There is no doubt that veganism has become fashionable. There are lots of high influence people that have recently gone vegan, and there are many people that are following the trend.
We all love fashion. It is a basic human instinct to belong to groups. We learn how the groups, we choose to associate with, identify themselves. We badge ourselves clearly so others can immediately see we belong. And we take great pride in the fact that have integrated our lives with the fashions we have chosen to follow. Each of these groups has a name attributed to it by the media soon after the group becomes visible in society. The media then continues to help us all identify the current fashions and advises us how to become more or less like any particular group.
There are a group of people that like to think of themselves as non-conformist. In each age they define their uniforms as being unlike some fashion that is currently vogue. Their uniform then becomes mainstream and the cycle all starts again.
This is very normal human behavior. We all conform to this whether we like to admit it or not. There is nothing negative in admitting it. In fact, it is quite a positive thing when you see fashion simply as associating yourself with a group of people you admire. And if the group of people you admire are vegans, a lot of animals will be happy about your decisions regardless of why you made them.
If you ask people who wrote the often quoted phrase “no man is an island”, the response you get will be determined by the group your interviewee belongs to. Some will tell you it comes from a current pop song. Others will quote a famous songwriter of the 1990’s, some will attribute the words to a famous girl-friend of Bob Dylan’s from the 1960’s, and some may tell you it comes from the English poet John Donne who wrote in one of his essays of 1623:
No man is an island,
entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were.
as well as if a manor of thy friend’s
or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind;
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.
This desire for belonging and yearning to be part of something bigger than yourself dates back to the beginning of humanity and can be seen in the writings of the early philosophers. Perhaps we would all do better to embrace the concept of fashion rather than be blind to its existence in our own lives and judgemental of others when we see it in their lives.
If you are attracted to veganism because it is fashionable, that is fantastic. You are here. You have opened your mind to ideas you may never have encountered had veganism not become fashionable. And the inquiring side of your mind may now lead you deeper into understanding a philosophy of life you may never have seen otherwise.
Veganism becoming fashionable is one of the best things that has happened to the planet.