The Misanthropic Bunker

My grumpiness serves as a kind of protective skin.....

Confronted with a world of unremitting violence towards other animals, where others fail either to see what you witness everywhere or don’t act on their own conscience, it’s easy for advocates to seek refuge in what I call the ‘Misanthropic Bunker’. We’ve all done it: no matter how positive or can-do our attitude about convincing others to become vegan or creating social change may be. And here is another truth about animal advocacy: that the retreat may be a necessary way of coping.

For some years, I’ve gone by the moniker of ‘Grumpy Vegan’, affecting a sort of curmudgeonly exterior that’s partly a reaction to the fact that, in spite of decades of activism on my and others’ behalf, animals are still being thoughtlessly mistreated, slaughtered, and eaten.

Although I recognise that advocates have made progress in alerting people to the suffering of other animals, I’m painfully aware of how much more needs to be done. I fully confess to a settled melancholia about how limited are my abilities to bring about the end of the animal industrial complex. My grumpiness serves as a kind of protective skin that ensures that I make it through a day of exposure to human cruelty with my sanity intact.

Inside my misanthropic bunker.

Occasionally, however, I find myself drowning in the sea of blood. I turn for rescue, only to find those around me indifferent or even hostile. Even those I consider my colleagues in the struggle urge me to pull myself together and knuckle down because more work has to be done. The animals don’t have the luxury of waiting while you cope with your feelings, they may say. You cannot afford to feel weak for them.

At moments such as this—when I’m overwhelmed, tired, and have lost confidence in myself that I’ll ever achieve any meaningful change for animals—I retreat to the Misanthropic Bunker. I also do this when I’m fed up and disappointed with the animal rights movement. We’ll never achieve animal rights, I tell myself. Speciesism will never end. Animal rights will never be accomplished. It won’t happen in my lifetime.

Before you know it, the following spiel unwinds:

Why can’t everyone care about animals like me? Why isn’t everyone vegan? How can people go about their daily lives and not realise that they’re killing animals all the time? It’s all so obvious. I see animal cruelty everywhere. Why can’t they?

I want to believe everyone will go vegan and embrace animal rights. But I know they won’t. We don’t care about animals enough. I’m not sure we ever will. Look at how we treat them! Throughout history, in every civilisation, people abused animals. Every minute of every day, somewhere in the world, animals suffer. Nothing else matters.

Why don’t more people like me experience the moral shock of animal suffering? I know I wasn’t born a vegetarian or vegan—I once ate meat—but nowadays it’s never been easier. There’s no excuse why not.

I don’t understand how people can compartmentalise their thinking so that a vivisector can love their dog at home but go to work and experiment on dogs in a lab. But, then, I can’t believe they truly love their family dog. How could they, considering how they make a living? What’s more, how can we ever expect to be kind to animals when we can’t even treat each other with respect? How can we ever expect to overcome such arrogance?

Positive attitudes, of course, have their place, and sunny optimists are more likely than dour pessimists to convince folks that their modus vivendi is attractive. But it’s vital that animal advocates recognise that our work has costs. We need to grieve the loss of so much sentient life. We need to acknowledge our anger at human beings’ unfathomable cruelty towards other beings and our species’ irrational and self-serving responses to its own casuistry, thoughtlessness, and moral inconsistency. We need to accept the reality that the world wasn’t necessarily waiting for us—and only us—before deciding that it was going to become nonviolent and vegan. Sometimes a dark place within our soul is a good location within which we can safely express that rage, frustration, and, yes, despair at other members of homo sapiens.

I try not to lurk too long inside the Misanthropic Bunker. I know that for all the reassurance and sanctuary it provides as a place where it’s possible to blow off steam and rail at how much better the planet would be without humans (unless those humans were like me!), it’s also an excuse to wallow in self-righteous indignation. It’s not only strategically vital to direct our animosities in a more positive and effective direction but it’s also psychologically essential to avoid being consumed by hatred and intolerance.

Adapted from Growl: Life Lessons, Hard Truths, and Bold Strategies from an Animal Advocate by Kim Stallwood. Published by Lantern Publishing & Media.