Why Toilet Paper is not the Enemy and other Tales of Ideological Purity

Eco-Activist Derrick Jensen related a story in which somebody confronted him and demanded to know if Jensen used toilet paper. Now Jensen is an activist committed enough that in the book he co-wrote "What we Leave Behind", he relates stories with using his backyard as a toilet. But at the time, Jensen was using a toilet like the rest of us, and he admitted as much. The man then dismissed Jensen whole cloth, smugly asserting that because Jensen wasn't ideologically pure (my words not the man's) that anything Jensen said on the subject could be safely disregarded.

I've seen this again and again.

"You use a car, you can't protest against big oil."

"You eat Corn Flakes, you can't protest against the practises of the big Agricultural Giants in the third world."

"You wear leather. You eat meat. You go to the doctor."

Again and again.

"You voted, what's your problem?"

"You didn't vote, so you don't get to complain."

Hmm.

What this argument tries to do, is to defang opponents in two key ways. First the argument tries to dismiss the objection on the grounds of an alleged hypocrisy, a lack of ideological purity. This would be like telling a drug addict that he has no right to advocate for changes to drug laws, because is an addict. The argument attempts to turn the fact that the advocate is being harmed by and oppressed by something into a mark against them. It is an attack on the victim.

Second, it attempts to disarm the advocate. If Jensen had said that he didn't use toilet paper, there are alternatives after all, the man would almost certainly have moved on to something else. Did Jensen make the clothes he wore? Did he reach the venue in a manufactured vehicle? And the trick here (while obviously still attempting to exclude the advocate on the basis on impurity) serves to expose its own goal. A person who was as ideologically pure as they want us to be, would be helpless to impact the modern world. And this is their trick.

Advocates in the modern world, must move through that world. Missionaries must adapt to the land they are in. In a very real sense, all missionaries must be sinners to reach the people to whom they minister.

Ideological purity is the purview of the hermit and the saint. The missionary must become comfortable with hypocrisy. Because it's hypocrites who change the world.

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