Self-Awareness, Morality, Elephants, and the Prime Directive
This morning, jaylake posted a link to a Centauri Dreams blog entry that discusses the philosophy of Star Trek's Prime Directive and then extrapolates more nuanced principles that might be more effective, more practical, and more ethical than the broad concepts that Trek put forth. (Go read it; I'll wait. It's fascinating
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1) A person raised in a racist household, neighborhood, country, or religion is probably going to grow up having that kind of racism. Hopefully, at some point, that person has an epiphany about that race, and realizes their prejudice against that race is unfounded and only stems from being taught that belief is normal, that much of the world doesn't share that racist opinion, and that opinion should be abandoned--if you have no rational reason to hate that race and not some other race, you embrace reason and abandon the hatred. Ideally, that person will also consider all of their other race-based opinions and figure out many, most, or all of them are similarly culturally-ingrained, and abandon those racist opinions.
2) A person raised in a cat-eating household, neighborhood, country, or religion is probably going to think that eating cats is normal. Hopefully, atsome point, that person has an epiphany about cats, and realizes their cat-eating isn't necessarily normal, that much of the world doesn't think it's ok to eat cats, and that cat-eating should be abandoned--if you have no rational reason to eat cats instead of other animals, you embrace reason and abandon your bias toward eating cats. Ideally, that person will also consider all of their other animal-eating preferences, and figure out that many, most, or all of them are similarly culturally-ingrained, and abandon those animal-eating preferences.
The short version of #2 is: if the only reason Americans eat pigs and cows instead of cats and dogs is because our culture says pigs and cows are food and cats and dogs are pets, what's to say our culture is right?
You *learned* that pigs and cows are food, and you *learned* that cats and dogs are pets, but you know that other countries feel the opposite. How can you eat something someone else considers a loving pet? If our culture is wrong about eating cows and pigs, are you sure we're not wrong about eating birds and rabbits and fish? You've been trained to accept that it's okay to kill and eat some animals and not others--an arbitrary cultural designation of "this is food, this is a pet."
I'm going to stop before this really turns into a vegetarian rant. :P
Anyway, I wasn't calling you a racist, I don't think you're a racist, and I apologize that my words made you think I was saying you are a racist! *hug*
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