Dear Vegans,
Stop hating.
Love,
The Animals
The first rule of politics is that nobody cares about your rage. Nobody. Politics is not based on morality but rather on the ease of the flow of emotions. And nothing is easier to do than to write somebody off as a crackpot or a rager. Coming off as a rager gives people (in their mind) license to ignore everything you say because they don't like you. It gives them license to throw the baby out with your bathwater. And that is a shame. Not for them - because, remember, they don't care - but for you and whatever cause you believe in.
Nothing incenses me more than the horrific treatment of the helpless. Animals, children. . .you name it. It is maddening. But that madness remains my madness until somebody else decides to share in it. And most people have enough to be mad about in their lives without taking on my madness as well - no matter how righteous that madness may be.
In a moral arena, there would be room to discuss this, but in a political arena, the fight is already lost. The other person has used their free will to move on - to whatever they feel like - The Cosby Show, Online betting, Oprah- whatever. You have just lost your audience without lifting a finger. And when you lose your audience - in politics - you lose your power, your power to make a change in the world.
This is an ugly truth. Nobody likes it. Even the people who are ignoring you don't like it. They have their causes that they get angry about, and they don't get it either when normal people dismiss them as whack-jobs because they think schools should hand out condoms or partial-birth abortions should be banned or whatever. But if you want to make a difference and change the world, you have to engage with enough "other" people to tilt the world along lines that you would prefer. And since you are in the minority, that is going to take some effort, some persuasion, some patience, and a whole lot of self-discipline.
I met my first vegan while I was in college. It was a music school, and everyone was, as a rule, pretty liberal. But out of 150 students in our little school, there was only one vegan (which is actually fairly representative of the population as a whole).
Well let me just say that as interesting as I found her ideas, this girl was an absolute bitch. Forget about self-righteous, forget about condescending, forget about being a rager. . .she was just maddening and annoying to be around. And the thought went through my head - and it went through the heads of everyone else who knew her - "I am never becoming a vegan."
Some 10 years later, when I became a vegan - almost overnight, as it turned out - I thought of my old college acquaintance. And in the moment I made the switch, I told myself consciously that I am doing this not because of her but in spite of her. In fact I made the point to say to myself that I am doing this for the sake of my own personal health and explicitly *not* for the sake of the animals.
Now, I did not not care about the animals. But I made certain that that wouldn't be my motivation, since I did not want to build my health on a foundation of anger. And, of course, the more I ate vegan, the more I cared about the animals I wasn't eating, and the more horrified I became at the way animals are treated in our world. But I refused to put that at the centerpiece of my philosophy, partly for political reasons, and partly to maintain a distance - both for myself and others - from vegans like the girl I went to college with.
Now it is true that life should not just be a popularity contest, and it takes character to hold unpopular views. But we have to remember that politics in a democracy *is* a popularity contest. In fact, that's the point, because the person who is the most popular wins. And the person who wins is the one who can make the changes he or she wants to make.
So if we want to make a difference, if we want to win people over to our cause, the worst way we can do that is to alienate them. They don't have to love us at first, but they at least have to not hate us. And most skilled politicians can take it from there.
Now there is an important point here that needs to be made about radical movements. In my heart, I don't believe veganism to be a radical movement at all, but one that is wholly normal, rational, and exceedingly healthy. But in reference to the world we live in, it is statistically, anyway, a "fringe" movement that most people would consider highly radical. And here I have to say this: radical movements can attract a certain kind of person that is more concerned with the radicalism of the movement than with the movement's success.
To take a current example from an objective standpoint, we can look at the Republican Party.
There is a radical wing of that party (led these days primarily by Sarah Palin) that is sticking to its guns and alienating not only their natural opponents (Liberals) but their natural allies (other Republicans). In New York, they recently succeeded in ousting a moderate Republican candidate in favor of a more radical candidate with the result that their party had no chance of winning at all.
There is a kind of purity of doctrine amongst these types that believes that holding on to their "truth" is more important than winning. In its way, it is a highly moral position to take. But the political results (politics being non-moral by nature) are pre-ordained: they will always fail. Many will view this failure as a sign of their purity, and so they welcome it as a kind of proof of their devotion, the way some Muslims maintain scars (zabiba) on their foreheads to show how sincerely they pray each day.
And indeed, there can be a kind of ecstatic self-immolation that comes with maintaining one's righteousness even in defeat. It is a kind of religious experience for the faithful to throw up their hands at their loss and pray for vengeance against the evil sinners who defeated them.
But it won't save a single animal.
And that is the point. That is what we must remember as vegans. That is, as the economists put it, "the bottom line."
And, my friends, for decades now, we have failed miserably in this pursuit. So much have we failed, in fact, that we are not even starting from a neutral place with the public. We are starting at a huge deficit even before we put on our first "Animal Rights" button.
Decades of throwing "blood" on fur coats, of persecuting medical practitioners for their experiments, and all manner of cockeyed schemes have made vegans a joke long before they are able to plead their case. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Because the sad thing is, most people really agree with us anyway. They are heartbroken and torn, but ultimately resigned, about what happens to the animals they are eating. They have seen those slaughterhouse videos, and they are disgusted. But they don't think there is any way to change any of that, so they look for ways to put it out of their minds.
Banging on these peoples' doors with your anger reminds them of things they feel they can do nothing about. This is not helpful. Worse, it suggests to them that they are less humane than you are, less caring than you are, and therefore inferior to you. And it gives them every excuse they need to write you off - and veganism with you.
When you bring your self-righteousness to these people, they feel that you perceive them as less than human. They perceive that you don't recognize that they care too, but that they don't know how to make a difference.
And the truth is- neither do you. You are both in the same boat. You want to make a difference, but you're not- not like this. If you turn three friends vegan while they're in college but alienate 10,000 strangers in a publicity stunt, then you don't know how to make a difference any more than Ronald McDonald.
But if you can start from a place of understanding, then there is more hope of building a coalition with the majority population that is disgusted by animal cruelty but feels powerless to do anything about it. If you can view their decisions to block out animal rights as a *sane* one and not an immoral one, then you have a better chance of winning a friend and a supporter. But first you have to admit that you don't really know how to change things yet. First you have to find a way to deal with the anger, to learn that shouting through a megaphone feels good for an afternoon, but that no animals were saved by that alone, and in some cases, many more were killed, because you gave meat-eaters one more excuse to ignore you.
Your anger is righteous. It is just. And it is humane. It is a human response to an inhuman ordeal.
But anger is cheap. Anybody can do it.
Finding solutions through work and patience is difficult. It is a schlog, as are all things in politics, and it is not for everybody. For people who care enough to put in this kind of work, there is an endless life mission ahead of you. For the people who just like to throw rocks at other people, you had best sit this one out if you care about animals. As perverse as it sounds, you would do better to share a chicken leg with a meat eater and talk about how hard it is to think about where this meat came from than to throw blood on him while you eat your tofurkey and scoff. This is a political fact. It is not a happy one, indeed, it is somewhat grim. But you have to continue to ask yourself- why am I doing this? Do I want to make a difference? *Am* I making a difference? And if not, why not?
This kind of questioning is not cheap; it is not easy. It is the work of the disciplined and patient mind, of one which can care enough to put off cheap results until real results can be achieved. There are not many people in "fringe" movements of any kind who are willing to do this, and for those who are, it is incumbent upon you to "police your own." Contain the rage in your group that you know is causing more harm than good. Channel their efforts, or perhaps just tell them to stay home. . .or you can even send them over to Sarah Palin!
The fight for animal rights is a heartbreaker- day after day. It is an uphill climb that seems like it may never end. It is no wonder that most people prefer to just turn the other way. But those people are human just like you. Maybe it's worth seeing what they are thinking. Because we can not do it alone, and without those people on our side - people who really want to be on our side - we can not achieve what we want to for the other species we share the planet with. But with a little courage, a little reflection, and a broader vision, we may just find solutions that will benefit all of us who live here on Earth.
D-Blog
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