"Us vs World Revisited" by Daniel Carden Nemo
As as ethics instructor, I am always looking for powerful arguments to challenge my students (and myself). Often the best arguments come in the form of questions. These lead to a dialectic that plays out in the iniquisitive mind.
I found an essay that contains a monsoon of ethical questions, all fruitful and conducive to a journey of ramifying insights. The essay is "Us vs World Revisited" by Daniel Carden Nemo, who is Editor-in-Chief of the Amsterdam Review:
https://www.amsterdamreview.org/world-revisited.html
The essay concerns our treatment of animals, which even today, in times of environmental crisis, is a largely unacknowledged atrocity. Our collective consciousness has advanced in many ways, say, in the last five hundred years, but the animals we exploit, torment, torture, displace and kill, directly or indirectly, in our selfish pursuits, remain halpless, unseen victims.
Even our acknowledgement of animal rights is fairly new on a cultural scale. Concerning human rights, we've made some important progress, battling it out with the forces of ignorance for hundreds or thousands of years. We've made slavery illegal and culturally abhorrent. Women can vote. Gay marriage is legal (in the USA, even, for now ...).
Just a few hundred years ago, slavery was debated. Chained, naked humans were paraded down public streets for auction. Brilliant progress has beeen made; but there is still a long way to go. Slavery still exists, albeit illegal. Misogyny is an ongoing problem and threat. The caste systems in India and the USA remain two monumental blights (Isabel Wilkerson, Caste).
But--as "Us vs World Revisited" brings out, if you read the keen questions in Nemo's essay--our continuing struggle with human rights is not a valid excuse to ignore the plight of animals. Indeed, it is all interconnected.
Nemo's essay, both incisive and eloquent, made me look at my own personal responsibility, and personal responsibility in general. I want to elaborate some on these issues.
Thomas Jefferson, a slave-owner, wrote "I fear for my country when I reflect that God is just." Jefferson knew that owning slaves was wrong. But he did it anyway. He took a Black slave as a sexual partner, starting when she was only 14 years old, which is rape for the age alone, even if he didn't use threat or coercion--then again, if one is enslaved, one is in a continuous state of coercion. The first President of the USA, George Washington, had dentures that were made of teeth pulled from Black slaves. We are grappling with this now in the USA (or, maybe I should say, attempting to grapple..). Similar issues concerning historically great figures occur in every geopolitical place.
We also have to look at our own hypocritical behavior--and grapple with it. I myself, full disclosure, was a vegetarian for over twenty years (after my first realization of the horror of our treatment of animals, in my mid-twenties). But, living in a small rural community, where options are quite limited--and being finanically challenged--and surrounded by others who are carnivores, I have slipped back to where I will eat meat, now and then, in social settings. I buy sausage a few times a year. There are also some health issues I have, which limit my diet choices. And yet ...
I have no good excuse. Even so, I want to say to all those persons--who are like me--that we can still be voices for what is right and--we can still perform good acts. Flawed though we are--and we should keep working on it--we are still in a position to promote the good. And we should. Human beings, in general, are flawed creatures, but we can't let our guilt and failures shut down our attempts to improve ourselves and the world.
Although it is probably disgusting to many advocates of animal rights to hear this, I will say, to people like me: if you cut back, at least, on your meat-eating, it is something good. It does not not absolve our continued participation. Future generations will be right to mock and damn us. Still, the world is a grey place, with many complex, ethical tangles--and no one is going to be perfect.
'No one is perfect' is often used as an excuse to do nothing. And I want to emphasize: that's not what I am doing here. I am wrestling with the question of personal responsibility, and finding myself wanting, as I think many people will. I think many of us, as I did for many years, grapple with being shut down from crippling guilt and outright even suicidal self-hatred.
I've written on this blog that human beings are very much like vampires and werewolves, the monsters we fascinate on in entertainment. We are born into a brutal world, where we have to devour life to survive. A world where fear of various kinds of pain can easily override reason and ethics. Again, though, we've made progress. Somehow we have stumbled across a span of thousands of years to discover a type of government called 'democracy,' which is far better than fascism and rulership by godkings.
All of us can make progress as individuals, though often, as in my case, dealing with my own issues, it is a brutal journey. And we should be proud of our courage to face our issues, and to find a candle in the dark, even if we stumble still. When I say "issues" I mean everything, such as the child abuse I suffered, for that is that is needed for honesty and to 'Know Thyself' and work toward compassion, including a look in the mirror.
Again, it's a brutal world, though if we are privileged, we can unfortunately hide from it. We buy products in stores, everything--food, clothes, electronics, and so on--and are no doubt sometimes, or often, supporting horrific conditions and practices tucked away in 'undeveloped' countries.' Coca-Cola, for instance, has been linked to slave-like and terrified conditions for women and children in India:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000009363281/sugar-industry-exploitation-of-women.html
In a way, Christianity is right, we are all 'sinners.' But-- importantly--and to repeat myself--we can do good acts, nevertheless. And we should. And it feels right to do them.
It is okay to feel good, sometimes, even as a monster, if actions merit.
For emphasis: The ethical complexity, even ambiguity, of the world is not an excuse to do nothing.
Furthermore, those of us that take the painful journey of truth, looking at ourselves critically, are doing something courageous. It is even more courageous if we manage to change in the right direction and do good acts, helping others in the right direction as well.
Back to animals and their plight. Animals deserve far better from us. One of my favorite questions in Nemo's essay is:
Did you know ethical progress often means reexamining cultural habits? Traditions shape behavior but they can evolve.
This question is at the heart of the book I am myself writing about how humanity can move our ethos forward. Culture can evolve. We have the mental and cultural plasticity to do it. But we have to get out of what I call the 'ignorance vortex':
https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/05/draft-intro-of-my-book-better-angels.html
For thousands of years, the ignorance vortex has trapped us, which has included cycles of war and ceaseless macho patriarchy. But, to end with some hope, we've made progress, an incredible amount, just in my lifetime. When I was in my twenties (1980s), there was no such thing as 'cage free' eggs or other animal-empathic products. Progress has occurred. And, on an historical scale, going back to the beginnings of civilization, ten thousand years ago, the pace in our time has been accelerative and swift.
Let's hope we keep moving forward, out of the ignorance vortex, and don't get pulled back. If we do go back, succumb to atavism, we will meet our doom on the perverse road we take to avoid it, a fate instigated by what godkings have always brought us: war.
"In the nuclear age, the real enemy is war itself"--Denzel Washington, Crimson Tide
This is a pivotal time. We can't afford the godkings, and all the ignorance and cruelty they require, anymore. Godkings will bring not just what they always have--cruelty, savagery, oppression and suffering--but the end of civilization itself.
Cynics often bring up 'human nature.' If 'human nature' made war inevitable, then, by definition, nothing could be done. It's circular reasoning.
But human nature does not limit us. The evidence that we can improve already exists. The fact that women have the right to vote--that alone--shows a massive flexibility in our culture--based on reason and goodness and light. For millennia women's voices were silenced, let alone given equal standing in political decisions. But we changed. Culture changed after thousands of years of being stuck.
The cynical argument that human nature damns us is a pathetic, miserable canard.
We can do it, move foward. We can all be part of the movement toward the Good, even though we are, each of us, flawed. In this time, 20-21st century, forward movement has taken place faster than ever before.
It is, in a way, a race to the finish line of what our future will be, light or dark.
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6/13/25 ... mods
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