Hi people

[Jasmine]

I've just gone vegan again after about 6 years of meat eating (I'm ashamed to say) I've tried for health reasons (fibromyalgia) and failed a few times during that time. I think the main reason was because I cut off my emotions about animal rights and grew cynical about how much one person's choice affects the whole issue- not much was my conclusion. Also the thought that the human race will never be completely vegan. There are some die hard meat eaters out there as I'm sure we all know....however this time I just realised again that whatever anyone else does, I just don't want to be a part of legalised cruelty and it is my firm belief again that until we treat ALL living, feeling creatures with the same respect we can have no self respect and no respect within our own species. To me it's about evolution. We are blessed and cursed with consciousness so to not take the logical and easy decision to base our diets on conservation and kindness is turning a precious gift into a curse. I find it hard to even think about the animal suffering and after years of campaigning for animal rights I think I burnt myself out and felt I had to close off my empathy....just wondering if anyone else has felt the same? It also coincided with motherhood and feeling particularly sensitive. Maybe it's also just a stage of development where you 'grow up' and try to be more realistic. I used to be so idealistic...sometimes I have wondered what became of that person, but I'm happy to say I'm back!! To being the person I always was. What a relief.
Anyway hi to all lots of love x

 

[poivron]

Welcome, Jasmine!

Congratulations on going vegan again. It takes most of us more than one try. I had an eleven-year stretch of eating animals between my two tries, but the second time, I was able to stick with it. Please remove the word "ashamed" from your vocabulary; veganism is not about guilt, shame, or perfection; it's about living compassionately and reducing animal suffering as much as possible. It is not about you or me or any other vegan; it's about the animals.

I think you're being too pessimistic about the future of veganism, which is growing faster than ever and is no longer a fringe movement. Veganism has grown by a factor of six in the United States in the last three years, and by a factor of 3.6 in the U.K. in the last ten years. That is a huge rate of growth. We're not talking 5% or 10% here; we're talking 600% and 360%. That's why more and more companies are starting to make vegan products. Medical doctors and researchers are looking into the health benefits of veganism and are feeling outraged by how potentially life-saving information is being hidden from the public in order to prop up the meat, egg, and dairy industries. People who understand psychology and have studied successful movements in history are getting into veganism and working on spreading the message more effectively.

I often have moments of despair, so I know what you're talking about. Remember always that when it comes to veganism, one person has a huge effect. When you don't buy an animal product at the grocery store, that translates into the grocery store putting in a smaller order the next time, and fewer animals being bred, tortured, and killed.* Every time you go to a vegan restaurant, you help keep it in business. Every time you request a vegan option at a restaurant, you help keep that item on the menu and send a message to the management that some of their customers are vegan. Every time you go to a party as a polite vegan, you remind the people around you that it's possible to live one's life according to one's principles. Indeed, veganism is one of the few things in life where one's actions have an almost direct result on what happens in the world. Don't let the meat-eaters convince you otherwise.

(Sorry for repeating information that you are sure to know as a former animal rights activists, but sometimes there is value in reiterating the obvious.)

Cheers, and good luck!

*The factory farm industry cares about nothing more than its bottom line. You can be sure, for example, that an industry that confines chickens into a tiny space order to save pennies per egg is going to notice when even a single carton of eggs it produces is not sold each week. Conversely, every dollar you spend on an animal product is literally a dollar you are giving to an operation that tortures and kills animals for profit. Only a meat-eater who needs to make excuses for continuing to eat animals would argue that one person going vegan doesn't make a difference.

 

[Jasmine]

Wow what an unexpected reply. Honestly not meaning to cause any offence if I have? I wasn't being pessimistic about veganism today, I was explaining what lead me to go back to eating meat back then. To my surprise veganism has really taken off from what was definitely a very small minority in this country. I just think its interesting to consider the psychology of what could get anyone to eat meat again when they already know the horror of where that meat came from. And really ashamed in this case is therefore utterly correct. Ashamed I stopped caring about the animals. Ashamed I let the 'hunter' in me win over the rational and educated modern day human? I do think perhaps it comes down to that. We have evolved to be hunter gatherers and we still have the capacity to switch off in order to be able to kill our prey. That is a genuine human and maybe necessary function. If we had to stop replying on our food delivery systems and our modern set up, we would be thrown back into a world where that function could mean the difference between life and death for us and our families. I wouldn't be ashamed to hunt in those circumstances and I'd like to say those circumstances are unlikely but seems the world is constantly poised to return to a state of total chaos at any time and for many reasons. It is interesting that my return to meat eating coincided with having children. Not because I thought a vegan diet would be unhealthy for my children (although I found vegan pregnancy scary and I ate fish a few times)
But because I felt like I had to have it in me to be able to kill for food if I had to. What I'm saying is that it was all subconscious and I didn't actually think that much about it at the time surprisingly. It just happened gradually.
Anyway yes you are very correct in saying what one person achieves by being vegan. I hope my cynicism hasn't upset you. I just hope we can invent meat that grows in a petri dish or we invent replicators. I'm sure that's controversial too but I think science will provide the answers eventually, if we haven't wiped ourselves out before then! Even then there will still be people who enjoy hunting for fun and feel it's their birth right - perhaps we will have realistic VR gaming by then but I'm not sure that would satisfy their blood lust.
Anyway, this is just my thinking. I let it take me where it will. Peace x

 

[Jasmine]

Actually on further reflection a lot of the reason I went back to eating meat was because of bullying. My first baby was small, I was vegan and the medical profession guilt tripped me about it, making me believe it was my fault when I have since learned I had pre-eclampsia. My family were unsupportive and didn't help. Then I had bullying from the other side- actually the animal rights 'friends' I knew at the time. They were superior, up themselves idiots who hated human beings and only had love for themselves and animals. I suppose I'm actually ashamed that I allowed others to put me off my own principles :/ oh well lesson learned. I was a vegetarian from the age of 13, then when I was in my early 20's I discovered veganism and realised that dairy products are still a definite main part of the meat industry, not a by product and not humane. It's a shame I met so many vegan idiots but they were young too I guess. I'm just trying to work out what happened because I had a sudden moment of clarity again and remembered why I used to believe in veganism and I wondered how the hell I managed to switch off all those feelings or even why?!
Also I think I made too much of an issue about blood thirsty hunters. Yes they do exist but having worked in a country pub I know that most of them aren't blood thirsty, it's just tradition and being uneducated...there is a lot of hope for humanity...here's hoping that one day our species evolves to become cruelty free in every sense!

 

[poivron]

I was trying to be encouraging and positive. I guess tone doesn't come across very well when all you have is the written word, written by someone who tries hard but at the end of the day is not a great writer.

Yesterday, I watched a video by Melanie Joy entitled "How Vegans Can Create Healthy Relationships and Communicate Effectively" on YouTube. Melanie Joy is a social psychologist and vegan activist. At one point in this video, she talks about how unhelpful shame is. Having watched this, I picked up on the word "ashamed" in your post, as I might not have if I had read it on another day. That might have seemed a bit strange, but I was only trying to get you to feel good about going vegan again rather than ashamed of not having stayed vegan. I think it's important not to dwell on feelings of shame, which, in a very practical sense, simply don't help the animals. A few years ago, when it was much smaller, the vegan movement was more shame-based. Fortunately, attitudes are changing, and vegans overall tend now to be more focused on producing positive change and trying always to do better, rather than on feeling ashamed of not being perfect and making others feel ashamed of eating animals. It's a subtle but important difference, I think. The trickiest part is that non-vegans tend naturally to feel ashamed in the presence of a vegan, even when the vegan is going out of her way to avoid being judgmental.

If you're interested in the psychology of eating meat despite knowing where it comes from, Melanie Joy talks about that in her videos. I'm embarrassed by how much I've been mentioning her, but I found her videos recently and am in awe of her brilliance. Check them out if you have time and if you're into watching videos about veganism.

Let me mention that I, too, gave up on veganism for reasons very similar to yours the first time I went vegan in my mid-twenties. I lasted four months. I gave up because I had zero support from the non-vegans around me; I could see that I was not going to be able to stay completely vegan (I was about to travel to Japan for my research); I had trouble reconciling veganism's dependence on synthetics (i.e., plastics) with my environmentalism; and I was turned off by the fact that the vegan community at the time was totally focused on labels and appeared to consider anyone who was only 99.9% vegan and dared to call herself vegan as an evil hypocrite and the cause of all animal suffering. (In their defense, it's tough to be vegan in a non-vegan world that sees vegans as the problem. Things are a little easier now, with veganism growing so quickly.) So I gave up and went back to eating larger quantities of animals than I ever had before going vegan. Returning to veganism eleven years later, I felt really bad about all the animals I had eaten. So I get where you're coming from. All I'm saying is that if you want to be able to stick with it easily this time, it might be better to focus on the positive feelings rather than on the negative ones. For example, instead of thinking about how many animals you ate during the years when you weren't vegan, think about how many animals you're saving every day that you're vegan now.

There is so much honest self-reflection in your posts. That is rare, and you should be proud of yourself. You clearly care very much about doing the right thing, and animals are lucky to have you on their side.