Article 25. What is Immorality?

Behaviour that isn’t obviously harmful, is different to behaviour that is. Sex outside marriage or homosexuality may be considered immoral in some societies but hardly unethical. Rape and murder, however, are immoral and unethical. It’s the authorisation of certain things as being morally okay when they’re obviously wrong, that makes us lose our confidence in authority and in society’s standards of morality. Watching chickens hanging upside down shackled to a conveyer which is taking them into the cutting blades is so obviously immoral, that for a society not to outlaw it makes people lose faith in its whole take on morality. Vested interests lay the rules it seems. People must eat chicken! In order to get people to cooperate, authorities convince them that what might seem unethical is in fact quite moral. For most people that’s the green light because it’s been morally okayed. Similarly when a society says that polluting the atmosphere or spoiling the environment is necessary to modern society, it becomes the norm and eventually it is no longer questioned. This is why thinking, caring people are beginning to turn their backs on their own society. Vegans, for instance, boycott all animal products. They reckon drastic action is called for in these circumstances. This has happened for many of us because of society’s treatment of animals. Animal Rights is a wake up call on an ethic, on a natural instinct gone awry. In the beginning, we may have hunted animals on foot, waving sticks about and shouting at them. It wasn’t very efficient but it worked to some extent. All animals, humans included, lived together that way. Then as time passed, humans overstepped the mark. We stopped being predators and became monsters. It’s this monsterising of our human nature that vegans are up in arms about. The violence has gone berserk.
We started to take advantage when we took to horses and chased the animals with guns. Now we’ve made it even easier for ourselves by herding them, capturing and breeding them in captivity in order to kill them and eat them. It’s brutal but at minimum inconvenience to ourselves. It is a long way from the original fair fight or equal chase! In the age of factory farming, we’ve done a global warming job on our ethics. Even though it may merely be a slip in the brain function of the human, it is nevertheless a crucial one. We see our own vain image reflected back to us in various ways. We see it reflected in the panic we feel over the current ‘climate-change’ threat. In terms of our treatment of captive animals there should be a similar panic and a consequent massive reduction in our cruelty emissions. For that to happen the liberation of animals must be the first step, where we can start the practical implementation of rescuing animals from the dangerous clutches of their users. Some humans are convinced we should stick with convention and a traditional Western diet and lifestyle. Others say no, because we can no longer rely on society’s codes of morality to keep us ethical.
From the point of view of vested interests, morality has served a useful purpose. It has mobilised consumers into spending their money on goods - such as animal products. The animal industries have put their products out there, everywhere. The consumer uses them without a second thought.
On this train of plenty, people ride in complete confidence with the promise of a better times ahead. As consumers, we’re not usually educated about food. We are lulled into a false sense of security by people who do what most of us would never do (for a job). They misinform, they spin and they sell. They make sure we are never morally challenged by using animal products but by using them we each buy a ticket to ride. And so we all (nearly all) ride the same train as everybody else and know it will carry us all the way to our destination. The train driver seems to know where the train is going and for that reason alone it wouldn’t occur to most of us to get off and walk the tracks instead. If we keep our seat on this train, we believe we’ll be shown the way through, even though we don’t fully understand it. By accepting its authority, we agree with its version of right and wrong. Most people accept the given morality of their society, of their parents, of the majority to which they identify. People follow morality as spoken by priests, politicians and teachers, even though it has been weakened by double standards and we suspect the driver has lost his way.
Some, however, don’t accept the terms of carriage. We don’t trust the ‘carrier’. We choose not to travel on this train despite the fact there are virtually no other trains running. Society makes it difficult to jump off the train and they don’t allow us to change the route it takes, so we have to accept the given. Shape up or ship out. We have to accept the whole journey without question. We either commit to the moral norm or we abandon the whole thing altogether. If we leave, we then have to reappraise each moral code individually according to ethical instinct.
Ethics are like the rail network or rather the hills and valleys which determine the routes of the network. They may lead us towards the same end, but the difference is that we allow ourselves the opportunity to make our own choices - to take the fast route, a more scenic route, a low energy-consuming way or a less exploiting way. Each ethic is probably quite logical, otherwise it wouldn’t have survived for so long as a way to get to where we want to go to. Ethics are our compasses.
There are several ethical routes to choose from. The choice has to do with exercising free will. Morality deprives us of this element of choice. We are not meant to make judgments on nasty stuff we see. On the contrary, we should show our obedience by smiling as we go about our business. Even when chewing the body parts of our beautiful brothers and sisters of the animal world. Morality demands obedience. It imprisons us, as it does the animals, on a one way, windowless, slow-moving train.