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Formally studying Ethics can make it hard to take ethical demands seriously. Iāve said I donāt know where I stand on callouts[a] for unethical behaviour, but I definitely know where I stand on telling other people they need to do callouts:
Why do you see the speck that is in your brotherās eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
The whole thing looks like a case of special pleading. Every time I hear āyou need to join my righteous cause!ā, I want to ask:
The point isnāt hypocrisy, but rather special pleading. It betrays a mindset where someone thinks they have Ethicsįµį“¹, and need to instruct the plebs how to have it. It immediately tells people youāre better than them, and youāve decided to educate them.
And this isnāt necessarily insane - when I read that Peta were an awful company, I listened, because that would be important to me (more research told me this was mostly hot-air, but it was worth my time looking this up). But someone who can clearly work on their own behaviour, and hasnāt formally studied ethics, deciding their contribution to the greater good is instructing other people to act or stand with them in judgement, betrays a deep naĆÆvetĆ©.
Iād like to live in a world where ethical statements have all the weight of Science, where we can say āthis is wrongā, with the same backing as āthe planet is sphericalā, but no society has reached that level of general agreement, or even some basic epistemological process.