The behaviors: preaching to the converted.....

[Guest guest]

The behaviors may warrant moral discernment, and the persons may well benefit from both moral instruction and serious soul-searching, but what is ultimately at issue is the moral POTENTIAL of persons to make these much-needed moral changes, and that POTENTIAL needs to be addressed.To merely CONDEMN both behaviors AND persons may, and often does, further entrench those persons in the deeply undesirable behaviors, reinforcing both the behaviors and the rationales and feelings and social acceptance of them.What is undesirable about a behavior is NOT that it's socially disliked; many folks in recent years have tried to adjust the social "stigmas" around behaviors to make them (therefore?) "acceptable."There's a necessary logical distinction between being "accepted" and being (morally) "acceptable." If every one of the 6.2 billion human beings alive today praised a morally reprehensible behavior (having numbed their moral discernment), that behavior would be no less reprehensible (despite wide-ranging public approval) nor more morally acceptable.I believe that vegans -- all of us -- need to learn look deeply for moral realities which are more real than our own subjectivity.I suspect that many folks who (like to) think of themselves as "activists" may indeed by projecting their own "personas" into the dialogue, the discussion, the "outreach," and not sharing something which needs to be known.If I carry an anti-fur placard in a picket, my signage can make points constructively, or it may be less than effective. Being effective has moral dimensions, as does everything that affects others, but outlining those points, particularly here and now, is something I don't have the energy, time, or preparation to do, though, perhaps, that's the most important point I could and should be making here (on this topic).{Meanwhile, though I may still be "hung up" or ethically blinded, I still think of the constructive teachings of the spiritual and reflective traditions of human history as having moral potential, and I think that people "under their instruction" as potentially having positive resources in that teaching. I also consider vegan philosophy (at its BEST, not at its worst) as being PART OF (or one of) the spiritual and reflective traditions of human history.}Maynard S. Clark

Oliver Slay <oliver wrote:

i agree... altho i think the Gandhi statement is taken out of context and therefore 'looks like' a 'value judgement' ...

 

i do not think there are people who are despisable ... no ... i would try to understand why they do what they do ...

 

but they have been 'educated' to do what they do ... who are they to argue with the massive authority of the academia ? ..

and they have been taught from an early age that they should go to school and learn ... but what is this learning? ...

and their parents have fed them meat throughout their childhood ... so it's got to be ok, right? ...

 

and then ARP come along and tell them that every other person in authority in their lives has been leading them into acts of cruelty...

 

that person is not to blame as an individual ... the whole society is at fault ... you can mock the person you can despise him .... but doing so will not change the society that created him....

 

God lived in the Middle East so he must have had a really social time of it ... :-)

 

Z

 

 

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Snoocat

Monday, March 25, 2002 9:05 PM

Re: preaching to the converted.....

 

I wonder :

 

Don't you think sometimes it's enough to be tolerant, patient, with what is untolerable ? Don't you think that there are situations and people which / who are truely despisable (hunters or vivisectionists for example) ?

 

Even Gandhi was making a "value judgement" when he said "la grandeur d'une nation se mesure à la façon dont elle traite ses animaux" (sorry I can't translate but I suppose you all know this sentence)...

 

In fact, I wonder if it's a real problem to hate, to despise, to dislike, to judge. You can feel this feelings and not to be violent of course. But when you feel this feelings, you act, you react, you do something !

 

Even in the Bible (I think), it's said that God doesn't like people too warm, he prefers "hot people"...

 

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Oliver Slay

' '

Monday, March 25, 2002 8:49 PM

RE: preaching to the converted.....

 

do you despise everyone? ... if you despise one group MORE THAN another .. it implies that you despise both groups... and religous people v. atheists/agnostics doesn't leave much room for anyone else on the planet...

 

i don't mean to pick on you ... but you speak too much of hate, despising and dislike... and this is not a compassionate stance...

 

IF you hate ... you are more likely to be nasty without intending to be nasty ... you may not even notice how nasty some of your own actions might be ...

 

namaste

 

Z

 

I despise religious people more than atheists/agnostics because they have a set of rules to live by which should make them more compassionate than non believers but they are not (with a few exceptions )

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