It�s scary that the author penned this in 1907 and we�re still a barbaric,
narcissistic parasite of a species�.
http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/moral-obligation-is-as-extensive-as-the-power-to-feel/
Thank you, Allison Banville for bringing this to my attention�.
Please read, cross-post, and disseminate widely�.
�Moral obligation is as
extensive as the power to feel�
�Man�s treatment of his fellow-men, and especially his conduct toward the
forms of life differing anatomically from him, are such as to stamp him as being
anything but an ideal animal�anywhere outside the psychologies of brigands, at
any rate.�
The New Ethics
By J. Howard Moore
London, 1907
The inhabitants of the earth are bound to each other by the ties and
obligations of a common kinship. Man is simply one of a series of sentients,
differing in degree, but not in kind, from the beings below, above, and around
him. The Great Law�ACT TOWARD OTHERS AS YOU WOULD ACT TOWARD A PART OF YOUR OWN
SELF�is a law not applicable to Aryans only, but to all men; and not to men
only, but to all beings. There is the same obligation to act toward a German, a
Japanese, or a Filipino, as one acts toward a part of his own organism, as there
is to act in this way toward Americans or Englishmen; and, furthermore, there is
the same reason for acting in this manner toward horses, cats, dogs, birds,
fishes, as there is in acting so toward men. Restricting the application of this
all-inclusive injunction to the human species is a practice dictated solely by
human selfishness and provincialism. The restriction is made, not because we are
logical, but because we are diminutive.
How would it be for some other distinct group of the inhabitants of a
world, to cut themselves off ethically from the rest, observing in their conduct
toward each other THE GREAT LAW of social propriety, but ignoring this law in
their conduct toward others, and acting toward all others, although these others
were like them in every essential respect, as if they were without any of the
ordinary rights and sensibilities of a common consciousness? Is it probable that
men would have any difficulty in seeing clearly the untenableness of such an
attitude? And yet it would be just as logical for any other group of animals to
do this as it is for men to do it. The philosophies of this world have all been
framed by, and from the standpoint of, a single species, and they are still
managed and maintained in the interests of this species. What insects! The
breadth of human sympathy and understanding is the catholicity of katydids who
never see beyond the hedgerows that bound the little meadow in which they sing
their lives away.
Moral practice and understanding are everywhere tribal and antagonistic.
They have been inherited, not reasoned out. They have been handed along to us,
not generated by us. They have come about as a result of the militant condition
of things in the midst of which and in conformity with which life has been
developed on the earth.
The ideal conception of social obligation is bigger than family and
friends, bigger than the city and state in which one happens to be born and
raised, bigger than species, bigger even than the particular world of which one
is a tenant. There are no aliens anywhere, not even in hell, to the being who is
as big morally as he ought to be�only brothers. The universal heart goes out in
tenderness beyond all boundaries of form and color and architecture and accident
of birth�into every place where quivers a living soul. The Great Law is for the
healing and consolation of all. Moral obligation is as extensive as the power to
feel. [�]
Man has defined himself as the �paragon of creation.�
This is an overestimate. Man is no more a model animal than the universe is a
model universe. They are both of them very immodel, as every one must know who
has powers of understanding exceeding those of the infant.
Man is a bigot, and in his conception of himself and in his estimate of
the relative importance of himself and others, he is true to the weaknesses of
his kind. But, omitting altogether the question of whether man is the
masterpiece of the universe or not, we may affirm with perfect confidence, and
without fear of contradiction, that if man is the paragon of the universe, the
universe has no cause for dry eyes.
Man�s treatment of his fellow-men, and
especially his conduct toward the forms of life differing anatomically from him,
are such as to stamp him as being anything but an ideal animal�anywhere outside
the psychologies of brigands, at any rate.
Human beings have been sufficiently enterprising and sufficiently devoted
to each other to evolve into the master of the earth; but instead of recognizing
their responsibilities and converting themselves into preceptors for the
vanquished races, as an ideal race would have done, they have become the
butchers of the universe. Instead of becoming the models and schoolmasters of
the world in which they have outstripped, and striving to improve the faulty
natures, and guide the wayward feet of those by means of whom they have been
hoisted into distinction, they have become colossal pedants, proclaiming
themselves the pets and specials of creation, and teaching each other that other
races are mere things to furnish pasture and pastime for them. They preach that
it is the ideal relation of associated beings for each to act toward the others
in the way in which he himself would like to have others act toward him. This
ideal of social rectitude was discovered two or three thousand years ago, and
has been taught by the sages of the species ever since. But in the application
of this rule human beings restrict it hypocritically to the members of their own
species. No nonhuman is innocent enough, or is sufficiently sensitive,
intelligent, or beautiful, to be exempt from the most frightful wrongs, if by
these wrongs human comfort, curiosity, or pastime are in any way whatever
catered to. Our own happiness, and that of our species, are assumed to be so
pre-eminent that we sacrifice without hesitancy the most sacred interests of
others, in order that our own may be carefully provided for. Even for a tooth or
a feather to wear on human vanity, forests are silenced and communities littered
with the dead and dying. Beautiful beings that fill the groves with song and
juvenility are compelled to sprawl lifeless and disheveled on the heads of
unconscionable sillies. [�]
Look at the scenes to be met with in our great cities! They are
sufficient to horrify any being susceptible enough to the sufferings of others
to be rated as one-fifth civilized. An army of butchers standing in blood
ankle-deep and plunging great knives into writhing, shrieking living beings;
helpless swine swinging by their hinders with their blood gushing from their
slashed jugulars; unsuspecting oxen with trustful eyes looking up at the deadly
pole-ax, and a moment later lying aquiver under its relentless thud; an
atmosphere in perpetual churn with the groans and screams of the dying; streets
thronged with unprocessioned funerals; dead bodies dangling from sale hooks or
sprawling on chopping blocks; men and women going about praying and preaching,
and sitting down two or three times a day and pouncing on the uncoffined remains
of some poor creature cut down for them by the callous hands of hired
cutthroats�such are the sights in all our streets and stockyards, and such are
the crimes inflicted day after day by Christian cannibals on the defenseless
dumb ones of this world.
Oh this killing, killing, killing�this awful,
never-stopping, never-ending, worldwide butchery! What a world! �Ideal�?�and
�perfect�?�and �all-wise�? Certainly�to tigers, and highwaymen, and people who
are sound asleep; but to everybody else it is simply monstrous.
We are
nothing but a lot of ferocious humbugs�that is the long and the short of
it�leading lives all the way from a tenth to two-thirds decent in our conduct
towards our fellow men, but almost absolutely savage in our treatment of
not-men. A being who can look without weeping on the heart-rending facts that
fill the cities of our so-called civilization has a psychology granitic enough
to gaze unmoved on a hellful of roasting souls.
The Chicago stockyards alone grind up annually 4,500,000 sheep, 5,500,000
cattle, 450,000 calves, and 10,000,000 hogs-20,500,000 living beings a year, or
an average of over 100 a minute during every ten-hour working day!
What a mill! Just think of it! You who find it hard to realize vividly,
and who stand blank and unconcerned in the presence of horrors that ought to
make your very viscera crawl, and the very stones at your feet rise up, just
remember, as you go about your daily duties, wherever you are and whatever you
may be doing, that every time the clock strikes, 6,500 innocent, intelligent,
and highly sensitive beings have had their heads smashed with an axe, and their
throats lunged through, and have struggled, and shuddered, and seen the world
vanish from their eyes, here in these godless charnels. And remember, too, that
this appalling carnage goes on, and on, and on, day after day, month after
month, year after year.
�What for�? Why, bless your life! In order that men and women may pray
for mercy, and preach the Golden Rule, and deplore injustice, with their bellies
full of blood!
I would like to retain respect for the religion of my boyhood, but when I
see that religion look with indifference, and even levity, upon a hemorrhage
wide as the continents, and horrible even to �heathens��not only wink at it, but
apologize for it, and even belittle those few emancipated souls who are trying
to stop it�I can but feel that such a faith has no just claims on the allegiance
of thinking men. �Does it not shame you,� cried �pagan� Plutarch away in the
dawning, �to mingle blood and murder with Nature�s beneficent fruits? Other
carnivora you call savage and ferocious�lions, tigers, and serpents�yet you
yourselves come behind them in no species of barbarity.� Men and women who hold
shares in the responsibility for the common crimes of our civilization would do
better to stop giving money for missionaries and begin on themselves; for they
commit every day of their lives greater crimes and more of them than the
so-called heathens they are trying to �convert� ever dream of. The gods pity
this world if we have got to go on for ever as we have in the past�a globeful of
lip-virtuous felons!
It has been claimed that man cannot be a consistent humanitarian, because
it is necessary for him to exploit others in various ways in order to provide
for his own needs and desires.
This is the most common objection. � It is the most common because it is
the most selfish. So prominent is egoism in human psychology, and in the
philosophies that have sprung from that psychology, that the most natural and
convincing objections to any proposition are those prompted by and appealing to
the selfish instincts. The question that arises in the mind of the ordinary man
when a change in the arrangements of the world is suggested to him is not what
will be the effect of the change on the universe, but what will be its effect on
him�on that remarkable atom of the universe so zealously partitioned off from
the rest of his own skin. Man has been so long accustomed to the undisputed
privilege of spoliation, and has so long and so brilliantly imagined himself to
be all there is in the world, that a proposition denying this privilege, however
fair the proposition may be from an impartial point of view, is promptly
classified as the allegation of a zany, and is supposed to be conclusively
disposed of when it is shown to be capable of interfering with human convenience
or pleasure.
Watch the video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4 and go vegan. Do it for
your health, for nonhuman animals and for the Earth!
