The Abolitionist Reconciliation

It used to be very simple. You could choose the “compassionate” route or the “who cares“ route. You could act in an “animal friendly” manner and become a vegetarian, or you could choose to go out hunting and enjoy a steak dinner. Not surprising; not that long ago there used to be just a couple of TV channels available, a few political ideologies to vote for, and a handful of religions to follow. But we now live in the era of choice. Not only there have never been more human neurons in this planet (about 700 quintillions to be precise) –all of them busy rationalising everything– but there has never been so many ways to connect ones with the others, even if they physically reside is skulls thousands of miles apart.

So, in this multi-ideological universe, becoming an “animal” person is not an easy task. If you have just arrived and would like to “join the club”, you’ll find yourself with this question: “which one?” There have never been so many “factions” in the animal protection movement to choose. So many, that I am sure there would be quite a few that would object of me calling it “animal protection” –and possibly quite a few more for calling it a “movement”. They will all have good epistemological and even political reasons for those objections, don’t get me wrong. I am all for “good defining” and systematization, as it will become apparent with this blog. But if I was a “beginner” –which I am not– I would find it difficult, even off-putting.

This is why I decided to create this blog. At risk of just “adding” another option on the table to make the whole thing even more confusing, I thought that it that option was a “sticky” one, one that unifies rather than divides, one that “agglutinates” different ideologies and approaches into one simpler and easier to accept, then it would be worth to try.

First of all, let’s find a term broad enough to label “those in our side” in a satisfactory manner. The side of the “compassionate”; the side of the “respectful”; the side of the “friendly”. Let’s call “us” the “animalist” people. Perhaps the “animal people” would be more correct grammatically, but all people are animals (and not accepting this could already puts us at odds with the anti-speciests), even those that are unfriendly to others, so it would be best to add the “ist” to show that we are talking here about a belief, and ideology or a attitude, rather than just a physical description.

Now let’s recognise that in addition to exist, the animalist people as a group feel somehow part of a sub-culture that has an effect –or wants to have an effect– upon the world. A group that is in “motion” trying to change things. That is, in other words, a social “movement”.

How many different ideologies exist within the “animalist movement” nowadays? I don’t even know. I keep finding some new every day. We have the vegetarians, the vegans, the animal rights groups, the animal welfare groups, the Reganists, the abolitionists, the pragmatists, the animal protectionists, the neo-welferalists, de Francionists, the fundamentalists, the animal defenders, the liberationists, the anti-specists, the Singerites, the animal advocates, and surely many more that can be found or invent. I am sure that each of these have good reasons to exist and good arguments to justify their identity. I am also sure that among those that feel affiliated to any of these terms there are many people that I would be comfortable to share this planet with –certainly many more than among those that feel affiliated to “unfriendly” groups such as the hunters, bullfighting supporters, animal dealers, fur designers, vivisectionists or factory farmers.

So, which of these groups do I feel more “identified” with? Well, most of them, to be honest, but if I was forced to choose one, I would choose the “abolitionists”. In fact, I plan to dedicate the entirety of this blog to explain why, and to show that, for me, being “abolitionist” is not a “separatist” choice from within the animalist movement, but rather the contrary.

In a hypothetical situation where I would have to confess that I have participated in online dating websites (which, if I did, that would not necessarily mean that I did it for the same reason everyone else does), I could well admit that there would be a term that would be most practical to explain “a bit more about myself” in a few words. That would be “VAREAL”, which is the acronym for “Vegan Animal Rights Environmentalist Atheist Lefty”. I certainly am each of these things. In fact, this is how I define myself in Twitter. However, “abolitionist” is a far better term, since I believe it includes all the other five concepts –and more– in the widest sense of the word. I certainly would like to abolish the use of animals in the food, clothes, cosmetic, pharmacy and entertainment industries, as well as abolish the legal discrimination that individuals suffer because of the species they belong to. And I would also like to abolish the unscrupulous exploitation and destruction of the environment, as well as all religions, all monarchies, and the capitalist paradigm. But I suspect that most potential suitors would not get all that about me from reading the term “abolitionist” in my online profile.

Therefore, explanations are in order. To abolish something is a curios “action”, since is an active “event” to stop something that occurs, which if successful implies an “estate” where such “something” is now permanently absent. So, it is not about “to be” or “to do”, but rather to “un-do” something forever. This means that in this simple verb, you have imbedded a powerful “moral judgement”. “Abolishing” is not like “extinguishing”, “disappearing” or “dying out”, which seem to happen spontaneously and without much help. Rather, it implies the judgement of something as being wrong, the possibility to do something about it, and the consequence that this something is stopping it altogether forever. It is a hugely powerful ethical and political word, perfect for those that feel driven by ethics and want to help to improve society and the world. So, good for people like me, annoyingly opinionated nagging “do-gooders”, but it is also good for those who history have remembered them as “great”, because of the positive changes that have given us.

When one feels frustrated and overwhelmed because of severe injustices and suffering witnessed, knowing that they are not inevitable and things can be corrected, is very consoling and invigorating. It certainly gives you batteries to carry on living, and reasons for optimism and hope. The possibility of “abolition” gives you this, but abolition is not just a theoretical possibility, but also a historical fact. “Bad” thing have indeed been abolished. Often not overnight; often not without a long and difficult struggle; often not “completely” in an absolute sense –but completely enough. Abolition is taught in history, and it is almost always associated to an improvement, a better world, a “good” result. And it is thought everywhere, because it has happened everywhere, in all cultures, and since the first records began. At the least, it is part of ethnic and cultural evolution. At the most, it is a universal achievement intrinsically linked to the good side of civilization.

The problem begins when we start to see abolitionism purely as a strategy. There are abolitionist strategies, which certainly are tools at the disposal of the animalist movement, but being an abolitionist is much more than just applying a strategy, as being a pacifist is much more than just be “at peace”. Abolitionism is, in fact, a process. A process which starts at one point in an individual life or a society state, and ends at another when something that was deemed bad is now gone. It is a journey in which, who takes it, only knows its general direction and destination, but not the exact path to get there. We may know the origin, have a moral compass for directions, and imagine how the final destination would look like, but we don’t quite know what we are going to encounter in the way, and how long is going to take. And this is the important bit: the kaleidoscopic abundance of types of animalist doctrines are in fact just the hills and meanders through which this journey is taking us; the irregularities in the landscape that may well slow us down, push us through short cuts, or simply “captivate” us with “the view”. Some of us may travel looking at the horizon; others looking at each step in the way, but most of us are going in the same direction and will recognise our destination when we reach it. We, the animalist people, are all in the abolitionist journey, even those that may feel that the term abolition does not apply to them, or those that do not use it because it is jealously guarded by others that like to bask in it.

The others, the animal users, abusers and consumers, are taking a different journey. The “exploitationist journey”. They go in the opposite direction to us, and sometimes they may distract us and even push us backwards. If that is the case we do have to raise the alarm, and help others to regain the “right” orientation. But in general, as long as we are all going towards our shared destination, we should be tolerant with the path that everyone chooses. This does not mean that we should not help others to take the best possible way we may think of, the one that is either easier to navigate, or takes us more rapidly to our destination, but we should not forget that not all of us started at the same point, not all of us carry the same baggage, not all of us are good in cross-country trekking, and not all of us want to be helped. And this is applicable to individuals, groups, organizations, societies and cultures.

When we look at abolitionism as a process, no just as a strategy, we will start to discover different facets of it. We may find “abolitionist milestones”, such as the one that goes from vegetarianism to veganism, or between lifestyle and advocacy, or between advocacy and activism, or between welfare and rights. We may discover that each step or action may have an “intrinsic abolitionist value”, so not always a reform is just a regulation (some reforms may indeed push us towards abolition, while others may not). We may find that the “abolitionist message” cannot be driven only though pragmatism and randomness, but that needs an ethical engine and a moral compass to work, if we want to reach the destination and not finding ourselves going backwards. We may recognise the advantages of “abolitionist refocusing”, which suggest that it is easier to lose one’s way if we concentrate too much in the compass (our high moral values), the road (the stones and crevices of each individual animal’s ordeal) or the horizon alone (the long term utopian policies), rather than paying attention to all of them in turns, according to where we are in our journey.

But this does not end with the animalist world. Those engaged in the abolitionist journey will realise that they are also going in the right direction when they think beyond the animal kingdom or within the human bubble alone. The environment, human rights, gender rights, sexuality rights, socio-economic paradigms, geopolitics, etc, all have “bad” things in them that can be abolished through a journey which happen to go in the same general direction than the animalist abolitionist process. A journey that often involves respect, fairness and non-violence, as the main fuel of the vehicles we choose to travel with.

By exploring all this with an open mind and a certain “good faith” attitude towards other well-intentional fellow beings, we may find that rather than select a very narrow niche from which undertake our quest for a better world, we may like to deep our ephemerons existence into more than one ink pot, as long as their colours paint the same kind of future, and we feel personally and socially fulfilled. We may feel that, while travelling, it may be good to sing the song of abolitionist reconciliation, so we can enjoy our journeys more and feel less alone. There is an awful lot of people travelling in the other direction and avalanching us stray from every corner, so hearing such song guiding us all the way may be “just the ticket”.

In this blog I will try to improvise this song with my own personal tune. In following contributions, I intend to discuss issues such as the green abolitionism, the neo-welferalism, the taxonomic factor, freedom and power, the charity question, or the Unified abolitionist. I know that it’s very pretentious for my part to pontificate along with cheap philosophies and pompous analogies, as if there is anyone out there that may care about my opinion. But hey, this is what blogs are for! Hopefully this writing will exorcise all the confused demons that are itching inside my brain, constantly excited by the sight of new divisions, seditions and puritanisms.

So, if curious, watch this space.

Jaysee Costa