Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Direct Action vs. Passive Activism

Sorry, been going through some things lately but I'm trying to write again, it feels a little shaky after so long, but hopefully it's a good read.

Whenever a certain individual is being prosecuted, beaten, or having their “rights” taken away from them, history usually shows this type of behavior leads to a revolt. A couple examples would women and blacks. These people throughout history were treated as if they were not human, animals, not worthy of respect. These people had to actively fight against authority to gain their rights; they had to go through abuse and torture, even being killed in order to gain their rights. Even in the 60’s and 70’s blacks were still fighting to show people that they are just as human as a white man or woman. Even 40 years ago blacks were constantly beat for nothing more than the color of their skin and even beat more so for simply trying to fight those people trying to degenerate the African race.

In modern society we still have many problems, no one will deny that. For one example, factory farms are still a problem. Now, in theory I strongly agree that the way factory farms treat animals is cruel, no doubt about that. However, the probably doesn’t lie in what they believe, it’s how vegans, for example, practice it. They lose my interest when the comment comes up, “Eating meat is morally wrong.” For I would ask, how does one go from factory farms being cruel to animals to eating meat is wrong. In my view, these are two completely different subjects. On the other hand, I fully support small farmers.


I believe that as in the example of vegans, people today are being manipulated into this PC style mindset that simply having an idea is going to change something, when that can’t be farthest from the truth. In fact, simply having a belief and doing nothing about is going to change nothing. What happen to that direct action that feminists and black panthers took to free their people? Sure, it took them a long time; sure, they were beaten and often killed. But if not for the spirit and action of these people, nothing would be different. And this is exactly what’s going to happen if people keep this attitude of passive activism, nothing is going to change, NOTHING. Keep on sitting on your couch and not eating meat while watching sitcoms, but nothing will change, no matter how much you bullshit yourself, nothing will change. What changes how we live are people that are willing to take direct action, people who are willing to protest, and if need be, do something like destroy factory farms. The problem doesn’t lay in the eating meat, the problems lays in with how animals are treated my big corporate businesses.

Paul McCarthy once said that if factory farms had glass walls everyone would be a vegan, which to I say, if factory farms had glass walls, then everyone would stop supporting factory farms, and hopefully, destroy factory farms from operating, and then going back to eating food from small farmers.

This, of course, is just one example. But everywhere I look, everything continues to happen in this passive activism form. People hold themselves on high horses by simply telling people something is wrong, but no one is willing to do anything about it. No cares when it’s time for them to go and do something about it themselves. So do we really care about changing the future or are people just trying to make themselves feel better? If it’s the latter, then this is very sad, but if it’s the other, if people really want to make a change, then people need to realize to go outside and do something about it.

4 comments:

  1. If factory farms had glass walls, I think people would more readily throw stones... Rather than changing the way they live, to simply feel more at peace with themselves. Your inner peace is a fucking joke, you've only washed the blood from your hands by going vegan; You haven't changed a thing. Throw a stone; make a change...

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  2. I should add, that the 'glass walls' theory does not only apply to Factory Farms... It applies to types of social, ecological, and economic travesties that happen all over the world every day. Pull your heads out of the sand, and start getting pissed.

    Revolution is ideas put into action! Ideas without action are nothing more than wasted mental space... This is why there is so much stress, drug use, and depression in modern generations. We've internalized our realities, and allowed the justified rage to be turned on ourselves and our loved ones, with the disease of hopelessness. Fuck that. Turn on the oppressor not the victim.

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  3. People don't go vegan to just be at peace with themselves, they see humans oppressing animals and want to end that. Abstaining from using animal products is direct action, so is informing others of why you made that decision. You just don't agree with veganism, something which is not related to your argument about factory farms being bad. It sounds like you should read your own question again in regards to why you wrote this: "So do we really care about changing the future or are people just trying to make themselves feel better?"

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  4. Abstaining from eating meats is NOT doing anything, direct action would be directly taking down factory farms and then PEOPLE not allowing politicians to allow this to go on any longer. But humans won't do that because sitting on the couch watching TV and bitching about it online is easier. And oh yeah, these days I ONLY buy foods from local farmers, meats, eggs, veggies, fruits, nuts, fuck big corporations and their poisonous foods. At least I will admit I do it for myself.

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