On Scheduling Epiphanies . . . and Coral Snakes

I have a column on my Tweetdeck (an application for ease of Twitter use on my desktop) called "vegan," where all tweets from all tweeple  who mention "vegan" are listed in somewhat real time.

One of the reasons I do this is to see what others are saying about veganism (both good and bad), vegan food, their vegan friends and family members, and of course, about going vegan (I've already seen a handful of #in2010 references to going vegan).

What I have discovered is that people like my husband, who went vegan overnight from omnivore, aren't exactly common, but they're also not that rare. I've also found that there are all kinds of activists and videos and concerts and demonstrations and books that I've never even heard of, that cause omnivores and vegetarians to go vegan.

Some people cut back on animal products, some eliminate one at a time, some ditch it all upon watching Earthlings (and I'd love to know if they watched it in one sitting, but no one has volunteered that information) or reading Eating Animals. Some watched their vegan friend or family member's example, and realized that vegans can be fantastically fit, high energy people who obviously enjoy what they eat. I've been introduced to several more professional athletes, such as Ultraman Rich Roll, who became a vegan and started getting into shape at age 40. I'll be using his inspirational story as an example for my own friends and family. Finally, I'm pretty sure I'm not in his demographic, but I've seen a lot of tweeting about people going vegan after watching Onision. As someone who's about to be a parent, I found him a bit worrisome. Then I remembered that I bought a black t-shirt in the East Village that read "Fuck you you fucking fuck," and decided not to pass judgment.

As a vegan who believes we humans have no right to use other animals, my impulse is to believe that only books or films or other media with an abolitionist message is going to get more people to go vegan. But that's just not the way it works.

When the student is ready the teacher appears, and we don't actually know what/who someone else's teacher will be, though we can hazard a guess. We can't schedule the epiphanies of others. But we can be there, consistently, with an answer, an explanation, a resource, or a meal. That's how critical mass is reached, if critical mass is what it's going to take. And that's how an epiphany will be triggered, if that's the route in play. The two things I know about vegan education are that: 1) it involves a lot of listening and guesswork; and 2) once someone has heard an answer to every objection they have–and we've all seen this–that doesn't mean they'll go vegan. There's a secret ingredient that needs to be mixed in and what exactly it is is a mystery, and it doesn't come from the outside.

Oh, and here's a bit of information I needed this morning. You can probably guess why.