Humankind isn’t just some abstraction. To love humanity, you must start by loving individual persons, by fulfilling your responsibility to those you love.
I thought of this earlier post (below) when I heard about a protest demanding both climate action and "Free Palestine." Why not add in mandatory raw veganism and full dismantling the Department of Defense? And a free unicorn for everyone?
For more on the climate movement (in addition to my comments in Losing) please see The Implosion of the Climate Left.
Once upon a time, some animal exploiter tried to convince an unstable person to plan a (thwarted) terrorist attack in order to make animal advocates look bad.
This comes to mind whenever I see people supposedly concerned with making the world a better place doing things beyond absurd. I wonder: are they infiltrators trying to discredit actual dedicated advocates? Or are they simply unhinged people without any connection to reality?
In this case, the person is unhinged - don't wash to save mites that live on you. OK, fine, the "Effective" Altruism community wants to allow weird brainstorming, even about non-sentient "wild" animals.
But whoever compiles the "best of" EA posts for the weekly newsletter actively chose to highlight and promote this insanity.
Ours is a world where countless fully-conscious human beings are actually and acutely suffering - including many individuals who are being tortured. Parents losing their five-year-old after a years-long battle with childhood leukemia. A teenager paralyzed by crushing anxiety. A new mother killed by a drunk driver, leaving behind a howlingly-despairing husband and infant. A political prisoner driven mad in solitary confinement.
And yet, in this world, the Effective Altruism community choses to promote concern for non-sentient invisible mites that literally feed on us.
<sigh>
2 comments:
Three years late but here's my two cents anyway. How did you conclude that these mites aren't sentient? To me it seems there's good reason to think they are. I kinda understand if the concern is how attention to these issues affects public perception of EA but it's annoying when arguments take the shape of "I arbitrarily care about this animal less than other animals therefore this issue doesn't matter."
Thanks, Eduardo! I've written a lot about consciousness (a LOT). Here are just a few: https://www.mattball.org/search?q=shrimp+conscious
Hope you are well. Take care.
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