littera enim occidit

people seem to think that someone’s worth as a person is directly tied to how moral they are.  that assigning value to people on the basis of “she is a good person” and “he is a bad person” is preferable and less shallow than other bases of comparison.  whatever philosophical system you are tied to, it’s ok to dismiss or attack people who don’t live up to it, and to prioritize those that come closer. 

this is a problem.

most of us have decided that everyone must be of equal worth, or at least that they start out that way and their value as a sentient being is capable of changing only through their own actions.  when you consider that some ethical systems - veganism being the one tumblr seems to have in mind (though it’s by no means unique) - have tenets that circumstance make it easier for some to live up to than others, you run into the problem that those who are more moral are considered to have more worth, and when class and birth and all the rest are tied to ease of living our moral precepts, you end up with the privileged having more worth as human beings, which runs contrary to all of our modern, egalitarian intuitions.  In many senses the extent of the disparity of moral opportunity is debatable, but I don’t think that’s the core problem here.

your worth is not tied to your performance.  we are not objects with the purpose “live ethically”, whose value is proportional to the extent we reach that goal.  we can abhor hypocrisy without denying the intrinsic value of the person existing in that state.  we can say, non-controversially, that to give your life resisting injustice is right, that silent collaboration with evil is categorically wrong, but that doesn’t mean martyrs are the only people in difficult situations who retain their fundamental value, their personhood. furthermore, this kind of thinking lends itself to thinking of an individual’s significance in quantitative terms.  we speak of “moral weight”.  I’d argue that the value of a being is qualitative, and independent of its accidental characteristics - up to and including its performance of ethical life.

this is complicated.  I’m not sure exactly how to elaborate on this idea, but I think western moral categories may not lend themselves very well to it.  in Buddhist literature the distinction is not between “good” and “evil”, but between “that which is effective” and “that which is not effective”.  the intrinsic value of a sentient being is entirely unrelated to the effectiveness of their actions in this system.

it is incoherent to invalidate a position X on the basis “group A can perform X without difficulty or harm, but group B cannot, therefore X cannot be a moral good.”  it may, on the surface, appear to make some sense when framed in terms of racism/classism/ableism, and when “X” is something unconventional and controversial to begin with, like veganism…but there are any number of unambiguous moral requirements, like “don’t ignore a genocide” that can put you quite squarely in harm’s way, even get you killed, which I don’t think anyone is going to argue are inherently flawed moral values.  an argument must be invalidated on the basis of its structure or the invalidation of its premises, not on the basis of its conclusion.

I guess the difficulty with not deriving someone’s worth from their performance is that it removes the popular impetus for valuing heroism and devaluing depravity.  we’re looking at a system in which you are “supposed to” give equal consideration to the needs and personhood of a rapist and a saint.  I actually don’t think this is particularly controversial from either a Christian or Buddhist perspective, but it certainly requires us to do more than just react to others in the way we’ve been socialized to do so.  I’m not very good at that right now, and I can see why it’s hard to accept.  Most of the time when we react to something like a hate crime we’re not voicing a response informed by compassion or philosophical reflection, we’re censoring someone for doing something we really, really do not like. censure of the same action can result from moral reflection or from personal distaste, but it’s imprecise (and dangerous) to equate the two.  personal preference can reflect ethical judgement, but it should never be its basis, nor is it an acceptable foundation for discourse.

on the surface of things attacking “homophobia”, “racism”, or “speciesism” is (depending on who you are) noble…but when all we’re doing is internalizing a slur and applying it to someone based on our gut reaction and social expectation, rather than speaking from a place of compassion and careful analysis, we’re not doing anything but name calling.  that name-calling may be effective, to some degree, in producing social change - and the actions it denounces are certainly not worth defending - but I can’t help but feel we ought to be more reflective and careful about the why behind our criticism.

I don’t know.