Earlier this week, in my Environmental Literature class, we were talking about veganism and whether animals deserve moral consideration. Some students expressed that even if they were to make the individual choice to go vegan or vegetarian, it would not end animal suffering. Although boycotting brands and products has had a place in almost every social movement, including animal welfare, several students said it felt pointless because it would not stop animal abuse, and it would not stop the war in Israel and Palestine, and it would not stop big corporations from making choices that bring in more profit, ethics be damned. Distraught by the powerlessness they feel against massive corporations, a question looms: why do anything at all?
Me, individually living a vegan lifestyle, is not enough to stop animal suffering. But I hope to show others that it is possible to stand against animal cruelty, even if they just do “meatless Mondays.” Think of it this way: if you want to lose 20 pounds and get in shape, doing a few sit-ups is not enough—but it is a necessary start.
I think this all-or-nothing mindset that students expressed tends to be more prevalent on the left. It’s evident to me that it motivates much of progressive thought. The civil rights movement was a prime example of small and slow progress that would not fully eliminate racism. In contrast, things like critical race theory and race-based affirmative action made an attempt to quicken the pace of equality because the civil rights movement was not going far enough fast enough. While it is undoubtedly unfair that racial minorities still face an immense wealth gap and other forms of discrimination, I believe that these practices that attempted to accelerate racial progress instead impeded it and undid some of the progress made by the civil rights movement. Progress, racial or otherwise, isn’t showy; it doesn’t make headlines the way egregious acts of discrimination do, but that doesn’t mean that progress isn’t happening or that faster or more radical change is the best solution.
Gen Z in particular is also susceptible to the nihilistic all-or-nothing view I’ve identified, I think, because we grew up on the internet, where any answer we want has always been at our fingertips in a matter of seconds. We have always had microwaves where we can get a hot meal in mere minutes. Most of us have a comfortably temperature-controlled house. Barely any of us read books anymore, in favor of a social media addiction filled with 60-second clips. With the obesity crisis, many of us are overfed on artificial sugar and empty calories. What I’m getting at is that we are immensely comfortable with our extremely convenient lives. Everything is instantaneous.
If we cannot achieve something now, or we cannot achieve it completely, then what is it worth?
I, too, have fallen victim to believing that things that are not enough are not worth doing. In therapy, I once asked my therapist if we could focus more directly on my depression. We frequently talked about my values, identities, and creating more connection in my life—but I, wrapped up in my own pain and barely tamping down on my urges to hurt myself—saw no point in discussing such things until my depression was under control. When, a few weeks later, we returned to the conversation about connections, my therapist said, “You may have been skeptical or felt like therapy wasn’t being conducted the way you wanted or expected, but aren’t we back where we started?” I itched with the heaviness of that, priming to put defense mechanisms up, because it was extremely difficult for me to suggest to him that we might focus more on my concerns about my depression, and his observation felt like an insult to the hard work I did to ask for help directly. But just because something was hard for me to raise, and I was proud of myself for doing so even in the face of conflict—that doesn’t make my position right. I took the words personally, at first, but he wasn’t critiquing me; he was critiquing my assumption that small progress wasn’t progress at all. See, I had made the idea of depression into a boogeyman—suffering himself, cloaked in a floor-length coat. But depression is not a man and he cannot be slayed with a magic bullet. It is a constellation of symptoms—some of which sound like the voice in my head telling me no one could possibly understand it. And, no, hanging out with my friends a few times, or spending time outside, or having a few therapy sessions—none of these will quell that voice entirely and all of the physical symptoms that come with it. But little by little, by doing these things—these acts that are not enough—I can prevent a downward spiral and slowly rewire my brain to be resilient against its depressive tendencies.
It used to terrify me that I could go to therapy, exercise outside, complete a task for a family member (others relying on me), eat dinner with my parents (in-person connection), get good sleep, eat nutritious meals, and tell a friend that I’m feeling depressed, and yet none of those strategies were enough to make the bad feelings go away. It scared me that my depression had outstripped all of my coping mechanisms, and I didn’t know what “enough” even looked like. But I was able to recognize that I was in a depressive episode, that I wanted to get out of it, and that I could actively employ some strategies I knew might help, if marginally, to try and alleviate it—small progress, so small it would be easy to overlook in the enormity of the suffering I felt stifled under because what I did that day was clearly not enough. Yet, I did more than nothing, and that's something that can be built upon and experimented with, and with any luck, one day, it might be enough.
A few years ago, I may have degraded this perspective as stupid or naive, but really, it was just inconvenient. The naive belief was that I could make progress by reading books and drawing the right, logically sound, conclusions about how to approach life, never having to experience the discomfort of trial and error, which are necessary parts of learning what “enough” looks like for an individual.
So, I hope today you do something small, something that is not enough, because one day all that which is not enough might become a single counterforce which is.
I have many influences to thank for this realization that I wanted to take a moment to gesture toward here: Greg Lukianoff for his openness about therapy, and his recommendation of the book “The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time” by Alex Korb, who also influenced my thinking; Dr. Alok Kanojia aka HealthyGamerGG; and Jordan Peterson, in particular the reflection of Stephen Bradford Long of Sacred Tension on JBP’s appeal.
Thank you so much for taking the time to share all this! I applaud you for reaching out for help when you were depressed! That takes tremendous courage and gumption! As someone who has struggled with depression myself, I can relate! And I love what you share here about micro-movements inching you (and all of us) towards a less depressed world! ❤️🔥👏😊