Reaching people about veganism: experiences of a 6-month vegan

April 13, 2010 @ 12:37 am

Although I was a vegetarian for three years after college, I went vegan about six months ago. So much has happened since then and I’ve learned so much that it’s impossible to recap it all in a single blog post. In fact, it’s hard to even keep these posts short since I have so much to say. So my strategy is to blog about veganism more in “chunks,” then eventually collate it all into a website.

One of the coolest things about going vegan for me is meeting other like-minded people and having a positive ripple effect on others on the curious. I recently got an email from a vegan that reads my posts and, with her permission, I’ve reprinted her questions here. My responses and thoughts on this follow.

“I was wondering if you’ve been successful at all in reaching friends/family with veganism. Lately, I’ve experienced a bit of frustration in talking to some otherwise intelligent people about it. I feel a sense of urgency in trying to convey the message, but am a lot of the time faced with stubborn attitudes and hostility. My approach is very peaceful and non-pressuring, but even then I am truly shocked by the deeply ignorant statements I get in return.

Is there anything you’ve tried on others that has had successful results? And what made you go vegan? Also, what is your opinion about talking to the truly ignorant? Yesterday, I tried explaining veganism to someone who just didn’t seem interested in the least…Do we move on from people like that, or still try to reach them? (I ended up giving him a copy of Earthlings).”

I’ll address these one at a time…

“Is there anything you’ve tried on others that has had successful results?”

This is what I do so far: I post about veganism on Facebook, and I tweet about it. Mostly I just try to learn as much as I can, and be the best, most informed vegan possible, so I can truly lead by example. I don’t actively go out and promote veganism by passing out pamphlets on the street and what not. Instead, I live it. I talk about it online and in real life. In engaging people open to the lifestyle and the information and values that inform it, I do think I’ve been successful.

To live life as a vegan and remain tolerant of non-vegans is a strategy that’s worked for me. Since going vegan last October, my fiancée has gone full-on vegan (She’d always eaten way healthier than I had, and very little meat). I talked to her a lot about why I made this choice and what helped inform it (more on that below). Since joining me on this journey, she’s become an advocate simply by living the life. She cooks us great vegan meals and actually helps ensure I get more variety in my diet. She suggests vegan restaurants. This all happened because I took this choice seriously and stuck with it. And I stay informed on the topics, so I could explain some concepts to her that I didn’t even understand before going vegan, like the fact that dairy (milk, eggs, cheese, butter, for those who are curious) is just as bad for animals and one’s health as meat. All someone has to do is read Chapter 7 of Will Tuttle’s “World Peace Diet” to turn them off to dairy forever. I’m only halfway through right now, but I can’t imagine someone reading the entire book and not going vegan themselves.

Since going vegan, I’ve had lunch with fellow professionals who ask about my choice, and none have ever been hostile or disrespectful. Some have been surprised, turned off, mentioned that they hate PETA, snide, or dismissive, but my approach is to never, ever be defensive or combative. It doesn’t work. Instead, when they inevitably ask why I chose to go vegan, I explain in short talking points how and why. I find it most effective to simply reward curiosity respect with respect and ignore hostility. It’s better for animals, your health, the environment, period. Check out “The Kind Diet” or “The World Peace Diet” to start. Here are some websites. And so on. I give as little or as much info as people ask for, and I try not to get shrill or pushy or preachy. Because that doesn’t work.

As another example of having a positive ripple effect on others, I want to reprint a few words I just received from a colleague who recently wrote me about the baked goods they brought to the office:

“Failing the enjoyment you might have had from actually eating them, perhaps you will enjoy instead the knowledge that your veganism encouraged me to alter the recipe (swapping out the butter and sour cream for vegan analogues) for the cookies I shared with everyone else, a number of whom were also vegans. You guys are everywhere!

In addition to [colleague A], several others asked if the cookies were vegan and seemed reassured when I said yes. I’m pretty sure [colleague B] was one of those. And [colleague C] asked for the recipe and wanted to know how to make it vegan. I couldn’t say definitively who was and wasn’t, but I was left with the impression more than a couple of folks in the office are either vegan or curious. Heh, vegan-curious, so that’s what the kids are calling it these days!”

There is only one other vegan I know of in this group, but you can see that because we live it, and talk about it in a respectful manner, and don’t aggressively proselytize, it has had a positive ripple effect at least in making people curious.

Here’s one more email I recently received:

“Hey Rich, thanks for ‘The Kind Diet’ reco. Really enjoying the book and am eager to try some recipes. Just flirting right now but am aligned and interested.”

OK, so they’re not vegan yet. But there is no other response to this than “That is great news.” Someone is thinking about it. And since you can’t make anyone go vegan, that is the most a vegan activist can ask for.

These examples help raise another point. Food is like religion, politics or sex. For some people, it is a very personal topic and people naturally fear what they don’t understand—especially when it comes to a discussion around food choices. This is why I am not “closeted,” but am very selective about when and where to bring up this topic, and why living it is one of the best forms of activism. People will find out about your veganism if you live it. And that’s the opportunity to discuss it, as long as it’s an appropriate time and place, and in the appropriate manner. I feel that tact and poise are very important qualities to have for anyone trying to talk to someone about veganism, or make a point around topics that are a bit more personal or potentially polarizing. I am a flawed human being like everyone else, so I have to work on my own communication style every day. But I think any success I’ve had around reaching people about veganism comes down to my commitment to it, living by example, and remaining as respectful as I possibly can in the face of curiosity or disagreement. There is a time and place for everything. So I recommend choosing them wisely.

What I’m trying to do less of is get mired in email or Facebook back and forths. I really think it’s very difficult to reach someone in this medium. Too much can be misinterpreted. It’s too easy to for things to get “hot” or hostile. It’s impersonal. In short, I think email and online debates can be a real waste of time and I try to avoid them in general.

“What made you go vegan?”

I went vegan in October 2009. It’s been a very long journey for me that started with me as a kid. I grew up in a rural area and used to hunt small critters—mostly birds and squirrels—with my first air rifle. One day I saw a friend of mine shoot a small bird dead in his backyard. The bird’s mate, a female, risked its own life by swooping down to the ground and trying to revive her mate. I could hear the panic and anguish in her cries. And then my friend raised his rifle and shot her dead, too. After that, I never killed another living creature again, except maybe a gnat or giant mosquito, and I regret even having to do that.

During college, I was strolling down a dirty boardwalk with my then-girlfriend when I noticed a line of fat people waiting to sit on an elephant’s back. The elephant was about 100 yards away, but from where I stood I could see the sadness and humiliation in its eyes. I could literally feel its pain. You can call this projecting but to me that elephant’s misery was as real as the keyboard I’m typing this on right now. I had to sit on a bench to recover, and I started to cry. A small bird landed at our feet nearby, searching for crumbs, making me more upset because that moment helped clarify for me how fragile life is and how badly we treated our fellow creatures. I say “fellow” because we are not superior, despite the biblical views of the Deep South, or what most others think. We are simply different. And that is never a reason to persecute, exploit, or destroy other living beings.

I’ve had many experiences like this leading to my veganism. More recently, in broad strokes, I unexpectedly became the guardian of a rescue dog five years ago. My dog has since literally become one of my best friends. I care as much for him as any parent would their child. He’s a dog, so I don’t understand all of his behavior, but I recognize him as a personality with his own thoughts, feelings, quirks and desires. He likes to sit on people’s feet that he likes. Sometimes he has nightmares, which I recognize by his quiet little “woof-woofs” in his sleep (I always wake him up). He likes to lie in the sun, and he sniffs the letter slot in the front door to test the weather outside. He anticipates a romp on the beach a few miles before we get there. He recognizes my car and knows when my fiancée’s home before we even walk through the door. In short, I love him, and being his guardian has opened my mind more to the plight of other animals. I’ve always hated and campaigned against shark finning because I loved sharks since I was a kid. The practice is extremely cruel and bringing sharks—who’ve been roaming the seas for 400 million years—to the brink of extinction. I went to demonstrate against Ringling Brothers with some good people of PETA. All of this led to me realizing last year that I couldn’t love animals and eat them—any of them—at the same time. It didn’t compute. So I dropped meat in a day, and in the next few weeks I phased out dairy. There are so many other things that led to this, but since making the decision to go vegan I’d never go back. I don’t miss meat or dairy at all. In fact, it repulses me—another experience common to new vegans that Will Tuttle mentions in his book.

Call me a sensitive flower, but I believe it’s wrong to kill or exploit another living being. I love animals but I also love my fellow man and would never kill them, either. To me, we are all interconnected and alive—with the same capacity to love, feel pain, think and enjoy life. Every single creature has the desire to live. Every single one. Non-human animals are part of the moral community. They deserve compassion, empathy and respect. If I had one wish before leaving this earth, it would be that every human could recognize that non-human animals are thinking, feeling, intelligent, sensitive creatures that have their own unique capabilities, emotions, and ways of seeing and experiencing the world. It would be to raise people’s awareness that animals have souls. They deserve to be treated as you would treat your own brother, sister or child. I’m convinced that veganism widens one’s capacity to experience love, compassion and whatever spirituality means to you. Will Tuttle talks a lot about this in his book, which has only validated my own experiences since going vegan.

“What is your opinion about talking to the truly ignorant?”

The short answer for me here is that I don’t waste time on them. I think if someone is being close-minded, hostile or rude, they’re just not going to hear the message. I think it’s better to concentrate on people who are curious and open-minded to at least hearing more about the subject. These are the “low-hanging” fruit that I think will ultimately decide to go vegan. When I protested against Ringling Brothers a few months ago, I can honestly say that out of the hundreds of people I approached with leaflets, only maybe two of them said something rude to me. One was along the lines of “You people need to get a life” and the other was a hair helmet with her kids who said something like, “The circus will always be here and we’re always going to go.” They just weren’t interested so I didn’t bother responding to their taunts. Instead I was actually very heartened and even moved that so many others were curious and were obviously completely unaware of how circus animals—elephants in particular—suffer horrible abuse in the name of “entertainment.”

To me, the biggest wall between the majority of the population and their going vegan is that they simply aren’t aware of the shocking level of cruelty, ecological destruction and health risks associated with an animal-based diet and the meat and dairy industries. I know for myself that when I went vegetarian for 3 years after college, I did so mostly to optimize my diet. Until my decision to go vegan I actually knew very little about how badly cows, chickens, sharks, fish, turkeys, pigs—how badly all animals and people—suffer needlessly because of the brainwashing we’ve been exposed to since infancy about animal products being necessary to good health and an acceptable part of everyday life. Since going vegan, I’ve felt a little like Neo in The Matrix, who comes to realize that the entire world around him is basically an illusion ruthlessly maintained by machines that are indeed harvesting confined, force-fed human bodies for their energy. And I do often feel like the rest of the world still believes that cows, for instance, live a very pleasant life on a cartoon farm before they willingly give over their life so that we might enjoy them as a cheeseburger. The fact is that the vast majority of people have absolutely no clue about how their animal dinner is killed or treated before they eat it. They have no idea how destructive animal agriculture is to the environment. And they have no clue about the toll this way of life is taking on their moral, physical and spiritual health.

All that said, there’s a difference to me between the willfully ignorant and the truly ignorant, the latter making up the vast majority of the population. And that is whom I prefer to focus on by doing the following:

Prioritize the message. A lot of animal rights people get very particular and academic about their views, which is fine for people who are interested in those particulars. But I have an advertising and marketing background, so I try to keep messages clear and simple, prioritize them, and make them relevant. All without sounding too preachy. This is why I prefer to stay as informed as I can, so I can answer questions on a general level, then refer the curious to books, websites or pamphlets by people who know way more about these topics than I do, or who approach or specialize it from certain angles (legal, spiritual, nutritional). The baseline message for me is that it’s very, very easy to go vegan, and it’s better for one’s health, the planet, and definitely for animals. To learn more, I recommend that the people explore more for themselves by checking out certain sources of information. I’ve found that this keeps people from feeling overloaded or browbeaten and allows them to explore more on their own time. Some sources I recommend are The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone, The World Peace Diet by Will Tuttle, Becoming Vegan by Davis/Melina. I also link to this pamphlet by the Boston Vegan Association, or this vegan starter kit from Mercy for Animals. One of the most important sources of information for me is the pioneer of the abolitionist vegan movement, Professor Gary L. Francione and his site, www.abolitionistapproach.com. I do like to recommend The Kind Diet especially because I think it does an excellent job of making a very clear and readable case for veganism from a health, environment and animal rights perspective, and of course Ms. Silverstone is a recognizable figure and hardcore vegan herself. What I do not recommend are Michael Pollan’s books or Food, Inc., because they send profoundly confused mixed messages around animal agriculture in particular, which has been and will always be horribly cruel, unsanitary, bad for the environment and bad for human consumption. Pollan and the Fast Food Nation author both eat meat and seem to me to just want a) to know where their meat comes from, b) some assurance that it will not make them sick, and that c) animals will be treated more “humanely.” Those who become more familiar with the abolitionist approach come to understand that c) especially does not work because most labeling schemes like “free range” and “organic” make little difference in any given animal’s level of pain and suffering. Ultimately these so called “animal welfare” campaigns ultimately tend to mislead the public and make them feel better about abusing, killing and eating more animals—and all of this is often done in overt “partnership” with certain larger animals rights organizations.

Finally, in terms of online voices, I get the most from many but here will cite four I tend to gravitate towards most consistently:

Angel Finn, a vegan/AR activist and blogger on Care2Causes

Trisha Roberts’s LiveVegan Facebook page

Kayla Coleman on Care2Causes

31-year abolitionist vegan Marcia Katz (blog)

Marcia and Will Tuttle especially look at veganism from a spiritual angle that resonates with me.

The sources I cite above are by no means comprehensive and I will be adding more and fleshing them all out with capsule summaries for a more complete list. In the meantime, as always, I try to:

Live it. Talk about it. Lead by example. Educate without being pushy or overdoing it. If someone’s closed-minded or disrespectful, ignore them. Go for the low-hanging fruit of the curious because they are the ones that will take the leap. The ultimate goal for me is to shift the paradigm from 1–2% of the population being vegan to 60, 70, 100%. The goal for me is to kill the demand (not the supply) for animal products so that the suppliers need to find another line of work. The goal is to shift the paradigm from a system that’s cruel, predatory, unhealthy, exploitative, unsustainable and destructive to a vegan world that’s just, moral, healthy and environmentally sustainable. My goal is for vegans to ultimately outnumber those who are unwilling to open their minds and hearts and unwilling to learn or change. Then they’ll have to change, is how I see it. This isn’t an impossible dream. It just requires that vegans live it and talk about it.

Avoid being hostile or snotty. When I first went vegan, I wrote someone I respected asking if they might retweet an article I’d written on veganism. Their terse reply clarified nothing about whatever sort of problem they might have had with the content of my article. I’ve since gained more clarity around this person’s views, but while they had every right to deny my request, I don’t think the rude response helped animals or veganism at all. In the same two sentences, this person could have explained where they were coming from and directed me to a link to help clarify their views. That would have been positive vegan education and helped me. Most vegans understand that being impatient or judgmental towards animal rights or vegan newbies is the wrong approach, but I think it’s important to share this story here. Don’t alienate someone that’s reaching out because they know less than you and are therefore less enlightened. You can do the world so much more good by staying positive, and it only takes a few words of education or encouragement if you respond at all.

Stay informed. There are people out there that dedicate their lives to veganism who know much more than I do about the animal rights, environmental and health issues surrounding veganism. They are heroes to me and a constant source of information and inspiration. Even if I can’t read or be involved in veganism and animal rights 24/7, I try to stay as informed as I can to be able to speak intelligently about these topics and ultimately do the best job of educating others I can in the time that I have.

Believe we change the world. I have heard some people “The world will never go vegan.” But as Will Tuttle points out in his book, so-called dominator or herding cultures (vs. sharing cultures) are a relatively recent phenomenon, starting about five to seven thousand years ago. Even more recently we found it acceptable to deny women the right to vote, African-Americans the right to sit at the front of the bus, and two people of the same gender to marry. Fortunately the paradigm is shifting on that last item in some states and I’m confident there will be a day when gay marriage will be legal all across the U.S. One of the most resonant messages I’ve taken from leaders like Harvey Milk, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and others I admire is their encouragement to assume the mantle of leadership yourself. Don’t remain silent. Protest. Organize. Communicate. Educate. Every one of us doesn’t have to necessarily go into politics or become a public figure, but every one of us has the ability to live by example and ultimately try to change things with their own version of creative, nonviolent form of social activism.

I hope this has been helpful for vegans or those thinking of becoming vegan. Please feel free to with any feedback or corrections you may have.

Peace,

- Rich