For me, for us, for them

The ideals of the French Revolution, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, are commonly regarded as solid pillars for modern democracy. They were the basis in 1948 for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the seed for the constitutions of many countries. However this motto is rooted on the philosophical current known as idealism, which posits that everything we perceive are only imperfect representations of the essence of things (or the ideas). As such, the fact that our experience of liberty is imperfect should not preclude as from aiming for a perfect one.

The problem of idealism, as I have pointed out in another article, is that it clashes badly with the material reality: things are what they are regardless of our interpretation of how they should be (our "ideal"). Commendable as it is to think that all humans should have the same rights, the material fact is that there is a big disparity with respect to the attainment of human rights from one country to another and even within the same country. Rural areas are likely to provide better access to nature, but less economic opportunity than urban areas. Well-off people are in a better position to have a dignified and fulfilling life than the disfavored.

Photo: pixy.org

Under these disparities, people and organizations who work against this kind of issues, such as social, sexual, and racial injustice, are faced with a conflict: fighting for their goals on a local scale has a certain chance of inducing an enduring change, but is bound to create a different type of injustice. For instance, fighting for equal pay for women in the US, if successful, will create an inequality across the border with Mexico, where women will have radically different expectations just by being born on one side of the border or the other. This is the example that American economists Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson present in their 2012 book Why Nations Fail. On the other hand, fighting for these goals on a global scale is a much harder battle: it is not necessarily impossible, but it can take decades or centuries. Just as an example, women's suffrage was attained in most Western countries in the 1910s and 1920s, while more than a hundred years later women are still only allowed to vote in local elections in Saudi Arabia.

This morning a friend of mine distributed to a Whats App group an audio recorded from the radio where they ridiculed a group of feminists who were demonstrating on occasion of the International Women's Day the day before yesterday. Initially I was thinking that this was going to be just another rant from the alt-right attacking legitimate feminism, but I was befuddled to hear that the speaker labeled herself as "antispeciesist  feminist". She claimed that women's day was also the time to rise awareness about all the female animals that were being "sexually exploited and systematically raped" in the industrial livestock operations. I was at a loss for words for a few moments.

It is obvious that animals are exploited by humans, both as workforce and as source of materials (hair, milk, eggs, meat), and that farms shall be designed at least to avoid causing unnecessary suffering to the animals. But I have serious doubts that sex-based segregation can be deemed sexist but purely functional: bulls are exploited for semen and cows for milk and calf because it would be impossible to do it the other way around. It might be disputable the moral right of humanity to exploit animals whatsoever, but I do not think that this has anything with the agenda of feminism. On the contrary, it can be very confusing and lead some people to think that this antispeciesist movement aims at getting the cows paid by the hour or the right to vote, which is plainly ridiculous. This is, once more, an example of the conflict of idealism that I pointed out above, and leads, in some conservative sectors of the society to use the term "woke" in a derisive way, as referring to people who make outlandish claims.

A remarkable example of the consequence of applying your ideals to the greatest extent possible is the case of Australian philosopher Peter Singer, who argues that, in order to achieve moral peace, it is our duty to do as much good in the world individually as physically possible. This means effectively to live literally as modestly as you can and donate the rest of your income to the charity that would produce the highest bang for the dollar. For instance, drinking a bottle of wine, not being necessary, is an indulgence which is detracting from the total amount of good that you could bring to the world. Instead of drinking that bottle of wine, you could probably support a family of four for a week somewhere in Darfur. Surprisingly, even making a donation to your church is a waste, because there are other organizations that could bring that money to better fruition somewhere else. Of course, improving your local community makes you feel better than improving the lives of some remote family, but if the point is to increase the total amount of good you should go with the latter, not with the former. I heard about him in an episode of the podcast Hidden Brain this summer and the idea did stick with me. It is not like I will be undertaking such a massive donation campaign, but I found it intellectually interesting.

As Peter Singer puts it, it is a matter of defining who is "us" for you: is it your family, your town, your country? Is it you religion, your part of the world or the entire humanity? Is it maybe all animals, or even all living beings on the Earth? How about alien life form that might there be? In the end, there is no way around setting a boundary between "us" and "them" and admit that each group should be treated differently. So do not lose sleep about making differences, just try to define what differences make sense and which ones do not. Have a nice evening.