“There is no way any of this is going to change.”
This was a sentence said recently by one of the students in my class, “Justice, Compassion and the Rights of Nonhuman Animals,” which I teach at my university.
It had been a difficult month. We had read about and discussed brutality toward animals—especially farmed animals—until we could hardly bear to hear any more. We’d spoken about the stark and undeniable relationship between human and animal slavery, the indifference of the vast majority of the world to the suffering of animals, and the powerful forces that have vested interests in that suffering.
It’s hard being an animal rights advocate. You get laughed at. You get ignored. The worst part is that even the people who share a deep concern for social justice, empathy toward the downtrodden, and a commitment to making the world a better place, often feel or care little about the oppression of nonhuman beings, our close brethren. The fact that violence toward animals desensitizes us to all types of suffering and that the oppression of animals is intimately tied to the oppression of humans is simply invisible to many people.
That was what my student was confronting: Hopelessness in the face of overwhelming odds and indifference. What can we do when so few people care?
I gave her one, simple, sure answer. What we can do is write.
Anyone who thinks the world can’t be changed by writing needs to take a harder look at history. What we now take for granted as essential aspects of modern life in the West—democracy and a free-market economy—were sparked largely by books: Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.
It was a novel—Uncle Tom’s Cabin—that mobilized anti-slavery forces in the United States: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s emotional depiction of life as as a slave captivated a nation, ignited outrage, and stirred people into action.
More than a century later, Martin Luther King’s powerful oratory and writing ignited the Civil Rights movement. Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring sparked public concern about pollution and helped launch the environmental movement. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystiquewere set off second-wave feminism. The list goes on.
Words are powerful. Writing is world-changing.This is the message I gave to my frustrated student, and that I give to anyone who dreams of making a difference. Even if all you do is spark a few moments of doubt in the mind of someone who thought they already had everything figured out. Even if your writing does nothing more than let in a single sliver of light. Even if your lovingly crafted words are just a quiet whisper in the reader’s ear.That whisper, combined with hundreds more, can turn into a roar.
I am an optimist. I believe things somtimes get worse in the short term, but always get better in the long. I believe that there is a spirit of good that operates in the Earth. I believe writing can be part of that spirit. I believe writing can be its voice.