As I said in the discussion entitled “Vegan Food Blogs”, the general public perception of vegan food is that it is “rabbit food”, leaving us hungry and completely unsatisfied. Sadly, many so-called animal ‘ protection’ groups, even including some ‘vegans’, add to the false notion that being vegan is ‘difficult’.
In addition, most people focus on what they’ll have to ‘give up’ in going vegan, but neglect what they’ll be able to replace with delicious alternatives.
People also have a tendency to forget that their eating habits are just that: habits. While the process of changing habits can be temporarily challenging for some people, once new habits are formed, continuing the new habits is usually very easy.
The truth is that being vegan is easy. That is, food choices for vegans in most areas where people live are plentiful. At most, if you live in a place like Barrow, Alaska, it takes some planning and thought. But for most people, even people who live in vegan-unfriendly areas of the country, as I do, being vegan is simple and delightful. For people who live in or near big cities, being vegan is mindlessly easy.
The most difficult aspect of being vegan also happens to be the most difficult aspect of life: other people. Other people, particularly parents (for young people) and spouses (for adults), can make it more difficult to be vegan.
If you’re financially dependent on your parents, and they are disrespectful and insensitive enough toward your moral choices to make being vegan difficult or impossible for you, then do the best you can until you are able to take control of your own choices.
Spouses are a different situation. It’s one thing if your non-vegan spouse is supportive of you as a vegan; but it’s quite another if your spouse is hostile toward you as a vegan. If your non-vegan spouse is supportive, then perhaps you can do more to help him or her go vegan? If your non-vegan spouse is hostile toward you as a vegan, then are the two of you as well-matched as you originally thought? These are simply some questions to think about.
Going back to changing habits and potential difficulties, years ago, I was very much in the habit of consuming animal products. I couldn’t have imagined living without them. But I went vegan quickly and easily. It wasn’t that I had a lot of ‘willpower’, because really, any ‘willpower’ I have comes from some other motivation, and never from willpower itself.
What motivated me is that there is always something I’m saying “YES!” to more strongly than another thing. In the case of going vegan, I was so appalled by the cruelty and injustice of all animal agriculture, and more than sufficiently motivated by empathy with each individual being who was unjustly exploited, that my “YES!” to vegan choices easily overwhelmed whatever habitual tendencies I had previously.
Do you need to feel more empathy or sense of justice for motivation? Try watching Earthlings and imagine yourself in the situation of each individual being you see. Think about what they did to deserve to be murdered – nothing. It shouldn’t take much of this kind of thinking to be strongly motivated to never intentionally consume another trace of animal product again.
The problem lies with getting people to watch things like this. They would rather bury their heads in the sand and pretend that it doesn't exist. What are we going to do tranquilize everyone and bound them to seats in a theater and tape their eyes open so that they have no choice but to watch???
You can't make people see what they don't want to see. People do not want to see the bad in themselves or the darkness that lurks around them. They want to think of themselves as good people and changing this perception is not something they are going to easily do or do intentionally.
Unless a person is looking to change themselves in some way or unless the person is truly connected to their compassion and moral conscious they are not going to change. They might try but if the change means that they have to admit that they where wrong, that they where not nice people and that they contributed to pain and suffering themselves then most of them aren't going to want to change.
How do you propose we get people to watch "Earthlings" or even just to understand the pain and suffering that is going on when humans are programmed at such an early age to think of themselves as the masters of the universe and to never ever admit they where wrong. Sorry is not a word you hear much anymore. Our species grows more selfish and greedy every generation. Our only motivation is our own selfishness.
I know that there are those of us (like all of us in this group) that have a moral conscious but we are outnumbered and that is the simple truth of it. What is the great plan to turn the numbers around? To give people back a sense of compassion, to give them back the souls that they have lost in the darkness of their selfish destruction of our fellow creatures and our home.
Sorry I forgot to add.....
Yes it is easy and joyous to be a vegan for those that do care. For most of us it is just simply a total turn around. No struggle. Just give it up and that's that. However some do struggle and they need support if they are willing to make the change.
But as I said above those that don't want to change won't change. No amount of soapbox preaching is really going to change who a person is deep down inside. You can't make a rapist not want to rape again.
Hi everyone,
I decided to delete my last post from here and start a new thread with it. I don't want the discussion of effective advocacy to take away from the subject of the joy and ease of being vegan.
As far as I can tell, what seems to be difficult is to break through the cultural conditioning of a society that thinks absolutely nothing of killing and enslaving living beings for food. It's sometimes hard for potential vegans to rise above the guilt that one has to face in order to move beyond it, and into a new paradigm of responsibility. Until we are willing to face the reality of our past choices, we will continue to repress that guilt, and that can make it difficult to see the truth of our current and future choices.
Aside from what Dan said about other people getting in the way, I think that when veganism appears 'difficult', when animal products appear 'tempting', or when personal experiences convince the individual that animal products are necessary for health, it implies that the vegan ideal itself is not so secure inside the individual.
Once a person sees the truth of the vegan ideal, the diet and lifestyle become an ethical imperative. Making vegan choices in our diet and lifestyle is an easy, necessary way for us to express our values, and we can take joy every day in the self-esteem that comes naturally as a result of truly living according to the highest principles we aspire to.
What Angel said about the truth or conviction of veganism being insecure in the individual who finds being vegan ‘difficult’ or animal products ‘tempting’ is so true in my experience. If I were vegan for solely health or environmental reasons, I would still find it pretty easy to be “almost a strict vegetarian”, but much more difficult to be vegan. (In fact, I see the word “vegan” as entailing the moral reasons in the word itself.)
As it is, I find it impossible (psychologically) not to be a vegan because I see consuming animal bodily products as no different than consuming human bodily products. The idea of consuming such products repulses me morally and from the standpoint of what those products are: somebody’s flesh or bodily fluids.
Fortunately, there are so many delicious and nutritious substitutes and alternatives that such a strong moral conviction causes me no sacrifice at all. As I said, even if I lacked moral conviction about this issue, it would still be easy to be ‘almost a strict vegetarian’ for less compelling reasons.
