Absurd pessimism

Wednesday 17th November 2010
There is good reason for us to have faith in people’s ability to change. After all, excluding ‘from-birth’ vegans, all of today’s practising vegans have once been omnivores. And therefore we all know why we were and they are omnivore, and why we had a rather gloomy view on life. Through our conformity to these major social norms we could see ourselves part of a system that clearly can’t succeed. No wonder we also knew pessimism!
You don’t have to be an omnivore to be pessimistic, vegans are just as doubtful about the future and they’re infectious with their views too. So, whether we’re vegan or omnivore, all of us have sometimes thought “things will never change” and we’re all going to hell in a hand basket. The end of the World is nigh, etc. All of us have see how pessimism arrests progress. All of us know the power of the mind, for positive or negative. If we want to see things pessimistically, if vegans for instance want to entertain the idea that “humans are fucked”, what hope is there for others who coming along behind us, who aren’t yet vegan? If our defeatism turns to anger and value-judgement, how does that not make things worse?
I’d suggest that we are simply divesting ourselves of personal responsibility, for the way things are.
The naming and blaming game is something we play in order to ‘feel-good’. Our self-justification eases shame. Our own complicity as animal eaters (with the Animal Industries) or if we’re vegans our complicity with pessimism, dooms us. Or so we believe. And in our pessimism we lose faith in the future and that makes us all deeply unhappy. “Why go on?”
The more violent amongst us take out their swords and resolve to get their revenge. For them there’s an adrenalin rush, shifting focus away from painful self-responsibilities, from ‘me’ to ‘them’. “The Corporates”, oh how we love to hate them. “They are responsible. They’ve made us what we are, they’ve infected all of us”.
We deflect personal responsibility away from ourselves and onto the big crooks, whose wickedness is unquestionable.
We are and always have been small time crims. We reckon we’re somewhat let off the hook by going for the big boys, the corporates, the politicians, the rich, the Animal Industries. We get brownie points for being active campaigners. But it’s often a smokescreen for dealing with our own guilt - lessening self-examination, downgrading the significance of personal discipline. We get more interested in meddling than self-development - we go for where we think we can be most politically effective. We concentrate on bringing down the big boys. By contrast we consider “what I do is nothing in comparison to the damage they do” … and so it goes on.
Because we aren’t rigorous enough with ourselves we therefore can’t be rigorous enough in our activism. It turns full circle: we’re back to why we aren’t being rigorous, why we go for the easy option, why our activism can be just revenge.
Judgement. We’re hooked on it. Sometimes (ouch, that flame feels hot) judgements are quite valid but our value judgements, that’s something else. “Let the non-sinner caste the first stone”. Our judgements, righteous as they always are, are also so predictable; when we’re condemning others we’re not utilising our time and energy to the max. Instead we’re getting our rocks off . We aren’t engaged in optimistic pursuit, looking for ways to raise awareness.