Compassion in activism

To be clear, compassion is not apologism or minimisation of harmful behaviours by those perpetuating or supporting oppressive systems. It is about understanding why these thoughts and actions pervade society and allow possibly otherwise kind individuals to engage in atrocities. Extending compassion to others is the belief that they can change — and this is difficult to do in our modern era of ideological battles (a feature of neoliberalism in every facet of our lives and amplified by the mechanisms of modern social interaction). We are recognising that facts and reason mean nothing when beliefs such as speciesism are so deeply entrenched in people’s identities, and to change these underpinning ideologies which harm requires us to fully understand how they came to exist and persist.

Take for example a person who hunts and fishes for a hobby. Their hobbies are repulsive, it’s violent… so why do they find joy in it? Why do they defend it and indeed why is a core aspect of who they are as a person? It’s baffling — especially if they are otherwise capable of kindness and compassion to animals (say towards a dog they live with). To help us understand(and by no means does this excuse the behaviour), think about all the ideological and experiential exposures they have had, likely since childhood.

Perhaps these activities are how they bonded with an important person in their lives — say a parent or older sibling, perhaps it’s a way to maintain a bond with their friends who they otherwise would not be able to be intimate with — something especially relevant in certain male social groups. Maybe where they grew up normalised this and even punished those who did not engage in these activities. And now, as adults, this hobby as repulsive as it is, is an expression of who they believe they are and where they have come from. It is bigger than a hobby to them and the necessary cognitive disengagement and dehumanisation of the victims to engage in this violence is long-established. In their eyes, criticism of this is an attack on them as a person, their peers and family, where they grew up and their ideological perspective.

So what is the most compassionate way to deal with this situation? We could attack the individuals committing the acts, but we could also see them as unwitting proponents of a systemically speciesist culture.

Accepting that people engaging in speciesist behaviour, however, can be incredibly difficult for us as activists. Any individual who has gained awareness of speciesism will know the trauma involved in waking up to its violence. Speciesism is a mass traumatic event, and we can be controlled by trauma in ways we aren’t aware of. As Dr. Melanie Joy notes in her book ”Powerarchy,” when we view the world through this speciesist lens we develop a trauma narrative, placing individuals in defined boundaries as either victim, perpetrator or hero. We remove our capacity for nuance, making it hard for us to feel empathy for others. Good people can participate in bad systems and it doesn’t necessarily make them evil people. As we know from history, apathy, ignorance, or the need to maintain social inclusion can perpetuate evil quite effectively.

Think of the worker committing atrocious crimes at a slaughterhouse or on farms, these individuals are more likely to have suffered severe and ongoing trauma than to be “evil”. Who would want to kill for a living? Very few! This does not excuse behaviour or make it acceptable, but it can help you realign your fight to end structural violence — including the kinds of structural violence which reaffirm the conditions in which speciesism thrives. Celebrating individual punishment, fines or prison (which is itself problematic as it is punitive rather than restorative) perpetuates the “bad apples” myth of animal agriculture, rather than exposing the barrel itself to be rotten.

Radical compassion is not “being weak” nor is it being an apologist or tolerating morally wrong actions. You can maintain your moral stance against the use of non-human animals, however, you need to extend empathy and attempt to understand the reasons why someone else may behave in speciesist ways. Most of us who today advocate for the abolition of speciesism previously engaged in actions and behaviours we now find awful. In fact, I’m sure many of us had moments of defensiveness when being exposed to the idea that our actions and beliefs (which we had never questioned before) were in fact rooted in violence and oppression. What made us able to overcome this defensiveness and change to living according to our values? It may have been the support of peers or the presence of others who were already living in a way that upheld the value system we were wanting to adopt. How many of us could have made the change without some form of support? As we’ve established, social cohesion is a key facet of human existence and in some cases, the need for this cohesion and inclusion can override the compassion we may express for “outsiders” — in this case, non-humans and those who advocate on their behalf. Instances where social cohorts, and with it, an individual’s identity and sense of self are perceived as being attacked, can provoke vitriol and almost performative callousness. We must be cognisant of the social conditioning underpinning the behaviours we condemn, and indeed provide opportunities for individuals to understand the structures which normalise these behaviours.

We can, and should, condemn the behaviours and attitudes we see, but in reality, our fight is with the structures and industries which encourage and normalise these. The individuals perpetuating them are the end result of something far more powerful than themselves. We need to reverse-engineer the social conditioning that perpetuates speciesism and subvert it. This is also why multiple forms of activism are valuable as the specific trigger or triggers for empathy and understanding in one individual may differ substantially to another.

There is also a tendency to conflate discourse with confrontation, but they aren’t the same thing. Discussions about ethics and injustices without using toxic communication can be incredibly difficult due to the desire individuals feel to see themselves as living ethically and the affront we all feel when our ethical framework is questioned. It is a skill to not absorb hostility, especially when discussing injustices with someone who does not share your ethics, whilst not compromising your message. Rather than a “battle” for who is right we should be looking to establish shared empathy and imploring the extension of this empathy to all. After all, it is ideas rather than people who are in conflict. This can mean being vulnerable and refusing to engage in pissing matches — especially ones which end up discussing tangential minutiae (looking at you, every facebook thread ever). De-normalising patriarchal “toughness” as a virtue is also a key step in undermining socially-approved cruelty — and this is something we will also discuss later in self-compassion.

In saying this, please do not confuse this with a call to civility. We do not believe that everyone’s opinion is valid or somehow sacred — those espousing oppressive views should be challenged. As Andrew Calabrese notes in Liberalism’s disease: Civility above justice, “Norms of civility can function as powerful instruments to discipline, to silence and to control.” It is not about staying silent or not using disruptive tactics, but being radically honest and valuing justice through compassion rather than seeking to punish. Calabrese continues;

“Liberal societies depend on wide adherence to norms of civility in the interactions of everyday life and in maintaining hierarchies of social structure. Norms of civility often are instrumental in appeals to reason and in the informal enforcement of social order. The virtue of civility fits well within the ideals of liberalism because it is grounded in beliefs about the mutual benefits of moderation, temperance, tolerance, and respect. However, civility can be at odds with arguably more compelling virtues, particularly justice.”

So we call on all activists to use radical compassion in their fight against speciesism. We must model the values we wish to see upheld in our ideal world. We must ensure that our end goal is to educate and advocate for liberation — not merely using these ideals as an opportunity to externalise our frustration and anger onto an individual whose views we oppose. If we are merely fighting for the sake of fighting, this is damaging to ourselves and does little to advance compassion as an ethos. As both Carol Adams and Derrida have said, human violence toward animals is a war on compassion (Adams and Donovan, 1995). We must subvert this dominant narrative and provide a workable alternative, and this also means changing how we communicate.