What Makes a Nation and Why do Vegans Need One?

We used to know what nations were. We used to know where they started and where they ended. They had borders and boundaries, a common language and a shared history. Today’s nations are less clear. At a time when you can fly from London to Australia without stopping and travel from Portugal to Finland without being bothered by an immigration official, we need a definition of a nation that doesn’t involve lines on a map. When you can have more in common with someone on the other side of the world who shares your views and outlook than you have with your neighbors or most of your compatriots, then we need new foundations on which to imagine communities.

We need an idea of nationhood that ignores places of birth and focuses on choice of values. We need to build communities that might not share a history but that dream of the same future. We need to bring like-minded people together so that together they can have the force of numbers and the power of co-operation to create a better world.

Vegans make up such a nation and we should make up that nation. We speak almost every language on the planet from Amharic to Zulu. We’re located in countries from Peru to Papua. We live in houses and apartments, in slums and on estates. We’re teachers and doctors, entrepreneurs and freelancers. We’re a million different types of people with a thousand different characteristics but we all look at the world and see the same thing: that we can live on this planet without harming it or causing suffering to anything living on it. We prove it every day, and that shared view is at least important as any of the random characteristics that bind us to the people around us.

Just as a traditional nation is at its strongest when it’s at its most united so the unity of the vegan nation will make us stronger and more influential than ever. It will give us the power we need to change the world.

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