Depolarise
In How To Talk To A Science Denier, Lee McIntyre ends his thoughts on communicating with science deniers by stating, “We must try to make them understand. We must try to get them to care. But first we have to go out there, face-to-face, and begin to talk to them.”
A popular animal liberation activist disagrees, declaring, “…it’s a reminder that opening up a liberation movement to those with right wing politics isn’t a way to broaden our movement, it’s a way to make sure we never win.”
In almost every way we are polarised on almost every issue. The reason is that we have learnt to be instantly outraged and will dig our heels in whenever we are questioned about our opinions. We have forgotten the joy of being wrong, of learning something new from a stranger, of trusting that people are inherently good. We belong to our tribe and speak in echo-chambers. We are skeptical of every new piece of information or anything which contradicts our own ideas.
We don’t want to work with those who we disagree with as it may be seen as us conceding our hard fought positions.
Just looking at raw numbers, as animal advocates we routinely alienate ourselves from the favor of almost everybody else. When we say that ‘you can’t love animals and eat them too’, we have aggressively judged at least 98% of the population who eat meat or dairy products. And, while the definitions of the politically left and right change depending on the specific issue, if we are to take a left-leaning animal- and social-liberation stance when advocating, we are attacking (at least) a full 38% of the population on the right. The way to make sure we never win is by alienating those who oppose us.
It may be that we are victims of a media agenda of misinformation and fear-based narratives. But we also need to first take a look at how we each individually communicate before we start criticising others. We need to clean our own room first.
Depolarisation of, or between, countries often happens following significant struggle: “a foreign intervention, independence struggle, violent conflict, or regime change”, and only lasts for around a decade before returning to their polarised state. There is difficulty in maintaining social peace, and may indicate “a cyclical pattern of polarization, depolarization, and repolarization may be characteristic of political life in many places”.
If we look at the proponents of the instances which have led to brief periods of depolarisation, they are often decidedly aggressive activists pursuing a social or cultural agenda. Might this be why the depolarisation episodes eventually come to an end and return to their polarised state? If something has been aggressively changed through conflict, intervention, or struggle, it is likely that it can be reversed using the same methods.
What if we were to work together towards depolarisation? Being advocates instead of activists? Of allowing everybody to contribute their ideas to removing animals from agriculture or medical research? Would it be so easy to reverse if everyone had contributed their ideas? Would there be such polarisation against animal advocates?
If we are to ask that others understand our position, we need to extend that courtesy to them. If we want them to give up something they care about, we need to allow them the time to consider the proposition.
As animal advocates it is particularly distressing to consider taking our time to convert those who oppose our positions, as we know that many billions of land and sea animals will die while we are conversing. But if we do not have the conversations, if we do not allow people the time to change their behaviors, we are going to create a tougher wall to pull down, and many billions more animals will die in the meantime as we all grow further apart.
