Is the future really on the Side of Justice?
The future is on the side of justice - at least if you listen to principle 6 of Kingian non-violence. According to this belief, the world tends towards justice. Was Martin Luther King Jr. wrong?
It’s easy to feel like this is just make-believe. Trump’s administration has cut vital aid for those who need it the most and up-ended the world order in mere months, inflation has negatively impacted living standards, inequality is growing, young people are struggling to buy property, the West is failing to meaningfully back Ukraine, war crimes in Palestine are being ignored, we are turning a blind eye to the war in Sudan. The climate and environmental crises are unique in that, for the first time, there appears to be a hard time limit for action. Millions are already suffering, and the worst is to come seems inevitable. Those in the animal rights movement, the social justice movement I am most familiar with and will focus on in this blog post, talk about slowed growth and a crisis of confidence in the movement. It is 89 seconds to midnight. With all of this, it’s hard to see how anyone could believe that the future is on the side of justice.
There are at least three good reasons to believe that the future is on the side of justice. Firstly, there is convincing evidence that the world really does tend towards justice. Secondly, the truth is on our side. Finally, and most importantly, social justice movements rely on hope, not defeatism.
My friends and I at the April 2025 Global Climate Strike in Uppsala, Sweden, representing Plant-Based Universities.
The world really does tend towards justice.
If you speak to many vegans today, they would tell you that veganism’s heyday was in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many food influencers were making the rounds on Instagram and whilst large consumer and business subsidies kept vegan businesses open. Yet if you spoke to many vegans during the pandemic, they would tell you that veganism’s heyday was in 2018, when novel vegan products were seemingly being launched daily and media coverage of vegan activism was strong. Unsurprisingly, if you spoke to many vegans in 2018, they would say that veganism’s heyday was in 2014, when vegan YouTube was strong and vegan festivals were popping up globally.
When you become vegan, much is new and you discover new facts, vegan products and vegan influencers. You may even form personal connections with vegan influencers. The algorithm suddenly understands that you have taken a moral stance against the oppression of sentient beings, and you probably start liking, sharing and commenting on vegan content. Perhaps you even start creating vegan content. You may even succeed in convincing some of your friends to become vegan. And so the echo-chamber is created. Over time, some of your favourite influencers stop making vegan content, stop posting altogether, or, in the worst case, stop being vegan. There are fewer new facts, products and influencers to discover, so you assume the movement has slowed.
Someone’s beliefs are likely to reflect only their own experiences of the vegan movement. However, someone’s experiences are not necessarily representative of wider reality - just because someone knows someone who got robbed does not mean that robberies are on the rise.
It may be true that veganism’s growth has stalled or even reversed in recent years (or it may not be true - it is notoriously difficult to find reliable statistics about the number of vegans or the popularity of vegan products). Nevertheless, this way of thinking is way too limited. Unfortunately, throughout most civilisations across time, the consumption of animal products has not been considered ethically problematic. We should use a more historically appropriate perspective and understand backsliding as minor and temporary. The harm caused to sentient beings by backsliding is not acceptable, but we ought to recognise that a movement’s growth must be evaluated over an extended period of time. No one would deny that our movement has made immense progress in the 50 years since Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation was released.
Metrics like the number of vegans also unfairly exclude others who partially act towards animal liberation. Veganism must be upheld as a moral obligation. Still, given that carnism is currently the standard position, vegans ought to recognise that vegetarians, pescatarians, and reducitarians engage in a partial boycott of animal agriculture even if more education and action are required of them. A parallel can be found in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which supports Palestinian liberation. The selective boycott of a limited number of large corporations complicit in the occupation of Israel is considered a powerful movement, even if not all implicated companies are boycotted, or if the boycotts are only partial. Vegetarians are not the enemy. Everyone can become vegan.
Other movements have faced hurdles. The civil rights movement had to face the Ku Klux Klan, murders (including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.), police brutality, voter suppression, state repression and discriminatory court rulings. Yet, even though the civil rights movement is ongoing, it would be ridiculous not to see its progress. Taking it a step further, the civil rights movement can be understood as having its roots in anti-colonial and anti-slavery movements. It would be silly to say that civil rights haven’t taken a step forward in the last 80 years, let alone the last 300 years. With enough time, the proper mental framework, and enough activist pressure, the world does get better.
The truth is on our side.
The reason that we engage in activism is that we believe there is an injustice we ought to stop. We are personally convinced that the injustice is wrong because of facts. For example, we know that the consumption of animal products leads to the unnecessary suffering of trillions of sentient beings per year. Animal agriculture is a leading cause of environmental harms, including climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, coastal dead zones, freshwater use and soil erosion. We know that veganism can be environmentally friendly, meet all nutritional recommendations, and be cheaper than eating animal products. Those who oppose veganism are uninformed, misinformed or currently benefit from a broken system which we are trying to fix. With sufficient explanation and appropriate incentives, everyone is on our side.
The truth is a mechanism for why the world really does tend towards justice.
Social justice movements rely on hope, not defeatism.
We cannot expect the world to improve if we sit idly by. Inaction is the enemy of progress, but if we do not believe that the world can and will get better, then we have no incentive to act. Fortunately, this is not just a delusion that we ought to accept; the world really is improving.
We have to ask why so many people give up on activism. I think that a key reason is that they don’t experience fast enough progress, which leads to frustrated activists. Frustrated activists often give up. Some of this probably stems from anger at others not changing quickly once they learn the truth about animal oppression. This frustration may be understandable, but it is unhelpful, and these negative emotions are certainly amplified by a purist mindset and infighting. We don’t need to accept the excuses for others’ inaction, but becoming angry at individuals will not get them on our side.
We must recognise that these excuses do exist, and that progress can be painfully slow and non-linear. The only way that we can overcome these excuses is through education. The best way to educate is by keeping the conversation alive everywhere, all the time. We will not keep the conversation alive if we do not think that progress can be made. Victories of social justice movements, including the civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, anti-colonialism, and even the victories within animal rights, could not have been achieved without thousands of people campaigning on various fronts. Just as previous activists did not stop campaigning just because of setbacks, we ought to keep pushing through these hiccups.
Social change is also not binary. This means that small progress is still progress, and total success is not the only success, even if we uphold it as the ultimate end. Likewise, backsliding is not binary. Backsliding would be much worse if there were no one pushing for progress. Where backsliding or stagnation occurs, we should be thankful for all the efforts that ensured that it was not worse.
Just as previous activists before us, we need hope that the world tends towards justice, that truth is on our side, and that our efforts will make the world a better place. The future really is on the side of justice.
