I started pondering this topic when I read a status between two friends on facebook. One was vegan, the other was not.
I have been vegan somewhere around 14 years now and I did go vegan because I am personally morally against factory-farming so I didn't actually disagree with the vegan friend's stance on factory farming. However, I saw her calling people "murderers" and I saw the people reacting how any human would react to being called a murderer, with anger. So, I gave my opinion on the topic.
A snippet from our conversation:
It is true that the view of animals as less than human is what makes people see the comparison (or animal death vs human death) as ridiculous but as I said in a post below, this type of lecturing is going to yield 0 results.
______ Honestly, your argument on veganism being more harmful to the environment doesn't hold weight overall but I get why you are feeling attacked because you are being attacked in a patronizing manner.
Lab grown meat is going to be the future and scientists are already working very hard on this because factory farming isn't sustainable. That will be why the changes happen not because people are screaming at other people that they are murderers. You are making people much less likely to approach any vegan in the future because of fear.
The vegan person's response was that they were angry. Outrage when seeing abuse of any kind makes sense but in my opinion angry lecturing is fruitless. In fact, not only fruitless but it causes people to run, in the opposite direction, of the cause. I suggested that this person use their anger to do something that would actually be productive for their cause. For example, I am in the process of writing a book on how to shop as a very, very poor vegan. It won't be preachy. It won't talk about abused animals. It won't have graphic photos. It won't be shoved in people's faces. Just information for people who want the information. THIS can make a difference.
Another productive use of time would be writing information on the industry that is factual. Writing about the damage it does to the environment that is factual. Or, if you are in a position to do so, going to college to study in a field where you could make a difference environmentally. There are plenty of ways to go about activism but is yelling at people angrily and comparing them to Nazis really the way to go about it?
In this vegan's opinion, it isn't.
I think this same philosophy applies to a lot of causes, not just veganism. I only used that as an example. But any time you are challenging another human's deep-seated ideologies you need to do so delicately and with compassion. Educating people without judgment is the way to change minds. Taking a stance of moral superiority will get you nowhere and will certainly not make you any friends.
My friend did a wonderful job of describing why this sort of activism is ineffective. So, with his persmission, I am adding a quote from him to better convey my message:
I completely agree with everything here. If you approach someone in a militant or condescending way, then it doesn't matter if you're right or not, or how logical or well structured and verified it is. They will simply become defensive and not listen to a word of it. You can't change someone else's mind; they can only change their own. In most cases they will only become more deeply entrenched in their beliefs. This is why I refuse to debate anyone who uses name calling or ad hominem attacks at any point in their argument. It only makes people more sure that they're correct, and never try to even see what's on the other side of the fence.
I will also use a quote from Carl Sagan's wife to illustrate this last point:
And there were other instances of Carl’s remarkable persuasiveness. One was a great story of a so-called “creation scientist” who watched Carl testify at a hearing about creationism in schools. Carl testified for about four hours. It was somewhere in the South, I can’t remember where. And six months later a letter came from the “creation scientist” expert who had also testified that day, saying that he had given up his daytime job and realized the error of what he was doing. It was only because Carl was so patient and so willing to hear the other person out. He did it with such kindness and then, very gently but without compromising, laid out all of the things that were wrong with what this guy thought was true. That is a lesson that I wish that all of us in our effort to promote skepticism could learn, because I know that very often the anger I feel when confronting this kind of thinking makes me want to start cutting off the other person. But to do so is to abandon all hope of changing minds.
Vegans and pro-lifers screaming "murderer", feminists that say they want to chop off men's penises, and the guy on the corner calling everyone a sinner are not going to change any minds. Well, actually, they may make people less likely to absorb information about their cause in the future even if displayed in a compassionate, educational fashion. People who encountered them may automatically have their memory triggered at the mere mention of the cause at hand and recall the angry psychopath that was screaming in their face about it and go running in the opposite direction.
I encourage people to be passionate about their activism and to set out even to change minds but I want to urge the need to do so with compassion, empathy, and a complete lack of superiority.
I am not arguing that anger being expressed in a productive, organized, way like peaceful protesting cannot be effective and sometimes necessary.
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