Individual actions matter far less than I once thought

In a recent conversation with a group of strangers, I found myself speaking aloud about something that’s been nagging away in the back of my brain for a while. Something that I didn’t really want to admit.

What I do as an individual matters far less than I once thought.

The change the world urgently needs isn’t about individual perfection; in fact, that’s near enough useless. We need togetherness, collaboration, innovation and BIG action, driven by leaders, groups, movements, governments, industries and international partnerships.

I’m not ignoring the fact that individuals make a group, but there needs to be collaboration that includes practical plans and goals. Not just one person deleting their X(Twitter) account.

This is the case with many of the biggest issues the world faces today, including all the ones that are consuming my mind recently. The lack of basic human rights for women in Afghanistan. The fact that the world has billionaires and now even a trillionaire, while others live in extreme poverty. The ongoing and largely ignored genocide happening in Palestine. The leadership of a country with significant global sway is in the hands of a man who has proven time and time again that he has one singular interest in his life, and it begins with D and ends in P.

I share my despair about these and many other matters with anyone who will engage in a conversation with me. Oh, what a thrill I am to have around. But what has suddenly become glaringly obvious to me is that my personal daily choices play a minuscule part in any possible change. We need big collective action.

Back to that conversation I was having with the collection of strangers I met two weeks ago. It was a vegan meet-up, at a wonderful restaurant that supports refugees from Burma, and everyone I spoke to seemed to be genuinely compassionate and really gave a shit, the kind of people I like to spend time with.

During one conversation, though, someone said, "There’s just no hope”, and everyone in the conversation agreed, some wholeheartedly, others desperate to disagree, but just couldn’t.

At this point, I couldn’t stop myself from adding, “I don’t agree, there is hope. Just not how we are doing things.”

Things can change, but not in the way I’d always thought. Not by me, or all the people in that room, or even another million other people making changes in their daily lives without a clear plan of action.

Photo by By Nicole Baster

Photo by By Jan Tinneberg

You see, my experience of the typical vegan is that they get so fixated on doing everything perfectly, trying to make sure every single decision they make is ethically bulletproof. In many ways, I think this is admirable - I would say that, it’s how I’ve tried to live for so long - but does it do much? Or could it actually be damaging, forcing people to believe only perfection is worthy?

We can be powerful enough to allow another plant-based meat brand to grow or a local vegan restaurant to thrive, but with an estimated 15 thousand births per hour and many sources saying that less than 1% of the world’s population is vegan, the animal products industry will continue to grow.

1% of the population’s buying power will create a small niche in a market, but it won’t disrupt it.

So actually, when you think about it in that way, it is easy to feel hopeless. But not when we think about what can be done with plans that put policies and regulations in place.

If the aim is to reduce the consumption of animal products to support the health of the planet and eliminate animal cruelty, we need rules to be changed, and we need governments and corporations behind us. I understand the grandeur of this suggestion. It’s so far from an easy quest, but I believe it’s still so much more likely than convincing enough of the world’s population to make individual decisions that will make a difference.

But this isn’t about veganism specifically. It’s about how to make real change possible.

When there are governments, policies and systems behind us, we can do all sorts. The UK managed to damage its economy and its relationship with Europe with one quick trip to the Brexit ballot box. The US voted in a King who, I assume, must be conducting some kind of social experiment, for a second time! But we’ve also done some sensible things, like many countries around the world have a levy or ban on plastic bags, caps are now attached to plastic bottles in the EU, there are smoking bans in many public places around the world, women have the right to vote in the majority of countries, and we have abolished slavery.

Things that seemed impossible to change are now hard to fathom how they ever existed.

Stepping away from perfection

Making the ‘right’ choice is a luxury

Another important point in this conversation is that it’s often the privileged who have the luxury of making personal ‘sacrifices’ in hopes of effecting change.

The guilty nagging I've often felt when buying a bottle of water because I’d forgotten to fill up my reusable bottle is starting to feel less important than it once was.

And I know the argument: if everyone buys a bottle of water, there’d be 8 billion plastic bottles used every day, but, bittersweetly, this isn’t the issue because less than 20% of the world's population has access to clean water safe to drink directly from their tap. Most people rely on buying or boiling water.

I’m not arguing whether there’s a plastic problem; there absolutely is. It’s estimated that 1.3 billion plastic bottles are used each day across the world, but so much of that number is due to the fact that people have no other accessible choice.

Individual action can’t do much here.

When you live in a position of privilege, you can much more easily make changes, but about 3.8 billion people, almost half the world population, live below US$8.30 per day. In this situation, priorities stay much closer to home.

It’s not our fault, especially in the context of being more sustainable, that we believe as individuals we need to do better. Big corporations make us believe it’s down to us; they tell us to keep our carbon footprint down, recycle, reuse or compost while offering limited access to facilities, pay more to airlines so they can be more ‘eco-friendly’, all while not having to take any accountability themselves.

We need to work together to solve the problems where they start. Not by blaming the people they land on.

This does not change my ‘vegan’ status, because I just don’t want to consume animal products, but I know individually it makes little difference, and perfection is no longer my goal.

Oh, and after pushing back a few times about how I believe there is reason for hope, it seemed, at least to me, that this lovely group of new friends left our meet-up feeling a slight bit more optimistic than when they arrived.

We are stuck within the system that exists, so it’s the system that needs to change.