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Of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Educating Meat Eaters

With the help of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), you can determine how you might present a message you would like someone to be receptive to based on how they prefer to experience the world and learn. Most people are either visual, auditory or kinesthetic. Visual people respond best to images, auditory people are particularly sensitive to tone and words (like me, and it’s no advantage, trust me), and kinesthetic people generate their best ideas when moving. That’s all a gross oversimplification, but it serves my purpose here. I don’t want to recommend one particular website, as there are disagreements in the NLP field regarding some initially-important ideas (such as "rapport"), and there are so many practitioners that I don’t want to side with anyone (although I will say that I don’t think the use of rapport to persuade people is not effective or honest).

Though you can give a book to anyone, all of the "animal rights books" (note that Singer writes of "liberation," not "rights") I have take a significant commitment on the part of the reader to complete (I’m talking about Singer, Regan and Francione).

Unfortunately, because most people are visual, the books have yet another strike for newbies. Luckily, visual people now have YouTube, and oodles of free videos and other presentations to help them grasp the idea that animals aren’t ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for our entertainment. And if they don’t grasp that, at least they’ll grasp the suffering we inflict on animals.

I have two recommendations for all of you visual people out there, and for the visual people you know:  video you can watch right now of a speech by Ingrid Newkirk that has some great images and film in it. It’s not all blood and guts, and she addresses several criticisms people have about PETA. Whether you are an animal welfarist or an animal rightist, most of the information in Newkirk’s speech will be valuable. If you have qualms about PETA, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Watch the video and show it to a non-vegetarian or someone who thinks circuses are a great idea.

My other recommendation, which gets into welfare versus rights, is for those who are more analytical. Watch Gary Francione’s slideshow series, beginning with the Theory of Animal Rights, then proceeding to Animals as Property, Animal Rights vs. Animal Welfare (my personal fave), and Animal Law.

In my experience, the first step is to expose your circle of influence to the realities of where their food and clothing comes from, and how animals are treated in "sports" and entertainment. That’s where Newkirk comes in (and my favorite quote, "There’s a piece of veal calf in every glass of milk."). The next step is to expose them to the idea of welfare and protection versus rights and abolition. That’s where Francione comes in.

I’d love to say that I believe that most people will immediately respond to Francione, but unfortunately I don’t have that much faith in the intellectual capacity of Americans. Please don’t write to me and tell me how mean-spirited I am. It’s merely an observation based on the data I have collected over a couple of decades. I hope I’m wrong.

Regardless of the welfare versus rights conversation, one thing that anyone can do to reach the one goal we all share is to become vegan and support groups that educate people about veganism, such as Vegan Outreach. Educate yourself and determine where you stand.

If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

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