Absurd pessimism

839: 

There’s good reason for us to have faith in people’s ability to change. Many of us have done, despite the fact that we’ve once been omnivores. Excluding ‘from-birth vegans’, all of today’s practising vegans once conformed with the social norms of the day. We were (nearly all of us) part of ‘The System’ even when we doubted that it could ever succeed. Most of us were so much part of it, and not optimistic. And even if you’re now a vegan, there are many who are profoundly pessimistic about the future. So how damaging is pessimism?

            To think that the human race is going to hell in a hand basket, that one pessimistic idea is enough to hold everything back. It can be highly infectious. Defeatism only makes things worse. What hope is there for others coming along behind us if we can inspire optimism, especially if we are vegan?

            I’d suggest that we are simply avoiding taking personal responsibility for the way things are. And it doesn’t help to be naming and blaming; we do that simply in order to feel-better. Our own pessimism dooms us.

            The more violent amongst us focus on revenge, shifting focus away from taking responsibility to blaming. We blame ‘the corporates’ because they’re easy to hate. “They are responsible. They’ve made us what we are”. And so we deflect personal responsibility onto the big crooks. Their wickedness is obvious. Our own complicities and pessimisms are less obviously damaging.

            Most of us are small time crims. We reckon we can go for the big boys, the trans-national executives, the politicians, the rich … and the Animal Industries; we can demonstrate our hatred of them and get brownie points for being active campaigners against them. But it often screens our own guilt and destructive attitudes. It diverts us away from self-examination. It may even downgrade our need for personal discipline. We get more interested in fighting the good fight than in self-development. We concentrate on bringing down the big boys, and when that doesn’t do a scrap of good, then pessimism creeps back in to darken our soul. “It will never work”, we say. “Whatever I do it is nothing compared to the damage they do”.

            Because we aren’t rigorous enough with ourselves, the problems bounce back at us. They turn full circle, and we have to ask why we aren’t being rigorous, why we go for the easy option, why our activism can so easily deteriorate into a thirst for revenge. Even though we might be solid vegan and convinced of the need for animal rights, we still can get bogged down by making value judgements. We’d rather blame than self-judge.

            Value judgements are so predictable. We do it to relieve the pressure, to get our rocks off. What we aren’t doing (although pretending to ourselves that we are) is engaging in the ‘most optimistic pursuit of all’ - raising awareness.