my empathy or the feeling of guilt in my being passive about it?
I can easily imagine the pig as victim of bullying - the pig at the slaughter house being pushed into a chute, for its life to be terminated, and apart from disgust I feel the nastiest prick of conscience if I try to look away. When I decide to do nothing my mind is saying to me “Stop, don’t go there” - I weigh up the advantages of doing nothing and the disadvantages of intervening.
Eating meat. Who’d have thought it? Such an ordinary event. And now, with a greater consciousness of the immorality of doing just that (because it’s involving animal-cruelty) everything should change, but it doesn’t. The surprise is that we can still eat meat and all the associated products and justify it, to lessen the guilt. But once we’re aware it seems pointless to dumb ourselves down ... when we know it’s insupportable.
When there’s nowhere that’s honourable to go, we have to retreat into self-deception. I wouldn’t be surprised if some horrible mental condition weren’t lurking in the background, ready and waiting like a monster to leap out and crush our spirit.

Essential for life?

335:

Despite our great gains as humans, with a long list of brilliant discoveries and advances, we’ve nonetheless succumbed to a central piece of misinformation - that animals are essential to our survival. We’ve meekly accepted that we need to eat them to stay healthy. If this isn’t true, and obviously I don’t think it is, then the whole human race has invested heavily in one carefully constructed fiction.
Set against this, vegans are emphasising that plant-foods are perfect for humans to thrive on. Nutrition ‘experts’, in the employ of the Animal Industry and therefore of opposite belief, advise customers to “eat meat or you’ll die”. Few people feel confident enough to risk their own physical well being, let alone the lives of their kids, to find out if this is true or not.
But instinctively there’s something profoundly dodgy about animal food, something about the fact that we never see the animals we eat ... they being always hidden away. We only get to see them dead, as meat. And that would suit most of us if only because it’s the end ‘product’ we’re interested in, not its provenance ... unless its product-quality is involved. We don’t want to be concerned with the animal we’re proposing to eat.
At some stage in our adult life we consciously enter into a Mephistophelian contract - we trade compassion for lifestyle . According to this contract we may enjoy our food just as long as we publically recognise that vegans are wrong about the safety of plant foods, and extend this to suggest that such people as vegans are conspiring to kill us by imposing their plant-based diet on us. It can then be assumed that vegans want to spoil people’s enjoyment of their food because they are spoilers.

The bite-back

333

Food is sensory not spiritual, so it’s usually just a case of ‘eat, drink and be merry and be careful of your weight’. There isn’t any other dimension to it. But when it comes to animal food, a stomach full of meat is a mind full of murder.
We put our very sensitivity on the line when it comes to indulging in animal-eating. Both compassion and intelligence are compromised by the use of animal foods, specifically by our conniving with the enslaving and killing of animals for food.
We aren’t out there hunting them or risking our safety since they don’t fight back. Everything has been made easy. The wild of Nature has been tamed – ‘food animals’ are docile and we imprison them to make sure they remain so. But the animals do bite back in a subtle and unseen way. The eating of their bodies and secretions is a creeping damage - after eating them continuously we often put on weight and suffer the ill effects of diabetes and heart disease. If we are tied to animal-based cuisine it will slow us down and in a subtle way weaken our affectionate nature, so that we no longer care for the beings for which we’d otherwise feel great affection.
The bottom line here is that we can’t resist eating them. So many delicious foods are animal-based. Why should we deny the enjoyment of them to ourselves?
Because animals represent such rich pickings for humans, it would seem like madness NOT to take advantage of them. But by choosing to use animals we bring out the worst in ourselves. The guilt or shame might be heavy enough, but being addicted to animal products, spending so much money on them, the chronic conditions they bring on, all adds up to a ‘slow-down’ ... our self development is held back by mindlessly consuming what must surely be the most ugly products on the market.
The Animal Industries are happy to do our dirty work for us, rearing and killing and presenting the end product, just so long as we don’t make a fuss about it. The deal is that we do our best to turn a blind eye to the horror while they conceal as much of it from us as they can - we conspire together to objectify the living being.
Over the years we’ve executed billions of animals, none of whom have ever been guilty of any crime. This wash of cruelty and destruction has forced us to pretend to ourselves that what happens to animals doesn’t actually happen ... and to then believe about ourselves that we are not cold blooded killers, when we know that isn’t so.

Do something about it

332:

Perhaps as consumers we are not only brainwashed by misinformation but bedazzled by the abundance of commodities in our shops. Steaks, rich dairy foods, soft woollen jumpers, elegant leather jackets plus many other affordable items, too numerous to mention. It’s all so attractive. It’s like an Aladdin’s cave which we can’t walk by without going in. We can’t pass up the chance to go in and buy them, these products, these co-products and by-products of animal origin. None of us wants to miss out on the treasure trove, so we don’t look too closely at the fine detail. We let the horror story of animal cruelty go unremarked.
But what goes on in the privacy of the human mind, regarding the wrong of it all? We tell ourselves that we don’t want to see it. And if we do take notice we might admit that “Something has to change ... but let it not start with ‘me’ ... I’ll join you once you’re up and running - I don’t want to start the ball rolling”. But the ball has been rolling for some seventy years and still not many are ‘joining’.
An example: my ‘vehicle’ is lying in a ditch. It has broken down and obviously it isn’t going to repair itself. It will lie there until I do something about it.
If something needs to be done in this world of ours, surely I need to start doing what needs to be done, and what you choose to do is none of my business. It’s a matter between me and my conscience. And I know that the less I take notice of my conscience the weaker my central safety mechanism is ... until I get to a point where I’m no longer effectively in control, where I hand the controls to those who are only too eager to take them up.
As I might mindlessly wander into a shop and spend my money on questionable products, so I might have done something I will regret later. If I keep on doing it there’ll come a time when I’m helpless to put any of it right again. Recently when the full impact of killing cattle was shown on one of our most popular TV current affaires investigation programmes, it didn’t require much of a leap of imagination to see how any beef-eater is implicated. We were shown ugly scenes of how cattle were being killed. I heard a lot of talk about that programme, from meat-eaters, who were perhaps trying in vain to absolve themselves from what they were witnessing ... and by now regretting.

Conscience

331:

A numbed conscience lets us get away with things. A troubled conscience casts a dark light on what we do. Does conscience prick when we eat a steak? Does it sleep when we want it to NOT notice?
Either sub-consciously or consciously, we presumably suffer ‘conscience pain’ ... unless we can switch it off. But if it can be switched off then the habit might grow until we lose sensitivity altogether, and that means we can only ever be half awake.
It seems that a big part of human development relies on our seeing things very clearly, but another part requires that we should close our eyes, for fear of being blinded by what we’re looking at. When it comes to food we’ve learned how to desensitise. With animal-eating we say, “Everyone does it so why shouldn’t I?” ... and just to help us along we have ads on the TV to help us normalise animal-eating ... and cooking shows always use lots of meat ... and it’s always a big part of travel and holiday programmes.
Promoting animal foods is big business. Animals are always portrayed as being here for our benefit. The messy or cruel side of animal life is never shown, only the ‘end product’ - we never know them as live beings only as dead food products. Even educated people convince themselves that, because they haven’t personally been involved in torturing or murdering animals that they can’t be held accountable for what goes on behind the scenes. Conveniently, we dumb down over all this, pretending we know nothing even though we know enough ... we know, for instance, that we support the Industry with our dollars.
We try not to see ourselves as the cold-hard-bastard. We try to let our untroubled conscience sleep on. And in this climate of acceptance, where meat and animal secretions are ‘just normal’, the only time we might be disturbed is when we meet up with one of those ‘damned vegans’, who ask how we can possibly go on supporting the Animal Industry.

Conscience, today’s attitude problem

328:

Not caring about what’s happening to all these animals is simply part of the predominant carelessness of humans. The reason we have to alter this attitude is that animals are not inanimate. They feel, move and have many life-functions similar to us. So, why do we give the farmer the nod to enslave them? Perhaps it’s because, for the majority of humankind, there is a belief in the need for animal foods, spurred on by taste addiction for them and an economic attraction for these highly subsidised, ‘bargain’ food products. For that we condone a cruel system of animal husbandry.
Being blasé about animal treatment - why does it matter? Simply because we’re side stepping something we wouldn’t normally be proud to be part of. By supporting cruelty we’ve sold our hard won humanity, which has been largely achieved by way of following our sophisticated conscience. We’re the inheritors of brilliant and beneficial human discoveries. Not only have many of them been useful but mostly they’ve conformed to conscience … but the development of animal husbandry methods and the making of foods based on animal ingredients ... don’t conform to conscience one little bit. We can’t be proud of what we’ve discovered here. The modern farm, where they practice mutilations and confine animals, is the perfect example of what is patently outside the bounds of conscience.

The inanimate

327:

If I think the animal thing is sad and another person doesn’t, it says a lot about perception. I might know a few more details which makes me closer to the animals involved but today almost every adult knows essentially how bad things are in these gulags they call farms, and in slaughterhouses. And yet it seems that I see things one way and someone else another.
How I see it: animals are not so very different to us, they’re sentient, they feel pain and suffer as we do when their well-being and life are threatened. But as ‘non-sovereign beings’ their treatment, by their owners, is no one else’s business - property is sacrosanct. That’s the law.
However, according to moral law the way we treat them shows us how careless we’ve become. Finding out what’s actually happening to them (care of the Animal Industries) has got to be a huge wake up call ... or so you’d think. But most of us are still swayed by our rights as owners.
One of the most useful things I possess is a table, my desk, a place where I sit and eat and write. I love my table - I made it. I’m proud of ‘my’ table. I chose the wood, paid for it and did the carpentry. I didn’t grow the tree but I feel I have the right to call this table ‘my’ table. It’s my property. I can look after it, abuse it, even chop it up. I don’t have to wonder how the table is feeling, or what it thinks about my ‘owning’ it because, of course, objects can’t ‘feel’ or ‘think’. Does that mean I can treat my car, my bike, my table in any old way I please? Legally I can.
This must be how farmers think about their ‘right’ to treat what’s theirs, in any way they choose, not only their tractors but their ‘stock’ . Essentially it’s carte blanche - we can do what ever we like - because animals are considered property (like my table or my bike) they can be loved and nurtured or they can be exploited and even destroyed. We deal with property as we please, with impunity (and legal immunity). Farm animals are regarded, to all intents and purposes, as inanimate: not without life but without the right to life.

The starting line

323
Vegans want to be thought of neither as missionaries nor as being too mild mannered to speak up. We want to be taken seriously and have what we say considered constructively.
Whatever I say is said on a ‘suggestion only’ basis because I don’t want to sound dogmatic and do want to show respect for the integrity of the person who is willing to listen to what I have to say. I don’t need them to agree with me, in fact I’d be surprised if they did but more importantly I don’t want them to go home and forget what they’d agreed with and slip straight back into old habits. You may nod at what I’, saying but I don’t need to be humoured, I’d rather have disagreement than polite accord. I’m going to welcome robust debate, encourage devils advocacy and try not to sound high and mighty with the uninformed. I stress that I’m not out to win converts but to get people thinking afresh. The trick, as I see it, is to tread a fine line between informing and maintaining an essential equal footing - never me know-all, you know-nothing. I want to guide information along what I expect will always be a very rocky and resistant road.
But however smart my approach, however slick my arguments, however nice a person I seem to be, I know that I just represent just one side of the debate (which is, of course, to my mind, the right side!!). There’s always something valuable to be learnt from listening to the other side of the argument.
Since all of us want to be right, does that create an obstacle? It’s a bit off-putting to meet and talk with someone who thinks they’re right all the time. Over these animal issues and nutrition issues, I suppose I must admit that I feel very right, about the non-use of animals. But my feeling right doesn’t give me ‘the right’ to earbash anyone, and if I’m given the chance to put my point of view I should, our of respect to a listener, be short and sweet. Initially, there’s no need to go into great detail. I imagine that as much as someone might want to hear something about veganism they also want to know how a vegan behaves - are they fair, unfair, interesting, boring, dogmatic?
My aim would be to show a launch pad with a rocket full of ideas, but latent, un-fired-off. I want to make sure, at first, that one things is understood - that I don’t ‘touch’ animals. This is the start of it all. If it doesn’t start there then it’s just a vegetarian diet with something extras thrown in, but without a strong and broad philosophical basis.

There’s hope yet, but not quite yet

321:

I, like many other vegans, am trying to inform people whilst taking care of myself at the same time - I know that vegan principles can enlighten anyone and yet this much valued veganism can be isolating. For myself, I know it’s my own source of inner clarity, it shines a revealing light on so many questionable aspects of human life, but at present I often feel alone and effectively silenced.
Vegans are more alone than others since we’ve taken it upon ourselves to upturn the status quo. Plus we encourage others to leap into the void with us … which makes people afraid of what we want them to think about.
I’d like people to be thinking about how truth is being manipulated. And while, on the face of it, the truth of animal exploitation is so obvious, the Animal Industries are pushing in the opposite direction. They encourage less thinking and more spending. Not surprisingly they are winning, since they’ve been building their networks for many decades and indeed thousands of years. They’ve cornered the market, which means they’ve addicted most people to the things they want to sell them. If people were better informed and therefore better united they’d rise up against the general world of crap commodities, food or otherwise ... but we’re each in our own corner. Few of us are willing to take the lead.
Using unscrupulous methods, the Animal Industries get what they want because they know the customers are united in favour of their products ... hooked on a wide variety of animal products which are bought over and over again. But as new information comes to light and the penny drops, sooner or later we’ll come to realise why so many people are becoming so chronically unwell. On a physical level animal foods are a slow poison but on a spiritual level they gnaw at our conscience about the way our animal foods come to us. And whilst that can’t be proved I doubt if anyone is unconcerned at the part they play in animal cruelty.
Vegetarian foods and diets are already being tried and as the ethical dimensions become more obvious, alongside health rationales, more people will move that way and then, logically, step towards veganism … and, once that happens, a change in what people are thinking about will show up.

Consistency

316:

I’m aware (and maybe you are too) of the scale of animal exploitation in our society. Commercial interests normalise animal abuse by concealing the truth of it.
All through my formative years there was never any suggestion that keeping animals captive and killing them for food was wrong ... and since it was food, and pleasurable food at that, I never questioned it. There was never a strong enough base of compassion from which that sort of questioning could arise. And today, there’s still not a sufficiently strong ethical base to stir people ... so, almost nobody questions ‘the use of animals for human consumption’. So nothing changes. And it will never change unless some people can enlighten others to the truth. And that may come about simply by showing others that life is possible without resorting to using animals for our convenience.
If any of us are going to escape the outrageous brain washing our societies put us through, if we can ever escape a lifetime of normalising animal-eating, then it will start by re-examining what we do - our habits, our attitudes and our addictions ... and with a touch of altruism too. And that means we must do it not only for ourselves but for the sake of the animals. By focusing on them we ignite our own empathy. That’s something we’ve had numbed in us (and we’ve complied with) for the sake of acceptance of meat and dairy in our diets.
When I eventually considered vegan principles and started to see life through more compassionate eyes and then went on to apply boycotts to all sorts of animal-based commodities, my life did change. It got a bit uncomfortable, at first. But soon enough I looked up and saw what I’d been doing. I saw that I was living in a carnivorous, violent society, and the thought of leaving it behind was a very comfortable thought. But if I wanted to help to change my society there’s be a price to pay. I’d have to face the fact that Society might remain as it was, even for a long time ... which would mean, for me, that I’d be on the outer for a long time. As uncomfortable as that thought was I could still hope, and that hope could sustain me ... and empathy could do the rest, to hold me together for ‘that long time’, knowing how bad things are for the true victims in all this. It’s a million times worse for the billions of animals (at this very moment of time) who are on death row, in prisons all around the world, who have no reason to hope.
If I and many other vegans try to ameliorate this discomfort I think we can best do it by being grateful that we don’t have to suffer as much as the poor creatures. We may have been born into a violent and animal-abusing world but we do have some chance, however slender, of escaping it. The animals were born with no chance of escape whatsoever. If we can hold that thought it may help us withstand the degradation we feel, being part of this unholy human species.
What better thing is there for any of us to do than set a new fashion in compassion ... and to let that fashion translate as style. It’s not about being ‘cool’ nor even solely about being ‘vegan’ but about being consistent in our conduct, in all our daily activities. And if we aspire to consistency we do it to set an example, which others may or may not choose to follow. I don’t think we’re here to enjoy the experience of simply living as free beings in a human-dominated world but to offer reasons for radical attitude change which will, down the track, lift humans out of their subservient, violent and weakened state to become the angels of mercy we were meant to be.

The easy approach

315:

There’s a lot going on in the world ... so, is it any wonder, with the present high awareness of issues, that some of the most uncomfortable problems are pushed aside? We say, “No time to deal with everything” … and so, that’s it. There’s no time for contemplating ideals and as for listening to vegans … get real!!
As animal advocates vegans are supremely ignorable. What we say doesn’t cut it, while conventional attitudes sit more comfortably with people. The world of plenty, promoted by the Animal Industry, is attractive. They seem like admirable people. They don’t preach at us, in fact they seem to have a certain sense of fun about them.
It’s therefore not surprising that veganism is dismissible. We are disliked for our high moral tone. Other urgent issues will always trump animal concerns. Omnivores are happy to use a few ‘naughty products’ and not feel too guilty. They believe that, otherwise, things are fairly okay and so there’s nothing much to worry about.
However, for the thinking person this sort of acceptance of how things are doesn’t wash. It’s because the whole mess of animal abuse is kept secret, behind closed doors, that one should be very suspicious. That we are hoodwinked into believing the conditions under which animals are kept is acceptable, that we are fooled into believing animal foods are healthy - all that concerns one’s brainwashability. I’m constantly amazed that otherwise intelligent people fall for it.

Comfort

313:

In the West we live comfortably enough but many of us are confined in an attitude prison where human-centred consideration outweighs any other consideration. We trash the planet and we dominate animals ... for our own benefit. We enjoy the fruits of our exploitations. We like what civilisation has given us, but we’re compromised by comfort. We’re too soft to make any principled decisions so we don’t live in harmony with anything especially if it’s outside the human realm.
Being trapped by comfort is rather like being born into the bottom of a pit with steep, slippery sides. There’s no chance we can climb out since we’re weighed down by our addiction to pleasure and the measure of happiness it brings. If we’re happy to stay where we are or we’ve given up trying to escape we know we can still survive in a human-biased bubble in which we don’t have to think too deeply about where we are or what we’re doing, as long as it’s comfortable.
The most trapping habit is our violence-based use of Animal Industry products, mainly for food. I’m sure people would, in theory, like to be free of it, but they don’t realise how trapped they are, especially by their need for comfort food. They choose to stay with what they know.
If I get the opportunity to talk about self-improvement, talk about escape, I might get some people to listen. But for everyone listening far more prefer not to. They don’t want to be told anything which is discomforting and of course if I say anything at all about animals used for food it evokes uncomfortable feelings of guilt and squeamishness. But there’s another factor involved - where, even though some are willing to forgo a little comfort for the sake of self improvement, they don’t want to feel as though they’ve been pushed into change. If they’re going to change they’ll want to do it at their own pace.
Your regular vegan response might be, “What? Leave it to them to decide if and when? Too slow, too slow”. And if any sort of psychological pressure is applied to the reluctant-changer, they’ll dig their heels in and tell us, “There’s nothing worse than being morally blackmailed into 'self-improvement'”.
So ... do people really want to change as much as vegans would want them to change? It’s doubtful. If I start speaking to anyone about intensive farming or abattoirs I see their eyes glaze over and know I’m saying too much. At first they might seem interested but it occurs to me that they simply want to improve their life in the pit, not actually escape from it. Probably they fear landing up in the fringes (like vegans appear to have done) ... so, they don’t want to learn uncomfortable facts or make too many radical changes, especially concerning their comfort foods. They want the best of both worlds, and in the end maybe they want to preserve their free-will most of all, but it’s a no-win situation for most people, they are torn between holding back and moving forward.
Some, however, will be almost ready to move on. They’ll want to find out, but eventually they’ll see that it’s not as quick a fix as they first thought. A dilemma - they’re attracted to the idea of self improvement, even outraged by what they find out about animals and animal foods … but, all things considered, they may not like the idea of having fewer food and clothing choices. They mightn’t like the idea of so much hard work in changing so many things about their lifestyle.
Moving on may not look so attractive. The would-be vegans look about them, their health is okay, their life is okay, they don’t have to confront face-to-face animal torture, so the idea of no-change doesn’t seem so bad after all - the comforts, the social acceptability, the normality. The decision to change is put off or thrown into the too-hard basket.
When the vegan missionary leaves and the horror stories fade, they sink back into their old familiar, cushioned pit.

Boycotting wins no friends

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Animal rights is about introducing values unheard of before. Most omnivores haven’t even considered that animals deserve ‘the right to a life’. Vegans, busy pursuing their own sense of responsibility, leave their friends behind. Their omnivore friends, more self-protective, aren’t as interested in developing a new value system. But, knowing today what they know, they are faced with a moral dilemma. They can’t convince themselves that what vegans are saying is not true.
Some animals are well known to be exploited - the hen, laying battery eggs in a cage; the chimpanzee, going insane in a science lab; the breeding sow, held in an ‘iron maiden’ sow stall; the dairy cow, turned into a milk-making machine. Today we know things about animal cruelty that weren’t widely known about forty years ago, and most people are distressed when they do get to know about it. But how strange, it doesn’t seem to change their eating habits. Perhaps this shows just how strong the impulse is, to not alter our food regime unless it’s to our own advantage, or not to choose a lifestyle which will separate us from others. But the more we learn the harder it is to be comfortable about our choices.
The whole idea that vegans are putting forward highlights this dilemma. We seem to inflict guilt just by bringing up animal issues ... which is why most people want to avoid us.
So we vegans might be lonely because we’re avoided and lonely because we deliberately disassociate from the lifestyle shared by almost everyone else - we not only boycott many products sold in shops (to our own considerable inconvenience) but boycott social events like barbeques, dinner parties and restaurants, and for this we’re likely to be disliked ... which is why we need to find a way of dealing with this loneliness and vilification.
We all suffer (the omnivore from guilt and chronic illnesses, the vegan from alienation) but for us there are special advantages - it’s great that we’re into self-improvement, great that we stand up to the hypocrisy in Society ... but we have to take into account our need for other people. And this comes down to our approach and how we advocate for animals - how do we advocate strenuously whilst not necessarily going on the attack, how we remain friendly with those we’d much rather be in judgement of.
The big question for us is surely how we stay emotionally neutral and not feel depressed when the people we know avoid us or avoid talking about this subject?

Ah, but the loneliness!!

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What’s it like being an animal activist, someone who wants animals to have a life but whose words fall on deaf ears? With almost everyone chomping away on their meat and various animal secretions nobody seems to be listening. No one is interested in anyone who seems to be denying them their pleasures.
As vegans, we know how it feels to be alone but perhaps it’s essential, because it lets us empathise more closely with animals. It helps us not to forget that domesticated animals are not only alone but at the mercy of violent humans. It’s no consolation though, for us personally, when we realise the apathy and silence of most people around us. I can’t help seeing this hardness of outlook, even in dear friends. I can see them desperately trying to shield themselves from taking a ‘soft’ view. They’re harder than I want them to be or even they want to be. They won’t communicate with their soft side for fear of what they might become.
I want to be an advocate for animals but I do want to feel close to my friends. However, at this point in time, it seems one must be sacrificed for the other. The louder I speak up the sooner my friends seem to turn off and walk away.
I don’t underestimate the pain of being marginalised. I know it could be dangerous to feel so alone. It may drive me crazy but I also know that, more dangerously, my need for acceptance might tempt me back to my old idiot-ways.
I have to tell myself that if I’m serious about ‘the greater good’ I have to find ways of NOT feeling alone and not feeling that it’s all pointless. It helps to know other vegans, it helps perhaps to meet up with a whole bunch of animal rights activists on a Tuesday night. But in reality, we all live apart. We’re on our own. This is one big personal challenge for most vegans - not in the changing of our diet but the facing up to a diminished social life and a shortage of simpatico companions.

Style

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My conscience may call on morality, but it’s not its only driving force and I’m not keen on the idea of morality when it has so much ugly association with god botherers and goodness-preachers. I’d like my conscience to take a constructive path and avoid the bad and insincere as one would avoid foul-smelling air, but I’m aware that ‘being good’ is still very much about brownie points, which I haven’t any interest in – ideally, my truth pie has to have ingredients like panache and style.
In a vegan lifestyle I see a smoother operation - the body itself is usually functioning in top form simply because it isn’t being daily poisoned by animal stuff. I feel that my mind too is inspired by the sophisticated idea of it rather than the dull focusing on bald goodness or sensible healthiness. I don’t want to just ‘do right’ but do right things more easily. I’m happier being in a more gentle relationship with my environment. It’s most proved for me when everything that can respond back does so, positively and in a gentler style.
Vegan lifestyle is stepping beyond the tempting world of commodities in order to become free to develop a number of things, not the least of which is style ... and that comes with sensitive thinking and sensitive attitudes. I notice it in myself, when I’m not for ever tripping over guilt and grubby attitudes, especially those which regularly concern favourite foods made by the animal-death-industry. For me personally, as a vegan, this is the really great advantage of my lifestyle - but I admit that it’s frustrating that I can’t say this without sounding ‘up’ myself.
When I’m advocating for animals I’m also hoping to set ‘style’. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not rubbishing a bit of old fashioned morality, it’s just that I like to think morality is a stepping stone to more interesting things. Morality is a good reference point, like having rules when you’re playing a sport. Then it’s a matter of honesty. The honourable sports-player plays a straight game and enjoys playing by the rules. The problem, as I see it, with evangelical preachers preaching unvarnished morality is that they always kill the enjoyment. They have to make pleasure sinful, and in terms of vegan principle if it’s made into a strictness it certainly loses its attractiveness.
Morality, ethical upbringing, values, they’re guides, pointing out the right direction, but we’re heading towards more sophisticated ways of living and decision-making these days . “Thou shalt not eat meat” isn’t inspiring, whereas “Lighten up - be vegan” seems to be worth investigating. It’s more attractive and just as moral.

Experiments in imagination

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Imagine what it would be like to ‘go vegan’, trying to give things up but always finding it to be an effort - if it was like that we’d surely, eventually feel like giving up and going back to easier ways.
But isn’t that the characteristic of any experiment – finding out whether it is worth putting in the effort and going on, in order to eventually reach a time when it’s no longer such an effort? Once over that hurdle then experiments become all-interesting. I suppose all people want to get to that stage. when they start out on any discipline.
I remember when I first contemplated veganism I’d ask myself if expending the initial energy (to get over the inertia) was worth it. But there’s a double hurdle for vegans, because there’s a huge weight of opinion set against us, trying to drag us back to convention. Vegans are in danger of being scuppered not only by a lack of support, not only by others’ inaction but by open hindrance.
In an ideal world we’d be simply pioneering, setting an example and others inevitably following - ‘vegans doing the right thing’, others alongside lightening the load. But that certainly isn’t the case for most of us, not right now anyway.
So, to break this cycle, to turn things around, to be experimenting rather than always watching one’s back, I found it best to approach this great lifestyle change as if I were forging my own philosophy. I was conducting a big experiment in order to feel a more exciting and effective energy flowing through me. I felt as if I were letting imagination play a part in linking self development with self discipline.
By going vegan I discovered my own potential for jumping the hurdles, for ‘making the effort’, without having to first be certain of anything - it was being done in the true spirit of experimenting, by not needing outside help to confirm my decisions or to keep me on track.

Imaginary companions

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The struggle to stand firm in the face of temptation isn’t merely one of disciplined decision-making but in finding a reason to be disciplined. For me, this reasoning is based upon the prioritising of issues in my own mind, where I sort out what is the most urgent thing needing my attention ... concerning the major issues of the day. I’m for ever asking myself “What am I going to do about it?”
Animal Rights figures large. Is it my own claustrophobia or my empathy with innocent little creatures that leads me to want to defend imprisoned animals? Whatever it is, it’s very clear and strong and urgent, leading me to boycott anything to do with cruelty to animals. If I’m going to do anything, I want to be effective and I don’t want to fail at it, so it’s a toss-up between making a big gesture (going vegan) and going in so hard that I risk not being able to continue with it.
When I ‘went vegan’, perhaps I feared it would inevitably drive me crazy, craving all these ‘prohibited’ things and not allowing myself any of them.
People often ask me if I’m “allowed to eat” certain things and I always say, “I can eat what I like. It’s my own choice. There’s no authority watching over me”. I’m sure other vegans get asked that a lot too. But to be able to say that you’re ‘a vegan’ you have to actually be it and stay it.
I know that I stay vegan by tapping into my sense of purpose and vision of a future in harmony with animals. But I stay vegan for other reasons. Now, this might sound a bit weird but it’s the best I can come up with. I like to think I have the ‘little people’ living on my shoulders … whispering in my ear … suggesting great possibilities and telling me things I can do. Now that I’m ‘clean’ (i.e. vegan), I can afford to hear them. I can use my imagination. And I know others can’t, not in the same way, if only because that can’t afford to hear ... most of them being omnivores or worse. They can’t go around condemning an abusive world because they’re condoning it. They’re caught up in it. They haven’t contemplated going vegan. They still think it’s absurd. They couldn’t even allow ‘such absurdity’ to enter their heads. They opt to stay where they’ve always been.
These omnivores love their animal products and tell anyone they know who is vegan “You don’t know what you’re missing”. But we know they can’t hear the ‘little people’ (and would think me quite mad if I were to mention them).
For me, it would be these ‘little people’ who do a lot of the difficult work for me - they suggest I take notice of things I could easily have missed. They alert my conscience when I’m in danger of doing something I don’t need to. I imagine ‘the little people’ as coming from another world, directly accessible through my conscience. Once my conscience is fired up it’s a bit like tuning into a radio station - I find ‘them’ and use ‘them’ and listen to ‘them’.
Whether you acknowledge such things or not, you’d probably agree that the whole matter of ‘the unknown’ interests most people. We’re all attracted to the unknown, ‘the possible-though-seemingly-improbable’. There’s nothing I like better than peering into the unknowable future, and in preparation projecting anything which might benefit our children’s’ generation and their welfare. The unknowable tempts me away from conforming to convention. The rationale here is, I suppose, that since conventional ways have gotten us into today’s mess, the opposite may well get us out of it.
Imagine this if you will: the world is dying from unimaginativeness. So, I like to cultivate imagination. Un-imaginative the ‘little people’ are not, indeed I think they embody imagination and have an overwhelming impulse to guide us by way of it. But they’re rough teachers, their guidance is full of fun and mischief, tripping me up when I get above myself, pushing me beyond my comfort zone, working for my best interests but they’re ever-ready to do ‘mischief’ if I ever drop my guard. I imagine them as elders, tough in order to keep standards high.
As I walk barefoot along a safe, sandy beach feeling rather self-important, I stub my toe on a rock. I’m angry. I’m cursing the bastards who made me do it ... but it’s only the ‘little people’, squatting on my shoulder, reminding me, sometimes painfully, not to get carried away with thoughts of self importance.
Imagining them into existence is similar to imagining ideas into reality. Learning from the ‘little people’ is like watching ideas grow until they’re independent of imagination.
Stubbing my toe on a rock I see the need for change, for growth in myself. Change needs exhilarating bursts of fresh energy. If change is too slow it will whimper along, never building up enough momentum, always held back by mistake after mistake. If I relax too often I’ll be constantly clobbered by the ‘little people’. They’ll scream with mischievous delight whenever I’m being idle or showing no gratitude for what’s on offer. When I’m not looking they’ll lay a rock in front of me, to stub my toe on.

The power of food

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What the Animal Industries may NOT realise is that a strong counter-culture is gaining ground. People are beginning to wake up to the fact that animal products are dangerous as well as immoral. We know food is obviously essential to life … but not this food. If animal-derived foods are anything, they’re toxic and unethical and detrimental to the environment, and yet almost everyone remains an omnivore. They’re seduced by roast dinners, egg and bacon breakfasts or after-dinner ice cream. They can’t walk past a cake shop without paying a visit.
We can’t get past our own tastebuds and food-tastes. We’re hemmed in by our social eating habits. If we go against eating norms then social relationships are affected, whereas if we eat from the same table we’re accepted.
For people like vegans social isolation is a potent punishment, simply because we eat different food. Perhaps people think we are trying to be better than everyone else. Whether that’s fair or not it happens that way ... but it shouldn’t make any vegan feel insecure or depressed, after all we’ve looked carefully at our own habits and decided to make changes which go against majority opinion. We boycott products and condemn the industries who make their business out of animal exploitation ... and most of us are thankful we’ve gone vegan despite the struggle. One might argue that some life-struggle is good for us, since it develops appreciation for what we have, contributing to a strength in our personality with which we’ll have no trouble attracting people towards us … and eventually towards our ideas. We develop a personality that seems unique and sovereign, and which acknowledges others’ sovereign right to a life. We recognise the unique individual in each other, who is worth something in their own right. If that does nothing else for us it should give us self confidence, enough perhaps to combat the social isolation that being vegan brings. It helps us lead the fashion and not follow it. It says to us, “Yes, go ahead, boycott, do what is necessary and right, and don’t back off when things get rough”. And this is the same confidence that says “no” when we’re tempted.
If that strength of character is a bit lacking in our world, and if people do keep giving in to exactly what the brain-washers have programmed us to want, then our biggest problems are ones concerning conformity. If we are giving in to social pressure to be the same as others we have to consciously go against our better judgement, our wanting to stand firm. And that, perhaps more than anything else, erodes self esteem and self-confidence, proving that we haven’t been able to stand up to the power of food.

Hand in hand

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The Animal Rights movement doesn’t have funding or pro bono help from top-level professionals. We can’t compete with the exploiters’ wealth.
They have all the material advantages. They own the media and advertising industries. They can buy whoever they please. They legally sell addictive food substances to the public. Their researchers tell them how far they can push the customer. On this level, veganism can’t win people over. We have to go the longer way around, at least at this stage.
All omnivorous humans in the rich Western world are having such a good time indulging in animal stuff that you can hardly expect they’d want to spoil their fun. They don’t want to think about food, just eat it and enjoy it. They’d rather not know about animal exploitation ... and they’re grateful it’s done behind closed doors.
In this respect our whole society is like a mutual encouragement club – the customer goes along with what the exploiters do, just so long as their favourite animal products are available for purchase. It’s a classic drug dealing system - there’s a co-dependency between dealer and client. We all get what we want and it’s in everyone’s interest not to welsh on the other.
But if our providers give us satisfaction, they also own us. If we continue buying their products we’ll have less and less chance of weaning ourselves off them. How seductive their product is ... but when you look at it more closely, it’s just smoke and mirrors, it’s as unattractive as it is attractive. One’s attachment crumbles as soon as we puff some resistance at it. And that resistance comes from a deeper, more passionate, compassionate inner self - something we can be proud of but something we often find reason to keep locked up.
If we do decide to rouse this sleeping compassion it’s obvious what we have to do - drop the lot, drop everything connected with animals. Once we become vegan a whole new opportunity to educate others arises. Suddenly we find ourselves in a strong position to speak up about something we’ve perhaps suppressed for a long time - the ‘animal problem’. Up to this point we’ve been unable to defend animals because we’ve still been eating them.
By boycotting animal produce we can reduce the impact of the exploiters and effectively help to put them out of business. Surely that’s a noble enough cause ... but food addiction is like a lump of concrete in our gut. The food binds body and mind more than we realise. All of our life we’ve been ‘doing it’ - we salivate at the very thought of something delicious to eat (activating the reward system of the brain, rather like a ‘dopamine reaction’). Shopping isn’t just a chore, food shopping is something else. It becomes part of our day-out, going in to the malls, supermarkets and even the corner shop to get our fix. They provide us with our treats and little food luxuries. It’s here we plan our meals and eat snacks along the way. Our providers display, at eye level, the most popular products they know we want. And the customer knows what (especially the animal foods) they are buying will soon enough be the main ingredient of a meal which will be enjoyed by others too. The foods on display, that we drool over, are guaranteed to act to bring us communal pleasure and social acceptance - ‘eating together to stay together’. It’s a powerful reason to forget about the animals and emphasise the need to feed ourselves and others with what pleases us.

The animals’ revenge

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I’m glad not to be part of the exploiter class, even though I sometimes work for them and see the splendour of their houses, cars, fine clothes and expensive belongings. I’m also glad not to be too closely involved with political corporations, which aren’t too fussy about the ‘natural resources’ they exploit. The corporations and those who run them - for them, rule number one is to succeed or perish. They face fierce competition from each other, and if they don’t succeed they let down their shareholders. In some ways they have many advantages, in other ways their lives are unenviable.
Today’s shareholders in the animal food and clothing industries demand good profits. Business-wise, they attempt to monopolise their market by sending competitors broke if they can. They conserve their assets, expand at every opportunity and play every dirty trick in the book to keep their advantage … in that way they stay afloat and keep their customers happy. They are the producers: we the consumers ... and especially ‘all-consuming’ when it comes to food. We buy items that are, to some extent, addictive. Our addiction to our favourite ‘animal’ foods (or other animal products we ‘can’t live without’) is essential to the welfare of the Industry but there’s another nasty twist, that all this producing and consuming and enjoying is The Animals’ Revenge. It may be so that, by consuming the (stolen) body parts of animals, there’s a creeping deterioration in our metabolism. If we ingest them and get used to them, we pay … in more ways than one. Animal products are excellent health destroyers and therefore good for keeping doctors in business. Perhaps that’s why most of them don’t advise their patients to avoid them or even to follow a vegan diet.
Animal foods are profitable to the exploiters but just as certainly not so good for the humans who consume them. We, along with the hapless animals, are simply victims. But, to some extent, we humans can look after ourselves. We can learn and we can change since we aren’t entirely enslaved, whereas the domesticated animal is helpless. Entirely. Vegans are calling for a stop to it because it’s unhealthy and suicidal but more so because animals can’t defend themselves against human attack. It’s bullying in its worst form. We act as parasites on the animals and for a so called advanced species this is a shameful act - the strong made strong by making the weak weaker. I, for one, am so glad to be shot of it, to disassociate from all that.

Soul food

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Eating animals: “But they have no souls so it’s okay”. “They don’t feel things as we do”. “They can’t reflect on their situation or see up ahead to what’s in store for them”.
Whether any of that’s true or not, does it matter? New information today says that it’s safe to eat solely plant-based foods, so why not simply do just that? In our world of misinformation people concur with what they’ve been told - that animals have no souls and that meat is good for you. Their main fall back position is a powerful one: “We’ve been eating meat for two million years so why stop now?”
But now we’ve moved on in so many ways. We are not Neanderthals. We are reconstructed humans, and perhaps it’s timely to stop this unnecessary ‘carnivorism’, not only because we know we can survive safely without animal food but also because we’ve shown how cruel the human system is towards animals. When the human is making money, beware – especially when they’re profiting from producing certain foods. It’s such easy pickings that everybody’s doing it all round the world and that spells competition and the danger of lowering standards to undercut you competitor. Just look at what hell holes the factory farms are. They aren’t designed as punishment camps they are merely the cheapest way of growing the product to stay in business.
We no longer chase and hunt animals to kill them for food. Instead we keep them captive and treat them like machines. Since the early part of last century the wealthy Animal Industries have been intensifying animal husbandry, and quoting from J.S. Foer’s Animal Eating, he says,
“Modern industrial agriculture has asked what hog farming might look like if one considered only profitability – literally designing multitier farms from multistorey office blocks …”.
The ruthlessness of these designs reflects the worst imaginable outcome for the animals themselves. The customer has ‘just gone along with it’ and doesn’t want to know too much detail. They’ve allowed agribusiness to wield the same powers as, in the past, the lords of the manor once did, weaving their minions into an inescapable maze - we need and they provide; we shop, they profit.
The Animal Industries have been successful at cementing-in our shopping habits, by giving us what we want whilst messing with our minds at the same time. They effectively do our choosing for us, do it by brazen temptation and misinformation. Subtly and subliminally they secure our loyalty to their products – we, the customer, support them (the Animal Industries) in order to serve our own best interests. Apart from vegans, has anyone noticed anyone routinely NOT wearing animal skins somewhere on their body or NOT eating abattoir-derived foods? And you don’t need to look too closely to see that most adults over 40 are already ill from their life-long use of these food products (ever seen The Biggest Loser on television?)
By using misinformation to persuade the spending dollar from peoples’ pockets the Animal Industries also succeed in screwing up the future of the planet at the same time. And we must ask how did they ever get so much power? It might be that they made it their business to know the way their customers think ... and not giving a stuff about being wicked.
They operate on a set of values (to do with the exploitation of resources) which most of us could never accept. We take what they give us (by buying). We don’t fully realise how dangerous our shopping habits are, since we are their playthings - they’ll do whatever it takes to keep their advantage. They’ll always conserve what they have. They’ll always act within the law. They’ll always protect themselves by never seeming to be directly accountable for what’s being done. They won’t usually act openly against the interests of humans … they wouldn’t draw attention to themselves in that way. But for all their stealth and careful image-making, they know their customers don’t really care to know too much. They know they won’t notice, or even care about, what’s being done to ‘non-humans’, as long as the good times keep rolling.

Conforming

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The exploiters, brain focused on self interest, know their customers can be relied upon to not-want-to-know-what’s-going-on. Most importantly, they know most people are subservient to a system which is tightly controlled.
When I first noticed the restrictions, as a kid, I accepted them as from people who I considered were lovingly protecting me. I learnt what ‘normal behaviour’ meant. I learnt how to conform.. My habits were formed, guided by my parents and Society, especially concerning my choice of food (no one had ever heard of vegetarian, let alone vegan food). Once I was beyond parental care and control I was able to decide for myself, and that involved decisions based on discrimination and disapproval ... and it wasn’t long before animal issues had to be looked at. Soon enough I realised I’d have to be involved in some sort of boycott, because there was no doubt that I disapproved of animal exploitation and therefore meat products. Later, as I thought more about it, it had to include all animal by-products.
If young adults today reassess things they were brought up with they could probably follow a similar path of logic and eventually arrive at something like the same vegan principle I arrived at. They’ll associate two forms of liberation - the freeing of the subservient human mind and the liberating of animals. They’ll weigh slavery against freedom and choose one over the other.
By chance, as a teenager, I took up running and the only teacher who showed any interest in my athletics was my history teacher so, in return, I showed an interest in his subject ... which I went further with. In studying history I found that slavery and the human struggle to escape it figured large. Humans had been forever trying to win their freedom and discover more intelligent value systems which would be better aligned with human progress. Now, basking in our freedom these days, we (in the relatively free West) no longer have to struggle on our own account and can now afford to look at what slavery signifies, and do something about it ... become advocates for the enslaved, some of whom are undoubtedly humans. But by far the most and worst enslaved are animals. Unlike their human counterparts they have no chance to organise on their own behalf (having no power to do anything about human oppression). Unless human advocates step in on their behalf they have no chance of being released from slave status.
My present freedom allows me to be an animal advocate but it comes at a price. By uncovering certain truths and speaking about it in public I find myself getting off-side with people. Animal advocacy upsets almost everyone.
But no worries (I think to myself), it won’t always be that way. There are obvious chinks of good sense in what we say, that will become apparent, eventually. I hold onto that, especially when I’m on the brink of despairing of my fellow humans.
Vegan principle and anti-slavery make sense if only in terms of human health. We, as vegans, wish to weaken the ‘exploiter’ influence on Society by keeping people away from animal foods and therefore out of hospital, and safe from premature death. We encourage people to un-poison their bodies and minds and of course to no longer be part of the obscenity that amounts to 150,000 animal executions a minute. Until we move away from so much gratuitous self-harm and this daily holocaust in abattoirs all over the world, nothing can possibly go well for us personally or collectively.