Sitting in a pub being asked to explain why you’re vegan, usually you’ve got about 60 seconds to wrap up your reasoning before your new pal is either on board or has bolted for the bar.
I’ve learnt this the hard way.
None of us wants to feel preached to about the morality of our choices (personal or political), so instead of spouting out words like ‘compassionate’ or ‘cruelty-free’, from now on, I’m going to quote the title of Aphex Twin’s third studio album:
…I care because you do.
While he may not be pop culture’s poster-boy for animal activism (like it or not, that one probably goes to Morrissey), Richard D. James has penned a pretty cool little strap-line that I wish I’d come up with.
Better known for his other-worldly electronic music, for speaking in half-truths and communicating in anagrams (‘Cow Cud Is A Twin’, anyone?), I’ve really no idea why RDJ chose those words for his album, but I’m going to nab them anyway next time I’m asked about being vegan.
Because despite the numbers suggesting otherwise (The Vegan Society reckons we’re about 150,000 heads in total), at heart, I think everyone’s vegan. I find it hard to imagine anyone wanting to be complicit in the untold ways we mistreat animals – or knowingly being happy about it.
Animals are not the unthinking, unfeeling ‘machines’ Descartes’ philosophy would have us believe; Darwin suggested otherwise, stating that the difference between humans and other animals is “one of degree and not of kind”. Eloquent as it is, we don’t need a theory of evolution to recognise the individuality of animals or to know, from our everyday encounters with them, that they are some-bodies, not some-things – and this is why we care.
(Strangely enough, while doing some ‘research’ for this piece, I read in Pitchfork that Aphex Twin was recently spotted in a vegan cafe in London, so perhaps The Vegan Society needs to revise its headcount to 150,001…)
Image credits:
Warp Records; Bored Panda.
pint sized vegan 