The Straw and the Camel’s back
I recently had a colleague complain that oat milk was a ‘luxury’ that the work coffee machines didn’t need. And this tiny little comment kind of broke me. I feel like I am so careful not to judge or lecture everyone around me for their insanely massive moral failings around animal welfare, or donating—yet apparently people can’t even just let me have my suffering-free milk in peace.
Which prompted me to re-evaluate something I hadn’t really thought about in a long time—being EA (or EA-adjacent or however people wanna identify) is just really hard sometimes. I used to be more actively advocatey about things, but it can be exhausting, and at some point I just kinda stopped. But now I feel very motivated to figure out how to start being a lil more vocal again, because it turns out that pretending like I don’t have strong opinions on these things is also exhausting!
Which is all to get to the point of: there are a lot of posts on here about EA being hard, and how to talk about EA, and reading those posts helps get a feeling of support but knowing this doesn’t magically make it all easier. I am just really grateful for this awesome community, and want to just normalise a bit more to share when it gets hard because thats ok. We are doing a hard thing.
(Note: while this one colleague clearly pushed my buttons, further reflection got me very happy that clearly a bunch of other people had been advocating to get the oat milk at LUMC and I’m very happy they exist and that they succeeded)
Jmd
But what great photos!!!
So glad Jan had some bear cuddles for support, Swapcard is draining!
Me too!!! I’ve been using it for a few weeks now (pronoucing it Co-Jee) and it works, I am trying to make it happen!
I agree I think EA connects are valuable and could be more so if we treated them in this way. Personally—I would probably have put more effort into EA connect this year if it hadn’t been the weekend before EAGx Amsterdam… I felt a lil EA overloaded. Though with the number of EAGx events these days I’m not sure how feasible it even is to plan the EA Connect event NOT close to at least some EAGx somewhere!
I think it was more having the arguments put forth to me by people I thought of as more rational (my sister tends towards the dramatic in general*, I think that made it easier to avoid her arguments). But yeah having numbers and data definitely helped, and adding in the climate change POV rather than solely focussing on the more confronting animal welfare aspects. Its like, that got me over the cognitive dissonce and then once on the other side all the animal welfare arguments could suddenly sink in.
*not to be too harsh to my sister, we were also just teenagers and sisters are annoying haha, but once we were older, for actually implementing the diet in my life, she was very very helpful :)
As someone who ignored the pleas of my vegan sister for many many years, I have been on the gaslighting side I guess (and now feel awful about it). Then I discovered EA and became vegan, so I think there is something here about how different arguments work for different people. But, I do still really find it confusing the most people don’t care about animal suffering—I am now so totally 110% convinced, and I don’t even like animals very much, so how do animals lovers still eat meat???
This was so nice to read. I just reached 10y anniversary for my GWWC pledge (Eeeeee!) and have also been thinking a bit about whether it feels different now or anything. I didn’t have anything so nice as an email thread to go back to, so its very easy to say “oh yeah this is totally where I would have expected to be” but I honestly do not actually recall what 2014 Jo expected of herself haha.
Exciting!!! Wish I could come back and join you guys :)
“oh these young EA whippersnappers, expecting so much!” is exactly how I feel sometimes! Thank you so much for writing this post, its brilliant (Read also as ‘you’ are brilliant) :)
I was thinking along these same lines but for skin-microbiota… we are lagging behind understanding this compared to gut-microbiota but it seems like the diversity is pretty important to our overall health? Its probably only a risk worth considering for the “install it in all the offices” rather than against using far-UVC in pandemic situations, but I guess research would be needed to assess the risks for skin disorders, or whatever else these microbiota might be important for?
I really agree that people (not just women) having negative experiences like this (not just in EA) is something that everyone needs to take more action on—and many of the action points in this post seem important. But I never know how to react emotionally to posts that imply this as a problem of all EA circles, I feel really strongly a need to stand up for and support of all the people I have met and experiences I have had over the last 8 years that have made me feel safe, respected, welcomed, intelligent, confident, capable. Some EA circles are genuinely wonderful places to be, and if I were given the choice between the room of EAs and the room of any other men, I would hands down take the EA room every time.
Thanks for writing this Marius :), I am feeling a little bit motivated to see how these things would apply to having conversations with academics about biorisks. I suspect that many of your points will hold true—not being alarmist, focusing on technical aspects, higher-ups are more dismissive, and that I will learn lots of new things or at least get better at talking about this :)
Thank you so much for writing and sharing this Michelle. It is super nice to have it highlighted that EA is super freaking hard sometimes, even for people right in the thick of it surrounded by like-minds!
Personally, I kinda struggle with the fact that I don’t always agree all the way on some of the long-termism stuffs, and sometimes I feel just so darn confused that everyone else just seems to be on board and do it so easily. But these techniques, and the reminder that there is a whole community of people to reach out to, all with such a spectrum of beliefs and values and difficulties, is exactly what I needed to read today!
I second the ‘not feeling smart enough to contribute’ - I am also 6yrs old and still get overwhelmed by the incredibly thinkers, the jargon, and the philosophical arguments that become so abstract my head hurts. I was pretty happy being a ‘generally knowledgeable cheerleader’, but now I am without a local group, so I guess I’ll let your leap inspire me and try grow a bit myself.
I have changed how I interact with EA since moving countries and starting my PhD. I think mostly because I am no longer in a place with a local group (having a role on local committees was my most direct involvement before), but my move also exactly coincided with Covid lockdown—so, suddenly those normal things stop existing anyways and life online was bigger, which turned out to be pretty great for me (I have some small amount of guilt at being happy about that, but at the moment I think we are allowed to take those silver linings where we can find them!). I have been engaged with EAN through online meetups/email, but also attending virtual events more globally, and volunteering for whatever I can get my hands on (that still fits within the time and brain space I have to spare). This has got me interacting with EA in ways I hadn’t before; meeting a wider spectrum of people, reading resources more (including this forum), trying more actively to keep up with the ways the movement is changing. I guess I don’t feel like I have become more deeply involved exactly, but something about my involvement has become reinforced, it’s survived enough shifts, in my life and in EA, that I feel more confident I am staying here for the long haul.
I disagree that ‘giving cause it feels good’ isn’t an EA reason to give. It’s about the head and the heart right? I give because it feels good, and it feels even better knowing that where you give is high impact and if giving makes you feel good then that’s encouraging to others as well :) And I also started giving when I had my student loan to pay off—maybe if my loan was bigger I would have thought about starting with smaller donations like with The Life You Can Save, but my main motivation was that if the debt is an excuse now, then buying a house will be an excuse later, and then all the other life excuses and I will never do it. So I leapt. People live really well on less than I did even with the donations and the loan repayments, it does mean thinking more about ‘fun’ activities’ though I found that I could still do all those things and where I spent less was on ‘stuff’ - things you buy but don’t really need anyways.
My quick thoughts—Do you know if Coefficient giving GHW or Biosec teams have some sort of reactive capacity to look into these things? My intuitive assumption is yes? (Though honestly maybe this got lost because hiring so many new people as they have been doing is a lot of work in itself)