Understanding the Psychology of Meat for Effective Vegan Advocacy

hey thank you guys so much I'm so I'm so excited to be here it's it's my first time in Sweden and it's a adventure I was just saying to David last night is everybody in Sweden this nice everybody it's been so kind and I'm so excited I love talking to different groups of activists and seeing how much we how much we have in common and it really it inspires me to see the energy of the movement all around around my own country I travel around the United States quite a bit and around the world so today I'm going to talk about understanding the psychology of meet the mentality of meet for effective vegan advocacy and I wanted to start out with this quote have you had a chance to look at this quote take just take a moment to read it over if not okay I choose to use this quote because I think it really perfectly exemplifies the classic conflict that marks the human response to suffering it's that tension between denial and awareness between numbing and witnessing between silence and Proclamation so as the renowned psychiatrist and traumatologist Judith Thurman tells us most people respond to atrocities by turning away but some people are willing to see the truth of what's happening and these people feel compelled to speak out and to break through the denial of others these people are the activists and the advocates advocates they're on the front lines of a social movement whose goal it is to attract a critical mass of supporters to tip the scales of power and these people are you if you think about it you're a really good company throughout human history virtually every revolution for justice and non-violence was made possible by the witnesses who refused to accept the denial of an oppressive system I mean what is a true revolutionary if not one who stands up against atrocities and one day and I really believe this day will come when the vegan movement the animal rights movement has achieved popular support then vegan activists will not be seen as radicals but will be recognized as revolutionaries will be recognized as heroes so before we get started I want to just hear a little bit about your experience and I'm gonna ask you some questions during this this workshop how many of you in your own experience notice this people turning away from atrocities have you seen this before okay so the responses you know to learning about veganism don't tell me that you'll ruin my meal and how many of you also can identify with this feeling like compelled to speak out like you want to have people see the truth can you relate to this so then in your experience when you do speak out how do people respond what do they say thank you for telling me the truth about animal agriculture I have no idea I'm never eating meat again thank you what's your experience like when you speak out does anybody want to just give an example or or share something of what you notice yep well sometimes they will listen but usually comes down okay so sometimes they listen they hear you and they say oh that's that's horrible that's true and then the next day they're at the McDonald's drive-thru right okay that's a good that a lot I've seen that a lot myself anybody also don't talk about like what happens are we getting this on tape or debating me I could all repeat that question a joke yeah okay yeah so so you noticed defensiveness sometimes it's enough to just say I'm vegan and people get this right this hostile reaction or this defensive miss or make a joke about eating animals or something right but they can taste so good does anybody also take one more yep right well we have to eat the animals because if we don't eat them then the world will be overrun by farmed animals and people will have nowhere to live right it's I mean it's so interesting isn't it it's it's not logical but it's such a common response and people aren't recognizing that it's not logical so you know you'd think we you know probably can relate to this feeling it becomes really frustrating when you hear the same thing over and over and over again and especially when you think about how you know the vegan message or veganism should be such an easy sell you know I mean we're advocating compassion and health and moral consistency but the way that people respond to the vegan message you'd think we were advocating Nazism or something it's bizarre so we have this incredibly important message but so often our message gets lost like we end up silenced can you relate to this kind of trying to communicate again and again and just feeling like communicating becomes almost impossible so the question is you know as vegan advocates our goal is to transform denial to awareness how do we do that given the reaction to the vegan message and so that's what we'll talk about today so first we're going to talk about you know why do people deny atrocities in the first place why is it that people who really do care about animals and care about the truth and really do want to do the right thing in many ways tend to turn away it's this paradoxical illogical mentality in so many ways yep thank you so much okay I forgot to mention in the beginning of this talk that if I use a word that doesn't translate perfectly or accurately to ask me I'm glad you asked me that so the question was can I explain atrocities an atrocity is a mass collective trauma like an example would be the Holocaust or slavery an atrocity is something that's a very very violent in general this is the way we use the word in English violence that is carried out against a group that makes is that clear what Google Translate said what cruel cruelty yeah implore oh we don't have a plural for cruelty so good see I should have studied Swedish before coming over here yes okay so cool teas we probably should have a word for a plural for cruelty so we'll talk about this paradoxical mentality of meat and then we'll talk about how do we use this understanding to advocate more effectively how do we transform denial to awareness because that's really the goal of the movement of all social movements if you think about it or at least an important part of the goal so we'll talk about advocacy principles and communication skills and also taking care of ourselves because living has a vegan in a non vegan world as you probably know can be challenging can be difficult if we don't take care of ourselves then we are not responsive but we're reactive then we can't think about our response what we just react automatically and often we can react with anger or with sadness and our reaction can get in our way and the good news is that with awareness and practice we can significantly increase the likelihood that our message will be heard as we intend it to be so this is this can be learned and there's a lot of wisdom in this room a lot of you have practiced what I'm going to be talking about and have experienced what I'm going to be talking about so I'll ask you at some point to share some of your own knowledge okay so let's begin why do people deny atrocities well I want to start out with a very short video that is from it's a it's the trailer for my book just a short example of what's in my book that gives an example of this paradoxical mentality of meat imagine your new neighbors have invited you to dinner rich aromas fill the air and wine and conversation are flowing again tell us how do you make this sure first of all if you start with three pounds golden retriever dominated and then you take this little tree oh I forgot you are Americans with your love affair of dogs but do you look like you saw a ghost I'm just kidding there is nothing but clean oh beef what you're not going to eat it now it's a bit hard to get that image out of my mind I it's golden retriever dog and animal on my plate it's disgusting that's just it's not normal I mean I'm sure a lot of you can appreciate this obviously the man in this film is an actor but if this experience were to happen in real life chances are his reaction would be exactly the same his experience of the meet dramatically changed even though nothing about the meat itself actually changed you know so what changed was just his perceptions of the meat and as vegan advocates we recognize that perceptions of meat are illogical when it comes to eating animals and we also recognize the role of perceptions so we recognize that when people eat animals typically there's a cognitive disconnect what this means is that people don't make the connection between the meat on their plate and the living being it once was when somebody is eating a cow for instance they're not making they're not having the image in their mind of the living animal and because perceptions impact emotions okay the diner's emotion the diner did not feel empathy he did not feel disgust when he thought he was eating a cow because his perception created a gap in his consciousness when it came to eating the cow and emotion drives behavior very often what vegans do is we define the problem and we target the problem of distorted perception we recognize that meat-eaters distortions of animals and so-called edible animals are distorted so this is where we focus on the problem so for instance how many of you have used this argument before would you eat your dog if you wouldn't eat your dog then why are you eating a pig did you know that pigs are as intelligent as dogs have you heard this before have you used this before how does it work for you is it effective - people say you're right I'm going vegan it doesn't know signs like this Mercy for Animals is a great organization in the United States and they do a very good job of raising awareness and when people are ready to take this information in it can really help but many people do not respond to only intellectual argumentation they don't respond because their perceptions are not logical for a reason the real problem it perceptions don't exist in a vacuum they come from somewhere the real problem is the belief system that drives the perceptions the belief system that the diner had enabled him to see cows as edible for instance and dogs as inedible and the belief system that shapes perceptions it creates a wall of Defense's that maintain these distorted perceptions we can't change perceptions as long as the defenses are intact so really if we think about it the diner was able to eat cows because he has a belief system that tells him that cows are edible and that creates a cognitive disconnect and blocks his emotions now in meat-eating cultures around the world people tend to have a tiny handful of animals of thousands of possible species that they've learned to classify as edible all the rest we learn to classify as inedible and disgusting and so even though the type of animal consumed changes from culture to culture members of all cultures typically see their own choices as rational and the choices of other cultures as irrational and often offensive to consume and disgusting I want to talk for a minute about disgust anthropologists and psychologists have than investigating this phenomenon and they found some really interesting things that go along with discussed some really interesting ideas discussed is considered to be ideational what this means is that we feel disgust not about what a food is but about the idea of the food the meaning of the food in other words people tend to be disgusted at the idea of either breathing in orally incorporating either eating or smelling something that they find to be morally offensive so and this is different from distaste distaste means we don't like the flavor of a food can you see the difference right so this is why vegans for instance are disgusted typically by all flesh and meat eaters are only disgusted by 99.9% of the flesh of animals disgust also is considered to be a moral emotion it's morally charged and it has what are called contamination properties so to give you an example of what this means let me ask you a question let's imagine that you are the diner in that video and that your host serves you a beef stew and you say I'm sorry I'm vegan I don't eat beef and the host says oh that's okay just pick out the beef and eat the vegetables around it would you do that I mean some people might if you don't have a strong disgust response and some people don't but but many people would not do you think the diner would pick out the golden retriever no because disgust has what's called contamination properties when somebody is disgusted by a food an object then everything it touches becomes disgusting as well so if you are at somebody's house for dinner and they tell you to pick off the ham from the salad and you say no and they say oh you're you vegan such a picky eater you can say no if this were kitten would you pick off the kitten and just eat the salad help them understand disgust is a bona fide psychological response and I'm going to tell you one more point about disgust but I want to use another example with this let's imagine that the diner was served not beef stew but fruit salad and let's say he's eating the fruit salad and he says to his host this Apple is so sweet I've never had an apple so sweet before what kind of Apple is it and the host says well it's not really an apple it's actually a sul ik it's a Indonesian fruit it grows on a tree it's like an apple but but it's a different kind of fruit do you think he would have said that's disgusting I can't eat that that's not normal probably not why not what's the difference between the apple and the Golden Retriever apples of fruit disgusting objects are all animal products typically they're animal products except for like rotten vegetation psychologists have found that people tend to be disgusted by the idea of eating flesh and animal excretions and that the fruit the plant products that disgust them are plants that are similar to or reminiscent of animal products like we say in English mucousy does that word translate mucus swamp it like okra yeah so the texture of vegetables that are slimy for instance like mucus so this is some very interesting information now I want to talk about this belief system that blocks the disgust response in people to explain the belief system that I've been referring to I want to do another quick exercise with you if vegan is the term that we use to describe an individual who follows the tenant's the teachings of the belief system or ideology we call veganism then what do we call somebody who is not a vegan or vegetarian what are some common words that you use here but they probably translate listen yeah right so do you say omnivore also and carnivore go okay and I've been saying meat-eater do you use this also these are in English and I think in in many places in the world these are the most common terms that we use but let's talk for a minute about these terms and omnivore by definition is an animal human or non-human that can ingest both flesh and plant matter and a carnivore is an animal that needs to ingest flesh in order to survive so both omnivore and carnivore describe one's biological predisposition not one's ideological choice if humans are naturally omnivorous for example and I know this point is debatable then vegans would be on divorce just as people who eat animals right so we're talking about physiology or biology not ideology and meat-eater describes a behavior as though it's divorced from a belief system this is why we don't say plant eater when we describe vegans right because we recognize that the behavior of eating plants reflects a deeper ideology we tend to assume that it's only vegans and vegetarians who bring our beliefs to the dinner table but most people don't eat pigs but not dogs because they don't have a belief system when it comes to eating animals when eating animals is not a necessity for survival then it is a choice and choices always stem from beliefs and so this is why I began using the term carnism to describe the belief system that conditions people to eat certain animals carnism is essentially the opposite of veganism it's an invisible ideology that I call carnism and this is what writing and speaking has primarily been about recently carnism is a dominant ideology it's the norm it's the meat eating norm this means it's invisible it's entrenched it shapes norms laws beliefs behaviors etc and carnism is also a violent ideology it's literally organized around physical violence meat cannot be procured without killing and other animal products cannot be procured without causing some degree of harm to animals and so violent dominant ideologies like carnism need to use a set of social and psychological defense mechanisms so that humane people can participate in inhumane practices without fully realizing what they are doing in other words this invisible ideology that is carnism it teaches us how not to think and ultimately how not to feel what carnism does is it blocks people's awareness of their cognitive moral dissonance cognitive moral dissonance is the term that psychologists are the phrase that psychologists use to describe the internal moral discomfort that people feel when their values are not in alignment with their practices it's the internal moral discomfort that we feel to give you an example of cognitive moral dissonance when it comes to eating animals I'm going to share with you a quote from a meat-eater I interviewed I did my doctoral dissertation on the psychology of eating meat and I interviewed meat eaters and Meat Cutters butchers and people who had raised and killed their own animals for food and vegans and vegetarians and I was interviewing this woman about her food choices and asking her what foods she regularly eats and when I got to down my list and I asked her about eating meat this was what she answered me I mean there are so many mortifying things in our culture in society but killing animals for food certainly is one of the worst and people ignore it the most because they think that animals don't matter I feel a lot for these animals just the thought is really upsetting and she started to cry when she talked to me and then she looked at me and she said I'm crying she's a meat-eater so when we feel cognitive moral dissonance which we all experience unless you're Gandhi or I mean if you don't experience this talk to me after because I want to interview you we all experience that nobody lives perfectly in alignment with their values all the time including Gandhi it's an uncomfortable feeling so we seek to alleviate this discomfort and we alleviate our moral discomfort by doing one of three things and you all know the answer to this what do you do what do you think people do meat eaters or ourselves to alleviate the world discomfort we can rationalize that's right and that will be our third option what else we use excuses similar what else what if we don't want to rationalize or use excuses what if we want to get rid of it for real we can block it out or you're good you're all just so psychologically minded here what if we don't want to play psychologic Gamze what do we do what did you do when to alleviate your moral discomfort with eating animals you can change your behaviors right we can we have to get in alignment somehow we can change our values people can say for example well you know I know that animals suffer but I'm just a bad person I'm selfish I don't care about animals and I'm just you know I'm just not a good person most people are not going to change their core values we found this through research I don't know why we need to needed to research it but we did and most people need to think of themselves as living a moral life we all need to or as you pointed out we can we can change our behaviors we can go vegan as you know often this isn't what happens the third option is the option that you all have been talking about which is to change our perception of our behaviors so that it looks like our behaviors and our values are more in alignment and it's around this third option that carnism is organized now I talked about how carnism uses a set of social and psychological defense mechanisms the primary defense of carnism is denial if we deny there's a problem in the first place then we don't have to do anything about it right and denial is expressed largely through invisibility the main way that carnism remains invisible is by remaining unnamed if we don't name it we can't even think about it and then we can't question it we can't challenge it the invisibility of carnism is why eating animals appears to just be a given it's just the way things are rather than a choice most people do not recognize that eating animals is in fact a choice it's just what they've always done and Kearn ISM also keeps its victims out of sight and therefore conveniently out of public consciousness now it's really important to point out that carnism is an entire system of victimization it victimizes all of us in different ways most of us here everybody here I'm sure is aware of farmed animals as obviously the most direct and obvious victims of carnism many of you I'm sure are aware that the environment is a victim of carnism vegans are also victims of carnism we have to live in a world that every day offends our deepest sensibilities and deal with hostility and defensiveness and many other problems that we've already mentioned briefly we'll talk about vegans a little bit later but it's really important for us to acknowledge these two sets of victims of the system often we see meat eaters only as perpetrators and not as victims but when we recognize that carnism is invisible and that carnism has effectively shaped meat eaters choices guided them like an invisible hand so that people who eat animals make choices that are against their own interest and counter to their own values and harmful to their own bodies then we can recognize that you know to some degree that this is not a free choice that they are making they're choosing to eat animals but without awareness there's no free choice victims of a system that has conditioned them to act against their own interests and meat packers and slaughterhouse workers often in the United States they're undocumented immigrants non-english speaking immigrants and I know around the world even when they're not immigrants these are people who have to work in they're highly dangerous death saturated environment and are deeply exploited and most people do this job because they have no choice and they end up traumatized from doing the job I think personally that it's really important that we shine a spotlight on carnism it's very important in my opinion that vegans encourage meat-eaters to recognize this system because often dominant systems maintain themselves by remaining unexamined it's like there's vegans and vegetarians and then there's everybody else now if visibility alone is not enough to protect the entire system that's carnism and I mean if you think about it invisibility is not even foolproof I mean hints of the truth are surround us there are dead animals everywhere we turn right in the form of meat so when invisibility inevitably falters carnism needs a backup a safety net so we need to justify eating animals and the way that people learn to justify eating animals is by learning to believe that the myths of meat are the facts of meat now there's a vast mythology surrounding eating animals but all of these myths fall under what I call the 3 ends of justification if you had to guess what they are what do you think they would be well that was fast natural what else necessary nutritious we'll come to that but people always say nutritious clothes normal natural and necessary you've heard this before I'm guessing right and nutritious I think of as falling under necessary right necessary for health I do this exercise I'm on a speaking tour now and I give it a different presentation to meat-eating audiences and I do this exercise with people with me eating audiences and people always guess that so quickly I say what do you think the three ends would be and I used to time them because I was fascinated by how quickly they guessed and it was under one second once so I stopped timing them everybody knows why do you think that everybody knows the answer to this it's just logical because we've heard these same arguments so many times before these same arguments have been used to justify violent practices throughout human history for example slavery male dominance heterosexual supremacy we've heard this all before so I want to just briefly before we talk about advocacy I want to briefly talk about these myths themselves each of these myths so eating meat is normal well what we call normal is really just the beliefs and behaviors of the dominant culture right it's the mystic norm and carnism as a social norm is so entrenched that people are unable to see this as long as they are inside the carnist ik box so the example I like to use to explain this one is that most people would not condone would not support for example killing a golden retriever who is perfectly healthy and six months old just because they like the way her thighs taste even if she had a good life even if for six months she was able to run around and play and form friendships with other golden retrievers and some people most people would say that's totally unacceptable and yet many people today have no problem allowing the same thing to happen to somebody of a different species carnism is a social norm is so entrenched that it blinds people to the fact that humane meat most people don't see this as a myth a myth that was constructed by those in the business of violence to appeal to people who would ordinarily never support such violence well how about eating meat is natural this one is probably the most commonly right have you read this a lot it's natural we've done this forever right humans are supposed to eat animals but what we call natural is the dominant cultures interpretation of history right it's it's not looking at human history it's looking at karna sztyc history for example we don't refer to our fruit-eating ancestors we refer to their flesh-eating descendants in other words we only look as far back in history as we need to to justify current karna stick practices and to be fair murder rape and infanticide killing infants are arguably as long-standing and therefore as natural as eating animals and yet we don't use the longevity of these practices as a justification for them today that's my friend and the author colleen patrick-goudreau says do we really want to use the behavior of the Neanderthals as the yardstick by which to measure current world choices can't we do better than that and finally eating meat is necessary well what we call necessary is simply what is necessary to maintain the dominant culture it's what's necessary to maintain the car mystic status quo and that's all and I will let a picture speak for itself but I know in the back you may not be able to see all these numbers this is the animal kill counter this is the number of animals killed globally since I opened this page you now for the people who said eating meat is nutritious you are probably referring to this right how many times have you been asked this question where do you get your protein well everybody in this room knows that this is a myth this has been proven by the medical establishment meant to be a myth or at least significantly demonstrated to be men for example did you know that you could be strong enough to lift a car without having eaten an ounce of animal protein in your life really of course you know John F Kennedy once said that belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought JFK did not underestimate the power of myths and neither should we even if we have stepped outside of the karna stick box it's important that we recognize how powerful myths are because the myths of meat prevailed despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and they prevail largely because carnism is so entrenched it's embraced and maintained by all major social institutions from the family to the state it's become self-perpetuating there's a quote that I like to use that gives an example of an entrenched system it's from a 19th century French political economist and he said when plunder becomes a way of life we create for ourselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it and when we are born into an entrenched system such as carnism we inevitably absorb that systems logic as our own in other words we internalize carnism we all learn to look at the world through the lens of carnism and carnism uses a set of Defense's that distort our perceptions of meat and the animals we eat so that we can feel comfortable enough to consume them for example carnism teaches us to see animals as objects so that we learn to refer to this turkey as something rather than someone what we learn to call this little baby and it a thing rather than he or she carnism teaches us to see animals as abstractions as lacking in any personality or into that individuality of their own and instead simply as abstract members of a group about which we've made generalized assumptions right a pig is a pig and all pigs are the same and like other victims of violent ideologies we give them numbers rather than names so for example I'm going to share a quote with you from a meat cutter a butcher or that I'm interviewed who said this to me I don't think of farmed animals as individuals I wouldn't be able to do my job if I got that personal with them when you say individuals you mean as a unique person as a unique thing with its own name and its own characteristics its own little games that it plays yeah yeah I'd really rather not know that I'm sure it has it but I'd rather not know it and carnism teaches us to place animals and rigid categories in our minds so that we can Harbor very different feelings and carry out very different behaviors toward different species a female meat eater I interviewed told me that she eats all different types of meat chicken and pork and beef and when I asked her if she also ate veal she stopped she got quiet she looked very offended and what she answered was let's just say I came to your house and you told me that I had just eaten veal I probably vomit like I have to get that out of my system and when I asked her why she said because bill comes from a baby I can't eat a baby we look at the world through the lens of carnism we fail to see the absurdities of the system so we see images like this or like this I mean somebody mutilating their own body to be eaten and we learn to take no notice rather than take offence or we see images like this or this and we we learn to laugh rather than cry if you think about it Voltaire was right if we believe absurdities we shall commit atrocities and carnism is but one of the many atrocities one of the many violent ideologies that are an unfortunate part of the human legacy and although the experience of each set of victims will always be somewhat unique the ideologies themselves are similar it's because the mentality that enables that violence is the same it's the mentality of domination and subjugation of privilege and oppression it's the mentality that causes us to turn someone into something to reduce a life to a unit of production to erase someone's being it's the might makes right mentality that makes us feel entitled to wield complete control over the lives and deaths of those with less power just because we can and to feel justified in our actions because they're only savages women animals it's the mentality of meat so if we fail to pick out the common threads that are woven through all violent ideologies then we will be doomed to recreate atrocities in new forms and this is why it's so important especially as advocates that we get people to incorporate all oppressive systems into their awareness into their analysis including carnism eating animals is not simply a matter of personal ethics it's the inevitable end result of a deeply entrenched oppressive ISM eating animals is really a social justice issue now I can't express strongly enough how important I think it is for vegan advocates to work to get eating animals included on the map onto the map of social justice issues that we can all work together Martin Luther King said you might be familiar with this quote the injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere he recognized the interconnectedness of oppressions and justice anywhere is also threat to injustice everywhere and just just can be practiced everywhere including on our plates so the question for us is how do we get people to practice justice on their plates so knowing what we know about carnism this brings us to the second question what do we do about it how do we transform denial into awareness I want to begin to address this question with a question for you what do you think is the reason that people use defenses in the first place why do you think carnism needs to use this this fortress of defense's people don't want to feel like a bad person exactly people care I have been speaking about this issue for a long time now 20 years I've been speaking about eating animals and animal agriculture and people care people care about animals and they care about the truth and carnism depends on their not caring and the system is built on deception I have very rarely seen a person who doesn't cringe when faced with images of animals suffering so the good news is that carnism is a house of cards it's a vulnerable system that needs a strong fortress to protect itself from its very own proponents why else would people need to use all the psychological acrobatics if not because they care and so people's caring is both the problem and the solution people's caring is what makes them want to turn away from atrocities and our caring is also what gives us the courage to see the truth of what is happening the courage to bear witness now I mentioned witnessing at the beginning of this presentation and I want to make sure this is clear when we bear witness this means we're willing to see the truth with our minds cognitively but also with our hearts emotionally on a cognitive level when we bear witness this means we identify with another this means that we see something of them in ourselves and something of ourselves in them even if the only thing we identify with is the desire not to suffer when we bear witness we also empathize with another we look at the world through their eyes so that when we make choices that impact them we ask ourselves what would he or she want us to do now so many people tell me vegans tell me that that one of the things that's so difficult for them is when they have friends and family or people they advocate to who see like have you seen Earthlings as okay who see something like Earthlings or they see undercover footage of factory farms Capo's and those same people continue to eat animals and they say how can you see this and still make the choice right have you experienced this it's frustrating and it's confusing that's because they haven't fully witnessed witnessing has to happen in the heart if people only see with their eyes and their minds often that's not enough to motivate them to take action when people bear witness this happens on an internal level first they take in the truth and then it can be practiced on an external level then they can actively become witnesses and work toward change witnessing is really the Achilles heel of carnism the whole system is organized to block witnessing on an individual level and on a collective level and we cannot force people to witness but what we can do is we can create an environment that creates space for witnessing when you show somebody a film for example you can't force them to witness because you can't force them to open their hearts and opening your heart is fundamental to witnessing so I want to talk about how we can create an environment that helps people bear witness to our message one of the most important things we can do is to focus on the process of a conversation not the content the process is the how how do we communicate the content is what we are communicating about if you have a healthy process it doesn't matter what the content is it doesn't matter if you're talking about or debating whether to go out or stay home on a Saturday evening or whether you are debating or discussing whether to eat animals or go vegan the process is the same a healthy process is the same and a healthy process means that your goal of the communication is to relate rather than to win what this means is that the goal of the conversation is to share the truth of your experience and to hear the truth of somebody else's experience the goal is not to be right when you're talking about veganism how often do you find that your goal is to win to make somebody go vegan can you relate to this I want to be right I want you to see that I'm right and I know that I'm right well it it's true that you know veganism is the most compassionate choice to make but if you approach a conversation with that agenda in mind well think about it when somebody talks to you and their goal is to make you agree with them how do you feel you notice right you always know we can tell even if the person isn't obvious so how do we do this how can we relate to people in a way that that is cooperative one way to do this effectively is to share your own story okay when I'm talking to groups of meat-eaters which I do very frequently as I said I'm among as speaking to her so I speak to large groups of meat-eaters almost every weekend now and I communicate through my own story whoever I'm talking to I share my own story that's me by the way a very long time ago nobody can disagree with your story nobody make your story wrong so when somebody asks you about veganism instead of saying for instance if somebody says why are you vegan do you get this a lot if you say I'm vegan and people say why why are you thinking right well we have a that's an incredible opportunity we have a choice we can say I'm vegan because 10 billion animals or 65 billion animals a year die globally because eating meat and eggs and dairy is a single worst thing you can do for the environment because you'll get heart disease and cancer we can do that but we can also say I'm vegan because well you know I learned about what happens and when I learned about this information I thought to myself ah I don't want to be a part of that and I make choices that I felt were really more reflective of who I am and what I believe you can share your own story people are much more likely to hear you when you share your own story one point is when you're sharing your story even it's to find common ground to find a common connection now I want to just take a quick poll how many people in this room at some point in your life ate flesh eggs or dairy just let me say Wow okay so one of the most powerful and important things that you have in common with meat eaters is your own carnism remember your own carnism when we become vegan it's so easy for us to forget you ever forget what it felt like to eat animals and it's like meat eaters can see us as fundamentally different from them it's so important to remember that we were not always vegan when people say to me are you vegan when I start talking about the title of my book or what I do they say oh you're vegan then right I always answer I am today but for much of my life I wasn't and that's what motivated me to do the work that I do and then I talk about my own experience as soon as you say I'm vegan today but for much of my life I wasn't you probably will notice that the person becomes much more open oh you understand me you can see the world through my eyes you're not thinking I'm a bad person I'm fundamentally different from you we have something in common it's also useful to indirectly illuminate carnist ik defenses and I'll explain what this means in a minute carnist ik defenses lose a lot of their power when they are exposed so for instance when I'm talking I share my story of my own defenses so when I telling somebody about my story I'll say you know I knew I heard information a little bit of information about the horrors of animal agriculture but I wasn't ready to really take that information in so I always said don't tell me that you'll ruin my meal or I say when I ate animals you know I I knew on some level that whenever I ate meat someone had to die for my plate but I just didn't make the connection I had a knowing without knowing and when I'm explaining my story to somebody who eats animals and I'm talking about my defenses you know what they're doing they're going so by illuminating defenses it reduces defenses and I'm not saying to do this in a strategic or manipulative way it's the truth you're sharing the truth of your experience and for all of us we grew up in this system we looked at the world through the lens of this system and we internalize the same defenses that the people that we're talking to have a really important point is to not expect the facts to sell the ideology how many of you relate to this if only you knew the truth with a capital T about eating animals you'd never eat animals again and then we tell them about the truth over and over and over and over and over again and nothing happens how does it feel yeah incredibly frustrating I have talked to thousands of vegans and you know over the years people can become misanthropic they can become they can really lose faith in humanity they can start thinking that you know humans are a bunch of psychopaths that just don't care about anything except their own selfish desires because we expect the facts to sell the ideology and when they don't and we say but wait a minute you know the truth and you still eat animals you must be a psychopath you have no empathy well that's not the case and you know we have to remember that carnism creates an illogical loyalty to eating animals it's not logical it's so important that we engage with the meat-eater not their defenses very often what happens is we get so frustrated we tell the truth and nothing changes and then we get into an argument of justifications back and forth the whole conversation is defensive so for example we might say but we wouldn't have to worry about what to do with all the farmed animals if people went vegan overnight well if people went vegan because we wouldn't be breeding them in the first place right so oh well what if you had to kill the animal yourself would you eat animals then no you're a hypocrite right so we can go back and forth with justifications some justifications need to be addressed if a person really believes they're going to get sick or die if they go vegan they need to know that that's not true but very often justifications are distraction from the real issue the real issue is the feeling level sharing our story is one to address that it helps to appreciate the meaning of meat the reason that the facts don't sell the ideology in large part is because when we ask somebody to stop eating meat we are not just asking for a change of behavior we're asking for a shift of consciousness it's if it was just asking for a change of behavior the world would be vegan you can get a vegan hamburger that is so realistic some vegans including myself can't eat it it tastes too real sometimes it would be simple we're not asking only for a change of behavior we're asking for people to change the whole way they see the world themselves and there relationship with others including other animals and themselves we're asking people to for instance see themselves as a strand in the web of life rather than standing on top of the so called hierarchical ladder of life we're asking for people to step outside of the dominant carnist ik norm and to become part of a minority and this is empowering but it's challenging maybe you can relate to this I mean sometimes relationships suffer when people become vegan when people in their lives have not become vegan we're asking people to take this on we're asking for people to open to the reality of animal suffering in this world and once you allow yourselves to take that truth in your life is never the same so we're asking for a shift of consciousness and people do not make that kind of change unless they are ready to people cannot make that change until they feel ready to psychologically socially and on a practical level so one way that we can help people feel ready or feel safe enough to hear our message so that they'll change when they're ready is to view them as victims not the enemy victims of the system not the enemy remember that carnism creates this us-versus-them mentality it's this divide and conquer mentality that is very effective in maintaining the dominant system I mean how can we possibly expect to reach a critical mass of supporters if we see the people that we are reaching out to as the enemy we have to see meat eaters as victims of the system one way to do this is to separate character from behavior mother Teresa was not a vegan mother Teresa was not even a vegetarian but in many ways she was a very good person right so we can appreciate that good people do harmful things this doesn't make them bad people people eat animals and are also great humanitarians their teachers their community leaders their loving fathers and sisters and daughters when we separate character from behavior it helps us to avoid falling into the trap of what I call reductive thinking reductive thinking is when you reduce a person to nothing other than a behavior right you're a meat-eater we reduce a person to nothing other than that and you know the example I like to use to describe reductive thinking is um I don't know what it's like here but in Boston where I live I to practice non-violence in thought and behavior and when I get into my car in Boston it takes about five minutes before my non-violent thoughts are gone I reduce the car that inevitably cuts me off Oh in my mind automatically the person in that car is not person anymore they're just the jerk driver they become nothing other than that jerk driver who cut me off or worse it's the Volkswagen that cut me off this happens to us as vegans so often automatically especially if we are eating around somebody who's eating animals so in our mind they can very quickly go from this to this can you appreciate this feeling so to avoid reductive thinking it helps for us to view meat-eaters as individuals rather than as people that have a certain practice we are all so much more than just our ideology I'm the vegan I'm off obviously it's my profession it's my work but I have so much more than just a vegan I'm not I'm a friend I'm a daughter I'm a colleague I'm a teacher I am an ex-girlfriend I'm many things more than just being a and meat-eaters as well for many of us we have more in common with some meat eaters than we do with some vegetarians are some vegans in our lives it helps to avoid all-or-nothing thinking I like to think of carnism on a continuum right you could be like a hardcore meat-eater over here meaning you eat meat 10 times a day you brush your teeth with it I don't know and and over and I don't think I know anybody perfectly over here I mean I have my vegan shoes on but I don't know if the glue and the heels of my shoe came from somebody's hoofs you know we do our best so most important in my opinion is not where we are on the continuum it's where we're headed on the continuum when people learn about me being vegan you know often they'll say what wait a minute what you're vegan so you only eat chicken and fish no you know not even cheese you will do you wear luck you don't wear leather what about wool why don't you wear wool they just take the hair off the shape that you know and then on women finally they say where do you draw your line you know and what they're asking is where do you draw your line around your circle of compassion and I always respond it's not where I draw my line that's important to me it's how I relate to my line you know do you draw your line in pencil and so our goal as vegans is really to encourage meat-eaters to reflect on their line that's it my friend the author I mentioned before colleen patrick-goudreau says the only thing that we can do really effectively when we're communicating is to plant seeds we can plant seeds we can't make people go vegan if that's our goal we'll be frustrated all the time we can plant seeds this is my truth you will do with it what you need to it takes a lot of the stress away because many people many vegans have said to me I feel guilty when I don't turn people vegan and they feel somehow as though if people don't go vegan after a conversation with them then they are personally responsible for killing animals that's a heavy burden carry and that makes us push harder which as we know is less effective so our goal is to plant seeds that's all in order to do this we need to ultimately model the qualities that we are asking for you know so don't expect behaviors and others that we're not practicing ourselves if we want people to be open and reflective we have to be open and reflected if we want people to be compassionate we have to be compassionate is it fair that we have to be on our best behavior in order for our message to be heard no but it is the truth it's hard to model these behaviors when we're feeling frustrated and tired and burned out so I'm gonna very briefly talk you know in conclusion about ways to take care of ourselves so that we are more likely to be able to practice some of these things that we've talked about these principles that we've talked about it and one of the most important things we can do is to acknowledge the insanity of carnot okay carnism is it's an insane system if it's totally illogical and this causes conflicting emotions right we have to love people whose behaviors we hate we have to respect people whose beliefs might offend us and it's helpful to rather than trying to fix these contradictions to accept them just accept them they are a natural part of living in a culture that is organized around illogical thinking and contradictions life becomes easier if we give ourselves permission to love meat eaters even if we don't love what they do how many of you have noticed that your relationships have been a little bit stressful veganism anybody okay so a lot of people in this room do you find sometimes that it's hard for you to continue to love people or feel connected with them when they're still eating animals it's hard sometimes we just need to say we can love people and not love what they do and that makes life a lot easier and it helps us to communicate with more compassion and more effectively loving our meat-eater it doesn't make you a hypocrite it just makes you authentic makes you practicing the things that we've been talking about I always recommend for vegans not to internalize carnism even for those of us who have stepped outside of the system we're still living inside of the system and one of the ways that dominant ideologies are dominant systems like carnism maintain themselves is by promoting negative messages about the people and the movements that challenge them right if we shoot the messenger we don't have to take seriously the implications of their message and often vegans can internalize these negative messages so for instance have you ever been called overly emotional right because this is this is what happens to proponents have happened to proponents of all social movements feminists people working in civil rights overly emotional when it comes to the atrocity of the animals the world needs more emotion not less when we are called overly emotional this is a way of discrediting our argument because it means if you are too emotional what does that mean you are not rational right it's a way of silencing it's not true if you're if you feel the emotions of anger and sadness and grief at what's happening to the animals in the world those emotions are normal healthful legitimate and appropriate this is that num karna stick culture looks at as overly emotional only in comparison with an under emotional dominant culture often word token to be a token something means to be that you become the representative for the entire group right so like how many of you as the vegan you feel like you always are representing veganism so you have to represent it well right I'll pretend I never get sick because if they know I get sick then they're gonna say it's because you're vegan and it's going to have a negative impact on the movement so we become the token ambassadors that's a lot of stress to carry often we become tokenized guys we're called picky oh you're such a picky eater you know you won't just pick out the meatballs and eat the pasta sauce we've already talked about this you can say no I'm having a disgust response it's a legitimate psychological reaction psychologists told me so we are hypocrites if we wear leather extremists if we don't if we express our anger about what's happening to the animals then we're militant human haters if instead we don't talk from anger but we talk from wanting peace and compassion then we are either free hugging tofu loving hippies and to proselytize propagandize might be to to promote propaganda right it's it's similar so when we when vegans share information about the benefits of eating a vegan diet we can be called sharing propaganda when meat-eaters share information about you know nutrients and eating animals that's not propaganda that's just information right so so recognizing these it is essential to not internalizing not believing them because holding on to our truth the dominant culture tries to make us question our own truth hold on to your truth and living your truth is the greatest threat powers-that-be one issue that I like to mention and I'm just gonna mention this very briefly is to recognize stsd this is called secondary traumatic stress disorder how many of you have heard of PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder that translates right so like combat veterans have this stsd is this same in many ways as PTSD but it's what happens to people who are witnesses to violence not the direct victims of violence many of us who are fighting atrocities who are working to raise awareness of atrocities can become traumatized by them and can feel maybe you have felt this can feel burnout can feel like a loss of faith in humanity a loss of faith in the world in the universe this happens sometimes when we over witness when we see too much I have so many vegans tell me I watched Earthlings again again well because I wanted my friends to see it and I felt like if the animals are suffering so much then for me to spend 20 minutes or one hour of my life that's nothing compared to the animals except that this person is of course traumatized and the more we Whitman we don't need to witness when you already know what's happening you don't need to see over and over and over again the images because they can have a negative impact over time maybe you have experienced it you can't get the images out of your mind they come to your mind when they don't when you don't want them to don't over witness and get witnessed find people who you can talk to maybe you don't share the graphic details but who see you to be witnessed is to be seen when we live in a dominant car mystic culture that turns away from veganism then we as vegans can feel invisible too we can feel invisible in very profound ways so it's so important to find people who see who you are and what you do and validate that so the culture doesn't minimize or dismiss you in that way this book by the way trauma stewardship is an excellent excellent book a practical book for taking care of ourselves all right I mean it will wrap up we've got two more okay appreciate your burden of knowing and expect that others won't people in your life cannot see who you are until they're ready to see the truth about carnism two more quick points don't let karna stick culture minimize your impact or dismiss your beliefs or efforts often vegans will say that the problem is still so big even though all art we've been working so hard well remember the problem would be even bigger you are the only thing that is standing between animals and a worse situation for them there is reason to hope in the United States the number of vegans and vegetarians has doubled in the past three years we've got articles coming out about veganism leaders celebrities saying no to veganism Ellen has her own website about veganism the culture the vegan culture is just exploding everywhere it is expanding exponentially and one way carnism maintains itself is by making it seem like veganism is not nearly as powerful or growing as much as it is but it is and my very last point is to find out what inspires you remember that you're part of something that's greater than your individual self you're part of the social movement that in my belief is going to be looked back upon one day as one of the most important and influential and transformational revolutions in the history of humankind and you're a part of that remember that you're not alone and find out what inspires you what inspires me is meeting you is talking to people and witnessing you do and and being reminded of how important this work really is and how many people are really active in this work so I want to wrap up by just saying to you thank you for all that you are and for all that you do you are the reason that the world is a better place for animals and you are the reason that I can continue to do what I do you recharged my vegan batteries and you inspire me and you make me want to be a better activist and a better person so thank you thank you for coming you you

Channel: Beyond Carnism

Views: 44,403

Keywords: carnism, psychology of meat, melanie joy, speciesism, animal rights, veganism, vegan advocacy, vegan diet, vegan, vegan food

Id: eqE0gUCp0oI

Length: 75min 56sec (4556 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 13 2014