Barefoot Vegan Mag Jan_Feb 2017

“Consent has us believing that
animals are willing participants
in whatever it is we want to do
with them, that they willingly
sacrifice themselves for some
greater human purpose.”
we can’t compete. We can never win the struggle for
justice by using the exploiter’s tools of deception. Like any
other social justice movement, our success lies in mass
education and building an organized grassroots
movement. And we should partner with all other like
movements to strengthen our common cause to fight
oppression wherever it rears its ugly head.
As a vegan living in a non-vegan world, it
often feels as if people don’t care about
animals. However, your book points to
research that argues otherwise. Can you
tell us a little more about that and how
that should shape our promotion of
veganism?
In his recent BBC series, “Sex, Death and the Meaning of
Life,” the world’s most famous evolutionary biologist,
Richard Dawkins, tell us that: “Science shows we humans
are hardwired to have empathy. Scientists can now scan
which parts of the brain register vicarious pain or
pleasure.” “Brain science helps us to see why we find it a
bad idea to steal, why we hate to see somebody kicking a
dog. We can trace the chemicals in the brain that reward
kindness. We can see what goes on in the brain when we
feel for others. Goodness is natural to us. Kindness is in
our physiology.”
More specific to vegan advocacy, we find a very high
rate of caring about the suffering of other animals, 80% to
90% in people surveyed, but this doesn’t necessarily or
easily translate into food choices. Nevertheless, if one
really believes that one should “meet people where they
are” then we should first recognise that empathy is there
in most of us yet needs to be cultivated. That’s where we
come in. Even if one insists that humans don’t care about
other animals, this is largely a cultural construct that
should not be used as an excuse to avoid the subject.
Culture is malleable. It’s our job as their advocates to
make the case for why people should care, just as it is the
role of any other justice activist to make a case for their
cause. They too dealt with incredible obstacles and
terrible odds and yet succeeded. We have compelling
stories and compelling evidence for why people should
care.
What is the biggest mistake most vegan/
animal advocacy groups are doing in
trying to change people’s behaviour?
What should they be doing instead?
There are certain high profile figures in our movement
who do their fair share of critiquing the vegan messenger,
telling her what to wear, how to act, what to say and how
to say it for maximum “effectiveness.” At times we seem
more obsessed about what people think about us than >
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