When I was a child, my parents were part of a group called of Friends of South West Rocks. They, along with a few other local greenies, were outraged when the Council approved a development that would destroy a pristine environment and cut off a wildlife path used by endangered species. Rather than standing by, they contacted the Environmental Defenders Office to help them sue the Council. After a gruelling campaign and a long court case, they won. There was nothing in it for them. In fact, our lives became much harder; suddenly, local developers weren’t especially keen to hire them for their architectural work. Eventually, we left the town. Despite this they never looked back – they both continue their activism and they instilled in me a fierce determination to fix the world’s problems as I encounter them.
In the campaigning sphere, we spend day after day convincing people we’ve never met to come to events, sign our petitions, vote our way, or donate to our cause. Those who agree and comply are good people, while those who don’t are somehow doing something wrong. Sometimes we claim this as our own failure. We could have tried harder, phrased something differently. However, sometimes the people we target don’t care enough, or in the right ways.
When they say yes, it’s often because a passionate campaigner inspires them – they aren’t driven by duty or calculated altruism. They’ll throw a 20 to your campaign just because you took the time to talk to them. Volunteering for Fossil Free has been no different. The academics at the ANU will sign your open letter provided you smile at them, don’t waste their time and act like everyone is doing it. Of course, according to the behavioural economist, this is only natural – but it’s hugely frustrating. It doesn’t just delay progress; it makes us feel like some people will never truly care.
What is even worse is getting the same responses from your friends – the ones you can’t manipulate with smiles and cupcakes. Activism and campaigning is often enjoyable, but it is not just a hobby. When your friends won’t come to a protest, you’re not just confused or frustrated because you want to hang out with them. The idea that activism is not important to someone you love, despite them holding similar political beliefs to yourself, is near incomprehensible.
Friends seem like the ideal recruiting ground, because you understand them so well and have a fair gauge about how sympathetic they are to particular issues. But more often than not, the people who join already engage in many different campaigns and already link their political opinions to behaviour. You will see the same faces at a Fossil Free sit-in, as at a RAC protest, as at a protest against university fee hikes, and most of them will have a rainbow filter on their Facebook DP, or have shared something about Streets ice cream. This may give you the impression that people are either oriented towards achieving social-change or they’re not. But I do not agree.
Often, those who don’t engage in social movements still care about the relevant issues; they follow them in the news, talk about them and even study them. For some, it is simple because they physically or practically cannot engage, and this is quite understandable. These are often the people social movements are fighting for, or people whose time and energy is dedicated elsewhere – positive influence is certainly not limited to activism. For others, what is missing is the belief that their work can make an impact. Although they want political change, they don’t see their own action, at least not in the activist sphere, as the catalyst for it. This is a perfectly rational position and no one thinks they are God’s gift to the movement. Rather, activists are driven by more than purely a consideration of their personal impact. This consequentialist outlook, although predicted by political scientists and economists alike, is neither universal, nor especially helpful. Leaving this position behind opens up opportunity for impressive group impact.
For the activist, or the volunteer, motivation comes from a place of emotion and ethical intuition. Some of this is self-interested: we want to look like good people in others’ eyes and gain the approval of members of the organisations we like. There is a certain element of selfishness in most actions we take, but this does not necessarily make us bad – simply human. Additional to this, many have a deep emotional connection to politics; they are devastated by campaign losses and joyous about campaign wins, celebrating each small success along the way. For others, action stems directly from a sense of duty.
With these outlooks in tow, it makes sense to be frustrated at people who are unwilling to contribute to the cause. How can others fail to feel morally or emotionally obliged to do something? This is not to say that activism and campaigning always feels burdensome. Ethics is not just about doing things you don’t enjoy because it is your duty to do so. It can mean choosing the enjoyable thing with the most positive impact or pushing yourself to enjoy different things because of their moral value.
Perhaps you feel that we should make the world better simply because we can, or that we should improve the conditions for those that have been wronged, in the name of justice. Perhaps you see group responsibility as divisible into tangible individual parts, or perhaps you want to do as much as you feasibly can. There is value in considering your own ethical drive and discussing it with activists and non-activists alike, to find common ground. Rather than approaching ethics as a judgement between good and bad, we should approach it with concepts of moral intuition, acknowledging people’s different upbringings, concepts of “the good”, and sense of ability to promote it. This can help us understand our friends, our family members, and ourselves better. Moreover, it can promote a deeper understanding of meaning in life and might even draw the least expected people towards activism.
Ultimately, not everyone shares the same ethical intuitions. However, people are often more adaptable than we expect. In campaigning, it is generally most efficient to appeal to existing values, establishing a captivating narrative to generate action from those who are already somewhat on side. That said, we are part of a world – and at ANU, a university – dominated by neoliberal rationalism, where we are told to follow our passions but given little guidance as to what those should be. In our own lives, we have the time to get down to the nitty-gritty, to question existing norms of individual behaviour and choice, dissipate judgement and help make the people in our lives, ourselves included, better activists.
