I'm Right and You're Wrong

1902:

In the best of all possible worlds we work for the greater good rather than our own good. Good ideas are good for the soul, but ‘spiritual’ goals always seem unreachable and dreary. Perhaps a milder manner is all we need, and then we don’t have to feel hemmed in by our own self-expectation of being ‘good’.

Doesn’t it come down to simply putting ourselves second, addressing the greater good and then deflecting our own fears. Getting things into perspective, whatever fears we may have are nothing compared to the torments of those we’re aiming to help.

The problems facing each one of us are seen within that context – of others’ greater suffering. For vegans, it comes down to straight-out empathy with exploited animals. By deflecting the focus away from ‘me’, I can deal with the problems more intelligently, since there’s so much less self-interest involved. Self-interest is a primary motivator, but it’s also a dead weight, sucking the best juices from any personal ‘fruit’, before what’s left over can be of much use to anyone else.

I suspect humans see all this well enough; there’s plenty of examples of altruistic acts (of kindness) to make us proud to be part of our own species. But we make the mistake of dealing with our closer-to-home problems first, to get them out of the way, so that we have a clear run at the deeper stuff (‘The Greater Good’). Trouble is, we never seem to manage to get that far. We never quite clean up our own act enough to concentrate on ‘the greater good’.

I suspect that that one, single decision is the turning point, the ruining-point of our best adult goals. Because we never finish cleaning up personal issues, because we so badly want others to like us, we never get around to the more principled stuff.

If many vegans do overcome their weaknesses, as they do by becoming vegan, there are those of us who go to the other extreme, who take themselves too seriously; yes, we have addressed big issues of conscience, and now we’ve ended up having contempt for non-vegans. We make it obvious that we want others to improve. To become more like us.

While these extremes exist, what help can non-vegans be to vegans or vegans be to non-vegans? We each have important things to learn from the other. That’s why I think it’s futile to be expecting others to be won over simply by being perfect vegans. It’s a trap. Because it becomes obvious to even the mildest of our detractors that we might only want to persuade others, in order to chalk up our own achievements, by doing our bit for ‘the animals’.

Activists are willing to engage in very ineffective actions to feel better about ‘their commitment to the cause’. “How can you be an activist without some ‘action’?”, they say. How can you be a vegan unless you are sure you’re right, which can descend into being ‘right all the time’. And no one finds that very inspirational.