Altruism revisited

Please Note:  At the conclusion to some longer blogs (this the second) - if a blog has undergone editing (by my friend CJ) it will have “Ed: CJ” at the end.

941:

Take the average person.  What makes them feel good about themselves?  I think it’s that every one of us wants to know we’re capable of doing something that’s not selfish or ego-driven. That we can be generous and self-effacing as well.  After we’ve done something we’re proud of - something altruistic - we feel great!

It’s all very well, this altruism, my feeling good about myself.  But can I let my altruism suck out my essential juices?  Does the ‘feel-good’ factor truly compensate for the injustice of ‘always having to do the right thing’?  When no one else is doing the same as me, does that leave me feeling depleted? I’m vegan, they’re not.

It’s just natural to balance the books at the end of the day and ask, “What about me and my own interests?”  I know that once I’ve struck my altruistic hammer,  I must keep it up.  It becomes the standard I set and it’s now expected of me.  “He does one act of kindness and makes a rod for his own back”.

This can apply to almost any altruistic act you care to name.  If I do good, does that mean I’m supposed to ignore the reasons why others don’t?  Whoops! There go some ugly ego considerations winning over the altruistic ones.  But the human condition dictates always, me-first. “Look after me and  logically it follows that I’ll be happier and then I can save the animals”…. ….Which surely is the reason most don’t.  They don’t want to be overwhelmed.  You could say something true but a tad provocative  - “Vegans have guts, others don’t”; “We have the guts for ‘the task-of-living’, others haven’t or they’re more withdrawn when it comes to certain matters in life".   Perhaps for good reason?

For instance, take the starving child.  My feeding the child lets me feel good about that.  But  then I’m surrounded by many more starving children and I can’t feed them all.  I have to choose to feed some and not others.  How can I choose?  I’d be better off ignoring the whole problem (me-first).  If I try to solve it, then things will quickly get out of hand.  And what’s more, I can’t just ignore my anger.  It’s there.  It’s being set-off by something.  It’s an anxiety about choice: do it-don’t do it.  We see something ugly - like hunger (kids going hungry when we have so much) and we do something (anything) about it.  The choice is always there but we decide to become insensitive to it.

So, where was I up to?  Altruism.  In the example above, where’s my altruism when I need it most?

Let’s say that I’m in a deep rage about something and this time it’s not starving kids but the abuse of animals who are ‘used-for-food’ and the profiting-abusers.  I’m angry on so many fronts.  The animals can’t be helped since they’re the ‘private property’ of owners who say I trespass if I try to intervene.  So I’m helpless!  I can’t save one animal, any animal.  I can only go into one of my ego-swells and be perpetually shocked and frustrated.

But that doesn’t help.

I can shout - “How can humans be allowed to do such things to animals?”  But no one’s going to listen to that old stuff anymore, or take notice.  So I just keep getting angrier.  But obviously doing that just eats away at my reserves of altruism.  I see (without getting drained by seeing)  those who’re running factory farms or sending their cattle on shipping holidays, to see what they’re getting away with.  To us (so bleedin’ obvious it hurts!!) this is criminal.  It needs to be stopped.  But in reality, there’s hardly any support.  The abusers are protected by law.  Law supported by people who demand their regular supplies of ‘animal protein’  -  and that’s a lot of people!

Whether you’re a customer or seller or producer,  it’s a fact that the Vast Majority are condoners, not condemners.

So Vegan Activists have nothing much to fight with.  Anger is useless and impotence is inevitable.

Perhaps I’m describing what I and fellow animal activists often feel and then want to describe.  Some days we make a little headway, and that’s enough to keep us going. Other days we’re enraged and despairing, which is why we need a core-energy source to fall back on.   I would suggest that our most dependable energy source is altruism.  It’s our fuel and we should use it wisely.  We may not be able to win this ‘game’,  not yet anyway, but the energy we need to push on against such almighty odds has to come from somewhere.  Our food is brilliant, but what about all this other stuff?    Perhaps the mental-emotional-spiritual stuff we need to look after can only come in a very informal way - contemplating the sheer beauty of altruism.   It has an ability, from within us, to build the resilience and stamina we’ll need over the many years ahead.   We’ll need it in bucket loads to help us grind away at the poor old public's mind.   And even more bucket loads to keep us all ‘in it’ for the long haul.

One by one, people might become impressed with us, with our ideals and the way we put our ideals into practice.   Slowly, drip by drip, we need the truth to come out (as nicely as possible?).   We need to break through the thick-skin-of-comfort-and-convenience.   Maybe though, knowing humans and the slow way they move, probably it’s going to be a long, slow process.

I suspect it’s only altruism that’ll give us the perspective we need.  An overview, like the space station’s shots of earth,  to appreciate what we’re really up against here.  It’s as BIG as the Earth!!   The centuries over which the machinery of animal enslavement has been developing.  And,  same perspective,  it’s so obvious, the particularly persuasive powers of the Animal Industries.  They’ve been doing it over such a long period of time, propagandising the populace so easily by appealing to their stomachs and not their brains.  They did it by being superficially up-front about what they do.  And over so much time, they’ve succeeded, simply by making the use and abuse of animals routine and normal. Some of us, thankfully, have seen through that smoke screen, and work for a clearer vision. But in the meantime, if we animal activists are to build strength, we need to tap into our fine altruistic intention and see the beauty of it.  There’s nothing like the pulse of doing good (doing something for the greater-good) to strengthen our resolve.

Altruism is inherent (is the essential, natural or potentially permanent part) in our wish to benefit the most oppressed in our world at this time -  farm animals!   We should never forget there are billions of them -  right now - standing in their own faeces, with prison walls, awaiting a terrifying death.  Perhaps it’s altruism that keeps a level head when Intellect screams impatience.  They say “Get over it”.   Get over the fact that our fellow humans consort with their animal foods every night at the dinner table!  It will stop, I’m sure of it, and the animals will be helped, I’m sure of that too.  But all I’m saying is that we can’t help anything while we’re still screaming. It’s not only in us to ‘do good’, it comes in the same package as our deeper understanding of altruism. Working for the greater good seems to be like wanting to breathe fresh air.  It stands for an ideal which everyone has and everyone can use, for fuelling themselves.  Altruism isn’t here to torment us or deplete us.  It has to be for me and for you all at the same time.  Altruism must be a two way road.  If we do something selfless and we’re sad about it, is that because there’s no likelihood of a reward for our efforts?  Perhaps altruism is the next stage up from do-gooderism.  The subtlest part of altruism is that we shouldn't expect outside appreciation for what we do, it has to be self-generated.  Altruism lets us tune inside ourselves for confirmation.

I get angry about just one thing, that the Vegan Animal Rights Movement isn’t getting traction in our society.  Vegans don’t seem to noticeably influence anything.  All we do is protest publicly. Or act illegally. We can’t directly influence what’s being done to animals, because it’s legal and it’s socially acceptable.  How does that make me feel? Well, not exactly at-peace-with-the-World.  Not altruistic. “Bugger them” I say.  But nothing is going to stop just because I want it to.  In reality, it’s a long road we travel, gradually eroding the common mind-set, replacing it with another, always tightening down the principles of non-violence.  It’s about choice, when each of us knows we have free-will (and adults like to exercise that)  it’s made easy for us because we have a legal system that allows animal slavery.  Life presents us with a different scale of enjoyment when we can make use of animals, ride them, milk them, egg them, eat them, wear them. To break all that down we need maximum patience, commitment and imagination.  Minimum sympathy-inducing tears, maximum altruism.

(Edit CJ)