I’ve recently been coming across content that on some level discuss how some aspect ‘X’ is / shoud be different in the pro-animal movement.
One example is the disproportionate amount of focus that goes into consumer activism over institutional change. I’m not an expert in social movements, nor have I spent much active time studying them, but the sense I get is that other social movements like ending slavery, and feminism have involved focusing on institutional and scalable changes. In this example, X = type of change we should focus on.
In this post, I would say X = the goal of the pro-animal movement.
In both instances, X is different for the pro-animal movement than in other forms of social movements.
I wholeheartedly acknowledge that nonhuman animal oppression is a beast that none other parallels so there ought to be some differences in the way we approach bringing about change in this area. But I inevitably also wonder if there is some level of embedded speciesism involved when we differentiate nonhuman animal oppression from human-specific oppressions.
Thanks for the great post! I was aware of the power of exponential growth in other movements/spaces but never thought to apply it to the pro-animal movement, so that was an ‘aha’ moment for me.
I’m curious though—in what way do you think the concept of exponential growth might not apply to the pro animal movement? The examples you’ve given in the post make it tempting to call the rate of growth exponential, but I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on scenarios where this might not be true.