Perspective | Compassion

There’s Nothing We Can Do

So here’s what we need to do

Our world is screwed. With our industrial way of living, we destroy everything.

Desiree Driesenaar opened her insightful article, ‘Confessions of a Hypocrite: No Shame or Guilt for Me’, with this blunt affirmation. She went on to explain her horror at the destruction humankind continues to inflict on Mother Earth and to warn us of the pitfalls of carrying on as we are.

The havoc we collectively wreak is abhorrent. Time and time again short-term financial gain is prioritised over coherent sustainable policies. The limited progress we have made to protect the Earth demonstrates a complete failure to act in the common good.

Sadly, this is natural instinct. We are still just children, unable to resist a marshmallow for fifteen minutes. Hardly surprising: our average attention span is now just eight seconds.

Collective Action?

We have created this mess together. And we have to live in it. No hiding possible.

Desiree cites Paul Kingsnorth, who argues that the present generation — or generations — cannot be the ones to re-invent the world because we are too set in our ways.

I would go further than this. We can’t change the world. Little by little, attitudes are modified. Our experiences inform our worldview and this worldview motivates our actions. The actions of others impact on our own experiences. Hence, the cycle continues ad infinitum.

We shuffle through life making minor adjustments based on our experiences of the world. Sometimes a major event can provoke a more substantial change. The murder of George Floyd seems to have finally alerted many to the systematic racism and inequality that infects our societies to the core.

But on the whole, the changes we undergo are small because we always see the world through our individual frame of existence.

We can learn the customs of a new culture. We can experience these customs first hand. But we still cannot know the thought process of another living being, nor the way the world looks through their eyes.

Perspective

Do not think that the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views.

This quote by Thích Nhất Hạnh shows that the best we can do is recognise our limitations. The “truth” we arrogantly think we possess is a mixture of human instinct, cultural conditioning, personal experience and second-hand testimony.

Desiree extols the virtues of curiosity as the only way to ‘change the world for real’. Yes, we can escape our ‘mental ruts’ by considering other perspectives. We can liberate ourselves from singular, blinkered thinking by reading about someone else’s experience. But our innate filter is always there.

Ancient teachings are often afforded more authority — and with good reason: these have “stood the test of time”. They have been subjected to scrutiny over millennia. However, tradition doesn’t guarantee veracity.

Likewise, scientific experimentation is rightly considered more reliable than hearsay. Even so, science is not infallible. Methods change, conclusions contradict one another.

Our modern thinking and decision-making should, of course, be grounded in the best knowledge we currently possess. But nobody should be in any doubt that today’s “certain knowledge” will be tomorrow’s “proven falsehood”.

Believe Nothing?

Don’t believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose. — Douglas Adams

Accepting that a large chunk of what we “know” now is almost certainly not “the truth” is not an easy fact to accept. Nor is it particularly useful. After all, we can only do our best in the present with the knowledge that we currently possess.

Therefore, believing nothing is not an acceptable solution to our uncertainty.

Scepticism is the attitude of doubting knowledge. In this sense, we are all— or should all be — sceptics. The original Greek word, skeptikos, means someone who is unsatisfied and therefore still looking for truth. To accept knowledge blindly without any questions asked is what defines a gullible fool.

Like with many philosophies, however, pushing scepticism to its extremities renders it impractical. If we doubt all knowledge to the point that we’re even doubting whether we doubt, we cannot live an engaged life and we will not contribute anything helpful.

A large chunk of doubt is essential. Refusing to ever offer an opinion is reckless.

We can never be certain in our knowledge. Even so, we must stand up for what we believe is right. We must speak out to criticise injustices in our society. Knowledge is little use if it is a mere byte of data to be stored.

Practical Philosophies

I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals — George Bernard Shaw

I am vegan because the meat and dairy industries — as well as being horrifying examples of human cruelty— are unsustainable. In terms of water usage, deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions (from raising the animals, as well as transportation and deforestation processes) the evidence we have in favour of veganism is as conclusive as is humanly possible.

Moreover, we are aware of the inequality that comes from relying on such an inefficient system of food production. Every year, nine million people die of starvation. One in nine people worldwide ‘do not have enough of the food they need to live an active, healthy life’.

Everyone is free to make their own choices as they see the facts. To repeat my earlier point: we cannot know the thought process of another living being, nor the way the world looks through their eyes. What seems like an obvious fact to me is clearly not as manifest to the majority of the meat-eating population.

From my perspective, justifying the slaughter of living beings for food requires some dubious mental gymnastics and a lot of cognitive dissonance. I would like to hear the views of anyone who can hand-on-heart defend the killing of sentient beings for food, fashion or entertainment.

Conclusions

We cannot know how the world looks through the eyes of another living being. But we can see the suffering that millions of people and animals are needlessly subjected to every day.

Perspective is the key to compassion. Compassion is the only way to bring about change. The Latin roots of compassion [com + pati] mean ‘to suffer with’. Only when our leaders start to suffer with the oppressed minorities will we create a fairer, more equal society.

Here is Desiree Driesenaar’s article that inspired my response:

Timothy Key recently shared some interesting thoughts on sustainable travel:

And I found this incredibly powerful from Drizia Bolaños:

You could also read my recent related articles: