In 1994, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the UK vegan society in 1944, and the coining of the word vegan in the same year by its founder Donald Watson, the date of November 1st was officially established as World Vegan Day.
Yes, in the year of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, the same year that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were paired onscreen for the first time, back when there was no internet and no mobile phones, when radio was still the central form of home entertainment, that deep and rich word that we vegans still identify with today, was being born.
Eight decades later, many think of the word vegan as something very different than what it was back then. But some of us still know what it really means. We are the vegans who know that veganism will never die, in spite of what some might have us believe. We know this whether there are dozens of vegan burgers on the shelves or none, whether vegan eateries are opening in greater numbers than ever before, or closing at an alarming pace. We know this whether or not there is a single celebrity in popular culture who sings its virtues.
We know veganism will never die even if the current dietary trend is toward paleo, or primitive, or carnivore, or keto, or Atkins. We know it whether it’s more popular to fry foods in vegetable oil or beef tallow. We know it when politicians with a plant-based leaning come and go from the limelight, when influencers announce that they’re embracing it, then turn around and say that they’ve changed their minds, and we would know it even if we were told that our decision to be vegan has absolutely no effect on climate change, or on resource scarcity, or on any one of the myriad urgencies that our society just can’t seem to get a handle on.
We know veganism will never die because we know what veganism really is, and we know that it has nothing to do with fads and crazes, nothing to do with consumer culture or the latest style. We know that it has everything to do with principles, with morality, and with integrity.
Veganism does not deal in the subjective world of what’s hot, or hip, or profitable, or commercial. It is simply a logical response to reality, to the facts of the situation; the profoundly, shatteringly, horrifyingly tragic situation that is the atrocity of our enslavement and persecution of our fellow sentient beings.
The legitimacy of our movement might be ignored, and the accuracy of our allegations against this heinous institution might be disregarded, but they can never be invalidated, and they can never be disproved.
We know this with as much certainty as we know that the sun will always rise.
In the words of Saint Augustine:
“Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”
Why I Love Vegans
Vegans recognize the inherent right of every animal, human or otherwise, to be the sole owner of his or her body, and they acknowledge our ethical responsibility to treat every body with respect and even reverence for the mystery that gives them life.
