Down With the Sickness?

There is a sickness in this society, one that runs deeper than any other illness. It primarily manifests in those most vulnerable to it -- newly disillusioned, disempowered teenagers and young adults. It's one of those things where some claim that it's empowering; in a way, I guess that recognising the sickness is empowerment, but embracing it is not. That's what the sickness is all about. Being embraced. That's how it feeds, breathes, lives.

What is the sickness? Well, it has different names. You could call it defeatism, or powerlessness, or disempowerment, or hopelessness. It is, essentially, the belief that we cannot change the world, so we might as well go along with the flow.

This belief is incredibly damaging. It is a (main?) reason why some humans refuse to go vegan, and why some of those vegans become ex-vegans. It's also a primary reason for neurotic (from "neurosis") depression in girls and women. It is why thousands of campaigns that would have changed the world haven't begun.

It starts when we're born. We are born into, and grow up in, a world of advertising where people, human and nonhuman, can be bought and sold -- even and especially as body parts. That cow is a slab of his or her flesh. That woman is a pair of breasts.

That is the starting point of this disease of "learned helplessness". What we see and hear often, we internalise. An animal lover will internalise that a cow is steak. A good, kind man will internalise that a woman's most essential feature is her body. The barrage of images is too much for us, especially us as children, to resist.

We are taught these days what is food, what is sexuality, what is love and what is "cool" through the wonders of advertising. Family and peers just regurgitate what is said on the television -- they grew up with it too. Or, if they dare to go against what the TV says, they are mostly ignored, because the TV has novel pictures and sounds that imprint in one's head in a much larger way. Eventually we start growing away from our family and towards our peers, and are left with these messages: Food is (hidden) death, sexuality is pain, love is absolute self-sacrifice and being cool means porn, McDonalds, killing, and subjugating others.

The disease shows its head when we first become aware of what is happening to us. We become angry, outraged that we were manipulated by everyone around us in order to please them. We don't realise that they were manipulated in the same way we were. And, after that anger has its time, it burns itself out amidst the furor of new, better ads.

We learn that we can't do anything to change it.

Knowing that you are able to influence others is, I believe, vital to a healthy spirit and self-esteem. If you are able to influence others, you have power; you can change the world, even if it is a little at a time. Love is a benevolent expression of that power when it's reciprocated; in the absence of love we find other ways to have power over someone -- pain is one of the strongest ones. Lust is another. That, I think, is how pornography began.

When we feel that we cannot influence others, we feel powerless, even over our own lives (others are, after all, an integral part of our feelings in one way or another). We start routinising our daily lives. One step at a time, don't make waves, it'll be alright. We feel vaguely depressed or sullen. We escape into a number of things, such as our worst enemy -- the TV and its accompanying advertising.

One of the most powerful things to realise is that, even if you don't make others change, you can change. And you can realise that, whether from you or not, others are changing around you. You're the Vegan Freak one year, and the next you find another vegan at your office (even if they do pronounce it "vay-gun"). Then you find more at a restaurant you go to. Or you go to a protest and meet others there. The possibilities are endless.

The first step is the hardest to make, but it's well worth it.

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