UnchainedTV: How To End Injustice Everywhere!

0:00 Here's your host, Jane Velez Mitchell. We are so excited and honoured to have Dr. Melanie Joy on Unchained TV, the famed social psychologist and best-selling author talking about that new book, How to End Injustice Everywhere. Let's do it. Dr. Joy is an internationally recognised speaker who wows her audiences and has written many other books, including my fave, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, which was a huge bestseller. She's got so many other books under her vegan belt, but today we are talking about her very latest. I love this book, Dr. Joy, How to End Injustice Everywhere.

0:40 I think it's something we all strive for. You said you wrote this book in order to give people who are trying to end injustice everywhere, the information and the tools they need to be more effective. So for example, how does your book help animal activists become more effective? Yeah, well, first of all, thank you, Jane, and thank you for that incredibly warm welcome as always. And I just, I love talking to you and I'm so happy to be here. So yeah, I wrote the book for several reasons. So one, I wanted to shed light on the common structure of all unjust systems, as well as the common mentality, most importantly, that drives these unjust systems.

1:20 So unjust systems like racism, patriarchy, speciesism, carnism, environmental degradation, and so on. So one of the goals of the book is to help advocates from all justice movements, right? Who are working to end any injustice to really understand the interconnectedness of all injustices, because with this understanding, then advocates for humans, animals, or the environment are better able to support each other's efforts rather than to get in the way of each other's efforts. And also to unify across causes. And another goal is to help those who are working for progressive causes like vegans, more effectively advocate to others, to really attract supporters to whatever cause they're working for.

2:10 And this will become clear when we talk a little bit, but a little bit later, but the same mentality that, you know, drives all forms of injustice is the mentality that also drives people away from our cause when we're not advocating effectively. And finally, I wanted to provide practical tools to help advocates reduce infighting and build more resilient and impactful groups and movements for justice. And infighting is, I know we'll have time to talk about this today, but it is bleeding a tremendous amount, a massive amount of resources from the vegan movement. And so, you know, these are just a few of the ways that I feel the book can help us to be more effective at helping to end animal exploitation.

3:00 Yes, and we just asked you to move your mic a little bit away from the camera so we can see you. Oh, can you see that now? There we go, perfect, absolutely perfect. You know, you mentioned the infighting and I have been a follower of yours for so long. And I saw you at the International Animal Rights Conference in Luxembourg way back in 2018 and you spoke about this. So let's play a little clip and then we're gonna talk about that on the other side. How are you? I know it's amazing to be here in a sea of vegans, a room full, a large room completely packed with people working to make the world a better place for animals. Nothing inspires me more.

3:41 So thank you so much. And I love having the opportunity to stand up in front of a group of vegans who are often so committed and working so hard to make the world a better place for animals and being able to share good news like how the vegan movement is growing exponentially all over the world, which it is. The movement is growing all over the world and that's amazing. Today, I'm actually gonna talk about something else that's growing and it's growing within the vegan movement. And this is a virus of sorts. It is a virus that is contagious.

4:22 It is debilitating and it can be potentially even deadly. But in this, there is also good news because when we recognise this virus, then with awareness of this virus, then we're in a position to prevent it from spreading, to reverse its course and ultimately to heal our movement. And the virus I'm talking about today is toxic communication among vegans. Now, before I talk about toxic communication and define it, what exactly it is, I'm gonna just show you a few examples. Can you see this to read yourselves? Is it people in the back, large enough on the screen?

5:04 Okay, I had a lot of examples to choose from, unfortunately, and just chose four of them to give you a sense of some of the problems that we're talking about today. And I'm just curious before moving on, how many of you have witnessed toxic communication? This is vegan to vegan. Okay, I didn't even finish the question and all the hands went up. So you know what I'm talking about. So there you were in 2018, an incredible speech, but yet here we are in 2024, we're still talking about infighting. So tell us a little bit about the problem with infighting and what's behind it.

5:47 Well, that's a big question and a really, really important question. So infighting is, so I was talking then specifically about toxic communication, which is the primary way that infighting is actually manifested or expressed. Infighting, I spent about a year and a half doing a deep dive into all things infighting. And the last chapter of my book, How to End Injustice Everywhere is about infighting. And I really wanted to understand, number one, like what exactly is infighting? How would we even define it? Everybody that I talked to in the movement and people from other justice movements as well were very, very concerned and everybody knew that this was a big problem, but nobody knew what was causing it and how to end it.

6:36 So I wanted to look at the causes of infighting, the consequences, how much financially is this actually costing the movement? How much is it costing the movement in other ways as well? And most importantly, what the tools would be, what are some practical tools that people, vegans in this case, could become like immediately use so that they could become proactive in helping to end the problem. And this is what led me to write the final chapter of How to End Injustice. And it also is what led me to establish infighting.org, which is our new website. And this is a very, very comprehensive website. And basically, infighting is fighting.

7:18 It's no different from what we could call outfighting. It's like any kind of fighting, except it's directed toward members of one's own group. And the very same mentality that causes us to fight others outside of the movement is the mentality that causes us to fight each other within the movement. It's also the mentality that causes us to communicate with people we're reaching out to in a way that drives them away from our movement. And it's the same mentality I write about in the book, How to End Injustice Everywhere, that actually drives injustices and lots and lots of problems in our lives. So, I mean, the good news is that really understanding this mentality and knowing the tools of how to work to shift it can make a tremendous difference, not only in our activism, but also in our movement and also in our personal lives and beyond.

8:10 Well, I have to tell you, I have a whole bunch of questions for you, but so does our audience. We've got callers on hold. Nilo Farr in Dallas, Texas, your question or thought for Dr. Melanie Joy. Hi, it's such a pleasure. One of the major risks in the animal movement is rights versus welfare. It's probable that the welfarists have added gains to big ag under the guise of the humane stamp, e.g. K3 free-range, pasture -raised, organic, grass-raised, certified humane, and animal welfare approved. What are the chances of attracting welfarists to abolitionist animal rights after reading the book?

8:56 Wow, that is quite a question. Take it away. Well, you know, in the book, I do, let's say on the website, I actually address this more because as I said in the book, the final chapter of the book is on infighting, but the entire website is dedicated to infighting. And if we were to basically take all of the pages of the website and turn it into a book, it would be close to the length of the book itself. So there's a lot of information on there. And what I wanna say is that infighting very often takes, it takes various forms, but there are two areas in particular that vegans tend to argue about the most when we're talking about infighting on the movement-wide level, not within teams and organisations, which is another form of infighting, which we can talk about later.

9:41 The focus tends to be on ideology. What does it mean to be vegan? How should we be vegan or define being vegan? And also on the second one is on strategy. How do we reach the goal of creating more vegan world? And so we do see this sort of this argument of what some people refer to as welfare versus abolition, which is not everybody uses that terminology, but as being sort of prominent in the global discussion when people think about infighting. And in my book, I don't talk about, break down the specific nuances and differences between different sort of groups within a movement because the problem is not necessarily, the problem that I'm addressing is not our differences.

10:39 People in all movements have differences because people are different and people have different ideas about how to interpret and practise their own ideology. So Christians and Democrats and Republicans and Marxists and so on, they all have differences in how they understand and interpret their respective ideologies. The problem is not our differences, it's how we relate to and communicate about our differences. We'll never reach a point, in my opinion, where we really have the kind of robust understanding and strategic decision-making that we need if we are not able to reflect on our own opinions and our own choices and communicate about our opinions and choices and our differences in a way that helps deepen our understanding.

11:27 Right now, when we have differences from each other, it can be the whole idea of vegans being different from each other can be very triggering. And the idea, the way that we approach our differences is very often to attack each other and to say, I'm right, you're wrong, and my goal is to get you to be more like I am. And so it's really, really important that we learn how to take a different approach to communication with each other so that we can learn from each other. Absolutely. Well, we've got more calls. Paige in Los Angeles, your question or thought for Dr. Melanie Joy. Hello, thank you for your work. It's been so insightful along the way.

12:08 Absolutely, my goodness. Beyond Beliefs has saved my marriage. Let me just put that in there. How would you say, and I know I need to get the book and read the book, but how would you say then to start, like I'm friends with a lot of folks who are just coming into the animal rights space and are curious and, you know, open, right? And there's many of us that have been around for a while that we're a little bit more closed. How would you say to merge those two mindsets, so to speak? When you say merge those two mindsets, what two mindsets are you referring to? Open and closed.

12:51 I mean, how do you find a middle ground without painting the new energy of new people with maybe some old thought patterns? So you mean, how do you approach, so you have new people coming into the, you're saying, can you, sorry, rephrase your question because I'm not sure exactly what- Well, I find myself not wanting to bring up the old and just stay forward thinking, but I do find myself holding my tongue to say, oh, well, there's been some challenges along the way. In other words, how do I, I guess what I'm saying is how do I stay open without, but also educating?

13:31 Does that make sense? Maybe I'm not- What I'm hearing, Gauge, is that you do a lot of advocacy work and you bring people into the movement. And a lot of times they don't really know all the facts. Like I've worked with people who are vegan but have no idea of the way animals are being tortured. And when you show them the image, they're shocked beyond comprehension. I'm like, yeah, we're seeing this every day. There's sort of this disconnect between people who've been deeply entrenched and those who are just coming to the movement and they have two totally different perspectives. Maybe that kind of summarises what you're getting at. Okay, we'll go with that. So you want to help educate, are you saying you want to help educate them without feeling like you're indoctrinating them?

14:18 Exactly, yes, yes, exactly. And pushing all my agenda on someone to say like, oh, do it this way, or, you know, and just really staying open to letting them find their own processes. And yet we have so much work to do. Right, I mean, there's never any harm in sharing your perspective as long as it's, you know, very clear that you're simply sharing your perspective if they want it. I mean, you can even ask them, you can say you've been in the movement for so much longer, they might be really grateful for your mentorship. And, you know, just coming at the conversation without being open to their choosing to do things a different way.

14:58 You know, as long as you have that openness inside of you, if you approach them and say, oh, you know, I remember when, you know, I tried doing such and such this way and I found that it actually is a lot more effective. And share your experience. If you share your story, right? Oh, I tried this, or I saw somebody do this and it was really effective. Nobody can make your story wrong. And then you're not sort of talking at somebody, but you're sharing your experience. And you can also ask them questions, you know, like, is it helpful for you? How can I help you? How can I support you in this process? I wanna jump in and go to the next caller. We've got an unusual situation here.

15:38 The lines are busy because so many people are calling in to ask questions. That's what I call a high class problem. All right, Michael in Los Angeles, your question or thought for Dr. Melanie Joy. Yes, hi, Dr. Joy. You know, as an animal rights activist, I really struggle with intersectionality because I see humans as the oppressors and animals as the innocent victims. So what advice can you give me to reconcile this conflict that I feel? Thank you. Yeah, wow, that's a really great question. And I really appreciate your openness. I think that, you know, awareness is really key.

16:19 Do you, if you, I think if you have a deep enough understanding of intersection, what's sometimes referred to as intersectionality, you know, or I would say the interconnectedness of oppressions, human and non-human oppression, we can talk about here. I think that that will help you to recognise the ways in which these, what you might see as incompatible actually are fundamentally unified in a sense. I actually wrote a book called The Vegan Matrix and the goal of The Vegan Matrix is a really small, skinny book.

17:00 The goal of The Vegan Matrix was for exactly this purpose, to provide sort of an overview of the interconnectedness of oppressions and why this is important for anybody who is working for animal liberation, you know, particularly through veganism, to be aware of. I'm gonna go to the next caller, Lindsay in Woodland Hills, your question or thought for Dr. Melanie Joy. Well, Dr. Joy, I am so pleased to have come across your work and your two books, The Vegan Matrix and How to End Injustice Everywhere. I can see the second book applying to politics, applying to corporate infrastructure and dynamics and I have so many friends that are telling me, basically everyone feels like there is so much injustice going on in the world.

17:58 And I think that this can be applied in so many ways. That's my one comment. The other thing I wanna say is, I think this is a great tool for people that are just becoming vegan. I'm coaching someone, just a friend that wants to become vegan and I can see this person's coming from a very meat eating background where this is like a whole paradigm shift. And I just think that everybody is different and each person when you're coaching or helping has to be approached in a very special way. And I think this book will be very helpful. I wanna thank you, thank you very so much. Wow. Thank you so much for that. Such praise. We're gonna go to Kush in Texas, your question or thought for Dr. Melanie Joy.

18:44 Kush? Thanks for taking my, yeah, can you hear me? Yeah. Thanks for taking my call. And before I ask my question, I really thank Dr. Melanie Joy for bringing up this new book and I'm a huge fan of her literary work. So thanks again. My question is how can an awareness of the psychological mechanisms that contribute to infighting within social justice movements, including veganism, help activists foster a more inclusive and collaborative environment to collectively address various forms of operation? Yeah, great. Thank you so much. And that's a great question.

19:25 And that's what we're here to talk about tonight, which is really understanding. And I know once we take a few calls, we can start to unpack this and talk about this mentality that drives all forms of injustice. Because when you understand this mentality, what I call this non-relational mentality, it's at the core of all injustices, all forms of injustice. And it's also what drives infighting. And it's also what drives people away from our message. When you understand this mentality and how it gets manifested, and when you have access to the tools to shift this way of thinking and build more effective communications, so much changes.

20:06 You can become really proactive in helping to heal your groups and your movements and much more effectively communicate the vegan message the way that it's intended to be heard. And I think this is the kind of thing, the reason I wrote this book for all activists, not just vegan activists, is because all of us struggle to communicate in a way that really increases the chances that our message will be heard the way that we intend it to be. Okay, we have three more, two more callers, and then we'll cut off the calls. Karen in Venice, California, your question or thought for Dr. Melanie Joy.

20:47 First of all, I'd like to say that I'm looking forward to reading your books. I am really excited about that. My question is, I know there are many different motivations for infighting, but what about the jealousy factor that perhaps one group is, one person is perhaps, they don't even realise it, actually just jealous of perhaps the other group is getting a lot more funding or exposure. Is that one of, I'm just curious, do you think that that is also one of the causes of the infighting? I mean, I wouldn't rule it out because vegans are people and people fight for a whole variety of reasons and people fight each other because they're jealous and they have vendettas.

21:33 So that surely is within the realm of possibility. When I looked at the really key causes of infighting, I had a list of eight of them actually that wasn't in the top eight. And we can talk about maybe the top three or so tonight, but certainly that's possible. And I'm sure that that has happened and does happen in some places. All right, now we're gonna go to Tiffany. Your question or thought for Dr. Melanie Joy. Yes, hi, I'm coming from Los Angeles and I'm fairly new to the movement. I'm very excited to order your books ASAP. And I just had a question.

22:13 I have a lot of friends recommending nonviolent communication courses to me. Do you have any thoughts on that or any ideas about? Yeah, I would say, so nonviolent communication, what I talk about in my books on what I just refer to as effective more generically as effective communication is based on the principles of nonviolent communication. I prefer the work of the people who put down, it's Matthew McCain, his colleagues who created an approach to nonviolent communication that's a little bit more, I think, a little bit more practical and a little bit less, a little bit more practical, easier to apply and applicable to all different circumstances than I believe that the nonviolent communication is.

23:04 There's less, nonviolent communication has a strong focus on needs and personal needs underlying a communication. And I think that, especially if we're talking about advocacy and some of the kinds of conversations that we'll be talking about tonight, learning the principles of effective communication is, I think, going, taking a course in nonviolent communication can never hurt because it's a great tool. And it's not necessarily a necessity if you really want to improve your communication. Okay, don't be mad. We have two more and then we're cutting it off. Absolutely last. So Jose, quick question from Arlington, Texas.

23:44 Hi, can you hear me? Yep. Okay, well, first off, I would just wanna say, thank you, Dr. Mallon-Joy for all your incredible work in the animal rights movement. And my question for you would be, if you had to like write a part two to your new book, what topics would you dive deeper into or like expand upon? Ah, if I had to write a part two, well, I did kind of write a part two, which was infighting. What became the infighting.org website was actually written in the format of what could have become a book. And as I said, it was as long as a book. I decided that it was better to put that in the format of a website.

24:27 So I feel that that is a really, really critical issue and deserves to be, I think for this book, one chapter is fine, but it needed a lot more space than one chapter gave it space for. Honestly, I think it's hit a nerve because we've never had quite this many callers. And I think people are really interested in the subject. Last caller, Jeff in Los Angeles. Calling from Los Angeles, then we'll cut it off. Jeff, your question or thought? Hey, Jane and Dr. Joy, thanks for taking my call. So my question is, I've observed a lot of something related to infighting, but it's about dismissing some protests and some activity in favour of others.

25:15 And it's, in social media, this is so prevalent. Like, oh, well, why did you do that? Who cares about Starbucks charging a few dollars a few cents more, right? And all, I feel all protests, all of the activities that we take on are important. And how do we respond to those things? Right, I mean, it's like I said earlier, it's not our differences, it's not our differences, it's how we relate to our differences that matters. And I mean, it is true that not all strategies are equally powerful and impactful. And we are in a race against time.

25:55 And we do, I think, have a responsibility to do our very best to choose the tactics, activities, and strategies that are gonna have the most impact and to reevaluate those and to learn from others who are giving us feedback about those. So, and we need to be able to talk about this. So sharing feedback, there is a way to share feedback without triggering people. And that's what we'll talk about tonight. Rather than diving into it here, I'll talk about it with, we have some, I'll talk about that with Jane in a couple of minutes. But there are methods and strategies for sharing your opinion in a way that reduces the chances that the other person will get defensive and increases the chances that they'll be open and receptive to your message.

26:43 And this is really what I think all of us need to be learning in the movement. Well, I'd like to end with a positive on this subject. Thank you for all the callers. I was at the UCLA VegFest this past week and it was a collaboration from a lot of groups, a lot of groups, vegan groups, animal rights groups at UCLA got together and pulled off this amazing UCLA VegFest. And as I was talking to one of the organisers, I was so inspired. Let's listen to what she had to say. What we have done this entire week, we have eight events. We put on this VegFest, it was only because we were working together. We combined our numbers, we found strength and unity and solidarity.

27:25 And even though we all have very diverse backgrounds, we all wanna do different things within the animal rights field. We're here today because we're still ultimately working towards the same goal. And that allows us to collaborate and push our passions forward and bring incredible things like a VegFest to a college campus, which is something that not many people can dream of because it just takes so many hands and it's hard to find the time when you're a college student, but we were able to do it. And so you could teach the adults something. Yeah, I mean, I've been in the animal rights space for nearly four years now and I have noticed the infighting. And I think at times there's always different theories of change and people have different backgrounds and reasons why they're here, but ultimately we're all here for the same reason.

28:07 And I think we all wanna see at least a similar angle. And if we can collaborate to make large impacts like this, I think we should at least consider it or explore it because there's no need to make enemies. We're all allies. We're allies with the animals, with humans, with the environment. And so we should be allies with each other as well. When I heard that, I thought I have to play that clip when Dr. Melody Joy is on, your thoughts. Yeah, I mean, and it's so inspiring and I just love seeing clips like that. I love seeing clips like that. And we all know, I mean, most of us are very, very clear. We all have the same goal. We all need to be working together and we can be very clear about what we need to do and what our goal actually is.

28:52 And nevertheless have trouble working together in a way that's more collaborative, in a way that creates connections rather than divisions. And to be fair, I wanna say that I think that people in this movement are, I am so deeply inspired by people in this movement. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning. It's what motivates me to do the work I do. It's seeing the compassion and the commitment and the tirelessness of people who just care so deeply. And a lot of people are doing just really, really great jobs. So I'm not here to talk about how like, oh, we're all cannibalising ourselves, the movement's imploding, we're falling apart.

29:34 I don't feel that that's true at all. I do, however, feel that there's a lot, a lot, a lot of saved resources and increased impact that we could have if we just became a little bit more aware of some of the things that we need to become aware of and built just a few of the tools or built out just a few of the tools that would really help us to reduce our, the infighting that does exist. And when I'm talking about infighting, I wanna just like kind of have a caveat here. And I should, I did say earlier, I was defining infighting earlier and saying it's the same as any kind of fighting except that it's directed against members of one's own group.

30:17 Infighting can be expressed on the movement-wide level or you could see a lot in teams, like working within an organisation, for example, or people even in the same team. I wanna say that infighting is not in disagreeing. It's really important to appreciate that disagreements about various issues, right, from philosophy to strategy to values, they're absolutely essential for creating a diverse and impactful movement. Our differences are our power in many ways. Some of these disagreements are particularly important, like when women or BIPOC and so on challenge imbalances of power in the movement. So we need to be really careful not to refer to healthy challenges that are helping a movement evolve as infighting, or we could be weaponising the concept and silencing critical voices.

31:08 Also, I wanna say that a lot of what we call infighting is actually in bullying. A fight implies that there are two or more sides attacking each other, but often what we see happening is one individual, you know, using their platform or their power to attack another, and this is a form of bullying. And there is, unfortunately, a lot of bullying in our movement. I think it might be useful for listeners if we sort of jump in so that people really understand when I talk about this mentality that drives us to fight each other, so that I can actually explain what this mentality is and what it looks like. Yes, and you talk about non-relational communication.

31:49 How do we know when we're being non -relational in communication? So why don't I talk about this non -relational way of being first, and then we can apply this and talk about communication. So, you know, when we look at, like, the problems in our world, when we look at the great injustices in our world and in our personal lives, you know, just being mistreated, domestic abuse even, or, you know, interpersonal fights that we have that are unjust, you know, toxic workplaces, we can see that these problems share a common denominator, and this common denominator is relational dysfunction. It's dysfunctional ways of relating, right?

32:31 Relating between social groups, between individuals, between humans and animals, you know, between humans and the environment, and so on and so forth. And so a common denominator in changing these problems is what I call building relational literacy. Relational literacy is the understanding of an ability to practise healthy ways of relating. Relational dysfunction is based on a particular mentality. It's the non-relational mentality. And relational literacy is based on the opposite mentality. And I'll explain what these are right now. And I'll explain it by explaining how, you know, this is the foundation of relational literacy, right?

33:12 So relational literacy is made up of a bunch of practises and tools, but they're all founded on this one, what I call the formula for healthy relating, this one key formula for healthy relating. So, did you wanna say something? Yeah, no, I'm listening. I wanna know the formula for healthy relating, for sure. Okay, so I thought you were going to ask me something. So in the formula for any interaction or any relationship, a relationship is really just a series of interactions, right? So when it is healthy, we do two things. We practise integrity and we honour dignity.

33:54 And I'll unpack this so it's really clear. When we practise integrity, that means we basically practise the values, the core moral values of compassion and justice. Another way to say this is we practise respect. We treat the other individual the way that we would want to be treated if we were in their position. When we honour someone's dignity, that means that we think of them, right? And also treat them. We think of them as being worthy of occupying space on the planet and of being treated with respect. They are no less worthy than anyone else of being treated with respect. So when we practise integrity and honour dignity, this leads to two things.

34:37 This leads to us feeling a sense of connection and a sense of security. And just to make this less abstract, I'd like everybody listening to just think of a relationship in your life that you consider a really good relationship. Chances are you trust that that other person practises integrity toward you. You trust that they treat you with respect. And you trust that they honour your dignity. They don't see you as less worthy of being treated with respect or of being here on this planet than they are or anyone else. And you probably feel secure and connected with them. And the non-relational mentality is based on the opposite of this, right?

35:19 Non-relational behaviours, which are a reflection of the non-relational mentality, reflect the opposite. It is when we violate integrity and harm dignity. And this leads to a sense of disconnection and insecurity. So again, think of a relationship in your life, a not good relationship in your life. Maybe it's with somebody you've never met before, like maybe even an online troll. Chances are you believe, you experience this other individual as violating integrity toward you, not treating you with respect and harming your dignity, perceiving you, seeing you as inferior, as less worthy than they are or of others of being treated with respect.

36:03 And you feel disconnected from them and insecure with them, right? So relational mentality is healthy and functional. The non-relational mentality is unhealthy and dysfunctional. It's really, this is the bare, bare bones, right? So any behaviour that you engage in, and this includes the communication. Communication is the primary way we relate. Any behaviour that you engage in that reflects the formula is healthy and relational. And it's going to increase the chances that you feel connected, you learn from each other, and that you feel secure. And any behaviour that reflects the opposite of the formula, that's non-relational, is going to drive divisions and create defensiveness.

36:52 And I'll say one other thing about this, and then we can talk about it probably a little bit further, but I wanna give you a chance to jump in if you want to, Jane. But very often, right, the way that most inviting is expressed through communication, because communication is the primary way we relate, and the vast majority, if not all of that communication, is shaming. The primary way that non-relational or dysfunctional, we can call it toxic communication, is expressed is through shaming. Wow, I'm almost speechless, because I'm processing all of this and trying to apply it to my own life, which I'm sure most of the listeners are doing as well, and the viewers.

37:38 So how do you behave in a relational fashion? What are the tips? Like, sometimes I certainly can catch myself almost mid-sentence or look back and go, oh, I thought at a recent protest against Adidas, somebody was trying to talk to me and I didn't have time, and I was alive. And then I thought about it later and thought, I feel bad. I wish I had at least stopped and talked to him a little bit because he wanted to connect with me, and I just didn't feel going live and being in this very chaotic situation that I could chat with him at that moment. So I was non-relational with him.

38:18 And of course they say there's no mess you can clean up, so I could reach out to him and say, sorry, I couldn't talk to you at the protest. I'd like to find out. But it's like, how do you catch yourself being non-relational and stop it? What exactly did you say to him that was non-relational? You didn't have time to talk to him, right? I didn't talk to him. I basically didn't talk to him. I was live and he was sort of coming up to me and talking, and I basically ignored him. Yeah, well, I mean, in certain circumstances you kind of, if you're alive and you can't talk to him, you can't talk to him. I wouldn't call that necessarily non-relational. But I will say that you do make a really good point, which is, you're saying, I caught myself.

38:59 And one real key here is building, slowing down our communication so that it's intentional, as opposed to reactive. There's a lot of anger in our movement for very good reason. That's another topic that we can discuss later if you want to. There's a lot of dysregulation in our movement, this feeling of just being charged and sort of like your nervous system is out of balance. And when we're dysregulated, when we're angry, it's hard. We all know that we should practise a formula, but doing it is another thing. And so the first step is to slowing down our communication so that we give ourselves the opportunity to get out of autopilot and building in life practises, so that our communication becomes more intentional.

39:50 And we build enough self-awareness so that we're not caught by surprise by ourselves. Most people don't realise it, that they're triggered until after they've said 20 things that they wish they could unhear themselves say and can never really take back. So slowing down your communication is one step. I mean, building relational literacy is the solution to most of the problems we're talking about here. If we build our relational literacy, if people build their relational literacy even by 5% or 10%, that can be absolutely game-changing in life. And this is not rocket science. I have a whole book on it, Getting Relationships Right.

40:33 And on the website, infighting.org, there's a tonne of information and resources on doing this. Asking yourself, as you're communicating, keeping the formula in your mind is also really important. Pausing during a communication to ask yourself, how, check inside, how am I feeling right now? Maybe the other person is not practising the formula toward you. So often we come out of a conversation and we just feel a little smaller than we did when we went into it, a little less good about ourselves. And we can't quite put our finger on why. And very often that's because the other person was communicating with us in a way that was not relational, that was not honouring our dignity, but wasn't obvious enough for us to actually recognise and identify.

41:22 So we just come away feeling like we're somehow not good enough. And pausing during a communication and really to the best of your ability, checking with yourself and ask yourself, am I connected with my empathy right now? Am I connected with my empathy? If you're not connected with your empathy, or especially if you're angry, right? That's a red flag. One of the things I mentioned earlier is that a key driver of infighting is high levels of anger in our movement, and our anger makes sense. I'm not putting it down, right? Anger is the emotional response, the legitimate, healthy, emotional response to witnessing or experiencing injustice.

42:09 And your anger is an indication that your moral compass is working. Your anger gives you the motivation and the sense of power necessary to take proactive measures, action, to protect someone else or yourself. Your anger is important, right? How we relate to our anger, however, determines whether our anger is helpful or toxic and harmful. And a lot of us have not learned how to relate to our anger in a healthy way. And this makes it very hard for us to practise the formula. So when we relate to our anger in a healthy way, we recognise it for what it is.

42:50 It is nothing more and nothing less than an emotion that is occurring inside of us. That's it. It's a data point alerting us to the fact that there might be an injustice that we are witnessing. There may not be. We might just think something is unjust when it actually isn't. That's all it is, is a data point and it's a feeling. Our anger, we relate to our anger in an unhealthy way when a couple of things happen. One is we don't recognise our anger as a feeling, but we become blended with it or like merged with it. We're hijacked by it, essentially, right? It's like, it's not, I'm feeling angry or a part of me is feeling angry, but I am angry.

43:33 I and the anger are one. We're looking at the world through the lens of our anger. And we relate to our anger in an unhealthy way when it has the charge of contempt. As soon as you feel yourself feeling contempt, which is anger plus judgement, you're looking down on someone, right? That is a red flag. That is a red flag that you have very likely lost connection with your empathy. And it's a red flag that there's a good chance you're gonna violate the formula. And there's been a lot of research on this and studies have shown that contempt is the one emotion most likely to destroy any relationship. Wow, just so profound.

44:13 So it's not just what you say, but it's how and where you say it. Has social media amplified this toxicity and this infighting? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as I mentioned a couple of times, right? Communication is the primary way we relate. So communication is the primary way that infighting gets expressed. And the primary way we communicate is on social media. That means that most of us, you know, or I should say most communication is happening online. And here's the thing that's really concerning. Social media is actually structured to, number one, trigger anger.

44:55 It is structured to cause us to feel angry. It is structured to cause us to feel fear. It is structured to reduce our thinking and to cause us to think in more shallow ways. And it is structured to basically dysregulate us. And, you know, I mentioned dysregulation a couple of times and I can talk about this a little bit more fully. I think it could be helpful for listeners to be aware of. Dysregulation is the experience of your nervous system being unbalanced. And so when you are dysregulated, that basic, everybody knows what it feels like to be dysregulated because you're in and out of dysregulation throughout the course of a day, you know? So you just like, for example, you could be regulated, calm, you know, in your happy place, feeling a sense of balance.

45:41 You're not overstimulated. You're not exhausted. You know, you're not worried about what you're about to do. You're just, you're relaxed. Let's say you're like, you're starting to read your emails in the morning. You're sipping your morning coffee or tea. And then this email pops into your inbox and it's like, you know, subject heading, urgent, five caps. And, you know, you open it up and it's a colleague at work that's like, you know, complaining about something going on. Chances are, chances are, you know, you went from regulated to at least slightly dysregulated, right? And social media is structured to dysregulate us. And dysregulated people have less access to their rational faculties.

46:27 So when somebody is dysregulated, you know, you can be wildly dysregulated or mildly dysregulated. Nevertheless, you think less rationally and you're less connected to your empathy. So just imagine, I mean, this is a recipe for fighting and for saying horrible things. So social media is structured to dysregulate us. And we've got people using social media as a forum to communicate about critical social issues that are a matter of life and death. You know, people can't even talk on social media without fighting each other about like, what birthday present to buy their nephew. Yeah, you know, Paige had a question that I thought was great.

47:07 And it was, how do we stay calm at protests? And it relates to another question I have, which is, we aspire to treat everybody with dignity, but people who abuse animals to make money almost never respond to appeals to conscience. Almost invariably, because it always starts with polite letters and videos. This is what you're doing. Almost invariably, it takes massive disruptions and public humiliation of those entities and the CEOs and the people who are making these decisions before they capitulate. So how do you dovetail that with treating everybody with dignity? I mean, I don't think that it's either or.

47:47 I don't think that you have to choose between exposing wrongdoing and shaming people. I think what you can do, I mean, shaming tactics are highly problematic for a variety of different reasons. I think what we can do and what people have done, you know, historically, in at least in nonviolent social change protests and movements is to hold people accountable, right? You highlight the behaviour and the damage that they've done. You can completely expose someone's wrongdoings. You can make fully public the harm that they've caused without hurling insults at them and their families in the process.

48:29 I mean, once we cross the line of not simply exposing the behaviours, I mean, we don't need to embellish, we don't need to exaggerate. The good and the horrible news about the work that we're doing is that we do not need to exaggerate any of it. It's as bad as it gets. All we need to do is to expose the truth. So we expose the truth and we expose the behaviours without hurling insults at and degrading the people who are engaging the behaviours. We don't need to do that. Okay, so no more saying, how do you sleep at night? That's one of my favourites. I mean, I don't even know that that would be necessarily degrading, to be honest, that kind of a statement.

49:14 But I think we can say, I mean, I have to think about that statement, I hadn't thought it through. But anyway, I think we can choose ways, we can expose the truth without taking that extra step of like causing unnecessary, like making ourselves look bad in the process, right? Like doing unnecessary damage in the process. What we need to do is expose the truth. Well, your book and your message is so fascinating. And I think one of the core questions is, how is it, or maybe talk about how people can be very compassionate toward animals, toward the planet, toward helping people get healthy and live a healthy life by going vegan.

49:57 And yet in their interpersonal lives, they do not have compassion or they're stunted in their compassion. I mean, we all compartmentalise. People have a remarkable ability to compartmentalise. You've got great humanitarians doing incredible work in the world who are eating animals in the process. And you've got vegans who are like so committed to compassion that are treating other human beings in ways that they don't even believe in themselves. So everybody compartmentalises, even just like the roles that we play and how we think of ourselves in the roles and the beliefs we have about ourselves in those roles, drive how we treat people.

50:38 People can be lovely human beings to be around until you're a flight attendant serving them. And then suddenly they're not. So I think we just need to accept ourselves and realise the perfect is the enemy of the good. We have all been born into an incredibly relationally dysfunctional mess of a world. All of us have inherited a lot of psychological messiness that we can't fully undo. And we are all complicated, messy, contradictory beings who are ideally just striving to be more consistent in how we practise our values. That's really the goal.

51:19 Strive toward greater consistency and try to build awareness of yourself. Practise the form. The beauty of the formula is that it's not limited by species, it's not limited by situation. When you recognise the formula, whatever situation you're in, you can check in with yourself and ask yourself, am I practising the formula in this particular situation toward this particular group of people or individuals or individual? So give us the formula. We'll have a couple of minutes left. One more time so it really drills into our heads. Treat, why don't we all make it really simple. Treat others the way that you would wish to be treated. The golden rule, honour their and honour their dignity.

52:01 See others as no less worthy, no matter who they are or what they have done in the world, no less worthy of being treated with respect than you are. And I know you wanna, you might wanna ask me about violent criminals and we can totally talk about that. That does not, what I'm talking about here is not that we should not hold people accountable. What I'm talking about here is how we hold people accountable. Yeah, well, that was a provocative question that I had because in the book you say, we should apply this to all people and includes criminals. And I'm thinking, well, that's easy theoretically, but in the real world, Hitler, let's just throw out an example.

52:46 Well, like I said, I'm not talking about not holding people accountable, but we can hold them accountable while honouring their dignity in the process. I mean, think of it this way. Had you Jane or I been born into the body and brain of Hitler? I'll just talk about myself. If I had been born into the body and brain of Hitler, if I had been raised by exactly the way Hitler was and had every experience that Hitler had, I mean, do you really think that I would be any different than he was? Of course not. Like expecting anyone to be different from who and how they are is like expecting a tree that's been rained on not to be wet.

53:27 None of us is anything more nor less than the hard wiring, the biology that we came in here with in every single experience that we've had in our lives. So does this mean we don't hold people accountable? Of course not. We need to hold people accountable. We need to protect others from being harmed. We don't have to be bullies in the process. We can hold people accountable without thinking you lousy less than being. And instead think you were born into the brain and body that you were born in. You had the experiences that you had and here you sit. And you're going to prison or and you're paying the price for this.

54:08 It's a matter of holding people accountable behaviourally, protecting others from them, for example, and not in our minds demonising them and turning them into putting ourselves on a pedestal and thinking that we are somehow more like ethical or better beings than they are. So I think this is so powerful because it really boils down to our entire society is a hierarchical and this one is important and this one's less important and this one's less important. And then animals are at the very bottom. And once we get rid of that mindset, then animals can experience rights, hopefully.

54:50 Final thoughts. Yeah, I mean, and you're right. If you look at like the core belief driving all different systems of injustice from racism to patriarchy to speciesism and carnism and this same belief driving all behaviours that are unjust. This is the belief in this myth, this myth and a hierarchy of moral worth that some individuals are more worthy of being treated with respect than others. And we all are who we are. So I think it's really important for us to, again, I think our movement has done such great work and is doing such great work and the people in this movement deeply inspire me.

55:33 And I just hope that this work can help people who are doing great work, do what they're doing and find more joy, more empowerment and more effectiveness in the process. Wow. We have been talking to Dr. Melanie Joy, an absolute inspiration. I have learned so much. Everybody commenting saying they have learned so much. So what I would urge you to do is please get her latest book, which is How to End Injustice Everywhere. It is absolutely fantastic. I happen to have it in hard copy on Kindle and Audible. So I'm completely immersing myself in this absolutely crucial message for all vegans.

56:18 And of course, check out her amazing bestseller, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows. What an incredible book. So many books that Dr. Joy has written. These are just some of them. You can check them all out. Just want to say thank you so much for joining us live from Berlin, Germany. Thank you, Jane. You're so inspiring. I love talking to you. Thank you so much. And I want to just shout out also visit infighting.org. Absolutely. Visit infighting.org. We've got it right up here. Everybody, and order those books now. See you next time here on Unchained TV. Thank you.