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ishkah · 3 years

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Beyond Compassion and Humanity; Justice for Non-human Animals by Martha Nussbaum

This is a great essay vegans can draw on for a virtue ethics answer to the question of why do we hold the principle that it's almost always wrong to breed sentient life into captivity?

So for myself and this strain of virtue ethicists it would be because you know you could leave room for other animals to enjoy happy flourishing, being able to express all their capabilities in wild habitat.

Therefore not wanting to parasitically take away life with meaning for low-order pleasure in our hierarchy of needs which we can find elsewhere.

The distinction between this philosophy and consequentialism would simply be if you wished to act this way because fundimentally it’s about who you want to be and who you want to let animal be:

It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain [and interests], but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is. . .[and] that the dignity of living organisms not be violated.

Counter-intuitively the author does still cling to a hedonistic view of the right to take life, but hopefully not for much longer:

If animals were really killed in a painless fashion, after a healthy and free-ranging life, what then? Killings of extremely young animals would still be problematic, but it seems unclear that the balance of considerations supports a complete ban on killings for food.

BEYOND “COMPASSION AND HUMANITY”

Justice for Non-human Animals

MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM

Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals… The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the forms of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case. I shall not attempt to explain these considered beliefs. They are outside the scope of the theory of justice, and it does not seem possible to extend the contract doctrine so as to include them in a natural way.

—JOHN RAWLS, A Theory of Justice

In conclusion, we hold that circus animals…are housed in cramped cages, subjected to fear, hunger, pain, not to mention the undignified way of life they have to live, with no respite and the impugned notification has been issued in conformity with the…values of human life, [and] philosophy of the Constitution… Though not homo-sapiens [sic], they are also beings entitled to dignified existence and humane treatment sans cruelty and torture… Therefore, it is not only our fundamental duty to show compassion to our animal friends, but also to recognise and protect their rights…If humans are entitled to fundamental rights, why not animals?

—NAIR V. UNION OF INDIA, Kerala High Court, June 2000

“BEINGS ENTITLED TO DIGNIFIED EXISTENCE”

In 55 B.C. the Roman leader Pompey staged a combat between humans and elephants. Surrounded in the arena, the animals perceived that they had no hope of escape. According to Pliny, they then ―entreated the crowd, trying to win their compassion with indescribable gestures, bewailing their plight with a sort of lamentation.‖ The audience, moved to pity and anger by their plight, rose to curse Pompey, feeling, writes Cicero, that the elephants had a relation of commonality (societas) with the human race. [1]

We humans share a world and its scarce resources with other intelligent creatures. These creatures are capable of dignified existence, as the Kerala High Court says. It is difficult to know precisely what we mean by that phrase, but it is rather clear what it does not mean: the conditions of the circus animals in the case, squeezed into cramped, filthy cages, starved, terrorized, and beaten, given only the minimal care that would make them presentable in the ring the following day. The fact that humans act in ways that deny animals a dignified existence appears to be an issue of justice, and an urgent one, although we shall have to say more to those who would deny this claim. There is no obvious reason why notions of basic justice, entitlement, and law cannot be extended across the species barrier, as the Indian court boldly does.

Before we can perform this extension with any hope of success, however, we need to get clear about what theoretical approach is likely to prove most adequate. I shall argue that the capabilities approach as I have developed it—an approach to issues of basic justice and entitlement and to the making of fundamental political principles [2] —provides better theoretical guidance in this area than that supplied by contractarian and utilitarian approaches to the question of animal entitlements, because it is capable of recognizing a wide range of types of animal dignity, and of corresponding needs for flourishing.

KANTIAN CONTRACTARIANISM: INDIRECT DUTIES, DUTIES OF COMPASSION

Kant’s own view about animals is very unpromising. He argues that all duties to animals are merely indirect duties to humanity, in that (as he believes) cruel or kind treatment of animals strengthens tendencies to behave in similar fashion to humans. Thus he rests the case for decent treatment of animals on a fragile empirical claim about psychology. He cannot conceive that beings who (in his view) lack self-consciousness and the capacity for moral reciprocity could possibly be objects of moral duty. More generally, he cannot see that such a being can have dignity, an intrinsic worth.

One may, however, be a contractarian—and indeed, in some sense a Kantian— without espousing these narrow views. John Rawls insists that we have direct moral duties to animals, which he calls ―duties of compassion and humanity. [3] But for Rawls these are not issues of justice, and he is explicit that the contract doctrine cannot be extended to deal with these issues, because animals lack those properties of human beings ―in virtue of which they are to be treated in accordance with the principles of justice‖ (TJ 504). Only moral persons, defined with reference to the ―two moral powers,‖ are subjects of justice.

To some extent, Rawls is led to this conclusion by his Kantian conception of the person, which places great emphasis on rationality and the capacity for moral choice. But it is likely that the very structure of his contractarianism would require such a conclusion, even in the absence of that heavy commitment to rationality. The whole idea of a bargain or contract involving both humans and non-human animals is fantastic, suggesting no clear scenario that would assist our thinking. Although Rawls’s Original Position, like the state of nature in earlier contractarian theories, [4] is not supposed to be an actual historical situation, it is supposed to be a coherent fiction that can help us think well. This means that it has to have realism, at least, concerning the powers and needs of the parties and their basic circumstances. There is no comparable fiction about our decision to make a deal with other animals that would be similarly coherent and helpful. Although we share a world of scarce resources with animals, and although there is in a sense a state of rivalry among species that is comparable to the rivalry in the state of nature, the asymmetry of power between humans and non-human animals is too great to imagine the bargain as a real bargain. Nor can we imagine that the bargain would actually be for mutual advantage, for if we want to protect ourselves from the incursions of wild animals, we can just kill them, as we do. Thus, the Rawlsian condition that no one party to the contract is strong enough to dominate or kill all the others is not met. Thus Rawls’s omission of animals from the theory of justice is deeply woven into the very idea of grounding principles of justice on a bargain struck for mutual advantage (on fair terms) out of a situation of rough equality.

To put it another way, all contractualist views conflate two questions, which might have been kept distinct: Who frames the principles? And for whom are the principles framed? That is how rationality ends up being a criterion of membership in the moral community: because the procedure imagines that people are choosing principles for themselves. But one might imagine things differently, including in the group for whom principles of justice are included many creatures who do not and could not participate in the framing.

We have not yet shown, however, that Rawls’s conclusion is wrong. I have said that the cruel and oppressive treatment of animals raises issues of justice, but I have not really defended that claim against the Rawlsian alternative. What exactly does it mean to say that these are issues of justice, rather than issues of ―compassion and humanity? The emotion of compassion involves the thought that another creature is suffering significantly, and is not (or not mostly) to blame for that suffering. [5] It does not involve the thought that someone is to blame for that suffering. One may have compassion for the victim of a crime, but one may also have compassion for someone who is dying from disease (in a situation where that vulnerability to disease is nobody’s fault). ―Humanity I take to be a similar idea. So compassion omits the essential element of blame for wrongdoing. That is the first problem. But suppose we add that element, saying that duties of compassion involve the thought that it is wrong to cause animals suffering. That is, a duty of compassion would not be just a duty to have compassion, but a duty, as a result of one’s compassion, to refrain from acts that cause the suffering that occasions the compassion. I believe that Rawls would make this addition, although he certainly does not tell us what he takes duties of compassion to be. What is at stake, further, in the decision to say that the mistreatment of animals is not just morally wrong, but morally wrong in a special way, raising questions of justice?

This is a hard question to answer, since justice is a much-disputed notion, and there are many types of justice, political, ethical, and so forth. But it seems that what we most typically mean when we call a bad act unjust is that the creature injured by that act has an entitlement not to be treated in that way, and an entitlement of a particularly urgent or basic type (since we do not believe that all instances of unkindness, thoughtlessness, and so forth are instances of injustice, even if we do believe that people have a right to be treated kindly, and so on). The sphere of justice is the sphere of basic entitlements. When I say that the mistreatment of animals is unjust, I mean to say not only that it is wrong of us to treat them in that way, but also that they have a right, a moral entitlement, not to be treated in that way. It is unfair to them. I believe that thinking of animals as active beings who have a good and who are entitled to pursue it naturally leads us to see important damages done to them as unjust. What is lacking in Rawls’s account, as in Kant’s (though more subtly) is the sense of the animal itself as an agent and a subject, a creature in interaction with whom we live. As we shall see, the capabilities approach does treat animals as agents seeking a flourishing existence; this basic conception, I believe, is one of its greatest strengths.

UTILITARIANISM AND ANIMAL FLOURISHING

Utilitarianism has contributed more than any other ethical theory to the recognition of animal entitlements. Both Bentham and Mill in their time and Peter Singer in our own have courageously taken the lead in freeing ethical thought from the shackles of a narrow species-centered conception of worth and entitlement. No doubt this achievement was connected with the founders’ general radicalism and their skepticism about conventional morality, their willingness to follow the ethical argument wherever it leads. These remain very great virtues in the utilitarian position. Nor does utilitarianism make the mistake of running together the question “who receives justice?” With the question “who frames the principles of justice?” Justice is sought for all sentient beings, many of whom cannot participate in the framing of principles.

Thus it is in a spirit of alliance that those concerned with animal entitlements might address a few criticisms to the utilitarian view. There are some difficulties with the utilitarian view, in both of its forms. As Bernard Williams and Amartya Sen usefully analyze the utilitarian position, it has three independent elements: consequentialism (the right choice is the one that produces the best overall consequences), sum-ranking (the utilities of different people are combined by adding them together to produce a single total), and hedonism, or some other substantive theory of the good (such as preference satisfaction). [6] Consequentialism by itself causes the fewest difficulties, since one may always adjust the account of well-being, or the good, in consequentialism so as to admit many important things that utilitarians typically do not make salient: plural and heterogeneous goods, the protection of rights, even personal commitments or agent-centred goods. More or less any moral theory can be consequentialized, that is, put in a form where the matters valued by that theory appear in the account of consequences to be produced. [7] Although I do have some doubts about a comprehensive consequentialism as the best basis for political principles in a pluralistic liberal society, I shall not comment on them at present, but shall turn to the more evidently problematic aspects of the utilitarian view. [8]

Let us next consider the utilitarian commitment to aggregation, or what is called ―sum-ranking. Views that measure principles of justice by the outcome they produce need not simply add all the relevant goods together. They may weight them in other ways. For example, one may insist that each and every person has an indefeasible entitlement to come up above a threshold on certain key goods. In addition, a view may, like Rawls’s view, focus particularly on the situation of the least well off, refusing to permit inequalities that do not raise that person’s position. These ways of considering well-being insist on treating people as ends: They refuse to allow some people’s extremely high well-being to be purchased, so to speak, through other people’s disadvantage. Even the welfare of society as a whole does not lead us to violate an individual, as Rawls says.

Utilitarianism notoriously refuses such insistence on the separateness and inviolability of persons. Because it is committed to the sum-ranking of all relevant pleasures and pains (or preference satisfactions and frustrations), it has no way of ruling out in advance results that are extremely harsh toward a given class or group. Slavery, the lifelong subordination of some to others, the extremely cruel treatment of some humans or of non-human animals—none of this is ruled out by the theory’s core conception of justice, which treats all satisfactions as fungible in a single system. Such results will be ruled out, if at all, by empirical considerations regarding total or average well-being. These questions are notoriously indeterminate (especially when the number of individuals who will be born is also unclear, a point I shall take up later). Even if they were not, it seems that the best reason to be against slavery, torture, and lifelong subordination is a reason of justice, not an empirical calculation of total or average well-being. Moreover, if we focus on preference satisfaction, we must confront the problem of adaptive preferences. For while some ways of treating people badly always cause pain (torture, starvation), there are ways of subordinating people that creep into their very desires, making allies out of the oppressed. Animals too can learn submissive or fear-induced preferences. Martin Seligman’s experiments, for example, show that dogs who have been conditioned into a mental state of learned helplessness have immense difficulty learning to initiate voluntary movement, if they can ever do so. [9]

There are also problems inherent in the views of the good most prevalent within utilitarianism: hedonism (Bentham) and preference satisfaction (Singer). Pleasure is a notoriously elusive notion. Is it a single feeling, varying only in intensity and duration, or are the different pleasures as qualitatively distinct as the activities with which they are associated? Mill, following Aristotle, believed the latter, but if we once grant that point, we are looking at a view that is very different from standard utilitarianism, which is firmly wedded to the homogeneity of good. [10]

Such a commitment looks like an especially grave error when we consider basic political principles. For each basic entitlement is its own thing, and is not bought off, so to speak, by even a very large amount of another entitlement. Suppose we say to a citizen: We will take away your free speech on Tuesdays between 3 and 4P.M., but in return, we will give you, every single day, a double amount of basic welfare and health care support. This is just the wrong picture of basic political entitlements. What is being said when we make a certain entitlement basic is that it is important always and for everyone, as a matter of basic justice. The only way to make that point sufficiently clearly is to preserve the qualitative separateness of each distinct element within our list of basic entitlements.

Once we ask the hedonist to admit plural goods, not commensurable on a single quantitative scale, it is natural to ask, further, whether pleasure and pain are the only things we ought to be looking at. Even if one thinks of pleasure as closely linked to activity, and not simply as a passive sensation, making it the sole end leaves out much of the value we attach to activities of various types. There seem to be valuable things in an animal’s life other than pleasure, such as free movement and physical achievement, and also altruistic sacrifice for kin and group. The grief of an animal for a dead child or parent, or the suffering of a human friend, also seem to be valuable, a sign of attachments that are intrinsically good. There are also bad pleasures, including some of the pleasures of the circus audience—and it is unclear whether such pleasures should even count positively in the social calculus. Some pleasures of animals in harming other animals may also be bad in this way.

Does preference utilitarianism do better? We have already identified some problems, including the problem of misinformed or malicious preferences and that of adaptive (submissive) preferences. Singer’s preference utilitarianism, moreover, defining preference in terms of conscious awareness, has no room for deprivations that never register in the animal’s consciousness.

But of course animals raised under bad conditions can’t imagine the better way of life they have never known, and so the fact that they are not living a more flourishing life will not figure in their awareness. They may still feel pain, and this the utilitarian can consider. What the view cannot consider is all the deprivation of valuable life activity that they do not feel.

Finally, all utilitarian views are highly vulnerable on the question of numbers. The meat industry brings countless animals into the world who would never have existed but for that. For Singer, these births of new animals are not by themselves a bad thing: Indeed, we can expect new births to add to the total of social utility, from which we would then subtract the pain such animals suffer. It is unclear where this calculation would come out. Apart from this question of indeterminacy, it seems unclear that we should even say that these births of new animals are a good thing, if the animals are brought into the world only as tools of human rapacity.

So utilitarianism has great merits, but also great problems.

TYPES OF DIGNITY, TYPES OF FLOURISHING: EXTENDING THE CAPABILITIES APPROACH

The capabilities approach in its current form starts from the notion of human dignity and a life worthy of it. But I shall now argue that it can be extended to provide a more adequate basis for animal entitlements than the other two theories under consideration. The basic moral intuition behind the approach concerns the dignity of a form of life that possesses both deep needs and abilities; its basic goal is to address the need for a rich plurality of life activities. With Aristotle and Marx, the approach has insisted that there is waste and tragedy when a living creature has the innate, or ―basic,‖ capability for some functions that are evaluated as important and good, but never gets the opportunity to perform those functions. Failures to educate women, failures to provide adequate health care, failures to extend the freedoms of speech and conscience to all citizens—all these are treated as causing a kind of premature death, the death of a form of flourishing that has been judged to be worthy of respect and wonder. The idea that a human being should have a chance to flourish in its own way, provided it does no harm to others, is thus very deep in the account the capabilities approach gives of the justification of basic political entitlements.

The species norm is evaluative, as I have insisted; it does not simply read off norms from the way nature actually is. The difficult questions this valuational exercise raises for the case of non-human animals will be discussed in the following section. But once we have judged that a central human power is one of the good ones, one of the ones whose flourishing defines the good of the creature, we have a strong moral reason for promoting its flourishing and removing obstacles to it.

Dignity and Wonder: The Intuitive Starting Point

The same attitude to natural powers that guides the approach in the case of human beings guides it in the case of all forms of life. For there is a more general attitude behind the respect we have for human powers, and it is very different from the type of respect that animates Kantian ethics. For Kant, only humanity and rationality are worthy of respect and wonder; the rest of nature is just a set of tools. The capabilities approach judges instead, with the biologist Aristotle (who criticized his students’ disdain for the study of animals), that there is something wonderful and wonder-inspiring in all the complex forms of animal life.

Aristotle’s scientific spirit is not the whole of what the capabilities approach embodies, for we need, in addition, an ethical concern that the functions of life not be impeded, that the dignity of living organisms not be violated. And yet, if we feel wonder looking at a complex organism, that wonder at least suggests the idea that it is good for that being to flourish as the kind of thing it is. And this idea is next door to the ethical judgment that it is wrong when the flourishing of a creature is blocked by the harmful agency of another. That more complex idea lies at the heart of the capabilities approach.

So I believe that the capabilities approach is well placed, intuitively, to go beyond both contractarian and utilitarian views. It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain, but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is.

By Whom and for Whom? The Purposes of Social Cooperation

For a contractarian, as we have seen, the question ―Who makes the laws and principles? is treated as having, necessarily, the same answer as the question ―For whom are the laws and principles made? That conflation is dictated by the theory’s account of the purposes of social cooperation. But there is obviously no reason at all why these two questions should be put together in this way. The capabilities approach, as so far developed for the human case, looks at the world and asks how to arrange that justice be done in it. Justice is among the intrinsic ends that it pursues. Its parties are imagined looking at all the brutality and misery, the goodness and kindness of the world and trying to think how to make a world in which a core group of very important entitlements, inherent in the notion of human dignity, will be protected. Because they look at the whole of the human world, not just people roughly equal to themselves, they are able to be concerned directly and non-derivatively, as we saw, with the good of the mentally disabled. This feature makes it easy to extend the approach to include human-animal relations.

Let us now begin the extension. The purpose of social cooperation, by analogy and extension, ought to be to live decently together in a world in which many species try to flourish. (Cooperation itself will now assume multiple and complex forms.) The general aim of the capabilities approach in charting political principles to shape the human-animal relationship would be, following the intuitive ideas of the theory, that no animal should be cut off from the chance at a flourishing life and that all animals should enjoy certain positive opportunities to flourish. With due respect for a world that contains many forms of life, we attend with ethical concern to each characteristic type of flourishing and strive that it not be cut off or fruitless.

Such an approach seems superior to contractarianism because it contains direct obligations of justice to animals; it does not make these derivative from or posterior to the duties we have to fellow humans, and it is able to recognize that animals are subjects who have entitlements to flourishing and who thus are subjects of justice, not just objects of compassion. It is superior to utilitarianism because it respects each individual creature, refusing to aggregate the goods of different lives and types of lives. No creature is being used as a means to the ends of others, or of society as a whole. The capabilities approach also refuses to aggregate across the diverse constituents of each life and type of life. Thus, unlike utilitarianism, it can keep in focus the fact that each species has a different form of life and different ends; moreover, within a given species, each life has multiple and heterogeneous ends.

How Comprehensive?

In the human case, the capabilities approach does not operate with a fully comprehensive conception of the good, because of the respect it has for the diverse ways in which people choose to live their lives in a pluralistic society. It aims at securing some core entitlements that are held to be implicit in the idea of a life with dignity, but it aims at capability, not functioning, and it focuses on a small list. In the case of human-animal relations, the need for restraint is even more acute, since animals will not in fact be participating directly in the framing of political principles, and thus they cannot revise them over time should they prove inadequate.

And yet there is a countervailing consideration: Human beings affect animals’ opportunities for flourishing pervasively, and it is hard to think of a species that one could simply leave alone to flourish in its own way. The human species dominates the other species in a way that no human individual or nation has ever dominated other humans. Respect for other species’ opportunities for flourishing suggests, then, that human law must include robust, positive political commitments to the protection of animals, even though, had human beings not so pervasively interfered with animals’ ways of life, the most respectful course might have been simply to leave them alone, living the lives that they make for themselves.

The Species and the Individual

What should the focus of these commitments be? It seems that here, as in the human case, the focus should be the individual creature. The capabilities approach attaches no importance to increased numbers as such; its focus is on the well-being of existing creatures and the harm that is done to them when their powers are blighted.

As for the continuation of species, this would have little moral weight as a consideration of justice (though it might have aesthetic significance or some other sort of ethical significance), if species were just becoming extinct because of factors having nothing to do with human action that affects individual creatures. But species are becoming extinct because human beings are killing their members and damaging their natural environments. Thus, damage to species occurs through damage to individuals, and this individual damage should be the focus of ethical concern within the capabilities approach.

Do Levels of Complexity Matter?

Almost all ethical views of animal entitlements hold that there are morally relevant distinctions among forms of life. Killing a mosquito is not the same sort of thing as killing a chimpanzee. But the question is: What sort of difference is relevant for basic justice? Singer, following Bentham, puts the issue in terms of sentience. Animals of many kinds can suffer bodily pain, and it is always bad to cause pain to a sentient being. If there are non-sentient or barely sentient animals—and it appears that crustaceans, mollusks, sponges, and the other creatures Aristotle called ―stationary animals‖ are such creatures—there is either no harm or only a trivial harm done in killing them. Among the sentient creatures, moreover, there are some who can suffer additional harms through their cognitive capacity: A few animals can foresee and mind their own deaths, and others will have conscious, sentient interests in continuing to live that are frustrated by death. The painless killing of an animal that does not foresee its own death or take a conscious interest in the continuation of its life is, for Singer and Bentham, not bad, for all badness, for them, consists in the frustration of interests, understood as forms of conscious awareness. [11] Singer is not, then, saying that some animals are inherently more worthy of esteem than others. He is simply saying that, if we agree with him that all harms reside in sentience, the creature’s form of life limits the conditions under which it can actually suffer harm.

Similarly, James Rachels, whose view does not focus on sentience alone, holds that the level of complexity of a creature affects what can be a harm for it. [12] What is relevant to the harm of pain is sentience; what is relevant to the harm of a specific type of pain is a specific type of sentience (e.g., the ability to imagine one’s own death). What is relevant to the harm of diminished freedom is a capacity for freedom or autonomy. It would make no sense to complain that a worm is being deprived of autonomy, or a rabbit of the right to vote.

What should the capabilities approach say about this issue? It seems to me that it should not follow Aristotle in saying that there is a natural ranking of forms of life, some being intrinsically more worthy of support and wonder than others. That consideration might have evaluative significance of some other kind, but it seems dubious that it should affect questions of basic justice.

Rachels’s view offers good guidance here. Because the capabilities approach finds ethical significance in the flourishing of basic (innate) capabilities—those that are evaluated as both good and central (see the section on evaluating animal capabilities)—it will also find harm in the thwarting or blighting of those capabilities. More complex forms of life have more and more complex capabilities to be blighted, so they can suffer more and different types of harm. Level of life is relevant not because it gives different species differential worth per se, but because the type and degree of harm a creature can suffer varies with its form of life.

At the same time, I believe that the capabilities approach should admit the wisdom in utilitarianism. Sentience is not the only thing that matters for basic justice, but it seems plausible to consider sentience a threshold condition for membership in the community of beings who have entitlements based on justice. Thus, killing a sponge does not seem to be a matter of basic justice.

Does the Species Matter?

For the utilitarians, and for Rachels, the species to which a creature belongs has no moral relevance. All that is morally relevant are the capacities of the individual creature: Rachels calls this view ―moral individualism.‖ Utilitarian writers are fond of comparing apes to young children and to mentally disabled humans. The capabilities approach, by contrast, with its talk of characteristic functioning and forms of life, seems to attach some significance to species membership as such. What type of significance is this?

We should admit that there is much to be learned from reflection on the continuum of life. Capacities do crisscross and overlap; a chimpanzee may have more capacity for empathy and perspectival thinking than a very young child or an older autistic child. And capacities that humans sometimes arrogantly claim for themselves alone are found very widely in nature. But it seems wrong to conclude from such facts that species membership is morally and politically irrelevant. A mentally disabled child is actually very different from a chimpanzee, though in certain respects some of her capacities may be comparable. Such a child’s life is tragic in a way that the life of a chimpanzee is not tragic: She is cut off from forms of flourishing that, but for the disability, she might have had, disabilities that it is the job of science to prevent or cure, wherever that is possible. There is something blighted and disharmonious in her life, whereas the life of a chimpanzee may be perfectly flourishing. Her social and political functioning is threatened by these disabilities, in a way that the normal functioning of a chimpanzee in the community of chimpanzees is not threatened by its cognitive endowment.

All this is relevant when we consider issues of basic justice. For a child born with Down syndrome, it is crucial that the political culture in which he lives make a big effort to extend to him the fullest benefits of citizenship he can attain, through health benefits, education, and the reeducation of the public culture. That is so because he can only flourish as a human being. He has no option of flourishing as a happy chimpanzee. For a chimpanzee, on the other hand, it seems to me that expensive efforts to teach language, while interesting and revealing, are not matters of basic justice. A chimpanzee flourishes in its own way, communicating with its own community in a perfectly adequate manner that has gone on for ages.

In short, the species norm (duly evaluated) tells us what the appropriate benchmark is for judging whether a given creature has decent opportunities for flourishing.

EVALUATING ANIMAL CAPABILITIES: NO NATURE WORSHIP

In the human case, the capabilities view does not attempt to extract norms directly from some facts about human nature. We should know what we can about the innate capacities of human beings, and this information is valuable, in telling us what our opportunities are and what our dangers might be. But we must begin by evaluating the innate powers of human beings, asking which ones are the good ones, the ones that are central to the notion of a decently flourishing human life, a life with dignity. Thus not only evaluation but also ethical evaluation is put into the approach from the start. Many things that are found in human life are not on the capabilities list.

There is a danger in any theory that alludes to the characteristic flourishing and form of life of a species: the danger of romanticizing nature, or suggesting that things are in order as they are, if only we would stop interfering. This danger looms large when we turn from the human case, where it seems inevitable that we will need to do some moral evaluating, to the animal case, where evaluating is elusive and difficult. Inherent in at least some environmentalist writing is a picture of nature as harmonious and wise, and of humans as wasteful overreachers who would live better were we to get in tune with this fine harmony. This image of nature was already very sensibly attacked by John Stuart Mill in his great essay ―Nature,‖ which pointed out that nature, far from being morally normative, is actually violent, heedless of moral norms, prodigal, full of conflict, harsh to humans and animals both. A similar view lies at the heart of much modern ecological thinking, which now stresses the inconstancy and imbalance of nature, [13] arguing, inter alia, that many of the natural ecosystems that we admire as such actually sustain themselves to the extent that they do only on account of various forms of human intervention.

Thus, a no-evaluation view, which extracts norms directly from observation of animals’ characteristic ways of life, is probably not going to be a helpful way of promoting the good of animals. Instead, we need a careful evaluation of both ―nature‖ and possible changes. Respect for nature should not and cannot mean just leaving nature as it is, and must involve careful normative arguments about what plausible goals might be.

In the case of humans, the primary area in which the political conception inhibits or fails to foster tendencies that are pervasive in human life is the area of harm to others. Animals, of course, pervasively cause harm, both to members of their own species and, far more often, to members of other species.

In both of these cases, the capabilities theorist will have a strong inclination to say that the harm-causing capabilities in question are not among those that should be protected by political and social principles. But if we leave these capabilities off the list, how can we claim to be promoting flourishing lives? Even though the capabilities approach is not utilitarian and does not hold that all good is in sentience, it will still be difficult to maintain that a creature who feels frustration at the inhibition of its predatory capacities is living a flourishing life. A human being can be expected to learn to flourish without homicide and, let us hope, even without most killing of animals. But a lion who is given no exercise for its predatory capacity appears to suffer greatly.

Here the capabilities view may, however, distinguish two aspects of the capability in question. The capability to kill small animals, defined as such, is not valuable, and political principles can omit it (and even inhibit it in some cases, to be discussed in the following section). But the capability to exercise one’s predatory nature so as to avoid the pain of frustration may well have value, if the pain of frustration is considerable. Zoos have learned how to make this distinction. Noticing that they were giving predatory animals insufficient exercise for their predatory capacities, they had to face the question of the harm done to smaller animals by allowing these capabilities to be exercised. Should they give a tiger a tender gazelle to crunch on? The Bronx Zoo has found that it can give the tiger a large ball on a rope, whose resistance and weight symbolize the gazelle. The tiger seems satisfied. Wherever predatory animals are living under direct human support and control, these solutions seem the most ethically sound.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE, CAPABILITY AND FUNCTIONING

In the human case, there is a traditional distinction between positive and negative duties that it seems important to call into question. Traditional moralities hold that we have a strict duty not to commit aggression and fraud, but we have no correspondingly strict duty to stop hunger or disease, nor to give money to promote their cessation. [14]

The capabilities approach calls this distinction into question. All the human capabilities require affirmative support, usually including state action. This is just as true of protecting property and personal security as it is of health care, just as true of the political and civil liberties as it is of providing adequate shelter.

In the case of animals, unlike the human case, there might appear to be some room for a positive-negative distinction that makes some sense. It seems at least coherent to say that the human community has the obligation to refrain from certain egregious harms toward animals, but that it is not obliged to support the welfare of all animals, in the sense of ensuring them adequate food, shelter, and health care. The animals themselves have the rest of the task of ensuring their own flourishing.

There is much plausibility in this contention. And certainly if our political principles simply ruled out the many egregious forms of harm to animals, they would have done quite a lot. But the contention, and the distinction it suggests, cannot be accepted in full. First of all, large numbers of animals live under humans’ direct control: domestic animals, farm animals, and those members of wild species that are in zoos or other forms of captivity. Humans have direct responsibility for the nutrition and health care of these animals, as even our defective current systems of law acknowledge. [15] Animals in the wild appear to go their way unaffected by human beings. But of course that can hardly be so in many cases in today’s world. Human beings pervasively affect the habitats of animals, determining opportunities for nutrition, free movement, and other aspects of flourishing.

Thus, while we may still maintain that one primary area of human responsibility to animals is that of refraining from a whole range of bad acts (to be discussed shortly), we cannot plausibly stop there. The only questions should be how extensive our duties are, and how to balance them against appropriate respect for the autonomy of a species.

In the human case, one way in which the approach respects autonomy is to focus on capability, and not functioning, as the legitimate political goal. But paternalistic treatment (which aims at functioning rather than capability) is warranted wherever the individual’s capacity for choice and autonomy is compromised (thus, for children and the severely mentally disabled). This principle suggests that paternalism is usually appropriate when we are dealing with non-human animals. That conclusion, however, should be qualified by our previous endorsement of the idea that species autonomy, in pursuit of flourishing, is part of the good for non-human animals. How, then, should the two principles be combined, and can they be coherently combined? I believe that they can be combined, if we adopt a type of paternalism that is highly sensitive to the different forms of flourishing that different species pursue. It is no use saying that we should just let tigers flourish in their own way, given that human activity ubiquitously affects the possibilities for tigers to flourish. This being the case, the only decent alternative to complete neglect of tiger flourishing is a policy that thinks carefully about the flourishing of tigers and what habitat that requires, and then tries hard to create such habitats. In the case of domestic animals, an intelligent paternalism would encourage training, discipline, and even, where appropriate, strenuous training focused on special excellences of a breed (such as the border collie or the hunter-jumper). But the animal, like a child, will retain certain entitlements, which they hold regardless of what their human guardian thinks about it. They are not merely objects for human beings’ use and control.

TOWARD BASIC POLITICAL PRINCIPLES: THE CAPABILITIES LIST

It is now time to see whether we can actually use the human basis of the capabilities approach to map out some basic political principles that will guide law and public policy in dealing with animals. The list I have defended as useful in the human case is as follows:

The Central Human Capabilities

Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living.

Bodily Health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter.

Bodily Integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against violent assault, including sexual assault and domestic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.

Senses, Imagination, and Thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason—and to do these things in a ―truly human‖ way, a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing works and events of one’s own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth. Being able to use one’s mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and freedom of religious exercise. Being able to have pleasurable experiences and to avoid non-beneficial pain.

Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us and to grieve at their absence; in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having one’s emotional development blighted by fear and anxiety. (Supporting this capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial to our development.)

Practical Reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s life. (This entails protection for the liberty of conscience and religious observance.)

Affiliation. (A) Being able to live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another. (Protecting this capability means protecting institutions that constitute and nourish such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the freedom of assembly and political speech.) (B) Having the social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation; being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. (This entails provisions of non-discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, caste, religion, national origin.)

Other Species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.

Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.

Control over One’s Environment. (A) Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life; having the right of political participation; protections of free speech and association. (B) Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. In work, being able to work as a human being, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers.

Although the entitlements of animals are species specific, the main large categories of the existing list, suitably fleshed out, turn out to be a good basis for a sketch of some basic political principles.

In the capabilities approach, all animals are entitled to continue their lives, whether or not they have such a conscious interest. All sentient animals have a secure entitlement against gratuitous killing for sport. Killing for luxury items such as fur falls in this category, and should be banned. On the other hand, intelligently respectful paternalism supports euthanasia for elderly animals in pain. In the middle are the very difficult cases, such as the question of predation to control populations, and the question of killing for food. The reason these cases are so difficult is that animals will die anyway in nature, and often more painfully. Painless predation might well be preferable to allowing the animal to be torn to bits in the wild or starved through overpopulation. As for food, the capabilities approach agrees with utilitarianism in being most troubled by the torture of living animals. If animals were really killed in a painless fashion, after a healthy and free-ranging life, what then? Killings of extremely young animals would still be problematic, but it seems unclear that the balance of considerations supports a complete ban on killings for food.

Bodily Health. One of the most central entitlements of animals is the entitlement to a healthy life. Where animals are directly under human control, it is relatively clear what policies this entails: laws banning cruel treatment and neglect; laws banning the confinement and ill treatment of animals in the meat and fur industries; laws forbidding harsh or cruel treatment for working animals, including circus animals; laws regulating zoos and aquariums, mandating adequate nutrition and space. Many of these laws already exist, although they are not well enforced. The striking asymmetry in current practice is that animals being raised for food are not protected in the way other animals are protected. This asymmetry must be eliminated.

Bodily Integrity. This goes closely with the preceding. Under the capabilities approach, animals have direct entitlements against violations of their bodily integrity by violence, abuse, and other forms of harmful treatment—whether or not the treatment in question is painful. Thus the declawing of cats would probably be banned under this rubric, on the grounds that it prevents the cat from flourishing in its own characteristic way, even though it may be done in a painfree manner and cause no subsequent pain. On the other hand, forms of training that, though involving discipline, equip the animal to manifest excellences that are part of its characteristic capabilities profile would not be eliminated.

Senses, Imagination, and Thought. For humans, this capability creates a wide range of entitlements: to appropriate education, to free speech and artistic expression, to the freedom of religion. It also includes a more general entitlement to pleasurable experiences and the avoidance of non-beneficial pain. By now it ought to be rather obvious where the latter point takes us in thinking about animals: toward laws banning harsh, cruel, and abusive treatment and ensuring animals’ access to sources of pleasure, such as free movement in an environment that stimulates and pleases the senses. The freedom-related part of this capability has no precise analogue, and yet we can come up with appropriate analogues in the case of each type of animal, by asking what choices and areas of freedom seem most important to each. Clearly this reflection would lead us to reject close confinement and to regulate the places in which animals of all kinds are kept for spaciousness, light and shade, and the variety of opportunities they offer the animals for a range of characteristic activities. Again, the capabilities approach seems superior to utilitarianism in its ability to recognize such entitlements, for few animals will have a conscious interest, as such, in variety and space.

Emotions. Animals have a wide range of emotions. All or almost all sentient animals have fear. Many animals can experience anger, resentment, gratitude, grief, envy, and joy. A small number—those who are capable of perspectival thinking—can experience compassion. [16] Like human beings, they are entitled to lives in which it is open to them to have attachments to others, to love and care for others, and not to have those attachments warped by enforced isolation or the deliberate infliction of fear. We understand well what this means where our cherished domestic animals are in question. Oddly, we do not extend the same consideration to animals we think of as ―wild. Until recently, zoos took no thought for the emotional needs of animals, and animals being used for research were often treated with gross carelessness in this regard, being left in isolation and confinement when they might easily have had decent emotional lives. [17]

Practical Reason. In each case, we need to ask to what extent the creature has a capacity to frame goals and projects and to plan its life. To the extent that this capacity is present, it ought to be supported, and this support requires many of the same policies already suggested by capability 4: plenty of room to move around, opportunities for a variety of activities.

Affiliation. In the human case, this capability has two parts: an interpersonal part (being able to live with and toward others) and a more public part, focused on self-respect and non-humiliation. It seems to me that the same two parts are pertinent for non-human animals. Animals are entitled to opportunities to form attachments (as in capability 5) and to engage in characteristic forms of bonding and interrelationship. They are also entitled to relations with humans, where humans enter the picture, that are rewarding and reciprocal, rather than tyrannical. At the same time, they are entitled to live in a world public culture that respects them and treats them as dignified beings. This entitlement does not just mean protecting them from instances of humiliation that they will feel as painful. The capabilities approach here extends more broadly than utilitarianism, holding that animals are entitled to world policies that grant them political rights and the legal status of dignified beings, whether they understand that status or not.

Other Species. If human beings are entitled to ―be able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature,‖ so too are other animals, in relation to species not their own, including the human species, and the rest of the natural world. This capability, seen from both the human and the animal side, calls for the gradual formation of an interdependent world in which all species will enjoy cooperative and mutually supportive relations with one another. Nature is not that way and never has been. So it calls, in a very general way, for the gradual supplanting of the natural by the just.

Play. This capability is obviously central to the lives of all sentient animals. It calls for many of the same policies we have already discussed: provision of adequate space, light, and sensory stimulation in living places, and, above all, the presence of other species members.

Control over One’s Environment. In the human case, this capability has two prongs, the political and the material. The political is defined in terms of active citizenship and rights of political participation. For non-human animals, the important thing is being part of a political conception that is framed so as to respect them and that is committed to treating them justly. It is important, however, that animals have entitlements directly, so that a human guardian has standing to go to court, as with children, to vindicate those entitlements. On the material side, for non-human animals, the analogue to property rights is respect for the territorial integrity of their habitats, whether domestic or in the wild.

Are there animal capabilities not covered by this list, suitably specified? It seems to me not, although in the spirit of the capabilities approach we should insist that the list is open-ended, subject to supplementation or deletion.

In general, the capabilities approach suggests that it is appropriate for nations to include in their constitutions or other founding statements of principle a commitment to animals as subjects of political justice and a commitment that animals will be treated with dignity. The constitution might also spell out some of the very general principles suggested by this capabilities list. The rest of the work of protecting animal entitlements might be done by suitable legislation and by court cases demanding the enforcement of the law, where it is not enforced. At the same time, many of the issues covered by this approach cannot be dealt with by nations in isolation, but can only be addressed by international cooperation. So we also need international accords committing the world community to the protection of animal habitats and the eradication of cruel practices.

THE INELIMINABILITY OF CONFLICT

In the human case, we often face the question of conflict between one capability and another. But if the capabilities list and its thresholds are suitably designed, we ought to say that the presence of conflict between one capability and another is a sign that society has gone wrong somewhere. [18] We should focus on long-term planning that will create a world in which all the capabilities can be secured to all citizens.

Our world contains persistent and often tragic conflicts between the well-being of human beings and the well-being of animals. Some bad treatment of animals can be eliminated without serious losses in human wellbeing: Such is the case with the use of animals for fur, and the brutal and confining treatment of animals used for food. The use of animals for food in general is a much more difficult case, since nobody really knows what the impact on the world environment would be of a total switch to vegetarian sources of protein, or the extent to which such a diet could be made compatible with the health of all the world’s children. A still more difficult problem is the use of animals in research.

A lot can be done to improve the lives of research animals without stopping useful research. As Steven Wise has shown, primates used in research often live in squalid, lonely conditions while they are used as medical subjects. This of course is totally unnecessary and morally unacceptable and could be ended without ending the research. Some research that is done is unnecessary and can be terminated, for example, the testing of cosmetics on rabbits, which seems to have been bypassed without loss of quality by some cosmetic firms. But much important research with major consequences for the life and health of human beings and other animals will inflict disease, pain, and death on at least some animals, even under the best conditions.

I do not favor stopping all such research. What I do favor is (a) asking whether the research is really necessary for a major human capability; (b) focusing on the use of less-complex sentient animals where possible, on the grounds that they suffer fewer and lesser harms from such research; (c) improving the conditions of research animals, including palliative terminal care when they have contracted a terminal illness, and supportive interactions with both humans and other animals; (d) removing the psychological brutality that is inherent in so much treatment of animals for research; (e) choosing topics cautiously and seriously, so that no animal is harmed for a frivolous reason; and (f) a constant effort to develop experimental methods (for example, computer simulations) that do not have these bad consequences.

Above all, it means constant public discussion of these issues, together with an acknowledgment that such uses of animals in research are tragic, violating basic entitlements. Such public acknowledgments are far from useless. They state what is morally true, and thus acknowledge the dignity of animals and our own culpability toward them. They reaffirm dispositions to behave well toward them where no such urgent exigencies intervene. Finally, they prompt us to seek a world in which the pertinent research could in fact be done in other ways.

TOWARD A TRULY GLOBAL JUSTICE

It has been obvious for a long time that the pursuit of global justice requires the inclusion of many people and groups who were not previously included as fully equal subjects of justice: the poor; members of religious, ethnic, and racial minorities; and more recently women, the disabled, and inhabitants of nations distant from one’s own.

But a truly global justice requires not simply that we look across the world for other fellow species members who are entitled to a decent life. It also requires looking around the world at the other sentient beings with whose lives our own are inextricably and complexly intertwined. Traditional contractarian approaches to the theory of justice did not and, in their very form, could not confront these questions as questions of justice. Utilitarian approaches boldly did so, and they deserve high praise. But in the end, I have argued, utilitarianism is too homogenizing—both across lives and with respect to the heterogeneous constituents of each life—to provide us with an adequate theory of animal justice. The capabilities approach, which begins from an ethically attuned wonder before each form of animal life, offers a model that does justice to the complexity of animal lives and their strivings for flourishing. Such a model seems an important part of a fully global theory of justice.

NOTES

This essay derives from my Tanner Lectures in 2003 and is published by courtesy of the University of Utah Press and the Trustees of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values.

The incident is discussed in Pliny Nat. Hist. 8.7.20–21, Cicero Ad Fam. 7.1.3; see also Dio Cassius Hist. 39, 38, 2–4. See the discussion in Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins of the Western Debate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 124–125.

For this approach, see Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), and ―Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice, Feminist Economics 9 (2003): 33–59. The approach was pioneered by Amartya Sen within economics, and is used by him in some rather different ways, without a definite commitment to a normative theory of justice.

All references are to John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), hereafter TJ.

Rawls himself makes the comparison at TJ 12; his analogue to the state of nature is the equality of the parties in the Original Position.

See the analysis in Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), ch. 6; thus far the analysis is uncontroversial, recapitulating a long tradition of analysis.

See Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, introduction to Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 3–4.

See the comment by Nussbaum in Goodness and Advice, Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Tanner Lectures (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), discussing work along these lines by Amartya Sen and others.

Briefly put, my worries are those of Rawls in Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), who points out that it is illiberal for political principles to contain any comprehensive account of what is best. Instead, political principles should be committed to a partial set of ethical norms endorsed for political purposes, leaving it to citizens to fill out the rest of the ethical picture in accordance with their own comprehensive conceptions of value, religious or secular. Thus I would be happy with a partial political consequentialism, but not with comprehensive consequentialism, as a basis for political principles.

Martin Seligman, Helplessness: On Development, Depression, and Death (New York: Freeman, 1975).

Here I agree with Thomson (who is thinking mostly about Moore); see Goodness and Advice.

Peter Singer, ―Animals and the Value of Life,‖ in Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays on Moral Philosophy, ed. Tom Regan (New York: Random House, 1980), 356.

James Rachels, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

Daniel B. Botkin, ―Adjusting Law to Nature’s Discordant Harmonies,‖ Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum 7 (1996): 25–37.

See the critique by Martha Nussbaum in ―Duties of Justice, Duties of Material Aid: Cicero’s Problematic Legacy,‖ Journal of Political Philosophy 7 (1999): 1–31.

The laws do not cover all animals, in particular, not animals who are going to be used for food or fur.

On all this, see Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, ch. 2.

See Steven Wise, Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2000), ch. 1.

See Martha C. Nussbaum, ―The Costs of Tragedy: Some Moral Implications of Cost-Benefit Analysis,‖ in Cost-Benefit Analysis, ed. Matthew D. Adler and Eric A. Posner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 169–200.

#vegan #animal rights #animal liberation #animal welfare #virtue ethics #martha nussbaum #justice #human rights #environmental protection #environmentalist #philosophy

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first-son-of-finwe · 4 years

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So this is my “leaving the fold” essay, which I mentioned some time ago. I wrote this mostly for myself because writing things down always helps me make sense of them, but quite a few people expressed interest in it, so here it is.

I was raised as quite a strict Orthodox Christian, and the religion is a huge part of my mum’s life. This is mostly my experience of its ideas and processes, and how and why I ultimately decided to leave. It’s a bit rambling, all over the place and very long, but I kinda wanted to post it somewhere, so 🤷

TW for mentions of abortion, alcoholism and general conflict.

When I was twelve or thirteen, my parents and I set off on one of our regular trips to Russia. We used to do this every year before time and money became restricted, and one of our compulsory stops was always a large, sprawling monastery on the outskirts of the city of Nizhny Novgorod.

It’s a place of smiling nuns but very strict rules, where God forms a part of every sentence and church is mandatory for both mornings and evenings. It’s a place of communal meals, harvesting vegetables and milking cows, ringing bells, and lots and lots of praying. For me, it was a taste of pure rural life. I loved running through the fields, swimming in the pond and helping out with the manual tasks of running a communal settlement. I gasped in delight when I saw the lone horse in the field. Deep down I was never meant to be a city kid, and being at the monastery fuelled my dream of living the simple life.

But the fact that we were there purely for religious reasons? That was only an afterthought. An obligatory thing I had to go along with, because the adults expected it. Perhaps I tried to feel the same spirituality they seemed to experience, but I never quite got there.

I put on the headscarf, held the candle, wrote the names of my loved ones on prayer notes for the living. I bowed to the icons, made the sign of the cross when everyone else did. But I never truly connected.

One year on the day of a particularly significant celebration, a huge icon was carried over a horde of kneeling worshippers, and my mum told me to kneel down and pray for my dad to recover from his alcoholism. And so I did.

This is something I’d been praying for for a long time. It’s something I was told to pray for at every holy site, and before every relic. And no, he’s never quit drinking.

But I already knew that he wouldn’t, even as I knelt, closed my eyes and begged whichever saint was on that icon to help my dad quit drinking. I simply knew that it didn’t work that way.

I knew it the same way I knew that Santa wasn’t real. Every child seems to have experienced a shock-horror moment upon learning that they’d been deceived, but I recognised him for what he was right from the start - a story. For someone who’s always thrown themselves wholeheartedly into stories and fantasy, I’ve always had a very clear distinction between fact and fiction - though I’ve also not been so close-minded as to think that there isn’t a grey area in between.

No matter how hard I tried to convince myself, I don’t think I ever truly believed in their version of what was supposed to be happening.

But I think my moving away from Orthodoxy truly began the day I heard my mum on the phone to her friend, who was at the beginning of a difficult pregnancy and was considering an abortion. She and her husband were on different pages with regards to this, though I don’t quite remember who wanted what. My mother’s advice was this: “Well you should really listen to your husband, because you know that a husband’s word is God’s word.”

Even being the believer that I was then, my immediate reaction was complete shock, followed by a thought process that went something like “Are you joking?? SERIOUSLY?”

And of course, it was hard not to think of my own father in his worst moments of drunkenness. So it seems “God’s word” is actually a whole lot of slurred, barely comprehensible nonsense occasionally sprinkled with some insults. That’s really the logic we’re going with here? And beyond that, how can you hand such a deeply personal decision to someone else??

When I went away to university for three years and spent considerable chunks of time away from my mother’s influence, my skepticism only deepened with every day. I couldn’t reconcile the science-driven environment I saw around me with the ideas being propounded in church. Sincerely believing in the Adam and Eve story, in this day and age? It didn’t compute.

Having said that, I would certainly not call myself an atheist even now. I think it is just as presumptuous to assume your absolute knowledge of the infinite universe and declare it contains nothing, as it is to declare that your religion is the only correct one. I find many things about the Christian God to be extremely convenient (just so happens to be an old white bearded man, oh fancy that), but I am certainly not convinced that there are no intelligent forces in the world, whatever shape they take. We are simply not in a position to know these things, and I’m okay with that.

In turn, I treat anyone who claims to know them with intense suspicion.

Ultimately, leaving Orthodox Christianity was a long and painful process (I say ‘was’ in the past tense, but the truth is that it is still ongoing) filled with guilt, second-guessing, deliberate habit breaking and an extremely distressed and persistent mother. But my reasons for it boil down to four key things.

Their ideas did not match my ideas. I will never believe that women are obliged to be submissive to men. I will never believe that being gay (or in any way not straight) is a sin. I will never believe that Eastern Orthodoxy is the one true faith among all the other hundreds and thousands of faiths that exist on this planet. Living with your partner without being married is not a sin. Eating some chicken on a lent day is not a sin. A woman on her period is not “unclean.” Their ideas of good and bad, right and wrong seemed so incredibly outdated and arbitrary that it became hard to take anything they said seriously. And I felt so uncomfortable standing there, surrounded by people who I knew believed in all of this wholeheartedly.

Despite the religion branding itself as ‘Christian’, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of the priests or worshippers talk about helping others. It is not on the agenda. People walk into church and think that because they’ve said their prayers, abstained from meat and dairy and then said their prayers some more, they’re now good people. But what have they done to make anyone’s life better? Who have they helped? Who have they listened to, cared for, understood? It’s not about that. It’s about making yourself feel good because you recited the Lord’s Prayer before eating your lunch.

The process of participating is extremely rigid, and trying to remember all those rules and traditions is honestly just stressful. Which hand do I kiss? How many times do I have to make the sign of the cross before approaching that super special icon? Do I have to touch the floor, or is that optional? Oh, everyone is kneeling...I guess I should kneel too. Once, I accidentally addressed the Archbishop as ‘Father’ and got a slew of disapproving looks from everyone around me. I think perhaps people find a certain kind of comfort and stability in routine, but having one imposed on you when you’re constantly unsure of the rules is not a pleasant experience.

Sometimes there is a very thin line between a religion and a cult, and Orthodoxy is toeing it a little too closely for comfort. I’ve seen it overpower people’s rational thinking and tap into their most powerful emotions in a way that’s honestly quite frightening.

The first step to leaving was progressively going to church less and less. I’d only ever really gone because my mum demanded it, but now, I put up a bit more resistance. I got screamed and yelled and cried at, and at first, of course I gave in. But little by little, I began to get the message across that I was simply not interested anymore.

Then, I deliberately made the choice to break certain habits. We always faced a row of icons on the wall and made a sign of the cross before leaving the house, and coming back in. It was such an ingrained habit that I did it automatically, and for the first few months, I had to physically catch myself in order to stop. That came with its own sense of guilt and hesitancy, and with the feeling that hey, now God is mad at you - hope a brick doesn’t fall on your head when you’re out there without his blessing.

The next step was removing the cross I’d worn around my neck ever since I’d been christened as a baby. Even now I can’t not wear something around my neck, so I have a little key necklace there in its place. Having a bare neck just looks too weird to me.

That cross came off and went back on at least three times. Each time I’d be persuaded, guilted, given the simple but effective phrase of “just do it for me.” I’ve removed it for what I hope will be the last time, and “just do it for me” won’t cut it anymore. If I converted to Islam tomorrow, would it be okay for me to ask someone to wear a hijab “for me”, even though they don’t share my faith? No, it wouldn’t. Religion and expression of religion is a personal choice, and not something you can strong-arm your adult children into.

Now, I’m in a fairly comfortable place where I’ve shed most of that initial guilt and am happy with my choices. I’ve even been back into church a couple of times just to meet a family member, only catching the end of the service - and even then, I’ve been reminded of exactly why I left. My mindset is simply too far removed to find any spiritual value in Orthodoxy.

Does my mother still try to get me into church? Yes. Are the attempts extremely mild and infrequent, compared to what they used to be? Yes. On one hand, I’d like to have a deep conversation with her and explain all the reasons why I have no interest in the religion anymore, but on the other hand, I know it’ll likely make her extremely upset.

Perhaps it’s better to just let it be.

#out of silmarils #religion #personal

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spiritualpoet · 7 years

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Last weeks themes —

Main theme – (Knight of swords), 9 of pentacles, queen of swords, 6 of cups, the tower, death, 9 of wands, crowning situation – the sun, outcome – queen of cups//page of cups, archangel Gabriel.

3rd-9th

Numerological breakdown calculation – 3rd – Family karma, Communication, expression, creativity, unity, birth/rebirth, motherhood, femininity – 9 – abandonment consciousness, completion, Resurrection, childhood wounds, transcending the ego, resolution, leaving the past behind.

The knight of swords as the main theme is a message of realisation and clarity that arrives with haste, and perhaps a lack of strategy. This could be the message that we did not wish to receive, the message that we have been avoiding, or had our eyes and ears closed to – even though we knew, with time – this truth would eventually arrive. There is only so long that you can conceal that which is reality, ,and this is what the tower card reveals so catastrophically – shaking us from the grips of our own illusions and facades. In truth, we knew that the tower was shaky. We always knew it was built without a stead foundation – we knew we weighed more than it’s required amount, yet still – we stood on it, forgetting to count the days till its demise.

The tower is a rude awakening and likely presents the truth to you regarding a past life situation, or a continuous, cyclical experience, or event in love that has screamed out to you in the form of various numerous partners of the past that you have had. .What is the one message and truth that you have taken from this all? What is the common denominator and factor in this situation shown to you? Yes this is very much a fall out week, but do not get too caught up in the fall out, actually – look closely to what it is teaching and showing you about yourself, and about what you allow. Also, about your perception of who you are.. As this will be asked to change, as the next week strides in.

Any last parts of instability to do with codependency are brought to the surface perhaps in an unexpected way that rushes us off of our feet.

The 6 of cups is memories of past relationships and the ways in which they have played out. The knight of swords may be finally understanding why past foundations were so shaky. The 9 of wands is illumination received from looking back at past hurts, especially childhood hurts. Serious cord cutting may need to occur in order for us to move on from old dimensions. The 9 of wands figure looks back at the sun card and receives insight, and illumination. This is the inner child who does long to be free, able to have the self determination, and self expression to live their life as they choose, but this particular past life situation has bound them for so long that they almost feel entrapped or imprisoned by it.. You could be looking back this week at a time where you were more free, or felt as if life was more enjoyable, and fluid and wondering why it no longer looks that way, and this is where the soul searching begins.. The sun card representing the part of you that is the undead.. Everything else may seem robotic to you, or systematic, or routine, but there is still the playful life and love, and child in you that WANTS to experience more of life, that knows there is more beyond the 3D illusions and entrapment..

For many, this past life recurring issue definitely does manifest as a relationship situation or pattern that is tired and played out. You have collected far too much wisdom and knowledge now to perceive that this is just the way that things are supposed to be, or that there is no way that your situation can be changed. Something can be done about it, but you do have to affect that type of change. The tower card gives you the opening, but you have to take the sword that the knight of sword delivers to you, and use your logic and discernment to cut away from this attachment, with the might, and the precision of the queen of swords.. For so many of us, we actually do not want to have to make this decision, and this is where the death card arrives – a change that is not as abrupt as the tower card, but definitely reminds us that this is a natural transition and progression, and that it actually does have to happen. Your growth is very much attached to this death and rebirth, and perhaps a situation has served its purpose, served its time, and needs to be released from you for the better of all those involved.

Death and rebirth is so clearly articulated when both the death and the sun card appear together. The phrase, ‘He has risen’, gives connotations of a Christ like emergence. Suffering through the pain, in order to connect more with our spirituality, more with our chosen path, and more with our understanding of what we are to go through.

The queen of swords may seem like a contrast to the queen of cups, but actually, when you are so emotionally sensitive, and open, you also must be very masculine in your approach, discerning, and perceptive – as you need to protect yourself by knowing when to share your openness, and when to allow others to come into your emotional space, and also when they have outstayed their welcome. A new side of the feminine is born this week. One that encompasses all that she is – destructive, yet creative, calm, and humble, yet chaotic, and ruthless.

The 9 of pentacles is the understanding of the importance of self cultivation, self sustainability, and tending to one’s crafts and tools. This illumination sends a powerful message about the dangers of codependency, and how they create a false sense of security.

Deep, intense healing for the divine feminine within us all is on the cards, as we go back to heal past wounds associated with infidelity, romanticising of toxic//abusive relationship dynamics, and feeling emotionally rejected in love and in spirit.

The tower card knocks us off our high horse, any half truths about us being able to avoid or suppress our pain are no longer allowed to exist for us.

The truth is taken from a tiresome situation this week, and we take the initiative to target the belief systems that caused this situation to manifest – head on.

The 6 of cups may represent how we should have been treated in the past, or in childhood – as a gift, not something to be ignored or neglected.

The shelter we built to house our wounds crumbles in real time, but the knight of sword lives on to tell the tale. Emotional immaturity may be presented with the page of cups, and perhaps this is why the queen of cups turns her back to him, and the tower crumbles behind him. She is beginning to realise how she should be treated, and this is what the 6 of cups represents. Relationships that have been stunting our emotional growth – platonic, or romantic are likely ending this week as we have had enough. The 9 of pentacles and the 9 of wands both represent endings, and conclusions of long drawn out situation. However, whilst the feminine figure in the 9 of pentacles is ready to embark on a self journey of acquisition, the masculine is still stuck in battle mode, and it could appear as if she has outgrown him in some sense.

The full moon in Capricorn is a powerful driving force of self realisation and determination. Bold, resourceful, and ambitious, the energy associated with this moon is not comfortable with settling, or playing small any longer, and as an earth sign is willing to secure their future in a way that is stable, and reliant on something concrete, as opposed to situations that have been abstract, or enigmatic.

The archangel Gabriel inspires us to seek healing through the word of God. Archangel Gabriel may reveal the mysteries to us in the strangest of ways. This could manifest as some kind of community support, spiritual/religious organisation or a feeling of finally belonging somewhere, as something is spoken to you upon your arrival there.

This message comes through from everything that has not worked, and has fallen out of alignment with us. A few weeks or even months ago, these very things may have very well fit in perfectly with us, and our ideals about who we are, but we find ourselves changing rapidly and for the better…

Trying to reach out to a past lover may reveal to us, that over time, love is lost.

General Weekly – 10th-16th

Main theme, (King of pentacles//Temperance), 6 of wands, 7 of swords, queen of cups, ace of swords, crowning – 10 of pentacles, outcome – page of wands//the star.

Numerological breakdown calculation – 10th – Creation/destruction, unity of feminine & masculine energy, completion, endings and new beginnings, the understanding of the all that is, recreation – 16th (7) – mysticism, spirituality, spiritual understanding, knowledge gained through hard truths, study, isolation for self reflective purposes, epiphanies, prophetic insight, wisdom, intuition, esoteric meaning.

Capricorn energy still reigns supreme when the king of pentacles is called into question. It is time for many of us to balance our financial pursuits with our spiritual pursuits. It is not enough to be spiritually rich, as the temperance card suggests, rather spiritual richness goes hand in hand with being able to provide for yourself also and your needs in a physical sense. As above, so below, says these two cards appearing in unison as this weeks main general themes.

A balance needs to be brought to your physical world, or perhaps it is your spiritual health that you have been neglecting. For many of us, the nature of this week will call into assessment the depth of the core of our ideas surrounding spirituality, philosophy, & money, & how interlocked those three practices are. Recognising money blocks or identifying how we sabotage ourselves from success is very much a spiritual & a healing journey, as it requires us to go deep within to understand more about our external world & reality.

The king of pentacles is very much responsible for themselves & the temperance card this week is all about self healing. After the major events of last weeks energies, a clear message that many of us should have taken us, you cannot be dependent upon anybody else for your healing, & this is a journey that requires you to put your own plans & savings in motion. For you. Nobody else, but you. You are to become your own God head, a deity embodying both masculine & feminine principles, ensuring that everything that is learnt, is put into practice.

The king of pentacles is a business savvy individual, so for many of us this may relate to finally taking our subconscious ideas & planning out into the world in order to make them a reality. Too much of one thing is never a good thing. And temperance can also represent a temporary halt, or reassessment of action. It could be the time to slow down this week, to take an objective look at things & see what you can add or subtract from your situation to ensure that the calamities from last weeks fall out (whatever they were), do not find themselves reappearing to us this week.

The 6 of wands represents a charge of action, & we are far more focused on our goals & their execution this week. Almost as if a wake up call has sprung us from our sleep, there is much work to be done, much lost time to account for. The ace of swords is the heros message. You know what you have to do now & there is a clarity that you can no longer ignore or substitute for something else. Things have been specifically cleared for you & a path specifically paved, so that you cannot say you do not know where to go or you do not know where you are headed. Self belief is the key this week & you may need to take some bold chances in going for opportunities that would have scared you away before.

This really is not the time to cower away in shame. But to rise up in the knowledge that there truly is somewhere that you are called to be. Perhaps through your healing this is the week that you realise even more about your path, where you are supposed to go, & the creative ventures that will take you there.

Long term visions, goals, plans & ambitions for success are mapped out this week – perhaps a 5 year plan is constructed, or you look to team up with some like minds to establish the projects that you are working on. There is a very independent tone to this weeks reading which suggests many of us are coming up out of codependency & expectancy of others to provide for us. This is not about isolating yourself or developing an ‘I will show them attitude’, but this is very, very much about the self.

The 7 of swords represents issues with avoidance, which I really do see as being a case of not feeling good enough, or not equipped enough to handle the tasks at hand.. but this solved nothing then, & it will

Solve nothing now. It is time to take a closer look at why you avoid responsibility in some areas. Could it be that this is because deep down you have an underlying fear of failure? A phobia of not being good enough, that discourages you from completing or attempting tasks, long before you have even begun them.

The star card as the outcome for this week represents healing that comes through the subconscious mind. Likely, with all of these coming realisations, you have a desire to change your mind of a very fundamental level. Whilst the ace of swords relates to changing your thoughts, the star card is all about changing subconscious thoughts & beliefs.. what is so buried underneath your subconscious that you do not even see, or feel it? This week you will know… and attempt to heal it.

The page of wands sets out on a voyage to express themselves. There is something very unique about you & the way that you present yourself & your gifts & talents to the world. And this is something that you should know, & something that you should hold on to. Stop looking at everybody else &

How their abilities manifest. Your unique imprint is very divine for the fact that it is a unique expression of you & nobody else is like you. Apart of the reason you have felt so unable to complete certain tasks is because you have been attempting to do them in the way that everybody else does them. No. Develop your own style, your own flair, by learning even more about who you are, & the different aspects of yourself… this is what is combined to become your ‘niche’, your special

Project, business or venture. Faith & patience is required as always to see your plans take root – but it actually does seem as if you are sitting on a gold mine here, or some sort of luxury idea that you need to share with the world. It could be a very healing message, drawing on your own past experiences in a way that brings emotional comfort to others.. the thing about creative work is, you have to dig so deeply into your own emotional centre in order to tap into your creative spot – which is the most honest, raw form

Of you. Are you ready to be successful?

The real question is… are you ready to be honest?

The 10 of pentacles represents family lineage, traditions & inheritance & this is seen as something to break away from this week.. there is a pattern, likely in relation to family drama or some kind of family cyclical behaviour that you have come to the realisation is no longer healthy or conducive to where you want to go. You know that to break these barriers, time away from certain family members may be on the horizon. Perhaps this is poverty consciousness, issues to do with avoidance, lack of responsibility, or resistance to do the full healing work. If your emotional richness suffers because of any of these generational clauses, then it may be time to pack up & leave home – literally (as in the physical sense), or mentally, as in adopting an entirely new mental approach & method of self care/self preservation.

Do not see it as dishonest or disloyal. If you are to return to the village later, you will want to have done so in a way that shows them just how much change is possible. This week, you are set apart.. and for a very good reason.

Divine lovers weekly

– 3-9 ‘The great betrayal’,

10th-16th – The great discovery’

What an hour these past two weeks have revealed. I did say this 10 year of creation and destruction would pull NO punches, and in just two weeks it appears as if so much has shifted for the divine lovers, and many of them find themselves embarking on a very separate and individual journey. It may seem as if things have gone rather pear shaped, but believe me.. Everything is working exactly as it should to bring the both of them into their INDIVIDUAL missions.. This path up until this point has been very much about understanding who we are in love, and all of the templates of dysfunction from past relationship patterns have boiled to the surface, until the only way to rectify them, is to be alone for a while. Many feminines found themselves turning away from the masculine last week realising that he still does have a lot of growing up to do. Although it may have come through a painful realisation, or a shocking trial, this week sets the tone for the feminine to rediscover herself.. The masculine coming into his maturity is still pretty turbulent, and he appears to get tempted along the way, but the feminine finds herself moving through many emotions, purging even lifetimes worth of stress, defeat, and abandonment. Only the strong shall surpass.

Don’t forget to check out the divine lovers DAILY reading at – http://www.facebook.com/twinflameandshamanchronicles or follow me on instagram for daily updates – @spiritualpoetess_

To purchase this full glorious reading – paypal £3.33 to paypal.me/seekcindy or for the full edition, featuring the masculine’s powerful transition into a higher state of consciousness this week, paypal £10.00 and send a confirmation email to [email protected]

Blessed be, my sacred beings.

General Weekly Reading – FUSION OF TWO WEEKS – The end, and the beginning – 3rd-9th – 10th – 16th. Last weeks themes -- Main theme - (Knight of swords), 9 of pentacles, queen of swords, 6 of cups, the tower, death, 9 of wands, crowning situation - the sun, outcome - queen of cups//page of cups, archangel Gabriel.

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crushsuggestions · 7 years

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crush the asks

below the cut i answered a bunch of crush related asks! i’m sorry if i didn’t get around to you, hopefully i can do these more often!

ask: i miss his voice and i miss holding his hand. i miss how his laugh made everything feel okay and how his smile warmed my heart. all i seem to want these days is his affection but i don't think I'll ever achieve that again. and it's utterly heartbreaking.

i’m so sorry! just remember that even if you feel bad now, it will pass, no matter how impossible that seems.

ask: my crush is like hella embarrassing but he's so nice to me. he always calls me babes and i tell him to not but like i don't really mean it. and he's got gREaT leGS, and this stupid fringe that's definitely too long and he makes me laugh. i still feel like nothing will ever happen between us, and next year we're not gonna have any classes together and i worry we'll just kinda stop talking :/:///

set up some sort of connection! you could jokingly ask for their number/skype/whatsapp, whatever you feel like, so you can talk more! whatever happens, good luck!

ask: hey! i have a real crussshh but the person is quite wild, and it's hard to see him regularly... what can i do? have a good day xx

similar to the other anon there! ask for another method of contact that they’d feel okay talking to you on, whether that’s texting or something online! you have a good day too! <3

ask: he likes someone else.. :/

aah, i’m really sorry, that sucks. i really hope you’ll feel better soon, just remember that it’s not really either of your faults, in you for liking them in the first place or you for liking them. best wishes to you anon, i hope you feel better soon <3

ask: Is it wrong for me to have a crush on someone while I'm in a relationship? Like, I'm not going to cheat on my gf for this person or flirt with them, its more of a crush where I stare and fawn over them. I would never hurt my gf like that but, I feel wrong.... am I?

i’d say that feelings are just feelings sometimes. you’re not consciously wanting to go out and have a relationship with this other person and you clearly love your gf. it’s about recognising that as a crush and not acting with it like you’re doing right now. feelings happen! but i’m glad you’re being a good person about it <3 <3

ask: do you have any advice on how to get over someone you see almost every day?

i’d say one of your best bets is to clear the air. if you can talk it out with them, phrasing it as a ‘crush you used to have’ or ‘something you’re getting over’, you might be able to clear some of the tension, whether that’s all in your head or in real life. if you can, try and stop looking at them as a crush (or ex crush) and just as a person or friend. i know that’s a bunch easier said than done though, so i wish you lots of luck <3

ask: sososo,, there's this kid and hes super cute and sweet and im rlly gay for him. buttt im also super awkward and afraid to talk to him about bc i dont know what he'll say or if he feels the same. any advice for overcoming that fear to give things a shot? xx

start up communication before actually asking them out, proposing those kind of feelings! whether that’s walking over to them and talking about something they did/said or just plain saying you think they’re sweet! it’s a good idea to get to a place where you feel comfortable talking! when it comes to the actual introduction, you could even ask a mutual friend to introduce the two of you? also, slow deep breaths, lots of hyping yourself up :D good luck!!

ask: not to sound annoying but did my ask not get answered because it was about having multiple crushes? is that not allowed on this blog. sorry

no, it’s totally okay!! there’s a lot of asks in my box at the minute and i’m really slow at getting around to them because i don’t want to spam people with asks. it’s almost never about the actual content of the ask (unless the ask is intentionally malicious in the situation or towards me i guess ‘:D)

ask: My more than crush is in the philipines. She i told her about how i felt towards her a week or two ago. We talk every everynight usually until 2am about all types of things and i usually just gush to her about how perfect i think she is.I feel really strong feelings for her and every time i tell her she says i don't feel this way and that i'm lying in a wierd voice and it sounds like she's getting flustered. What do i do now?

i’d say you should probably talk honestly about your feelings! if you’ve put forward that you like them and they don’t return your feelings, that’s totally okay on both sides and you can continue the friendship. if she doesn’t feel that way, i think it’s best to leave off on the subject, even if you’re unsure how valid that is, you have to respect her feelings!

ask: I met my crush online over a year ago and I've had a crush on him for 10 months. I think he might like me back but I'm not sure because I don't know if he's actually flirting with me or if he's treating me the same as his other friends since he's generally an affectionate person. He often tells me he wants to hold my hand, hug me, and he loves me, but I'm still not sure that he has romantic feelings for me. I asked him out in August and he said no but that was a while ago, so should I try again?

often with people, you can’t really tell their feelings by their actions, one of the main things you can do is talk it out. instead of asking them out this time and making your feelings clear, you could pull them aside and ask what their feelings are to you. if you can, keep the tone light and friendly, so it doesn’t get too odd for either of you, but i think that might be the best course of action. good luck!!

ask: god i am in love with two diff friends but im also in a relationship w a v cute gal (i love her but its not rlly working idk???) and shit aaaaaaaa i am dying of frustration bc itd be so shit to break up w her bc shes absolutely smitten and i have no idea how to deal???? idk im not making any sense sorry

i really think that if you don’t think it’s working with your current partner, that’s something you really need to address. while you might feel like you don’t want to hurt her, it might not be too nice to not talk about the fact that you don’t think it’s working with her! that’s something very important to talk out and be respectful before considering pursuing another relationship!

ask: so I've had a crush on my best friend for a while and she seems like she could like me back now...how do I hint that I like her???? i have no clue how to flirt, what should i do? thanks so much, i love your blog btw

you don’t have to hint at all! if anything, to avoid getting feelings confused, it might be more clear to have an honest, friendly conversation about it! that’s a little harder than flirting, but it might be worth it in the long run.

ask: I told my bf I loved him when he was really upset about something but I'm not sure if I meant it in the same way I loved him when we were just friends and now I'm thinking I said it too soon? I'm kinda freaking out a bit any idea what I should do?

it’s totally okay, i promise. it might not have been the right time to say it, in terms of them being upset, but it’s okay to be honest with how you’re feeling. if you wanted to clarify with them and speak about that, it might help clear your head a little!

ask: Ok so I have this one friend who I call my son bc apparently I Am The Mom Friend and ANYWAY he's in my drama class and the other day he asked if I had any feelings for anyone in drama but in the 'do you have a crush' voice and I Do in fact have a crush on someone in the drama class but I panicked and was just like 'well there's that girl we all hate and I freaking hate her' and he was like wow that's the worst thing I've ever heard you say about anyone and dropped it but WHAT IF HE KNOWS????????

i don’t know in the slightest gosh!! i think it’s probably best to clarify what you want to say when you talk to him again or if it’s not brought up again, i suppose assume that they didn’t take it that way?? absolutely your choice! <3

ask: There is this girl I really like. We hung out on Monday and we went to a park. I really like her, she's beautiful, funny, has an awesome taste in music and I just really like her. But I think she only like me as a friend. I don't know what to do 😭

the best thing you can do for your benefit is respect her feelings and understand that she doesn’t want a relationship! don’t stress yourself out over it, deep breath, do your best to let it go. there will be lots of awesome people who like you right back, this just isn’t one of them!! aah gosh, wishing you the best though anon <3 <3

P.S.

i’m sorry it’s not too much. i love all of these asks and i’m really glad that people are interested and enthusiastic about my blog but i do have 1,248 asks right now! i’m desperately trying to get around to them, please don’t get mad at me if i don’t get around to yours fast enough/at all! i’ve had a lot of not too nice anons recently and while i understand how bad it feels to be ignored, you also have to respect i’m a person too here!

aah that’s negative. i wish all the anons the best up there, let me know if posting in a chunk like this works for you!

#about a crush #all advice is my opinion only!#if you want to give yours you can totally reply or reblog the post #i'm sure that would help these anons a lot!

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genesischi · 7 years

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Why Does The World Hate Autism - a response to three news stories from 17th Feb 2017

Soo... when this news first came out a week ago I was too angry and distressed to write much about it.

I wrote a short explanatory rant on over this study on Facebook (partly to reeducate my family since a while ago my cousin Went Blue For Autism and I had to explain why not to do that)

*Okay, I am horrified "a debilitating disorder" is a fearmongering phrase that isn't, or at least, doesn't have to be remotely true. AND THIS STUDY IS SUPPORTED BY AUTISM SPEAKS - DO NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH THIS SH*T!!!!

(For those who don't know, Autism Speaks is the hate organisation that parades as a charity, it seeks to "cure" autism through such methods as forcible drinking of bleach, please never give money to the blue puzzle piece who would rather kill autistic people because we're oh-so-hard to understand, a truly unsolvable puzzle! {hence their logo} which isn't remotely true, yet again)

Rant over.

…

So, now I've had the chance to calm down a little and not cry when I look at the things that I learned about all on the same day.

Okay, as an autistic person I get it, I've seen the way anti-vaccers and various other haters fear their kids being autistic. I've seen those videos of children being forced to drink bleach cos it will “cure” them.

I've reached the point of numbness about it.

So if a study calls my way of thinking “debilitating”, and says that it can now be identified before birth, fine, I know what this means. Call up the pro-choice brigade cos abortion rates are gonna skyrocket.

Now, I'm an avid pro-choicer, I think the right to decide what happens to you based on your own emotions/principles/circumstance/etc rather than preset laws is one of the most important human rights there is. But it's going to be a load of uneducated and fearful people deliberately killing off autism.

Part of me is okay with this, autism can suck, and the way society views it is horrible, so in a way I'm happy with the fact that less people will have to suffer. But the part that screams “they're targeting us” is naturally horrified, because the other way of thinking about it is that people are so afraid of something they don't understand that they're ready to kill it before it even exists.

Trump claims autism is on the rise and blames various things that makes no sense as usual. I'm too tired to care anymore. I left a protest early on Monday because I was bored of the walking around and rallies, the weather was awful and I just really didn't want to be there. But if he's gonna start targeting autistic people, this is gonna get bad fast. Because other groups he's targeting can fight back.

Autism is a spectrum as we all hopefully know, and not everyone on it will be able to defend themselves from whatever the future may hold. I am extremely privileged to be what is still sometimes diagnosed as “high-functioning” though the functioning labels have been decided outdated and ableist as fuck, I know that I am capable of many things that others aren't in terms of what I can do for myself day-to-day. Hell, even the well known issues of social communication are something I'm much better at then most, as much as I complain about it.

But yeah, back to my point. If autism gets the blame for something from the esteemed POTUS, it's gonna get nasty. Not that it already isn't, what with the other thing I saw on the same day that distressed me so much – a sixteen year old was beaten to the ground and her attacker only let up at the comment “I think she's dead.” We all know the cliché of a mother's love that our mum would know us regardless what happened. Her own mother didn't recognise her, and I get why.

I wouldn't want to recognise that it could be anyone I love that that had happened too either.

If I had written this a week ago it would have been angry and deeply emotional. As it is now I can read it myself as being tired and defeated. I don't want to be pessimistic, fatalist or even realist about this, I know that I catastrophise and it's something I'm working on. But in this situation I genuinely don't know what to do. I don't see any way of this getting better

Probably a better vent for my emotion at the time was a parody poem I wrote of Brave New Voices poet Ash's “An Open Letter To Cis People”

It's still a work in progress but it's an important part of this tired response to hate I suppose:

An Open Letter To Allistics

Neurotypicals and Divergents!

Someone once mentioned a door

A door opening out, extroversion

A door opening in, introversion

A door that open both ways, indecision

Anxiety? It's a revolving door

Door locked and no-one has the key, depression

Suicidal? That door is really a bottomless pit

Autism: Noun, a mental condition from early childhood, renowned for its affect on social interaction

Social interaction: Noun, communication between two or more people, identified by written, spoken, or body language used to convey a message

Social interaction is the task of deciphering all the muscles of the human body's possible symbolism all whilst having to translate someone speaking in your third language

Language: A body of words and systems aiding humans in understanding one another

Understanding: Simply, something you don't try to do.

To you our struggle is a nuisance you don't try to aid, you have no consideration for how hard it is to paint a picture when the subject keeps moving

And you wonder why I cry when you ask questions too quickly that I just say “I don't know” - because maybe I would if you gave me time to figure out what the fuck it is you wanted!

Well I have some news for you allistics,

You aren't the only people who exist!

I know, you just had a heart palpitation, you're fluttering around like you always tell me not to do

But now that you're perfectly still and orderly again you must be wondering how this is possible

Fear not allistics

I'll be your Allying Aspie,

Your Doting Divergent

Your Advocate with Anxiety

Your Depressed Declaimer

Your Stimming Spokesperson

And your Wriggling Representative!

So hear me allistics all

I, your messenger of ACD shall guide you through our troublesome talks

The world isn't black and white and it never was

It was always a rainbow of hues

Give yourself a spectrum like Dulux

A colour chart to include everyone

Regardless of: Gender, race, ability, physicality, weight, beauty, ethnicity, background, nationality, class, mental health, physical health, education, verbal skills, stimming propensity, special interests, hobbies, “productivity in society”, and how many friends you have!

But on that colour chart one shade should be missing

A dark shade of Navy called Puzzle Piece Blue,

Autism Speaks is a network of hate aiming to destroy us

They seek to find us at birth and neutralise

And when they find us grown up it's cures and bleach and drugs

Vaccine's don't cause autism!

And they won't cure it either.

You can't cure a mindset as if by magic

You can only teach and train it

Let us learn away our ignorance

Like anyone else with a prejudice it can be remedied with education

Though for us our ignorance stems not from our own hate but yours

You don't teach us to speak or act like you, just yell until we do

But how can I get back on the horse if you've not taught me how to hold the reins?

Allistics, think of our brains as computers, we're electricity and coding and we're amazing at what we do

You are PC but we are all Macs

We have a specific and finite purpose,

Not for the faint heart or for general use

But those who want us adore us

Treat us with the care we deserve

Adapt to our programming

Instead of changing our core to fit theirs

We all know that without fences and walls we wouldn't need Gates and Windows

But where would we Macs be if it weren't always raining?

#autism #anti trump #autism hate #news #blog post #My writing #Writing Media module #BA English & Creative Writing #uni #my poetry

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theren · 7 years

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On how the “left” pushes young white men to the “alt-right”

by MeeperMogle

Not the person originally sharing an anecdote, but someone who recognises the experience he shared. Hope that it is okay that I share my thoughts as well - despite it being rather lengthy. In either case, know that I for one appreciate your asking questions to get the idea(s)/understand the sort of mindset of people who can see any appeal in these groups. Understanding is the pillar on which we build together.

How can we talk to you in ways that connect rather than alienate?

Communication is inclusive by default. One of the bigger issues is that "white men" are less talked to and more shouted at, linking to

What can you point me to as examples of "negative rhetoric" that pushed you toward the right?

Men (especially white men) being the root of all evil, the ones that make everything bad, Kill all men, I hate all men, male tears, I support man-hate, if you were born with a penis you are partly to blame for every bad thing that happens to women, unless you are non-cis/non-straight/non-white your opinion on equality doesn't matter, check your privilege shitlord, men are pigs, hypocritical justifications for inequalities that negatively affect men, public calling for policy changes that would negatively affect exclusively white men, discarding problems unique to men on the basis that "other things are more important", discarding problems NOT unique to men on the basis that "it happens to X-group more"...

I don't particularly like "the right", but when it comes to "the left"... I don't feel welcome. As a matter of fact I don't feel safe, not around people that seem to have no qualms talking about how much of an offence my existence is to the world. And I definitely don't feel like they'd care about male (or my) issues.

What does your wife say that "keeps you grounded"?

Not my wife, but myself: that this is not the whole picture. For one, there is the same kind of rhetoric the other way - often a lot more vitriolic. Wouldn't feel much better being around that either. And in addition, this behaviour is not representative of the feminist movement and it is definitely not what Feminism is about. Treating people based on their individual qualities is something that I care a lot about and something that feminism in my eyes are the largest movement working towards. This knowledge isn't so much what keeps me away from these groups as it is what keeps me from completely disconnecting with feminism-related subjects. As a happy result of this I finally found /r/MensLib.

What goes through your mind when you are attracted to the "allure" of alt-right views? Do you feel in your heart that you and other white men actually ARE superior to the rest of us and should stay in charge?

Have been depressed for about ten years, am increasingly questioning the meaning of existence, my value and potential, whether there is something wrong with me, trying to wrap my head about how this situation could possibly ever turn around to me feeling happy with myself.

Don't feel particularly drawn to these groups - certainly not to the kind of an idea used as an example in the quote - but I do feel like they would be more welcoming to me than I feel that feminism/"the left" would. Don't feel like feminism would include me in the supposed "everyone" that are to be treated as individuals - if included at all, I feel like it would be as a support to get women and minorities all of the help that they need in their lives with none of it (because I'm neither a woman, non-cis or of a minority) extending at all to me. This isn't meant in any way in a "I'm more important than them!" way, but rather... Not feeling included in the "everyone" very much makes you feel like "no one", and that is not conducive to feeling welcome. That isn't even re-iterating on some of the outright hostile expressions towards (white) men that some seem prone to.

The "alt-right" or whatever the phrase should be I don't believe would be that way. Believe that they, with true intention or not, would acknowledge the problems in my life. Believe that they would listen, that we would to some extent bond over our issues. Perhaps the issues that I have would be partly or fully solved with their support - because I do believe that they would offer support. Even if that would only be to make me a more loyal supporter of their greater goals, I do believe that they would offer me support.

Looking back on the other end of the spectrum... I'm not convinced that the left/feminism would/will have/take the time. Because I don't feel included in their Everyone.

/r/MensLib being an obvious exception, albeit one with a feminist perspective on male issues as opposed to a regular feminist community with a regular feminist focus.

As a straight white cis-man feminism does not appear to be "for" me - I'm not part of that world, if anything I feel like the definition of the problem with the world. This is the singularly strongest thing, I believe, that pushes people to the alt-right. Particularly loud feminists that throw all of their hatred towards men as a gender/sex, disregarding that everyone who is able to read what they're saying is an actual person. Not having a single thought to how many people in vulnerable positions that are looking for places to turn and who come to the conclusion that "feminism clearly isn't it".

Someone in another discussion over this article made a comment that stuck with me: white men are being demonised, and then people complain about a demon invasion. It is a firm believe in me that a lot of the people in these kinds of groups have at some point reached out - or looked for places to reach out - only to be met by messages of hate towards them which made them ultimately disregard alternatives, such as feminism.

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dvineyinspiration · 5 years

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Do you care?

In Defence of Utilitarianism

Let’s begin with a bold statement. If you care above all about the happiness of all living beings you are a liberal. If you think something else is more important then you are not.

In a way we could end the book right there. That is why liberalism matters because it is about caring about well being, caring about all living beings.

The insult thrown back at this stance is ‘Bleeding Heart Liberal’. Like all the best insults it contains a grain of truth with it’s suggestion that the caring is an affectation.

But what if the caring is genuine? Then the idea of criticising it seems repugnant, at least to a liberal.

So what else might be more important than the well being of all living beings? Yourself? Your God? Your community? Justice? Power? Accomplishment? Science?

We need to explore each of these and more to see if the statement stands up to scrutiny but before we do that we need to examine the statement itself a little.

First off there is the choice of the word happiness. David Hume talked about utility, Jeremy Bentham about happiness, and John Stuart Mill pleasure. I am not too bothered which word we use, none is perfect because each one comes with slightly different connotations. But what they have in common is that they point towards pleasure, well-being, satisfaction, comfort, absence of pain and suffering in life.

Hopefully it is clear in the statement that we are interested in maximising this.

Then there is the phrase ‘all living beings’. That includes ourselves, our family, our community, other living people, other animals, plants, fungii, bacteria and whatever other branch of living thing I am too biologically ignorant to list. It also includes all future living beings and if you press me all past living beings though there is not much we can do for them.

Finally let’s look at that part of the statement ‘care above all’. This does not preclude caring for other things. I can care about my football team’s result on Saturday, but if I am fanatic enough to wreck someone else’s life to achieve the right result, most people will conclude I am not a liberal but a nutter.

What’s so good about happiness?

In my opinion this is a good question and one there is no answer to really. Some things just seem to be that way, like gravity.

Try imagining the following and hopefully you will see what I mean:

We have accomplished incredible feats but we are filled with despair.

We have accomplished nothing but everyone is happy.

Our politics is rightfully and perfectly ordered but everyone is suffering.

Our politics is a mess and everyone is carefree and joyous.

Injustice has been eradicated in the world and everyone is deeply depressed.

Injustice is rife but no-one is suffering as a result in fact everyone is perfectly contented.

Everyone is perfectly following the one true faith but everyone is miserable.

No-one follows any faith but is happy.

Some might seem incongruous like injustice and happiness going together, but would you seriously choose any that involved suffering and misery?

If you choose anything over happiness and pleasure, at best it just seems weird and at worst evil.

It seems that although accomplishments, order, justice and religious faith are, or potentially are great things, if they lead to misery they are worthless.

To be clear I am not saying these other things do lead to misery but only that they are really a means to an end and the end is always happiness, well-being, absence of suffering, whatever you want to call it. I suppose biologically it is hard wired into our DNA to value happiness and well being over everything else.

Unfortunately happiness is a vague term because it encompasses different emotions. It includes an emotional high where you are smiling, laughing and filled with the joys of life but there are of course other types of happiness like the idea of being happy in one’s job which is not about a feeling of elation but more about being relaxed, aligned with your role, your environment and the people around you.

So to be clear we are not only talking about some flash in pan moment of joy although that is always a bonus, we are talking about alignment, ease, absence of suffering.

Me and my folk

As I have already made clear caring for the happiness of all living beings, includes me and my folk.

And whilst in a perfect world I might make ethical decisions that treat my well being, my family’s well being or my community’s well being any differently from people I don’t know or an amoeba 200 million years hence, we have to recognise that it is more logical to treat them differently because we simply don’t know nearly as much about these other living beings.

There is something fundamentally important about me looking after my happiness. For one thing, I can do a much better job of it than anyone else. I also relieve others from the responsibility. If I can take care of my family’s well-being that is also great because now I am providing well-being for others and again I am much better placed to do that than some stranger to my nearest and dearest. I also know my community and my folk better than someone from outside my community, so probably I will be able to look after their happiness better than someone else.

What I am trying to point out is that there is nothing wrong with this, it is important and it would be madness to equate my ability to make good choices about the happiness of my family with my ability to make good choices about the happiness of someone else half way around the world I have never met. Looking after oneself and one’s own is therefore not inherently inconsistent with utilitarianism which is the branch of ethics we are talking about.

Where it gets screwed up is when it is clear that looking after one’s interests is at the cost of someone else’s and I don’t stop to consider that and whether there is way for me to get what I want without them losing out, or whether their suffering is greater than my pleasure.

All of this is pretty basic really, it is what we teach children in nursery. But a lot of serious criticism is leveled at Utilitarianism on this point. As we will see the serious criticism often ends up in some fairly extreme ‘what if’ scenarios. An example here might be along the lines of: you live in a flat in London worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, if you are serious about being a utilitarian why not sell your flat and donate the proceeds to Sightsavers UK thereby restoring thousands of people’s sight? Ok you will make yourself destitute and throw your family onto the street, but you will transform the lives of thousands of people.

But this ignores quite a few things. I know the unhappiness my family and I will experience from being made homeless. I certainly have no problem imagining the prolonged pain and suffering I will experience doing this to my wife and children. How happy will it make those thousand people? How long will that happiness last? How much suffering are they in now? Are we saying that all blind people are living in misery? Will all of them stop suffering? Would they want me to be homeless to give them their sight? Isn’t there another way I can help all those people that doesn’t involve me and my family being homeless? All of these are valid questions in the judgment I must make about which course of action will maximise happiness.

That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t consider it. I should. But the ethical utilitarian answer now seems less clear cut.

Often when you look at these what if scenarios that are put forward to disprove the ethics of utilitarianism, you find that utilitarianism does in fact give you the ethical course of action but it is not obvious at first glance. It needs some thought and digging under the surface of things. This is actually one of the great strengths of the philosophy, though perhaps also one of its great weaknesses.

In the above example, I would say the real reason why it is not ethical for me to sell my house to restore the sight of thousands of people is that the fabric of society depends on most people living sustainable pleasant lives. If my life falls apart and so does my family what resources will others feel they need to give us to support us? We add to the burden on society in the process of relieving it. What is clearly preferable is that we pool our resources to get these people’s sight restored, that we make a collective effort. It is more sustainable and no-one needs to suffer in the process.

Or it could be I am deluding myself. Maybe I should be selling my house, maybe it is clear to you that this would increase happiness in the world. The fact that I don’t do it, does not disprove the value of caring about well being. It may just prove my morals are as compromised as the next man.

Does this mean my happiness is worth more than someone else’s? No. But it does acknowledge that there are different levels of risk at play when I make decisions about myself or my family and other people. If I am making a calculation about maximising happiness that involves me and others, I have to also evaluate my risk in getting my calculation wrong about the impact on my own well being and others. If I am 95% certain a course of action will make me happy but only 50% certain the opposite will make someone else a bit happier, I should make myself happy. In that way of operating I will maximise happiness over time.

So far we have remained at the level of our personal choices, the individual and our family. But this book is about politics and that is where we must turn next.

Everyone Else

Finding a way to be happy as an individual is hard. Finding a way to provide your family with happiness and fulfilment is also no small undertaking. So trying to take decisions that bring well-being to a nation or the world is fairly mind-boggling.

One big argument for ditching the collective well-being as a guiding light for decision making is that it is simply too difficult. Inherently there is the certainty that my assumptions about what will make others happy are bound to flawed. I am bound to superimpose my own bias for what makes me happy on others, I am bound to think about my community before anyone else’s.

Even if I could free myself of my bias the time it would take to evaluate and compare the effect on everyone else’s happiness would be prohibitive. By the time I got to the right answer, the world will have moved on.

To me all this is true, but no reason for abandoning our guiding light. Yes we will fail, yes it will be hard work, yes it is all subjective, yes we will never have time to do it properly, but if we abandon our guide think of the damage we could do.

Probably we are going to need some rules of thumb and short cuts in our endeavour which is what the second part of this book covers.

But most of all, if we make maximising happiness our aim, it forces us to consider the consequence of our actions, it makes us think about how they will affect others, it will lead us to listen to others about their opinion about the actions we are considering.

So it turns out that our philosophy’s big problem, is also it’s great strength. It’s not easy to do the right thing. It takes hard work, but the outcomes, however imperfect they are, will be better for the effort. And what is clear is that choosing to ignore other’s well being is going to result in some truly awful outcomes.

At this point in an argument about the merits of utilitarianism, someone usually brings up persecution of minorities. The challenge goes something along the lines of:

‘What if it becomes clear that the majority will be really happy and contented from persecuting a minority whose unhappiness is real but puny in comparison.’

The Nazis and Hitler’s popularity will often get a citation.

To deal with this objection we have to think about the nature of happiness and contentment. First off there is a big difference in between the unhappiness that someone who is persecuted and abused will experience, and the pleasure the general populace might get as a result.

Very few people will experience intense joy frequently in their lives. And the moments when it arrives tend to be passing by their nature. However it is possible to live with intense pain, fear and despair for prolonged periods and commonly if you are being persecuted.

Secondly persecution is about domination, it requires justifying a self righteous anger at or superiority over the persecuted.

In the moment human beings are in a place of self righteous anger, self justification and domination they do not experience love, freedom or joy. That is not a statement of opinion but a statement of fact. If you do not believe me, try filling yourself with self righteous anger and self justification sitting in your seat now. Then try to experience love, freedom and joy at the same time. You will not succeed.

The two states do not exist in same person at the same time. A society filled with self rigtheousness, self justification and domination is not a society that is experiencing love and joy.

Bullies are not known for their carefree happiness.

Hate is a poison that we administer to ourselves not our enemies.

Finally, I have never heard of an actual situation where persecution of a minority was required to make the majority happy. The scenarios that tend to get raised to prove the weakness of the philosophy on this point are generally ludicrous. They seem theoretically possible but on closer examination you realise they describe a human race that does not exist.

Everyone? Yes everyone

One feature of these scenarios that get used to attack utilitarianism is that they often hide the clear and obvious reduction in happiness inherent in them. They are like a magic trick where we don’t notice what is being stuffed up the magician’s sleeve as the ace is being plucked from behind our ear.

One of the best is about environment. It goes like this:

‘Utilitarianism would agree with of us trashing the planet. Clearly everyone would be really upset if they had to radically change their lifestyles to save the planet. Ok there are a few liberals who get worried about it, but most people would be outraged to have to give up their lifestyle.’

For a while you scratch your head, then with luck you spot the sleight of hand. It doesn’t consider future generations.

If we are going to be true to our guiding principle, we have to include those yet to be born. Their happiness is no less valid than ours. However once again in our evaluation of maximising happiness, we can’t treat it in the same way as our own because there are so many unknowns. But in the case of the environment it doesn’t take being a genius to realise that if we make our generation the last to enjoy the incredible privilege of living on an inhabitable planet we are most likely diminishing the sum of all happiness possible.

All living things

I predict that a common reaction to reading that our ethics must embrace the happiness of animals, plants and even amoeba will be ridicule.

I have sympathy for the reaction. Too often liberals have given equivalence to the well being of plants or animals and humans.

To explain why I have sympathy for the reaction but have included it my ethical stance, we need to carefully dissect two aspects to making ethical choices. One aspect is the relative value of our own happiness with the happiness of another living being. The other is our ability to evaluate it and the likelihood of arriving at the right evaluation.

I believe we need to treat our happiness and the happiness of other living beings equally. However we have a problem with evaluating the happiness of other living beings which is we have so little insight into their experience.

As you cut down a tree it shows no sign of unhappiness. It does not cry out in pain, it does not immediately seem to react in any discernible way. Over the months that follow as the leaves on the tree die, one may say one can see it is not happy, but it is more of a projection of our imagination that it doesn’t want to die than any knowledge of it’s actual suffering.

If we have no real knowledge of it’s suffering how can we safely include it in our evaluation of an ethical decision? My response is that we can’t. If we can see human suffering being increased by not cutting down the tree, we should cut down the tree.

Of course we may also see human suffering caused by cutting down the tree. We may mourn the loss of a thing of beauty, mourn the loss of habitat for other animals and plants we love, despair at the impact the destruction of the environment may have on our children’s lives. But all that is a separate matter to our evaluation of the suffering experienced by the tree itself.

If we can see no real effect either way, don’t cut down the tree because although we have no real understanding of what suffering a tree may experience, it seems likely that it there is more suffering involved in being cut down than continuing to live.

Animals, especially those with more intelligence do show clear signs of suffering. If you hit a dog, you need to be in denial not to see it suffering. Therefore I am much less inclined to ignore the suffering of a dog in my ethical decisions. But I do also accept that however much suffering I infer from the look on the face of a dog that has just been hit, no dog has ever been able to tell us what it is experiencing and so I have less certainty to their suffering than I have of my fellow human.

When I look at ethics this way, I see some justifiable anger at liberals. Are there times when we have prioritised the suffering of animals and plants over humans? I think so. And worse, we have probably been ultimately motivated out of self interest about our own likes and dislikes.

That said, it is much more common that we ignore the suffering of animals. We have industrialised animal torture for our own gratification of eating meat in a way that is indefencible. We should not ignore this suffering. Nor should we ignore our pleasure of eating meat.

The truly liberal response is to try and find a way to avoid the torture whilst maintaining the pleasure and if there is no way, in my opinion we need to stop the torture because it is much more significant than the pleasure.

As ever the point with liberalism is to look beyond the surface of things and make an honest attempt to resolve things in such a way that produces most happiness and the least suffering.

The Power of Love

The connection between utilitarianism and love is clear. Caring is a function of love. The things we care for are the things we love. Our capacity for love is important because it determines our capacity to look after others and include them in our thinking.

The further we can extend our love for others the happier the world will be. So the bleeding heart of the liberal is important. Love moves us to imagine the suffering of others, without it we will ignore their suffering. We should not underestimate its ability to reach across the things that divide us and resolve our problems.

At the same time it is vulnerable to being faked. Having someone else truly share our suffering can be life altering but having someone pretend to share it is profoundly insulting.

Love is a precious quality and we must cherish it, but that also means having the integrity never to fake it. We have to face the fact that all human beings have the immense capacity for self delusion. One of the most deeply damaging lies that we can tell is that we are motivated by love for our fellow human when we are simply motivated by our own self interest.

It undermines the idea of love and the idea of caring. It spreads mistrust and disillusion. One reason that we face a fight with reactionaries is because too often the leaders in liberal democracies have professed to be motivated by the greater good but in fact motivated by self interest. Then the idea of acting for the greater good is degraded.

If we want to take a stand for liberalism we have to examine our caring and bring integrity to our expressions of love.

We also cannot limit our expression of love to sympathy and being lovely. Sometimes but thankfully not often, the most loving course of action is hard, cruel and even brutal.

Liberals need to rebuild respect. Respect that we really do care about more than ourselves, respect that we can make difficult decisions and respect that we will do the hard work to truly understand the consequences of our decisions.

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