Thursday, December 12, 2013

The diminishing value system

914:

We might think that by morally disapproving of animal-product users, we’ll be able to stop them in their tracks, and get them to discover the facts for themselves. We reckon we can shame them, set them off in the right direction, and after that it will be a piece of cake.
If only it were that easy! People might be much better informed today but values have become so warped that wrong can seem right, especially when enough people say so. Eating meat and therefore abusing animals, for example, might be contrary to our core values but we have a way of making it okay to eat these same abused animals anyway. And if there is ever any threat that something, like a favourite food, might be taken away, that is when people are seen at their most implacable.
The human dilemma is whether certain values should be judged important. Who is to say that one value outweighs another? If most people, if almost all people, contradict a value, then it becomes a diminished value, as if the principle behind it can be turned upside-down according to popularity. It’s as if there’s a choice in how we see right and wrong. It’s as if we can choose to endanger ourselves (and others) by letting vested interest sway us.
So, here we are, going along with life, thinking we have a handle on truth, until that truth begins to feel inconvenient, and then it’s as if we have no choice in the matter; we have to simply follow a new truth, to see where it takes us.
Is this what has happened, where people have been persuaded en masse, to accept the unacceptable?


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