“We are better than them and that’s what it is all about”
It was a comment from a voluminous vegangalist on facebook a few years ago.
The candid admission that the issue was not fundamentally about compassion and animal welfare surprised me.
Unconscious admission no doubt.
Posturing for the high moral ground has clearly been the unifying principal of his continuous flow of posts since seen in this light.
Judgement a frequent theme.
The tedium makes me sleep notifications for prolonged periods.
Oh look he is back and still banging on....
The problem is it is counterproductive to the cause.
I think he protests too much.
People screaming ‘I'm better than you’ tends to make you think of their failings more than analyse your own.
Why this burning desire to be better than others?
How has he treated his girlfriends over the years anyway?
In terms of ends over means it is about occupying moral high ground rather than improving a situational.
The whole diatribe is filed under ‘vanity of egotist’ and an important dialogue striving to improve the ethical dimensions of food production is drowned out. No one reflects or learns anything.
The same dynamics are in play in the climate debate.
The environmental moral high grounders become tools for the fossil fuel industry.
‘look these people think they are better than you, stick with us and we will show them’.
Arguments built on the foundation of being better than someone tend to be more moralistic than ethical and dig trenches rather than build bridges.
It's an old motif.
We are better than them.
We are good they are evil.
God is on our side.
My tribe is great again...
Etc etc at least since Zoroaster framed morality as light vs dark and victorious city states held their torches high and marched to the next righteous conquest about three thousand years ago.
Cohesive society needs shared morality, but it rests on some authority.
Moral arguments are won by claiming allegiance with that authority.
Trumpets are blown as a call to arms and the tribe gathers to sneer at the infidels and heretics, perhaps cry victim to them, maybe burn a few of them...
I produces effective rhetoric to rally the base and wage a righteous war.
An ethical argument does not work like this.
Fist there is a search for agreed underlying principals.
A negotiation is required.
Listening is much more effective than shouting and posting emotive photos.
Then we work it through, striving for consistency.
Perhaps new things are brought into consideration and you find you need to change your position to maintain integrity.
No problems this is learning and progress.
Growth feels good, not a threat but a challenge.
Easier to find common ground in an ethical dialogue than to accept you were once evil but have been shown the light by a morally superior being.
This seems even more important in these times of increasing political tribalism with little cooperation with those deemed not ‘us’
Mutual trust and respect to begin the search for shared principals may be hard across the divide but a good first step will be to refrain from digging the trenches any deeper
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