Peter Singer: "In a society in which the narrow pursuit of material self-interest is the norm, the shift to an ethical stance is more radical than many people realize. In comparison with the needs of people starving in Somalia, the desire to sample the wines of the leading French vineyards pales into insignificance. Judged against the suffering of immobilized rabbits having shampoos dripped into their eyes, a better shampoo becomes an unworthy goal. An ethical approach to life does not forbid having fun or enjoying food and wine, but it changes our sense of priorities. The effort and expense put into buying fashionable clothes, the endless search for more and more refined gastronomic pleasures, the astonishing additional expense that marks out the prestige car market in cars from the market in cars for people who just want a reliable means to getting from A to B -- all these become disproportionate to people who can shift perspective long enough to take themselves, at least for a time, out of the spotlight. If a higher ethical consciousness spreads, it will utterly change the society in which we live."

3 Comments:
Poor rabbits... :( Interesting that I can feel so strongly about the rabbits but can rationalize my feelings about people in Somalia...
By Anonymous, at 11:06 AM
I would be interested to know if you spend the additional money buying non-animal tested and environmentally-friendly products and if you do something about hunger in the world... The post is interesting, but if you do not do anything about it and you just point out what so many activists have spent years trying to drive attention to, then this post is only about words and it's empty. You don't need to respond, but I hope you think about the emptiness of the post.
By Anonymous, at 12:32 PM
If the decision was mine, would I choose to have more strict animal testing laws? Yes. If the decision was mine, would I increase the U.S. government's aid to Africa? Yes. I am far less materialistic than most people, and if I could cause systematic changes in humanity's ethical behavior, even if doing so meant I would have to change in the same way, there is a lot that I would change. But the only way I can make these things happen is by spreading memes. Can I have a greater impact by altering my own behavior or by encouraging many others to think about their behavior and consider altering it? The latter, by many orders of magnitude. You might ask, why not do both? My response is, how far along the spectrum does a person have to be, how devoted to a cause do they have to be, in order for them to be able to talk about what others can do to improve the world? Should a person only be able to encourage others to help reduce the world's suffering if they spend every minute and every dollar they have in pursuit of that goal? Life is short, and no matter how much someone does, they can be accused of not doing enough. But we have to pick our battles. No one cares about a rabbit in a lab as much as they care about themselves. What about a hundred rabbits, or a thousand, or a million? What's the equivalency ratio between human suffering and animal suffering? This is the type of question I hope to understand better with this blog. I obviously don't have all the answers yet.
As a side note, on this blog, my posting a quote from someone else does not necessarily mean I agree with the comment. If I say something and it's coming from me, then what I say is what I really believe, think or feel. But I will often quote others I don't necessarily agree with, if I think they have interesting things to say that I want others to hear. But I do agree with the sentiment of Peter Singer's comment.
By howtolive.org, at 8:40 AM
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