What Is Self-Protective Moral Abandonment?

Self-protective moral abandonment is when someone abandons doing the right thing to protect their self-interests. It is when someone chooses not to do what they know is right because it would be too inconvenient or costly for their own interests.

The disturbing thing about this behavior, and what sets it apart from other immoral behavior, is that the individual feels justified in abandoning doing what is right because they deem it as having too high of a personal cost and therefore they feel justified in prioritizing their own interests. They feel justified and shameless after committing immoral behavior, and that is extremely dangerous.

Common examples of self-protective moral abandonment:

• When someone chooses not to become vegan because they deem it as having too high of a social cost to go against what everyone else is doing (e.g. not wanting to jeopardize relationships with non-vegan friends or family, not wanting to be disrespected, mocked, or ostracized)

• When a vegan chooses not to advocate for animals and veganism because they don’t want to face social pushback or ostracization (e.g. not wanting to jeopardize relationships, an influencer/public figure not wanting to push away non-vegans and lose popularity and income)

• When spiritual people are unwilling to question their spiritual teachers for failing to hold nonviolence toward animals as a moral imperative, because they are unwilling to risk being disappointed and betrayed, being pushed to distance themselves from those individuals, and losing all of the benefits they gain from them (e.g. guidance and protection that they rely on)

• When spiritual teachers avoid acknowledging the severity of humanity’s violence against animals and the moral imperative of veganism, because they know it would push most people away and they would no longer be widely supported or followed as a spiritual teacher

Self-protective moral abandonment goes hand in hand with ‘diffusion of responsibility’ and the bystander effect. A large part of what allows someone to feel justified in abandoning doing the right thing is the mentality of “This would be really inconvenient, why should I have to be the one to carry this burden? I’ll let somebody else handle it.” When billions of people think like this, not nearly enough people do the right thing, and the result is disaster.

The extremely damaging effect of this behavior can not be overstated. When abandoning morality to protect your self-interests is commonplace and accepted, this leads to the normalization of selfish, immoral, and evil behavior; this causes the lines between good and evil to be blurred, and this causes corruption to spread like wildfire.

We can see this playing out now, with tens of billions of animals being abused and murdered every year, and even spiritual teachers—the ones who are supposed to stand for love, truth, and justice—are not sounding the alarm. Rather, they are remaining dispassionate toward the suffering of animals, turning a blind eye, and avoiding taking a firm, passionate stance on veganism—to protect their social position (their status as a spiritual teacher, source of connection and fulfillment, source of income). Meanwhile, everyone is justifying not changing because it’s too inconvenient to go against the crowd. And if you step out of this madness and demand the end to violence against animals now, you are ostracized. You are pushed to the side, like a failed offspring. Silently and casually. Ostensibly lovely people will cut you off and not care if you live or die. You are removed from the picture, all for refusing to abandon billions of animals being tortured and murdered. And they are shameless. This is the unbelievably backwards result of a collective of souls who normalizes abandoning doing what is right—and what could be more right than sticking up for the most innocent and vulnerable beings—because it’s too inconvenient.

People talk about love and kindness. They think of themselves as good people. But their actions say different. The truth is that as soon as you threaten people’s comfort and stability, their morality goes out the window. As soon as you ask people to actually do something difficult for the sake of doing the right thing, you see how morally compromised they are.