He asked how I knew they were inhumane. And so I described to him what I have seen myself: hundreds of thousands of chickens crammed into cages in typical egg factories and calves chained at the neck in tiny crates in modern veal factories. I talked about my studies with an observant rabbi who is a vegetarian because he insists not only in following the letter of the law (kosher slaughter was, at its inception, far more humane than typical slaughter of the time), but also the spirit of the law (which clearly rejected cruelty to animals). Only slowly did I seem to pique his interest. I gave him my card and encouraged him to learn more for himself.

Later, I reflected upon this man’s work. He is trying to do what he considers God’s work. He is attempting to deeply live according to his values. Yet, it is harder and harder to do this without an equally strong commitment to learning more, to bringing our inquiry to our choices and actions, to insisting upon greater understanding than what we are likely to obtain from our culture, whether observant Jewish culture or popular culture.

I hope that our brief interaction will spur him to learn more and consider how he can more genuinely live according to his religious beliefs. He mentioned that at his age, he might not pursue more knowledge in this area, but he hesitated as he said this. I like to think he will reconsider and open himself to new knowledge so that he might more fully live his values.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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“Just as drops of water will eventually fill a bathtub, so the accumulation of small choices shapes who we are.”

It’s easy to dismiss the power of small choices. In the scheme of things, what difference does it make if you use a disposable bag at the supermarket or buy a cup of non-organic, non-fair trade, non-shade grown coffee in a Styrofoam cup, or eat a hamburger or chicken leg, or buy a new cell phone? No number of compact fluorescent light bulbs is going to save the world, and with all the problems we face, it’s easy to decide that our every day choices don’t much matter.

And really, if all a conscientious, compassionate person were to do was focus on small everyday choices to ensure they were as MOGO (most good) as possible, the good that would come from this might well pale in comparison to the work of an inventor who creates a solution to an entrenched systemic problem, or an activist who changes a system, or a lawmaker who bans a type of cruelty, even if that inventor or activist or lawmaker made a host of less-than-MOGO small choices each and every day.

Which is why I’m always advocating a both-and approach to changemaking: model your message by making conscious and caring personal choices AND work for systemic change. But Fronsdal’s quote struck me as a new lens with which to view the power of our every day choices. The accumulation of our small choices, how we treat others each and every day (others being not simply those with whom we interact personally, but also those people and animals whose lives we affect through our daily food, clothing, and product choices) adds up. These are the choices that largely define who we become over a lifetime. They matter.

So let’s try to remember each drop of water we are adding to the bathtub that comprises our life and choose it with respect and kindness.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Image courtesy of missmoney via Creative Commons.

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One hundred years ago, where I live in rural Maine, it was fairly obvious how to make MOGO choices. Everyone knew where their food, clothing, energy, shelter and transportation came from and who and what was harmed or helped by their actions. It still wasn’t easy to always be good though. Fear, jealousy, anger, and other emotions all led our great grandparents to make choices that weren’t always MOGO.

Today, not only do we have those same challenging emotions and impulses, it also takes enormous motivation to find out who and what was harmed or helped to supply us with our basic needs, let alone everything else we indulge in. Because our lives are inextricably connected to everyone and everything across the globe through economic globalization, to make MOGO choices means that we must become conscious of these connections and make choices that help rather than harm everybody, not just our family, friends, and neighbors; not just our own pets; not just our immediate environment.

Read the complete post.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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Vanquishing the enemy means looking below the surface evil to the ways in which rage, hatred, sociopathy and brainwashing occur, and attempting to find root causes and root solutions.

While it may feel satisfying, and deeply so for those who lost loved ones on September 11, Osama bin Laden’s death represents no solution to hatred and bigotry; minds easily influenced; actions determined more by situations and systems than by careful thought, reflection and analysis. These are the real and powerful roots of evil.

There is a way to confront our biggest enemy, and it lies with children….That way is through schooling that teaches critical and creative thinking and problem-solving and that fosters reverence, respect and a sense of responsibility.

It is, in fact, the only way to cultivate healthy roots so that each of us has the capacity to resist the effects of a destructive environment — whether that environment is political, cultural, economic or ecological — and then transform that environment into systems that are more just, sustainable and humane.

Read the complete post.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Image courtesy of L. Marie via Creative Commons.

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There is no benefit to neglecting the suffering and exploitation of animals in our efforts to end the suffering and exploitation of humans. The systems that perpetuate oppression are the same whether they are perpetrated on human or nonhuman animals. And we should not fail to note the irony that the systems that abuse animals often lead to our own suffering and death.

It’s my fervent hope that all progressives concerned with human rights and environmental preservation will embrace a more expansive ethic that includes other species, and that we’ll come to acknowledge that treating everyone with respect and care – humans, nonhumans, and the environment – is part and parcel of creating a just and healthy world.

We can begin by assessing the ways in which our daily choices, from what we eat, wear, and buy, can be an expression of justice and compassion toward people, animals and the environment, and expand the vision of our activism, volunteerism, and participation in changemaking so that it excludes no one.

Read the complete essay.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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Bittman’s essay describes the sort of unreflective and hypocritical (as opposed to critical) thinking that prevents us from creating a society that is just and humane and healthy, and I would love to see this essay read in high school classrooms, followed by class projects that uncover various inconsistencies within their own schools and our society that require investigation and, hopefully, rectification.

Imagine what would happen if our students became these sorts of critical and creative thinkers.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Image courtesy of meddygarnet via Creative Commons.

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When CBS’s Lara Logan was dragged off, beaten and sexually assaulted by a mob of Egyptian men in Tahrir Square the giddy night that Hosni Mubarak stepped down, most of us were aghast. But some vile bodies online began beating up on the brave war correspondent.

Nir Rosen, a journalist published in The Nation, The New Yorker and The Atlantic, who had a fellowship at New York University’s Center on Law and Security, likes to be a provocateur. He has urged America to “get over” 9/11, called Israel an “abomination” to be eliminated, and sympathized with Hezbollah, Hamas and the Taliban. Invited to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2008 about the Iraq surge, he told Joe Biden, the committee chairman then, that he was uncomfortable “advising an imperialist power about how to be a more efficient imperialist power.”

Rosen must now wish Twitter had a 10-second delay. On Tuesday, he merrily tweeted about the sexual assault of Logan: “Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger.”

He suggested she was trying to “outdo Anderson” Cooper (roughed up in Cairo earlier), adding that “it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too.”

Sadly, Nir Rosen’s comments are actually tame in today’s climate in which anonymous commenters (as opposed to paid “provocateurs” and commentators) spew the most vile invective imaginable. It’s my deep hope that those who so readily spread their rage and hatred are the minority, but it’s sometimes hard to reconcile the nasty language of commenters that seems to outnumber the thoughtful and helpful ones.

Here are some words of advice from the late Eknath Easwaran, former Berkeley professor and meditation teacher:

“Please do not indulge in unkind words, in negative comments. Criticism, as you know, can only be useful when it is constructive. Comments can only be useful when they are friendly. So even from the point of view of effectiveness, I would suggest that unkind comments add to the problem. Unloving criticism makes the situation worse. It does not mean that we do not have to comment and suggest. Very often we have to. But it is the mental attitude with which you make the suggestion and the loving concern with which you put forward ideas, sometimes opposed to others, that make for effectiveness.”

Please share Easwaran’s words widely. We need to heed them not only for the sake of civil discourse, but for the sake of effective changemaking for a better world.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Image courtesy of SweetOnVeg via Creative Commons.

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“You must teach because you want to help students achieve their dreams. You must teach because you care almost as much as much about the children in your class as you do about your own children. And you must approach the job with the humility to know that what you are trying to do – to help children grow up wisely and well in an ever-more-complex world – will tax you to the limits of your being. It should – it will – demand the best of you. If you can engage in that reflection… you will understand why you must apologize deeply and profoundly to your students… because you would never want another person to hurt your students as I imagine you have hurt them.”

Read the complete post.

Thanks, Chris Lehmann, for these eloquent and wise words.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Image courtesy of Chris Lehmann via Creative Commons.

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The Girl in the Café is certainly an entertaining film, but its entertainment value is trumped by its great message. Revolving around the G8 summit and the Millennium Goals to (among other things) eradicate extreme poverty, the take home point is that we must stop dithering and compromising our values; we must stop defending the indefensible; we must stop conflating idealism with utopianism; and we must commit to meeting goals that are, beyond a doubt, achievable, if we harness our will to achieve them.

The next morning, I read an AP article about farm groups joining together to fight bad publicity and improve farmers’ images. In the article, Joe Cornely, a spokesman for the Ohio Farm Bureau, is quoted saying the following:

“So often people advocate for a utopian world and it’s not doable…. Feeding the world requires us to kick up some dirt and create a few odors. That is just a reality of producing food and fiber that may not fit in with the utopian vision…. The vast majority of people are reasonable people, they just need to know that you can’t have the perfect world.”

What Cornely is implicitly defending are egregious farming practices in which sentient beings are crammed into cages and crates in which they can barely move, routinely mutilated without painkillers or anesthesia, forced to live (and die) under conditions so inhumane that were such atrocities perpetrated on dogs or cats the people responsible would be thrown in jail. He is also implicitly defending practices that are causing such horrific pollution that wildlife, too, routinely die by the thousands, as waste lagoons burst and their contents spill into waterways.

Having watched The Girl in the Café the night before, Cornely’s words were particularly cynical. By resorting to utopianism as the alternative to institutionalized cruelty and destruction in our modern farming practices, he tries to appeal to those “reasonable” people among us who might be swayed that striving for a more humane, sustainable, and healthy world is either impossible or downright silly.

Idealism is too often perceived as a weakness, a form of immaturity, a sign that a person is not yet wise. Yet Martin Luther King, Jr., was an idealist, and so was Mahatma Gandhi. Nobel Peace Prize winners, Wangari Maathai and Aung San Suu Kyi, are also idealists. Even the founding fathers of the United States were idealists, and without William Wilberforce’s persistent idealism, what might have happened in the British Parliament during the endless debates about the African slave trade? Today, it is the tireless efforts of millions of changemakers across the globe – fueled by a belief in a better world; fueled by idealism – that is creating systemic change leading us closer to peace and closer to restoration. Without idealists who envision a safer, saner, more equitable world and who are willing to work toward it, the fate of billions of people, animals, and the ecosystems upon which we all depend, would be far worse.

Cornely and the Farm Bureau fighting reforms follow a long line of people who dig in their heels to protect the status quo, no matter how destructive and unjust that status quo is. They prey on our fears and doubts, our inertia and apathy, our greed and our self-centeredness. They urge us to feel superior if we are “pragmatists,” even though there is nothing pragmatic about practices that cause harm and suffering and misery.

It’s time for all of us to embrace the idealist within and refuse to succumb to the messages that would keep us inert. This does not mean we should be utopians or refuse to compromise when compromise serves the ends we seek. It does not mean that we should perceive the world – or other people – in either/or terms, taking sides rather than seeking viable solutions. It means that we should envision the world that we have the power to create and take all the necessary steps to achieve it, practically, and with every ounce of our idealism intact.

And we must nurture our children’s idealism, ensuring that they never fall for the myth that wisdom lies in abandoning your ideals and that “reasonableness” is a sign of maturity. Instead, we must raise them to be solutionaries who use their great minds in service with their loving hearts to change unjust and inhumane systems, understanding that their idealism can and must be harnessed effectively and practically for the good.

For a better world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

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The excerpt was from the end of Most Good, Least Harm in a section which offered a short summation about how to make choices that do the most good and least harm to oneself, other people, animals and the environment. The section was titled, “10 Principles for MOGO Living,” (MOGO being short for doing the most good and the least harm).

Personally, I would never have chosen the new title, “10 Easy Ways to Become a Better Person” for a number of reasons. First, I don’t teach about being a better person; I teach about making choices that do more good and less harm to ourselves and others. Second, the 10 principles are about choices that create a better world rather than better people. But despite the fact that the title could have been off-putting for a list about making MOGO choices, it was hard to believe the staggering outpouring of vitriol that followed. I have never been called so many names before, by people who know nothing about me other than from a short excerpt, taken out of context and given a misleading title, from a book I wrote that is meant to offer people ways to make their lives more meaningful while contributing to a healthier, more just, and more humane world.

The irony was that I’d already written a post for today. It was a short piece with links to several newspaper articles, one of which was the Wall Street Journal’s recent excerpt of Amy Chua’s new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which elicited massive amounts of hate mail itself. I’d read that excerpt, and I, too, felt hostile toward Amy Chua. Now I know better than to judge Amy Chua by an excerpt. I pulled my blog post and wrote this instead.

It can be satisfying to vent our anger, especially from the safety of our computer keyboards, but it is damaging, not just to the recipients of our anger, but to all of us. When we fail to dig into information deeply and explore thoroughly, and when our discourse becomes crass and cruel, we close doors to understanding and learning.

I’ve learned from this experience to be ever more careful about my responses to what I read in the news, and to try, ever more diligently, to be kind.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

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