Hit the Switch

"There's this switch that gets hit and it all stops making sense."
Bright Eyes

Yes, this post is titled after a Bright Eyes song. No, it doesn't actually have anything to do with that song besides that one line.

I recently watched Peaceable Kingdom which, by the way, is a wonderful documentary that I would recommend (and lend) to anyone who still has a VHS player, since it apparently doesn't exist on DVD. I really enjoyed listening to all of the people who were interview. Two of them were Gene Baur and Lorri Houston, the founders of Farm Sanctuary, which automatically made me love this documentary. But the one who really stuck with me was Harold Brown. He was a former beef farmer who had been involved in animal agriculture his entire life and then one day just decided that he couldn't do it anymore.

The thing that I found so interesting about Harold Brown was not so much the fact that he was able to go from being a farmer to an animal rights advocate, I had heard similar stories before, but the way he described his transformation. He talked about how he had felt about animals when he was a child, how he had somehow known that it was wrong to kill them. He explained how he had learned to ignore the way he felt and eventually grew up to do the same thing his family had done. It doesn't surprise me that all those years of killing finally got to him, what does surprise me is the way it happened.

He said that he went to visit Farm Sanctuary shortly after it opened, which is a good sign that he was already starting to seriously doubt his lifestyle. After listening to Gene Baur speak, he felt compelled to sponsor an animal. He chose a calf named Snickers who had been rescued along with his mother. After spending some time with Snickers, Harold went back to his life as a beef farmer. A year later he came back to Farm Sanctuary and was shocked to find that Snickers remembered him. When Harold called his name, Snickers ran over and gently head-butted him in the chest. Harold said that it was as if Snickers had hit a switch in his heart. He realized that he had learned at a young age to turn off the switch which allowed him to think of farm animals the way he thought of dogs and cats. He had turned off his compassion for these animals and Snickers had turned it back on. After that, he just couldn't be involved in animal agriculture anymore. 

The more I thought about what Harold Brown had said, the less I knew how to feel about it. On the one hand, it's extremely encouraging to know that even someone who has lived his whole life killing animals for a living can realize that it's wrong and decide to change. On the other hand, it makes me feel like the whole idea of me trying to change people's minds about killing animals is kind of hopeless. The thing is, everyone has that switch but the thing that finally hits it is different for each person. Harold Brown saw cows everyday of his life. He interacted with them constantly. So who would have thought that a cow head-butting him in the chest would change his mind? Who would have thought that anything a cow could do would change his mind?

It's really amazing sometimes what that one things is that finally opens a person's eyes. I find it incredibly frustrating to know that if I just knew what that one thing was, the one thing I could say or do that would finally get through, I could convince anyone. If there were some way for me to tell where each person's switch is, I would spend my whole life going around and turning every switch on. But there really isn't any way to tell and that's what makes fighting for animal rights so hard. Sometimes it seems like no matter what you do and no matter what you say there are some people, a lot of people, who you just can't ever seem to get through to.

The good news is, because we never know where someone's switch might be, we never know what small thing might hit it. Sometimes it's as simple as being handed a pamphlet. When I went to the AR conference, one of the speakers I listened to was Dallas Rising, the program director of the Animal Rights Coalition. She said that, when she was in high school, as she was getting off the bus one day someone handed her a pamphlet. It was cold and she was tired and she just took the pamphlet and kept walking. She didn't even look at the person who gave it to her or pay any attention to what it was about. Later in the day she started looking through it and it was about veganism and animal rights. That was what started everything for her, and now she's this amazing activist who also speaks at conferences and motivates other activists form all over the world. 

So to all of you animal rights activists out there, don't give up! Everyone has a switch, even your friends and family who you've been trying to get through to for years, even that guy at work who thinks it's hilarious to make fun of you for being vegan every time he sees you, even that girl who looked at you like you were the most disgusting thing she had ever seen and then proceeded to tell you about all the meat she was going to eat just because you tried to hand her a pamphlet. It is there, you just have to find it. And to all of you omnivores out there, please I'm begging you, hit the switch. I would gladly do it for you, but I don't know where it is. Try starting here http://www.earthlings.com/