We must, of course, be thankful for the fact that today we can help strangers without dreading the knock of the Gestapo on our door. We should not imagine, however, that the era of heroism is over. Those who took part in the 'velvet revo- lution' that overthrew communism in Czechoslovakia, and in the parallel movement for democracy in East Germany, took great personal risks and were not motivated by thoughts of personal gain. The same can be said of the thousands who turned out to surround the Russian Parliament in defence of Boris Yeltsin in his resistance to the hard-liners' coup that deposed Mikhail Gorbachev. The supreme contemporary image of this kind of courage, however, comes not from Europe, but from China. It is a picture that appeared on television and in newspapers around the world: a lone Chinese student standing in front of a column of tanks rolling towards Tiananmen Square.
In liberal democracies, living an ethical life does not involve this kind of risk, but there is no shortage of opportunities for ethical commitment to worthwhile causes. My involvement in the animal liberation movement has brought me into contact with thousands of people who have made a fundamental deci- sion on ethical grounds: they have changed their diet, given up meat, or, in some cases, abstained from all animal prod- ucts. This is a decision that affects your life every day. More- over, in a society in which most people continue to eat meat, becoming a vegetarian inevitably has an impact on how others think about you. Yet thousands of people have done this, not because they believe that they will be healthier or live longer
l 9 0 H o w a r e w e t o l i v e ?
on such a diet — although this may be the case — but because they became convinced that there is no ethical justification for the way in which animals are treated when they are raised for food. For example, Mrs A. Cardoso wrote from Los Angeles:
I received your book, Animal Liberation, two weeks ago . . . I thought you would like to know that overnight it changed my thinking and I instantly changed my eating habits to that of the vegetarian . . . Thank you for making me aware of our selfishness.
There have been many letters like this. Some of the writers had no particular interest in the treatment of animals before they more or less accidentally came into contact with the issue. Typical of these is Alan Skelly, a high school teacher from the Bahamas:
As a high school teacher I was asked to become involved in the general studies taught to grade eleven. I was asked to prepare three consecutive lessons on any social topic. My wife had been given a small leaflet, 'Animal Rights', by a child in her class. I wrote to the organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, in Washington, DC and received on hire the video 'Animal Rights'. This video has had such an impact upon my wife and I that we are now vegetarians and committed to animal liberation. They also sent me a copy of your book, Animal Lib-
eration . . . Please be aware that fourteen years after the publi-
cation of your book you are responsible for the radicalization and commitment of my wife and I to animal liberation. Perhaps next month when I show PETA's video to 100 eleventh grade students I may also extend others' moral boundaries.
Some of the people who write tell me of particular difficul- ties they may have; how they can't get non-leather hiking
L i v i n g e t h i c a l l y 191
boots, or see no practical alternative to killing mice that get into their house. One had a retail fur and leather shop when he became convinced that we ought not to be killing animals for their skins - he has had problems convincing his partner to change the nature of the business! Others want to know what to feed their dogs and cats, or whether I think prawns can feel pain. Some practise their new diets alone, others work together with groups trying to change the way animals are treated. A few risk their own freedom, breaking into labora- tories in order to document the pain and suffering occurring there, and perhaps to release a few animals from it. Wherever they draw the line, they all provide significant evidence that ethical argument can change people's lives. Once they were convinced that it is wrong to rear hens in small wire cages to produce eggs more cheaply, or to put pigs in stalls too narrow for them to turn around, these people decided that they had to bring about a moral revolution in their own lives.
Animal liberation is one of many causes that rely on the readiness of people to make an ethical commitment. For two gay Americans, the cause was the outbreak of AIDS. Jim Corti, a medical nurse, and Martin Delaney, a corporate con- sultant, were horrified to discover that American regulations prevented their HIV-positive friends from receiving novel drugs that appeared to offer some hope for people with AIDS. They drove to Mexico, where the drugs were available, and smuggled them back into the USA. Soon they found them- selves running an illegal worldwide operation, smuggling drugs and fighting government bureaucracies that sought to protect people dying from an incurable disease against drugs that were not proven safe and effective. Eventually, after taking considerable risks and doing a lot of hard work, they suc- ceeded in changing government policies so that AIDS patients - and all those with terminal diseases - have quicker access to experimental treatments.5
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Australia's most memorable wilderness struggle took place in 1982 and 1983, when 2,600 people sat in front of bulldoz- ers that were being used to begin construction of a dam on the Franklin river, in south-west Tasmania. The Franklin was Tasmania's last wild river, and the dam, to be built to gener- ate electricity, would flood dramatic gorges and rapids, oblit- erate Aboriginal heritage sites, destroy Huon Pines that had taken 2,000 years to grow, and drown the animals that lived in the forests. The blockaders came from all over Australia, some travelling thousands of kilometres at their own expense from Queensland and Western Australia. They included teachers, doctors, public servants, scientists, farmers, clerks, engineers and taxi drivers. Almost half were arrested by police, mostly charged with trespass. A team of twenty lawyers, all volunteers, helped with court proceedings. Nearly 450 people refused to accept bail conditions, and spent between two and twenty-six days in gaol. Professor David Bellamy, the world- renowned English botanist, travelled around the world to take part in the blockade, and was duly arrested. Interviewed later in the local police lock-up, he said:
It was the most uplifting thing I have ever been part of, to see such a broad cross-section of society peacefully demonstrating in quite inhospitable weather against the destruction of some- thing they all believed in.6
Ethical commitment, no matter how strong, is not always rewarded; but this time it was. The blockade made the Frank- lin dam a national issue, and contributed to the election of a federal Labor government pledged to stop it. The Franklin still runs free.
These exciting struggles exemplify one aspect of a commit- ment to living ethically; but to focus too much on them can
L i v i n g e t h i c a l l y
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i|jj|
193
be misleading. Ethics appears in our lives in much more ordi- nary, everyday ways. As I was writing this chapter, my mail brought me the newsletter of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Australia's leading conservation lobby group. It included an article by the Foundation's fund-raising co- ordinator, in which he reported on a trip to thank a donor who had regularly sent donations of $1,000 or more. When he reached the address he thought something must be wrong; he was in front of a very modest suburban home. But there was no mistake: David Allsop, an employee of the state department of public works, donates 50 percent of his income to environmental causes. David had previously worked as a campaigner himself, and said he found it deeply satisfying now to be able to provide the financial support for others to campaign.7
There is something uplifting about ethical commitment, whether or not we share the objectives. No doubt some who read these pages will think that it is wrong to release animals from laboratories, no matter what the animals might suffer; others will think that everyone ought to abide by the deci- sions of the state's planning procedures on whether or not a new dam should go ahead. They may think that those who take the opposite view are not acting ethically at all. Yet they should be able to recognize the unselfish commitment of those who took part in these actions. In the abortion controversy, for example, I can acknowledge the actions of opponents of abortion as ethically motivated, even while I disagree with them about the point from which human life ought to be protected, and deplore their insensitivity to the feelings of young pregnant women who are harassed when going to clin- ics that provide abortions.
In contrast to most of the examples given so far, I shall now consider some in which unselfish, ethical action is a much quieter, more ordinary event, but no less significant for that.
194 H o w a r e we to l i v e ?
Maimonides, the greatest Jewish moral thinker of the medi- eval period, drew up a 'Golden Ladder of Charity'. The lowest level of charity, he said, is to give reluctantly; the second lowest is to give cheerfully but not in proportion to the dis- tress of the person in need; the third level is to give cheerfully and proportionately, but only when asked; the fourth to give cheerfully, proportionately, without being asked, but to put the gift into the poor person's hand, thus causing him to feel shame; the fifth is to give so that one does not know whom one benefits, but they know who their benefactor is; the sixth is to know whom we benefit, but to remain unknown to them; and the seventh is to give so that one does not know whom one benefits and they do not know who benefits them. Above this highly meritorious seventh level Maimonides placed only the anticipation of the need for charity, and its preven- tion by assisting others to earn their own livelihood so as not to need charity at all.8 It is striking that, 800 years after
Maimonides graded charity in this way, many ordinary citi- zens take part in what he would classify as the highest pos- sible level of charity, at least where prevention is not possible. This happens at the voluntary blood banks that are - in Britain, Australia, Canada and many European countries — the only source of supply for the very large amount of human blood needed for medical purposes. I have already briefly mentioned, in Chapter 5, this widespread instance of ethical conduct. The gift of blood is in one sense a very intimate one (the blood that is flowing in my body will later be inside the body of another); and in another sense a very remote one (I will never know who receives my blood, nor will they know from whom the blood came). It is relatively easy to give blood. Every healthy person, rich or poor, can give it, without risk. Yet to the recipient, the gift can be as precious as life itself.
It is true that only a minority of the population (in Britain, about 6 percent of people eligible to donate) actually do
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donate.9 It is also true that to give blood is not much of a
sacrifice. It takes an hour or so, involves a slight prick, and may make you feel a little weak for the next few hours, but that is all. How many people, a sceptic might ask, would be prepared to make a real sacrifice so that a stranger could live? If the willingness to undergo anaesthesia and stay over- night in hospital is enough of a real sacrifice, we now know that hundreds of thousands of people are prepared to do this. In recent years, bone marrow donor registries have been established in about twenty-five countries. In the USA, about 650,000 people have registered and 1,300 have donated. Fig- ures in some other countries are comparable. For instance, in France, 63,000 have registered, and 350 have donated; Eng- land has had 180,000 registrations and 700 donations to date; in Canada, 36,000 have registered, and 83 have donated; while Denmark's registrations total 10,000, with five dona- tions. Approximately 25,000 Australians have registered on the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry, and at the time of writing, ten have already donated bone marrow."1 With
calm deliberation, in a situation untouched by nationalism or the hysteria of war, and with no prospect of any tangible reward, a number of ordinary citizens are prepared to go to considerable lengths to help a stranger.
We should not be surprised about this willingness to help. As the American author Alfie Kohn puts it in a cheery book called The Brighter Side of Human Nature:
•f-'
| It is the heroic acts that turn up in the newspaper ('Man Dives ' into Pond to Save Drowning Child') and upstage the dozens of less memorable prosocial behaviors that each of us witnesses and performs in a given week. In my experience, cars do not spin their wheels on the ice for very long before someone stops to give a push. We disrupt our schedules to visit sick friends, stop to give directions to lost travelers, ask crying people if
196 How a r e we to l i v e ?
there is anything we can do to help . . . All of this, it should be stressed, is particularly remarkable in light of the fact that we are socialized in an ethic of competitive individualism. Like a green shoot forcing its way up between the concrete slabs of a city sidewalk, evidence of human caring and helping defies this culture's ambivalence about - if not outright discourage- ment of — such activity.11
Countless voluntary charities depend on public donations; and most also rely on something that, for many of us, is even harder to give: our own time. American surveys indicate that nearly 90 percent of Americans give money to charitable causes, including 20 million families who give at least 5 per- cent of their income to charity. Eighty million Americans - nearly half the adult population - volunteer their time, con- tributing a total of 15 billion hours of volunteer work in
1988.'2
We act ethically as consumers, too. When the public learnt that the use of aerosols containing CFCs damages the ozone layer, the sale of those products fell significantly, before any legal phase-out had come into effect. Consumers had gone to the trouble of reading the labels, and choosing products with- out the harmful chemicals, even though each of them could have chosen not to be bothered. Leading advertising agency J. Walter Thompson surveyed American consumers in 1990 and found that 82 percent indicated that they were prepared to pay more for environmentally-friendly products. Between a third and half said that they had already made some envi- ronmental choices with their spending dollars. For example, 54 percent said that they had already stopped using aerosol sprays.13
The Council on Economic Priorities is a United States orga- nization that rates companies on their corporate citizenship records. The aspects rated are giving to charity, supporting
L i v i n g e t h i c a l l y I97
the advancement of women and members of minority groups, animal testing, military contracts, community outreach, nuclear power, involvement with South Africa, environmental impact, and family benefits. The results are published annually in a paperback that has sold 800,000 copies. Presumably many of those who buy the book are interested in supporting com- panies that have a good record on ethical issues.
Many of the millions of customers who have helped to make The Body Shop a successful international cosmetics chain go there because they want to make sure that when they buy cosmetics, they are not supporting animal testing or causing damage to the environment. From small beginnings, the organization has grown at an average rate of 50 percent per annum, and sales are now around $150 million a year. Simi- larly, mutual investment funds that restrict their investments to corporations that satisfy ethical guidelines have become much more significant in the last decade, as people become concerned about the ethical impact of their investments and not only about the financial return they may gain. '4
These examples of ethical conduct have focused on ethical acts that help strangers, or the community as a whole, or nonhuman animals, or the preservation of wilderness, because these are the easiest to identify as altruistic, and therefore as ethical. But most of our daily lives, and hence most of our ethical choices, involve people with whom we have some rela- tionship. The family is the setting for much of our ethical decision-making; so is the workplace. When we are in long- standing relationships with people it is less easy to see clearly whether we do what we do because it is right, or because we want, for all sorts of reasons, to preserve the relationship. We may also know that the other person will have opportunities to pay us back - to assist us, or to make life difficult for us - according to how we behave toward him or her. In such
198 How a r e we to l i v e ?
relationships, ethics and self-interest are inextricably mingled, along with love, affection, gratitude and many other central human feelings. The ethical aspect may still be significant.