It happens not rarely that I find myself with nihilistic thoughts feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the issues. The animal cruelty, the looming climate catastrophe, and the rich soaking up all the money destroying the environment in the process leaving the poor with nothing but crumbs and having to deal with the consequences.
I have previously discussed how inadequate individual action is necessary to inspire and ensure collective and systemic changes. But when the US elects a president who accelerates the worsening of the problems, Europe is going in the same direction while globally we are set to shoot past all the limits we have set ourselves, it's easy to feel nihilistic. And people are not even talking about the animals!
As a result, I sometimes end up with "fuck it, why bother" thoughts as Ava calls them.
When people don't extend, or even consider ethics for beings and situations that don't directly affect them, it makes individual effort very unbalanced. On the one hand, you have people who really care, and take actions hoping it will make a difference, while on the other hand you have people whose ethics systems don't even consider the problem (Philosophy Tube, Was Nietzsche MAGA?).
It's in these situations that it's important to remember that even small activism can have ripple effects that extend far beyond the activism itself.
small activism
When we think of activism, we often think of Big Activism. Protests that demand structural change now. Civil disobedience, direction action. But I posit that that small activism, our daily actions, and choices have far wider impact than we might realize.
I recently finished a 5 week sustainable innovation course which ended with a Pitch & Pizza event where I pitched Njoror. However, at other events they hadn't had a vegan choice of pizza, and since I was attending with my partner Isaac, I decided to send an email asking if they would be able to order a vegan option for us. At first, they were hesitant because they didn't know any good vegan pizza places, but after I suggested a place that specializes in vegan pizzas, it seemed they would order one for us.
However, at the event, they had not only ordered vegan pizzas for us, they had only ordered vegan pizzas. Everyone I asked seemed to like the pizza, and the organizers even said that they would only buy vegan pizzas for future events as well. Multiple people on the staff even thanked me for pointing out their hypocrisy wanting on the one hand to be sustainable, but also serving non-vegan food.
What started as a simple assertion of my values, and asking I could have some vegan food ended up with structural changes in the organization to be more vegan.
I have similar stories with friends who have eliminated many categories of animal products from their diets after meeting me, and me simply being vegan around them.
A longer while back, my local library had an event where they invited guests to share their ideas for making the library more sustainable. My local library is very cool. Among other things, it offers free coffee, but it uses single use cups even though it has a kitchen with dishwashers. So I suggested that they could use reusable cups instead of the single use cups.
Although there wasn't immediate buy-in. In fact there was some skepticism about whether the kitchen's dishwashers could manage so many cups. But a few weeks later, the reusable cups were removed, and a sign was put up asking people to bring their own cups, or get a cup from the kitchen. It should be noted that while the staff has some motivation for being more sustainable, the guests by and large are not very motivated to change their habits.
This made it more surprising that when Isaac and I agreed to cook a vegan community dinner for the 50 library guests, the reception was very positive, and multiple people came up to us and expressed surprise that vegan food can taste good. I don't know how much of a difference this one dinner made, but I want to show that even small activism can have bigger effects than you might realize.
Even biking everywhere has inspired people around me to bike more. Not just with me, but also by them selves on their own commutes and errands .
For more perspectives, I recommend Ava's you have more pull than you realize, and ReedyBear's Consumer choices and personal responsibility.