Being good

1455: 

By avoiding animal products, by becoming vegan, we can soon come to feel good about our decision.  One’s stomach feels more comfortable, one’s conscience lighter and one’s brain sharper.  But there are other dimensions to consider too.

         

Feeling good is not unconnected to ‘working for the greater good’; doing things which make one feel good because they’re altruistically-intended – which means that some things one is doing are not being done for one's own benefit only.   

But, there must be a distinct difference between the irritating, showy way of ‘doing good’ and the more internal experience of doing good, as when behaving peacefully, as when this is the most productive and enjoyable thing one could be doing. So, at the end of the day we know we've been involved in nothing selfish or violent, and can sleep peacefully in our beds.

Perhaps the most self-convincing way we can promote a selfless and non-violent approach is by starting ‘at-home’, by trying to see the best in others rather than their weaknesses, which involves breaking the habit of value-judging others.  And this happens frequently when we feel strongly about a certain value and others don’t agree that that same value is important.

This question of value-judging crops up a lot where animals are involved, over the validity of using them or not using them.  It’s not an objective science – judging.  I’ve noticed about myself that I’m not consistent about this.  So, when I really like someone then all their virtues are great and all their bad points insignificant.  How subjective is that?  So, it’s often unfair the way we judge someone, as if we use the excuse of our difference of opinion to make an adverse judgement of them as a person.  Nothing is more certain to cause mutual dislike and a digging in of heels over the issue of difference. We end up, if not actually being violent with each other, then certainly destructive of something too valuable to take lightly.

By way of peaceful and non-violent approaches we can avoid all this.  Instead, we can be content simply to sow seeds.  We can fertilise the soil and leave the rest to Nature, leaving the seeds to flower later.  What I mean by working for the greater good, is contributing the most positive influence we can, minus the present-moment judgments.

Perhaps the reason for making judgements about others is that we're in a hurry.  This subject, concerning the use of animals, the statistics of slaughtering, the details of modern farming methods, brings some of us out in a cold sweat.  We can only see the urgency of mass attitude change.  And yet, looking at the situation more coolly, we know we face a mountain, a huge collective behaviour pattern which will take a lot of shifting.  And no one single person is going to magic this mountain away.  If we ever do anything good in our lives, especially over this entrenched attitude to animal-use, the effect of our good work will probably only show up long after we’re dead.  And if that is a reality, and we can accept that, then we might realise that all our urgency only serves to slow the process of change rather than quicken it.

We’re dealing with an as-yet-unspecified set of changes which need to take place in the human psyche.  It’s likely that the concept of animals-being-liberated is so foreign to present-day thinking that it’s likely NOT to come about until certain other preliminaries have been established.  And that’s likely to take time.

So, today is not about impatiently chasing change but about laying foundation stones for future change.  From the point of view of working for ‘The Greater Good’, it is essential we act now for the sake of the future, but most particularly so we can start to ‘feel-good’ about ourselves now, simply because we keep proving to ourselves that we care, and care enough not to have to show off about it.

If, on the other hand, we don’t care about what’s coming, in the vein of “I won’t be around to see it”, then we won’t be much interested in long term planning nor in the concept of altruism.  It will be meaningless.  And instead, self-image will be more important to us, including putting on a show of ‘being good’ and yet letting a little aggression or violence or judgement into our dealings with others.