Many aspects play a role in answering the question of why those who are committed to improving the living conditions of all living beings are torpedoed, attacked, discredited and disparaged. First of all, it is the social conditions that are reflected in the political situation. People in bourgeois society these days are comparable to those of the Biedermeier period, which spanned the period between the end of the Vienna Congress in 1815 and the beginning of the bourgeois revolution in 1848. The ideal of this time was the cozy, apolitical family life. Politically, it was characterized by ingenuity, informer and oppression. This retreat into your own four walls, the focus on your own navel, takes place again today. The big difference is that monitoring is much easier than it was then. Metternich would have been delighted.

It was essential not to interfere, not to attract attention, not to look up and to concentrate on the things that directly affect you. This includes how the neighbor behaves or which festival takes place in the place etc., but not what the living and dying conditions of our fellow creatures look like. After all, that happens elsewhere and you have nothing to do with it. The fact that you benefit from it in the form of cheap food is another matter, it’s too common to distinguish between cause and effect. Of course, everyone finds it terrible when calves are transported thousands of kilometers through the area in the most terrible conditions. But when it is said that it is due to milk consumption, you have to listen to it, because you cannot stop consuming milk and milk products. It is very radical. I do not want to list the thousands of excuses that are well known, as well as the circumstances per se. The main reason why this system of exploitation persists is because the majority not only remain silent, but oppose those who draw attention to it. One quickly becomes radical, extreme and militant, because they have obviously not been deformed well enough by socialization in education and training that they open their mouths, and that also loudly and publicly. You can’t say anything. And precisely because many believe that they cannot say anything, everything remains as it is. We prefer to rest there, in our cozy home, until our own house burns. We don’t care before.

The second aspect is the fear of change. The dairy farms will perish, the farmers who keep living beings will have no livelihood and we will all starve to death. So, the tenor. As if there was no agriculture besides the exploitation of our fellow creatures. Of course, if you stay on the point that there is no alternative other than to continue with what already exists, then you could understand it. But people are proud that they can think, anticipate and change the world. And in this case, all of these options suddenly seem to be forgotten. Apart from the fact that there are now enough examples of a successful changeover, no farmer can survive without subsidies. That means we are already withholding this highly acclaimed profession from what is due to them for their work. It would be easy to use the subsidies to make this switch possible. The relevant interest groups could offer training and other support. But just by that you can see that they have no interest in releasing the farmers from the knot of chambers, associations and Co. It just lives off too well if you keep the members on the tightrope.

The majority of people have chosen to be quiet and not to jump up. But that is a decision, whether consciously or unconsciously, that you can change again. We can also choose to be reflective, conscious, thinking and reflecting, to work for better living conditions. It is still easy to attack these people because there are few and the majority stand behind the oppressors, but if you get up enough to leave the warmth and comfort of your living room idyll, it will be more difficult to bring them down. Then it would also be politically necessary to deal with these demands. Until then, we will work for it and we will continue to do so. That is the hope we have for the survival of our planet and thus for our own.

Go to part 3 here