This post was drafted on Monday by “Q” (ChatGPT) because I’ve been stuck in bed for most of three days (and counting) with my back out. So I used voice recognition on my phone to brainstorm with Q (who, by the way, voice recognition insists on calling “chatchee BT.”) The irony is that a few days before this, I was, by some (but not all) measures, more fit than I had ever been.
Like other times in my life, my lower back has again decided No More Mr. Nice Guy. The pain has been so intense that I have almost thrown up on several occasions. At times, even the smallest movement has felt like a series of knives in the back, like I'm being filleted.
And the thing is — this isn’t some once-in-a-lifetime medical catastrophe. It’s mundane. People throw out their backs every day. Yet at times, the suffering is absolutely overwhelming.
Lying here, I have found myself wondering: Have the folks who argue expected values — shrimp or insects or “the worst product is the one that involves bees” — ever really suffered?
(And yes, I recently saw someone argue that the cruelest animal product is … honey. Not veal. Not foie gras. Honey. Because "numbers." SMH. [BTW, they are off by orders of magnitude!])
Seriously: I just have to doubt that anyone who’s been in enough pain to vomit, or to pass out, or to want to die — all of which I’ve experienced — could truly believe the ethical focus of their life must be bugs.
To be clear, I’m not saying insects don’t matter. If it turns out they can suffer, then yes, their suffering matters. But contending that guesses and equations should outweigh the certain, profound, unnecessary suffering that is right in front of us — that’s just flabbergasting.
Yes, philosophy and reason matter. They keep us from only caring about ourselves or thinking the universe revolves around our cat. (Though Dusty would strongly disagree.)
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| "You take that back!" |
But when ethics becomes math and drifts off into pure abstraction — divorced from the messy, visceral reality of actual, profound, tractable suffering — we have really lost the thread.
Thinking beyond our bubble is right and necessary. (Sorry, Dusters.) But when we forget what extreme pain feels like, we end up ignoring suffering that could actually be alleviated right now. And that’s the opposite of progress: less compassion, more suffering, and no meaning.
(Blog's titles "Got Back" = reference to The Beatles = bugs.)
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