Educate...or ventilate?

One of the quandaries I found myself in (and still do) from time to time is encountering someone who exhibits either ignorance and/or obliviousness re veganism. (I'm always sort of stunned at how many folks that eat animals say they "love" animals...although 20 years ago I probably would have done the same thing.)

It's at that point the dilemma presents itself. Do I want to point out the horrors of harm to 'animals' that a non-vegan way of living causes...and thereby almost invariably evoke defensiveness and maybe anger and/or upset (ventilate)?

Or...do I want to try to educate someone and perhaps nudge them toward behaving in ways that are less harmful?

Do I want to educate...or to ventilate?

The folks over at Faunalytics offer the above image to illustrate the approaches that have been found to be the most effective for educating folks. If you want to ventilate...well...you can figure out how to do that.

Usually ventilating results in feeling self-righteous about yourself and ensures...however...whomever you're going off on will probably forever figure vegan folks are thoroughly obnoxious and weird.

Educating...by the way...is a heck of a lot harder than ventilating...and I'm not kidding. That's probably why so much more ventilating goes on than educating. It's really easy to get the defensiveness going and little learning happens once that occurs.

Someone once said, "Nobody can get browbeaten into being a good person".

So...educate or ventilate?

Each one teach one. (I've liked that saying from when I first heard it)

Just think, if everyone who is vegan managed to get just one other person to live vegan...then a vegan world is quite possible.