Virtue Ethics for Animal Rights Activists - A Practical Approach to Becoming a Better Activist

I previously posted about identity being key to self-improvement. However, the identity of “animal rights activist” is broad. Having the identity of being an animal rights activist is easier said than done. Using virtues, we can break down identity into distinct features that are easier to understand and implement.

In virtue ethics, what is morally right is what a virtuous person would do. A virtuous person is one who upholds virtues. Being a virtuous person is challenging in difficult times, but this is precisely when embracing virtues is most important. Virtues form a foundation or backbone we can lean on. I will not be comparing virtue ethics to other ethical frameworks, but we will use virtues as pieces of identity to ground ourselves in what we want to accomplish and how. Virtues will be our guides.

Some virtues: honesty, courage, justice, temperance, wisdom, compassion, generosity, fidelity, integrity, kindness, prudence, magnanimity, magnificence, wittiness, liberality, patience, modesty, indignation, caring, friendliness, and industriousness.

One approach is to identify a virtue to work on, meditate on our knowledge and current behavior with this virtue, and then challenge ourselves to uphold this virtue more. As we continue this cycle of refinement, we embody the virtues more and therefore have a greater impact for the animals. This will take different forms for different people. Below we review some virtues and how they apply to activism.

Courage

Paraphrasing the fantasy author Joe Abercrombie, “Fear is good. Fear means we have room to practice courage.” To be courageous is to face fears.

I am an introvert known for saying “I want animal liberation so I can go back to reading comic books and playing videos.” I don’t want to talk to people, let alone groups of strangers. So when I was approached to be a tour guide at Piedmont Farm Animal Refuge, my reaction was an automatic “hell no!” - at least in my head. But to the Founder of the sanctuary, I said “Absolutely. However I can help is what I will do.”

I knew I had to overcome my feelings of introversion and overall uncomfortableness of speaking in front of others in order to help animals. I could not rationally come up with a reason why I should stay home on tour days. Fear of speaking and engaging with strangers is not an excuse. Those are merely obstacles to overcome in the quest for animal liberation.

The beginning was the hardest. I rehearsed constantly before the tour. I was assigned as the sheep tour guide. What are all the sheep facts? I know the names of all the sheep, but don’t mix them up! Let’s see… That is Lurther and that is… Oh god, a family is approaching to visit. There was a child. I’m never around children! How do I talk to children? They better not run and chase the sheep! What is my opening line? Oh yeah… “Hello. Welcome.” We all smiled.

Everything went fine from there, and being a tour guide only got easier. I’m still introverted, but I greatly enjoy the opportunity to talk to the public about our sanctuary. Furthermore, I’m grateful for the privilege and opportunity to take on this role. Remedying the plight of the animals is our moral responsibility. Taking this responsibility seriously means I need to face my fears, and that is, to exemplify courage.

Tourgoers are easy since they want to be at the sanctuary to learn from you. What about strangers on the street? Here we can employ the virtues of temperance and patience.

Temperance and Patience

“Animals were bred to be food, so what will happen to all the animals if we don’t eat them? You want them to go extinct?” - We have all heard such nonsense while speaking with non-vegans. We want to lay into the person with an hour-long lecture about how wrong they are siting all the facts, figures, and logic that science and philosophy have to offer. But we should not. Instead, we should practice temperance with our reactions and patience when talking with individuals.

Temperance is practicing moderation or restraint. When we sign up for a Cube of Truth or find ourselves in conversation with someone in the public at a protest, what is the objective we are trying to accomplish? We want to educate the person on the realities of animal agriculture and encourage this person not to participate in the normalized exploitation of animals. This means, that to be effective, we should model our behavior in the conversation towards this goal. We should suppress the automatic emotional responses that we so dearly wish to give and instead focus on how to nudge the person to our side.

Patience is similar but with a subtle difference here. We know the many responses people have about why it is permissible to continue exploiting animals is nothing more than misinformation and marketing from the industry or deep-seated traditional rhetoric. But for that person, these are serious thoughts. A struggle for me is remembering not everyone knows what I know and not everyone is an edgy troll looking for a fight. We should accept people where they are and have the patience to guide them through their concerns so they walk away more informed.

This cannot be stated enough, so I’ll repeat: Doing this is challenging. Practicing virtue is hard. It takes deliberate thought and discipline. It requires us to be conscious of what we do and reflect on how to be better. Practicing virtue could be considered a virtue. But we do it because we are committed to helping the animals.

If before any event you say “I am <insert your name>. I am an animal rights activist. I will embody the virtues of courage, temperance, and patience. That is who I am.” and then go do the action, you will have a profound impact on all of those around you.

There are many more virtues. They can all be adapted to what you need to accomplish.

Ambition - strive for deep, meaningful goals instead of doing the same thing over and over.

Honesty - we do not need to embellish the truth. The horrors of animal agriculture can speak for themself.

Humility - Every day, every situation, every event, and every conversation, these are all learning opportunities. Know we may never have everything right, and we can refine our approach through constant humility. Debug Your Bug is a YouTuber who posts 1-1 vegan outreach conversations with random people on the street, but lately, he posts those conversations stating what he should have said differently. He is practicing humility, and encouraging us to do the same.

What I have talked about is with speaking to strangers or performing on the street since that is familiar territory for me. But virtues can be applied to any form of activism. Whether you work in policy, administration, fundraising, economics, operations, or similar, we can all practice virtue.

Frugality - perhaps you spend too much money on going out to eat or other indulgences you could do without. Practice the virtue of frugality to save money for donations or travel to activist events such as Animal Activism Collective convergences.

Epistemopile - a seeker of knowledge. One pathway to saving billions of animals is creating cultivated meat. Making cultivated meat a reality might be the strategic goal that resonates with you, so becoming obsessed with chemistry and synthetic biology could be a virtue. We still don’t know how we can scale cultivated meat. There is room for multiple Einsteins in the area. Learning how bioreactors work may not feel like animal liberation, which is why focusing on virtues centers us. The virtues remind us of the identity we are manifesting.

Discipline - We live in a world where every device wants our attention with pings and notifications. Social media companies have PhD psychologists and marketers behind them to make those platforms addictive. It takes discipline to say “no” to these distractions and practice discipline to focus on the important task we know we should be doing.

Of all the virtues, discipline might be the most important. Showing up day after day despite the obstacles to learn, grow, communicate, teach, create, plan, and execute all requires discipline. Discipline brings us back to the beginning with identity. Saying “I am an animal rights activist” is to instill the virtue of discipline in my behavior because obstacles do not stop a disciplined person.