Wednesday, September 17, 2008
I wonder, if you have ever wondered like me, why are we collecting can tabs to save a couple of legless, unnamed elephants in Thailand? Apart from helping Grant, who must be appeased from time to time, why are we helping them, while we could be spending our time and effort on something else? What if one day, a stranger goes up to you and declares, "You are wasting your time collecting can tabs for elephants! Chiang Mai is so faraway! You should be doing something practical for disabled people, who definitely need more help!"
Echoes of this have been ringing in my ears for the past year. I can hear it coming from my close friends as well as my mom. And sometimes I do hesitate, what is the point of caring about elephants, while I can spend time raising funds for this disabled charity or that? Or like Pei Yee, volunteering at MINDS - surely helping the intellectually disabled is worth more than the leg of an unknown elephant, whom we shall never meet in our lifetime?
This stranger whom you have just met has a few basic assumptions. One, locality matters in measuring the worth of actions. Two, human beings are superior than elephants, or animals in general, that's why we should help them more instead of elephants.
On the first point, it is easy to refute. Locality does not matter since the sum of human utility in the world is equal to the maximum welfare of mankind. Contributing to local charities rather than overseas charities is still considered raising the utility of people, and vice versa. People seem to believe that by helping people close to us, we benefit more than by helping people further from us. Strictly speaking, according to the utilitarian view, it does not matter since we are still maximising the welfare of mankind.
For the second point, however, we have to consider if human beings and animals are equal. You may immediately begin by thinking, that all lives should be treated equal. This is precisely the Buddhist view that all beings in the world are reincarnated - a man might become a cockroach in the next life and vice versa, therefore the 'soul' is permanent. Hence the lives of human beings and animals should be given equal weight.
Apparently this stranger still thinks humans are superior than animals, so it's more rewarding to help ourselves instead of elephants. For this assumption, I must invite philosopher Peter Singer (he is alive, by the way, not all philosophers are dead) to argue his case. He claims that people are guilty of 'speciesism' - we discriminate against animals, just as racists discriminate against other races.
The typical arguments racists use to justify their causes are that other races have lower intellect, less strong or maybe even less human, therefore it is right to discriminate them to protect their status. Sexists can claim women do not have the right ability for some jobs, so based on differences in ability, they discriminate women. Similarly, 'speciesists' see great differences between people and animals, so we discriminate against them by exploitation, through the easy act of eating them and vivisection.
Races and sexes are increasingly equal, because people have come to realise that though there may be fundamental differences between men and women, or genetic differences between different races resulting in different abilities, the fact is that the claim to equality is NOT based on eliminating these differences at all. We understand that men and women have different abilities in performing a job, yet we give them equal opportunities in trying for it, because equality is a moral ideal, a principle which we accord greater respect as our society progresses.
There may be differences between an elephant and a human, but even by eliminating these differences, they can still be unequal. This is because both have different capacities for pleasure and pain. And I adhere to the principle of equality by treating both equally.
When I mention different capacities for pleasure and pain, this is important for us to understand why we are helping the elephants. Can a mentally retarded person enjoy more than a mother elephant? We have no certain way of knowing, and one suspects the answer tends towards a 'nil'. Peter Singer continues to argue that since animals have the capacity for pleasure and pain, then they have interests in the world, which should be protected similarly to raising the utility of disabled people.
Therefore by giving disabled elephants prosthetic legs, we are protecting their interests and maximising the welfare of all life on this planet. There is no difference between helping elephants and disabled people. Some can choose to ignore the pain elephants are suffering, and even if they see them enduring it, they may not feel it themselves. Yet this is still no argument that animal lives are worth less than human lives. This highlights instead that we are not fully maximising the welfare of all beings in the world.
This may seem a long answer to the stranger. But I'm trying to tell you, us, that because elephants are treated equally as we treat one another, then there is justification for sending tonnes of can tabs to Thailand. By minimising their pain, we protect their interests. By doing so we raise their utility and all of us benefit from greater welfare. I cannot convert this into monetary terms, since I've just failed Maths, but I can argue that this intangible welfare is what leads to John Stuart Mills (dead philosopher)'s 'Greatest Happiness Principle'. You do have to admit, elephants are cute and we enjoy seeing them with 4 legs instead of 3.
Keep on collecting those can tabs! You are doing in part for both mankind and elephant-kind! May the Force be with you.
10:22 PM