Compassionate Coexistence

On a dismal day in South England, a puppy screamed out in pain as his leg was twisted and shoved through the gap in a park bench’s slats, and his anguish was mocked and jeered by a group of teenagers.

Another child, on the outskirts of the park, heard the puppy’s cries and followed them. Upon discovering the tormented animal, she pushed through the onlookers, freed the dog (who ran off), and turned.

“How dare you,” the 8-year-old told the much older youth. “Don’t you ever do that again.”

Clare Mann attributes her childhood actions on that day to the sparking of an inner fire — a fire that she says flames up in many people when they encounter something unexpected and so blatantly wrong that they take immediate action.

The fire surfaced again in her late 40s, when she came across “hunting” dogs who were starved so they would attack feral pigs and also came across the frozen corpses of piglets who had died after their mothers had been killed. Around that time she also learned, with horror, that the cow’s milk assumed by many to be a “byproduct” of the dairy industry actually resulted from forcibly impregnating young cows, ripping away their babies from them at a few hours to days old, and repeating the gruesome process until the animals — still in their childhood, as far as their natural lifespans go — were considered “used up” and sent to a slaughterhouse.

Mann remembers turning to her partner of the time, who had researched and watched the slaughterhouse videos alongside her, and asking, “If I didn’t know this, what else don’t I know?”

They gave up eating animals that night. Over Zoom, Mann recalled with a laugh that her next question was: “Are we going to die?”

Shortly into her vegan journey, however, Mann realized she had been lied to by society, marketers, and animal agriculture. Rather than die on a plant-based diet, she thrived.

“I realized that I would rather live on French fries than be part of a system that is brutalizing animals in that way,” she said. “I didn’t know then one of the best kept secrets about becoming vegan, that not only is it possible to not die from having a plant-based diet, but a whole foods, plant-based diet is the most healthful.”

Despite the bright spot of her health, Mann still had to face the monstrous animal cruelty she now saw everywhere every day. Rather than succumb to the despair that followed her awakening to the atrocious exploitation of animals – not just in food, but in cosmetics, household products, furnishings, entertainment, military exercises, the pharmaceutical industry, and more — Mann became an activist. 

She also went a step further and focused on the psychology of Veganism, determined to find out how otherwise good people could contribute to such cruel systems and, later, to help other vegans facing vystopia — a word Mann coined to describe the crushing feelings like grief, anger, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and misanthropy that often follow when animal lovers have their eyes opened to the massive and serious animal suffering in our world today.

“Having worked as a psychologist for over 30 years in psychiatry, homicide, and private practice, I continue to discover hidden levels of violence and abuse that shocks me,” she said. “We are living in a world where violence is normalized and seen as a necessary part of life.”

Mann defines Vystopia as “the mental anguish of knowing about the systematized abuse of animals within a hidden dystopian world.”

However, vegans don’t have to spend the rest of their lives in the depths of desperation. Nor do they have to spend their days glued to graphic footage of animal torture to be of service to animals, Mann said.

There’s another way — a way in which animal activists (and any other justice warrior, really) can build resilience, stay centered, and advocate from a place of hope and personal health, while still making an impactful change. 

Mann shared more about her journey, how activists can build inner strength to stay in justice movements for the long-run, and why living a plant-based and vegan lifestyle — dedicated to the non-initiation of violence toward all beings — is one of the most compassionate and important life decisions we can make for a better world.

The following interview has been edited for length. You can check out the full conversation on the Compassionate Coexistence’s podcast! 

For more information about Clare Mann or to connect, check out her website at veganpsychologist.com, where you can find her books, articles, interviews, and interactive courses, as well as sign up for her FREE 3-day master classes on building resilience as a vegan activist or check out individual counseling (when she is accepting new clients).

A Q&A with Clare Mann: Vegan Psychologist and Author of Vystopia 

Why do we need to care about the plight of animals right now? Why is this such an important justice movement of our time?

I often get asked this: After all, there are so many problems in the world. I say to people, “We can’t really separate this. We can’t be good to one group and not another. All of them are related: how we treat ourselves, how we treat each other, and how we treat animals.”  

I think if we take a principle of nonviolence – of causing no harm – we have a completely different picture here. It’s very important to take another lens and say, “How can we create a world where we are not causing unnecessary pain?” And then if we want peace, freedom, and liberation for humans, why on earth wouldn’t that include all living beings – and therefore animals?

It’s the biggest calling of our time because of the ubiquitous nature of animal abuse. It’s really reflecting that we have an opportunity every day, with every decision, to be part of making decisions that are nonviolent — and that’s something we can do. Someone said to me recently, “If we could live in a way that we would never even hurt a fly, how could we hurt each other?” I think that’s the principle we’re talking about here.

(From her website) If we focus on stopping one area of violence whilst we’re unwittingly involved in another, we will never have freedom, peace, and liberation.

In your experience, are people becoming more aware of how animal suffering in industrialized animal agriculture intersects with environmental degradation, danger and abuse to human workers, and health problems?

I think that they are. We’ve suddenly woken up to the intersectionality of things, and people are starting to get deeply troubled. They are looking around, and they are saying the world is getting worse. 

Can you please share more about your own awakening and resulting activism?

It was about 16 years ago that my partner Brendan and I were living in New Zealand, and we came across pig dog hunting, which is the starving of dogs for several days until they are driven wild with hunger, and then they go out and kill pigs in the most heinous way. I came across dogs in cages where they had wounds, and it was minus seven degrees, and their paws were sticking to the outside of the cages. I was hand-feeding these animals, and then as I walked with my own rescue dogs during the day, I would find baby pigs that had frozen overnight because their mothers had been killed. I had all the dogs taken away, but that started to open my eyes. 

I also came across the dairy industry, and the crying of cows that went on for 30 hours. They’d just cry and cry and cry, and when it all stops, that silence is deafening. I found that these cows were made pregnant and their babies were taken away, the milk stolen for our lattes that we think is a byproduct. But guess what, they’ve lied to us about this. And then the babies that go into the system are in fact killed. And this was systematized and normal.  

So I started to open my eyes to this, and when we came back to Australia, my partner did some research, and we watched a number of videos about the industrialized abuse of animals — of pigs, cows, goats, cattle, chickens.

At that time, I had been a psychologist for about 25 years — including having worked in homicide in different countries. And I actually didn’t know I could hurt that much. What I was seeing brought me to my knees, and I thought, “How is it possible for me to get to this age – 45 or something – without knowing this. If I don’t know this, what else don’t I know?” 

So then I became an activist and decided to speak out and help others.

Can you share more about your choice to go vegan on the spot?

We went vegan before we knew there was a word for it. When I made some inquiries, someone told me that a vegan is not an extreme form of a vegetarian, it is someone who has a philosophy of the non-use and non-exploitation of animals. That made total sense to me.

I had been vegetarian for 30 years earlier. Even then I didn’t drink milk because I had eczema, and I thought I was lactose intolerant; but I found out that I wasn’t a baby calf and I shouldn’t be drinking it anyway. 

I thought I was doing the right thing by being a vegetarian, until I realized how inadequate that was because of the animal suffering in the dairy and egg industry that — far from being byproducts — causes the most prolonged suffering.

What impact, if any, has marketing and lobbying from Animal Agriculture had on people’s ability to make an informed “choice” about their food?

Let’s start with the notion of choice; we have the choice, for example, if we want to eat meat. But our choices are always limited by the understanding, the framework, the yard stick through which we see it. 

It’s bad enough for us growing up as children that our first -ism is speciesism (Editorial Note: Speciesism is the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals.) We’re given a fluffy lamb to play with, and we sit down to lamb chops at dinner.

Let me give you another example: I was walking someone else’s dog and I was talking to a woman and she mentioned something about some medical tests she had. I shared that I knew a little about the effects of dairy on her health, and I said, “Would you like to know?” And she said yes. I said, “If you look at the research, there’s something like a 40 percent increase of breast cancer by drinking milk or eating dairy. All the research is there.” She said, “I don’t drink milk. I just have a little bit in my coffee, a little bit on my cereal.” And I realized this 65-year-old woman genuinely didn’t think she was drinking milk because she saw it as a “glass of milk.” So her choice was limited and bounded because the advertising has been enormously successful.

I would say that we are all dairy intolerant; we are not meant to drink the reproductive secretions of other living beings. We’re the only mammals that drink the reproductive secretion of another species, by proxy, until old age. It’s absolutely ludicrous if we actually think about it. 

One of the best things we can do as human beings is to constantly question and be curious. These days we are often wanting some outside group to control the actions of people. But often giving that power to an outside force — like a government or organizational enterprise — takes away the responsibility from the individual.

We cannot relinquish responsibility for our part in ushering in a new world by saying, “Well, the government will do it,” or “I’ll vote for that, and they won’t allow it,” because it will happen, because things go underground.

How do you help activists build resilience and hang on to hope while advocating for change in the face of atrocity?

Vegans have all the normal problems of life  — with relationships, money, jobs, purpose, friendships — and then we throw Vystopia on top, because they are seeing the pain of others. Often, it taps into previous pains they have had as children where they have felt incarcerated, abused, or out of control. It’s very important, therefore, that one’s healing has to take place. No amount of activism is going to solve our personal pain.

We have to redefine what success is in our life. The best definition I ever heard of success was given by the late Earl Nightingale in the late 1940s, when he recorded something called “The Strangest Secret.” He said, “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” It’s not an end in itself; it’s a progressive opening up. 

If we have a worthy ideal — that we want to be part of creating a world of non-violence — then we have to start by donating one person who is curious, open minded, and kind. It’s very important that you put in place a strong foundation so that you are doing the work on the inner part.  I’m running some free Vystopia Recovery Master Classes that people can join to look at some of the practices we can learn to transmute that into powerful action for change.

You also have a book about effective communication for vegan advocacy – any quick tips? 

We engage with the person, and we say just what is necessary — with the spirit of “How can I push this in the right direction of the progressive realization of a worthy ideal?”  Do I rant to the person and say, “How can you do that?” Is that really my progressive realization of the world? Or can I invite the person and say, “Of course you are upset, and you don’t want to watch this, because both you and I are decent people, and of course we don’t want to be upset by it. However, unless we come a bit closer and speak out against this, this is going to keep going on. We need to create a world where our children don’t even have to ask about this (cruelty).”

What gives you hope?

It’s an unrelenting pursuit of a dream, really. I forgot who it was who said, “Our job is almost impossible, so let us begin right away.” 

A rising tide raises all boats. It’s very easy to look around and think that the problem is too big. But if you think something small can’t make a difference, try going to bed with a mosquito tonight!

I do not believe that we are wired for violence and rage; in fact, there is some research in the empathy field that suggests that. The majority of people are pretty good people; they are (just) struggling in a socioeconomic system that causes them often to do bad things, or to be so exhausted by the process that they don’t have time to look further and to ask the bigger questions.

Not everyone has to change. Sociology shows that most movements start with about 2.5 percent of people – they call them the innovators – who accept a new idea. Then come the early adopters. After the idea reaches about 16 percent, it reaches the early majority (another odd 30 percent), then you get the late majority (another 30 odd percent), and then the last little group (called the laggards) eventually signs on.

The same thing will happen with veganism. When we reach 2.5 percent, there will be a massive increase  — and we’re already seeing that.

Any closing thoughts?

When you see injustices, you must speak out: Because if not you, then who? 

The reality is that our choices — what we eat, what we wear, what we do, and what we don’t speak up about — are contributing to a world that is more full of violence. 

I think we can make the change within us. 

Veganism is not a trendy diet, it’s not for environmental reasons; all of it is related, but it is a philosophy about the non-use and non-exploitation of animals, which is the kindest thing we can do for ourselves, for people, and the planet on which we live, without a doubt.

Editorial Note: Featured image courtesy of Clare Mann. Photo Credit: Pierre Madraga