Vegan Education

Here you will find essays, articles, books, activities, websites, and much more to help us improve our advocacy work as animal rights activists/vegan educators. For the animals!

[nprbooks]

Critic Barbara J. King says Frans de Waal “contributes immensely to an ethical sea change for animals” in his new books, Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves. Check out her full review here.

– Petra

[purplebuddhaquotes]

It is impossible, after a certain point, to go back to a previous way of life, a previous way of thinking.

Henry Rollins

[just-shower-thoughts]

People would be more inclined to donate to charities if they later received a statement detailing exactly how their money was used.

[veganeducation]

How tenaciously children and adolescents cling to the values, beliefs, abstractions, and generalizations that they learn depends on how disturbed they are at the time the learning occurs. The amount of displaced anger, grief, sexuality, or joy being suppressed at that time has a big effect on both what they learn and how they learn. In any given culture, the brainwashed ones who fit in best assume much of the leadership. As a culture burns out or fails to renew itself through change, its educational and political leaders are often the least creative members — the ones who cling hysterically to old methods simply because they once worked. The best people in a dying culture are the outcasts considered crazy by the leaders; the ones most disillusioned with their own culture. In Yeats’ phrase, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Intense emotional attachment to any value, any virtue, any set of “shoulds” is a disease, a mental illness, a condition of self-murder and cultural assassination.

Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth.

- Brad Blanton

[veganeducation]

The Age of Overwhelm: Strategies for the Long Haul

“Whether we are overwhelmed by work or school; our families or communities; caretaking for others or ourselves; or engagement in social justice, environmental advocacy, or civil service, just a few subtle shifts can help sustain us.

Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, bestselling author of Trauma Stewardship, shows us how by offering concrete strategies to help us mitigate harm, cultivate our ability to be decent and equitable, and act with integrity.

The Age of Overwhelm aims to help ease our burden of overwhelm, restore our perspective, and give us strength to navigate what is yet to come.”

[thoughts-in-shower]

You don’t realize how little you know about a topic until you have to explain it.

[veganeducation]

Vystopia: the anguish of being vegan in a non-vegan world by Clare Mann    

“This book is the first of its kind to identify the existential crisis faced by vegans. Vystopia is the normal response any feeling human being should have after discovering the nature and extent of society’s systematized animal abuse. It’s fuelled by the trance-like collusion of non-vegans with a dystopian world they’ve not yet realized they’re part of.”

[veganeducation]

Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism: New Tactics, New Technology by Mark Hawthorne 

“A major revision of the animal rights handbook Striking at the Roots, this 10th-anniversary edition is more than 100 pages longer with advice on using social media, protecting yourself at protests, supporting prisoners, living with non-vegans, a deeper dive into activist self-care, and much more. 

The book brings together the most effective tactics for speaking out for animal protection. Activists from around the globe explain why their models of activism have been successful―and how you can become involved. Concise and full of practical examples and resources, this manual for success demonstrates how many of the world's most engaged activists effectively speak to the public, lobby policymakers, and deal with law enforcement―all while keeping their eyes on the prize of achieving victories for animals. 

Striking at the Roots will empower you to make the most of your skills. From simple leafleting to taking direct action, each chapter clearly explains where to begin, what to expect, and how to ensure your message is heard.”

[psicologicamenteblog]

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.

Carl Rogers

[purplebuddhaquotes]

[wheresmybubble]

Quote from the amazing writer Jeanette Winterson. Part 1 of 2.

[purplebuddhaproject]

[veganeducation]

[veganeducation]

Change the Way You Complain

Your brain loves efficiency and doesn’t like to work any harder than it has to. When you repeat a behavior, such as complaining, your neurons branch out to each other to ease the flow of information. This makes it much easier to repeat that behavior in the future – so easy, in fact, that you might not even realize you’re doing it.

You can’t blame your brain. Who’d want to build a temporary bridge every time you need to cross a river? It makes a lot more sense to construct a permanent bridge. So, your neurons grow closer together, and the connections between them become more permanent. Scientists like to describe this process as:

Neurons that fire together, wire together.

Repeated complaining rewires your brain to make future complaining more likely.

Over time, you find it easier to be negative than to be positive, regardless of what’s happening around you. Complaining becomes your default behavior, which changes how people perceive you.

When we complain repeatedly, neurons build pathways to make it easier to complain!

And here’s the kicker: complaining damages other areas of your brain as well. Research from Stanford University has shown that complaining shrinks the hippocampus – an area of the brain that’s critical to problem-solving and intelligent thought. Damage to the hippocampus is scary, especially when you consider that it’s one of the primary brain areas destroyed by Alzheimer’s.

Complaining is Bad for Your Health

While it’s not an exaggeration to say that complaining leads to brain damage, it doesn’t stop there. When you complain, your body releases the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol shifts you into fight-or-flight mode, directing oxygen, blood and energy away from everything but the systems that are essential to immediate survival. One effect of cortisol, for example, is to raise your blood pressure and blood sugar so that you’ll be prepared to either escape or defend yourself.

All the extra cortisol released by frequent complaining impairs your immune system and makes you more susceptible to high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease and obesity. It even makes the brain more vulnerable to strokes.

Since human beings are inherently social, our brains naturally and unconsciously mimic the moods of those around us, particularly people we spend a great deal of time with. This process is called neuronal mirroring, and it’s the basis for our ability to feel empathy. The flip side, however, is that it makes complaining a lot like smoking – you don’t have to do it yourself to suffer the ill effects.

The Solution to Complaining

There are two things you can do when you feel the need to complain.

One is to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. That is, when you feel like complaining, shift your attention to something that you’re grateful for. Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the right thing to do; it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood and energy and substantially less anxiety due to lower cortisol levels. Any time you experience negative or pessimistic thoughts, use this as a cue to shift gears and to think about something positive. In time, a positive attitude will become a way of life.

The second thing you can do – and only when you have something that is truly worth complaining about – is to engage in solution-oriented complaining. Think of it as complaining with a purpose. Solution-oriented complaining involves the following:

Have a clear purpose. Before complaining, know what outcome you’re looking for. If you can’t identify a purpose, there’s a good chance you just want to complain for its own sake, and that’s the kind of complaining you should nip in the bud.

Start with something positive. It may seem counterintuitive to start a complaint with a compliment, but starting with a positive helps keep the other person from getting defensive.

Be specific. When you’re complaining it’s not a good time to dredge up every minor annoyance from the past 20 years. Just address the current situation and be as specific as possible. Instead of saying, “Your employee was rude to me,” describe specifically what the employee did that seemed rude.

End on a positive. If you end your complaint with, “I’m never shopping here again,” the person who’s listening has no motivation to act on your complaint. In that case, you’re just venting or complaining with no purpose other than to complain. Instead, restate your purpose, as well as your hope that the desired result can be achieved, for example, “I’d like to work this out so that we can keep our business relationship intact.”

UPLIFT

[purplebuddhaproject]

Difficult things take a long time, impossible things a little longer.

Author Unknown

[psychofactz]

[lightheartedsuggestion]

Be emphatic, be kind, be understanding. But be strong, be honest, be assertive.