GROWING
Page 2* The provision of elements to sustain a cruelty free world is rapidly underway, a whole new area of social growth. Veganism does not have the baggage or the momentum of older cultures. This allows freedom of choice and direction. The need for a renaissance, the streamlining of out of date practices is irrelevant in the freshness of the adopted vegan context; and thus a vegan culture could be expected to exhibit quick change, experimenting with new means and then moving on. There isn’t anything vague about Veganism… it is VEEg-anism not Vague-anism!
* We can identify some major cultural events which promote veganism, landmarks such as World Vegan Day, Vegan Fairs, Cruelty Free and Lifestyle Expositions, numerous social media links, social and meet up groups, potlucks and other meeting places; and of course the various vegan festivals and celebrations. These activities actually provide the meeting place, a crossover of individual achievement and communal action, supplementing and supporting daily living.
* Vegan societies, organisations, businesses, charities and trusts interact via the Internet, and just as social media changed the way people communicate, the range of veganism achievements is well canvassed by discussion, in film and documentaries, and continues to accumulate at a rapid rate; familiarizing us, and demonstrating the extent of the vegan portfolio and it’s compassionate aims.
The Individual Expression
Some examples of getting things done the vegan way:
* Vegans have had to learn how to be self-reliant; they don’t always accept shit from just anyone! Vegan organic gardening is non-exploitative of animals and thus does not rely on animal inputs for satisfactory outcomes.
* Vegans can be resilient and vigilant, with plenty of thorns and spikes, as vegan culture is necessarily pioneering. The first plants and animals in nature have strong protection mechanisms from roaming predators, and from the elements.
* The process of transformation, rebirth, is an essential facet of understanding the vegan journey. Casting off the old, the path of the alchemist, the phoenix! We should not be surprised at the reaction. The first move we make is towards food, the mother’s breast. This IS the primary act, and yet as vegans we question the source of food. No wonder the term ‘food anarchist’ is proffered to describe a vegan dietary path.
So this act, of selecting a vegan dietary, has deep roots in our own psyche, and consequently, major challenges for the society as a whole. This is the power of a plant food-based diet, and a reason, I suggest, why as vegans we appear to be actively engaged and successful in endeavour. We are continually transforming. That is life and life IS change. However, certain rites of passage can unleash strong responses, the move to a vegan diet being one.
At the 2009 Brisbane Ideas Festival in Australia, where the topic was ‘A Sustainable Environment’, over 50 % of the audience indicated they were either vegetarian or vegan. This is amazing, given estimates of up to 5% as vegetarian, and much less than 0.5% of total population as vegan at the time, and indicates not only a strong social responsibility, but evidences the maturity and caring nature which partners compassionate action and environmental awareness.
Research in Australia shows an increase in Vegetarian numbers from 9.7% to 11.2 % of the population in just 4 years from 2012 -2016 (Ref.19). As a further comparison, in a 2014 study, population estimates in U.K. were between 7-11%; in Israel there has been an absolute surge of interest, vegetarians have risen from 2.5% of population in 2010, to 8% in 2015, with a 5% Vegan contingent, while Japan has 2.7% vegan, and Nederland has 0.1% vegan contingent. These numbers are supplemented by 31% of the Indian population, who are vegetarian (Ref.6).
Veganism is a culture of compassion in the making; expressing itself as a movement for compassionate living. Compassion may be both intuitive and conceptual; however, compassion and kindness cannot be legislated. Perhaps we can’t all avoid suffering: but we nearly all can exclude animals and animal products from our diet. Everyone can do that. Let compassion arise from the practice of not eating animals, Keep it simple.
Acceptance
“You cannot run from your problem. You have to dance with it” — Vietnamese proverb
Ten years ago this heading reference would have been called ‘Weaning’, to suggest the tentative nature of veganism on the social radar at that time; since then there has been a dramatic shift in community uptake and response to all things vegan due to the speed of recognition and integration of a shift in awareness that has thrust the vegan way from relative obscurity on the fringes of social movements, to be taken seriously at the centre of youth attention in the dominant cultural mix.
Veganism is new and has a fresh start; it is well skilled and well informed and questions everything. Some of the interests that are advanced by the vegan transformation include animal rights, non-violence, compassion, social ethics and justice, sustainable lifestyles, personal and environmental harmony. Our sensitivity as vegans is accompanied by a heightened response to these issues that sit at the core of our social relationships, and the vegan way has a great capacity to contribute positively to the community as a whole.
Veganism in all its guises, vegaculture included, is in the right place at the right time for the right reasons, (judgments that suit our purpose are of course acceptable)! An acquaintance commented recently, “there is very little potential in the value of vegaculture, it is just an opinion,” and I can understand the sentiment, as opinions and platitudes may have little value, but in this instance, I prefer to accept the benefit of the doubt in favour of vegaculture; just another opinion perhaps, but who would have predicted this rapid interest in all things vegan?
He then went on to expose a deeper crisis, the perception that vegaculture might lead to a disruption of innate cherished human values when he mentioned, “and there are plenty of compassionate people who are not vegan.” Let it be clearly stated, compassion is a universal response, and laying claim to compassion is to reduce compassion to a material value, a view of things, where feelings and emotions are fixed elements in an (ir)rational subject-object relationship; and the opposite of the tenet of veganism.
His comment of course opens the proverbial Pandora’s box for it touches on the fear of change, the potential to upset our finely honed balance between concern and dismissal; does one dismiss information as another opinion, or go inside to seriously evaluate the potential for personal growth. This reaction is not a personal criticism but a common response because at the heart of veganism is the challenge of knowing ourselves, the letting go of our security to reveal the ego grasping for itself. When the need to protect our deepest values is apparently threatened by our own admission that ‘it is only an opinion and therefore has little value’, there is definitely room for further contemplation and self-acceptance.
There is however a great sense of personal satisfaction and relief to be experienced when we meet the challenge, the world is suddenly a different place, we are naturally more at ease, because we have realised through our own experience, possibly for the first time, how simple life is with a reduced burden of cruelty in our sub-conscious, and the release can be therapeutic.
If formative experiences granted witness to common decency and functional relationships in a world of our own making, a non-threatening environment, a place with ready access to a natural sense of justice and a peaceful upbringing where relative harmony came to be accepted as normal, that perceived environment will be conducive to the acceptance of trusts and support, for an awareness and acceptance of a compassionate view as an innate human value; a vegan view can flourish in these circumstances as a natural consequence of the human condition.
Veganism has already been recognised as a credible platform for social reform and vegan culture is close behind, exemplified by a plethora of feature articles in newspapers and periodicals such as the Jul-Aug 2017 Harvard Magazine where the author reports on ‘The Rise of Vegan Culture’, and mentions the rising interest in research by social scientists to investigate the phenomenon (Ref.20).
A review of the vegan journey so far indicates tremendous social transformation with strong foundations that are closely tracked in mainstream media and daily dialogue. It does require further input to discover and frame the range of cultural benefits which have come about through the vegan activism and presence, but I suspect we do have a vegan culture, one that is satisfying, vital, alive and sincere in its expression of goodness, and in its manifestation in action.
If we revisit the birthing of Veganism and the example of the foresight of the founder Donald Watson, he was not content with just EXCLUDING cruelty and exploitation, he designated an on-going striving, an affirmative position, to develop and promote the use of animal free alternatives. This is not a static philosophy; it is imbued with the desire to expand cruelty-free aspirations into the whole of the realm of human activity, and from his simple 75-word statement, look at what is happening!
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