Not everything within the political realm works as stringently as one would like to have it. The same old question and we heard it many times is: what deserves to have the highest priority. In the past this would have been answered for most part that ‘their nation should come before anybody else’s matter’. Today though we know that the stories of places wherever in the world are interwoven, and we do know that human rights issues in one other place will surely affect us in the end of the day, at least in a form ‘our nation’ likes or dislikes – for the sake of their own interests.
Now finally we enter a third phase where – after we realized that ethnocentrism, racism and national chauvinism is bad for others and for us and that the problems other nations suffer will eventually likely cause instability to the other nation states – today we are confronted with a variation of the question about political priorities that touches the concerns of the environment and nonhuman animals.
Many would still understandably like to say: no we must first reach more goals in regards to humans rights and social justice, only then we can help animals and nature, BUT and that’s a big but:
is it really true that when you say “NO animals and nature need the same care just now and the same amount”, that you should pull your heard in and feel guilty cos you look like an ignorant bad ass towards human rights?
No you don’t have to be shy about that, because we need to have a look at how things are interrelated from the expanded point of view, where our newly discovered moral and ethical concerns really come into play and form a multitfocus.
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The other side of the coin
Bertrand Russell made this wonderful observation about how the circle of ones selfishness expands, to finally grasp the entire universe:
‘Politeness is the practice of respecting that part of a man’s beliefs which is specially concerned with his own merits or those of his group. Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. Some of these convictions are personal to himself: they tell him of his virtues and excellencies, the affection of his friends and the respect of his acquaintances, the rosy prospect of his career, and his unflagging energy in spite of delicate health. Next come convictions of the superior excellence of his family; how his father had that unbending rectitude which is now so rare, and brought up his children with a strictness beyond what is to be found among modern parents; how his sons are carrying all before them in school games, and his daughter is not the sort of girl to make an imprudent marriage. Then there are beliefs about his class, which according to his station, is the best socially, or the most intelligent, or the most deserving morally, of the classes in the community – though all are agreed that the first of these merits is more desirable than the second, and the second than the third. Concerning his nation, also, almost every man cherishes comfortable delusions, ‘Foreign nations, I am sorry to say, do as they do do.’ So said Mr Podsnap, giving expression, in these words, to one of the deepest sentiments of the human heart. Finally we come to the theories that exalt mankind in general, either absolutely or in comparison with the ‘brute creation’. Men have souls, though animals have not; Man is the ‘rational animal’; any peculiarly cruel or unnatural action is called ‘brutal’ or ‘bestial’ (although such actions are in fact distinctively human) (1); God made Man in His own image, and the welfare of Man is the ultimate purpose of the universe.’
(1) Compare Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger
( See just a few more interesting citations of noteworthy people on here: http://www.simorgh.de/thequest.html )