I’m finding it difficult living up to my morals – where is the line between compromising a little, versus becoming complicit in what I don’t agree with?
I’m one of those people who believes we can each take a role in solving big problems, and that we should try to make things better where we can. For this reason, I’ve ended up working in public service and try to reduce how much meat I eat. I’m vegetarian 60% of the time, which is not perfect, but I believe doing something is better than doing nothing.
But recently, I’ve found it too difficult. It turns out I’m intolerant to most sources of veggie protein and gluten, and it’s really affected my health and limited my ability to socialise and exercise. I don’t want to keep feeling ill, but I also feel shame for not being able to keep it up.
Similarly, with my job I am restricted from things like campaigning. I could move to the private sector, but they also have gag clauses and do less good. Quitting all work is not viable or fair to my family, but silence also feels like complicity.
My question is: how will I know where the line is? Am I being lazy and complicit because these things are inconvenient to me, or is there a point where it’s OK to compromise?
Eleanor says: One of the features of a profoundly unjust society is that engaging with justice can look so onerous. You’ve been trying to eat less meat, work a more meaningful job. That’s something! That’s much better than nothing! Now what about cars, are you driving less? Do you fly? Donate blood? Do you have disposable income? Do you donate to charity? For $5, you could provide a bednet that could prevent malaria in another country. How many times have you spent $5 on something trivial?
It all feels so demanding so quickly. We despair of our chances for drawing a principled line that could explain why it’s OK to make just some effort, give away some of what we have. Donate some money – why not most? Donate blood – why not a kidney? Once you start thinking about morality at all, consistency threatens to compel you to change a great deal about your life, so it can feel like the only options are to have your eyes open to the scale of these problems (and so feel doomed to fail) or close them again (and so also fail, but at least not feel bad about it).
No wonder so many of us trend towards a kind of nihilism, and tell retrofitted stories that justify the closing of the eyes. I’m not going to make a difference anyway. Self care compels me not to watch all that suffering on the news. It’s an act of revolution to go back to bed.
I think there are two good responses to all this overwhelm. One is to really try to do the most good. Make the sacrifices that have the biggest proportionate impact. Find the things that will make as big a difference as possible without making you feel sick, or like you’re being unfair to your family. And, with your particular knowledge and skills – perhaps you’re a good communicator, or you’re good with tools – you can ask: “Where is my money, time and effort best spent?”
The other is to ask a different question from “am I complicit?” In my view, that already cedes to a certain way of seeing these things. It’s about whether I’m on the hook. Exactly as you say, complicity of that sort is everywhere: the work we do, the property we live in, the transit we use, the food we eat. Sometimes being “complicit” in one way is how you do the most good in another, as you described with your job. A lot of our cultural thinking about morality focuses on: “Am I doing enough to alleviate the symptoms?”.
A different question might be: “how much am I helping to resist the causes?” The hazard with eating less meat or driving less as ways of engaging with the massive consumption of animals, or pollution, disease or global poverty, is that they risk individualising what should be collective. As well as thinking “something is better than nothing”, another place to spend your energy is on thinking about how you can help build the communities that address the causes, too. How could you help build groups in your neighbourhood, your community, your job, your political groups? Are there ways to volunteer, organise or create groups that fight as well as fighting on your own?
Guilt asks what you’re failing to do. But another way to see the world is: what are you helping to build?
