Shouting about the disgrace of our society. We need to face upto the fact that killing animals is just unacceptable. Do something worthwhile today. Be vegan.
It has recently occurred to me that I have been living safe as a vegan. When I first became a vegan I was talking about animal rights all the time. I seem to have settled into a lifestyle where I now live quietly with my views. I have not posted often enough and not made a fuss about the things I should have been. In Wales there is a huge badger cull going on, small independent companies everywhere that used to be against animal testing are being bought out by multinationals and life is not getting any better for the animals. And I, a vegan, with a vegan blog, looked up yesterday at my household cleaning cupboard and felt ashamed. It has become easy as a mum with a busy life to just pick up something off the shelf at the supermarket when I needed it, instead of thinking ahead when running out of an item and ordering online from an ethical store or going into Manchester to a store I know will sell compassionate goods.
I have adopted a complacent attitude. If I have stayed over with a friend and she has made me toast and butter for breakfast, I have eaten it, if I want a make-up product I see on a market stall, I have bought it. And I guess I have just had a wake-up moment. We probably all do things we shouldn’t do and on a grand scale a piece of toast and butter is not such a misdemenour. Yet to me it speaks volumes about how easy it is to forget what is important in life. Life, love, friends, values. We all know what it’s like. You’re in a long term relationship, you begin to care less about what you look like, listen less to what your partner is saying….You are in a steady job, you lose enthusiasm for your work, it becomes easy to slack off, take a a longer lunch, complain….You are a vegan and you forget about what the animals go through to produce milk, butter…. the suffering of a rabbit having mascara smeared on its naked eye, that animals are not objects and that perhaps a slightly less kept house for a day or two while you order ethical goods or a day without eyeliner is better than violence, cruelty and a society obsessed by animal torture and death.
That’s my point for today. Be aware always of who you are and what you can do. And if you are not who you want yourself to be, become it.
I used to eat meat, wear leather and basically had the same contempt for animals which I see on a daily basis everywhere I look. I became a vegetarian after seeing newborn lambs prancing around and not wanting to be responsible for them being murdered. I became a vegan when I was thinking of breastfeeding my son and finally understood what the dairy industry is all about. What I know now, I did not know then. No longer living in ignorance, I have no option but to write this blog.
Loading ...
In some ways, my path through veganism has been the opposite of yours – I came to it more from the eco-political world than from pure animal rights, and it was only later that my emotional response to the AR side of things kicked in. I too used ot be complacent (when going abroad, for instance, I might eat cheese if that was the best option I could find in a restaurant) but it seems that woth each passing year my attitudes harden, and I become less and less tolerant of the excuses people make for continuing in their uncaring life styles.
The only thing that keeps me in check nowadays is the knowledge that I too was once the same… After 25 years, it is hard now to really remember what was going thorugh my head before I became a vegan (nothing, probably!), but I have to acknowledge how hard it is for anyone to break out of their current life style.
More than any other, it was probably Hans Ruesch’s amazing book “Slaughter of the Innocent” that really opened my eyes. After reading that, ignorance is no longer a defence.
Thanks for shouting – keep it up!