Thursday, August 25, 2016

Broccolian Follow-Up

Creating hatred of vegans.

After I finished my Brocconian post, I came across this interview that Tobias did with Dr. Jared Piazza of Lancaster University. The entire interview is worth reading, but this is the conclusion:

To finish, I’d like to hear some recommendations you have for activists or the movement.
I guess my first recommendation would be to do your best to avoid the moral reactance and motivated reasoning when discussing the issue of eating meat with people. This is not always possible, but put yourself in their shoes. How would you react if someone suggested to you that something you really enjoy doing and have been doing most of your life was immoral? Perhaps this is something that you never considered to be a problem before and brings you daily pleasure. Do you think you would be receptive to their message at first? Or would you question their arguments? Would you immediately stop what you have been doing all your life, or would you immediately think of ways in which what you’re doing is perfectly acceptable and not problematic? Once you have made the conversion to not eat meat, it is easy to forget what it is like to see things from the other side – from the perspective of the meat-eating majority, who are wondering what all the fuss is about.

I’d also recommend to advocates to be inclusive and welcoming, and not to give up. We need people to think they really can make a change. We need to empower people, not only with an awareness of how meat production is destroying our world and ruining lives (lives that truly matter), but also give them an opportunity to imagine other ways of viewing the world, particularly how they view themselves, so they can reason through the arguments in a less defensive, self-preserving manner. I think we may have greater success that way.

2 comments:

The Animalist said...

Inclusive and welcoming FTW!

Joseph T. Espinosa said...

Animals are hostages in modern society. If we do not simply let the hostage takers know that their behavior is reprehensible and then put down the phone we are betraying animals ;-)