Feel
For many the essence of being vegan is to feel empathy with others. It’s core to humanity to feel empathy for other humans. A lack of empathy is a common sign of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), also known as sociopathy. But many humans limit their empathy to other humans and don’t even consider animals.
No matter where in the world we are raised; our culture; race; religion; sexual orientation or other social categorisation, at some point in our upbringing we are all exposed to the concept of “other”. Sooner or later we are taught that others not in our group are somehow not as deserving as those in our group. This is where factions in society stem from. We are told that people in other countries are not like us. We are told that people following other faiths are not like us; that those from other races are not like us. This is the stem cause of all oppression. We learn that racism is ok because they ar “other”; that sexism is ok because they are “other”; that transphobia is ok because they are “other”
We are taught that we don’t need to have empathy for others because they are not like us, they are not in our group. What group is the first outgroup that almost all of us are taught? Yes, that’s right, animals. We are taught from a very young age that we are superior to animals; that they are not as important as us humans. We learn that it's okay to take their eggs, steal their milk and even take their life. Animals are the first outgroup, that we lean to treat as “other”. Here at Be The Alternative we firmly believe that being taught that animals are other is the beginning of learning that other groups can be treated differently because they are not like us
If we grow up thinking that is okay to treat others badly simply becuase they are not like us then when we think about other groups its esier to use the same logic. Thus when we raise our children vegan they learn that all creatures deseve respct and they don’t build the concept of treating others diferently. In this way they are much more likely to have empathy with others as the grow up. This will reduce all types of oppressive behavior. Not just speciesim but racism, sexism, homphobia, transphbia etc…..
A vegan world is a world full of empathy where we all feel for others, a world where we don’t treat others differently because they are not human; because they come from a different culture; because their skin is is different colour etc…. This alone is in itself reason enough to be vegan.