(you can click on the cartoon to enlarge it)
This cartoon beautifully illustrates the issue of the morality of free and responsible human conduct. It exemplifies the question of right and wrong in man's (or Hobbes') conscious and deliberate activity. We are forced to make these choices hundreds of times a day.
The question as it pertains to our decision to eat animals I think it is very clear:
Is there anything that can justify taking a life just to satisfy my palate?
Some people find this a ridiculous point of view and are quick to point that out. But in any debate the animal eater loses. In every "is eating animal flesh unethical" debate I have witnessed, no one has been able to provide a valid reason to eat meat other than satisfying the palate. This, to harm animals for the mere pleasure of it, is unethical.
It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that black men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolish has now become a recognized truth. Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life. -- Albert Schweitzer
No comments:
Post a Comment