Equality, Sameness, and Rights

Abstract

67 My intuition is that the right to live is one and the same for all individuals, whatever the species, but the vital interests of our nearest nevertheless have priority. The rules that operate when interests conflict include two important factors: vitalness and nearness. The greater vital interest has priority over the less vital, and the nearer has priority over the more remote-in space, time, culture, and species. Nearness derives its priority from our special responsibilities, obligations, and insights as human beings among human beings. The terms used in these rules are of course vague and ambiguous, but even so, the rules point toward ways of thinking and acting that do not leave us helpless in the many inevitable conflicts between norms. The vast increase of negative consequences for life in general, brought about by industrialization and the population explosion, necessitates new guidelines. For example, the use of threatened species for food or fur clothing may be more or less vital for certain poor families in nonindustrial human communities. Among people who are not poor, however, such use is clearly ecologically irresponsible. Given the fabulous possibilities open to the richest industrial nations, it is their responsibility to cooperate with poor communities such that undue exploitation of threatened species, populations, and ecosystems can be avoided. It may be of vital interest to a family of poisonous snakes to remain