Writing Sample

Moral Responsibilities in My Future Community

           When it comes to moral responsibilities, though turbulent ideas of what they could include and exclude have been occurring and reoccurring to me, I believe these seemingly varying beliefs have some consistent underlying core values. I would say that I believe in reciprocity more than altruism and that I have been contemplating the moral principles with which I would hope to treat my future community. This all begins with the way in which I conceive of how my community will be constituted.

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           Who will be the members of my future community, the people to whom and with whom I will owe moral obligations? I assume this community would consist of members tied together through mutual reciprocity, meaning I would be morally responsible for their well-being just as they would expect the same in return. I would first count those people who are of immediate emotional proximity to me. I disagree with the universalist perspective that “no one is more important than anybody else just because she is your friend or a member of your family”[1], because I, like many other human beings, have the arguably instinctual need to form connections with other people; that is, the need to bond with others who have similar interests. Despite the fact that such relations might fall into the category of a type of favoritism, I would argue that care for a broader community should start with people who are physically closer to you. Furthermore, I disagree with Keller’s proposal of “patriotism as efficiency”[2] because I choose not to limit my immediate close contacts to people of the same cultural background, ethnicity or nationality, as these can all too easily succumb to simplistic and warped notions of patriotism. I find myself “closer to and more familiar with”[3] people who are under similar experiences of suppression and who enjoy a lifestyle similar to mine, rather than with my compatriots, as Keller suggests. For example, compared to top Chinese male elites who hold overarching power and wealth, I bond far more easily with foreign nationals who share my same disdain for the trappings of patriarchal power. Since the primal instinct of building human connections is facilitated in modern society through social media, I would consider those people I find on the internet to also be included in my future community. Thus, my career as a content creator will become increasingly important as the community for which I am morally responsible continues to expand, perhaps even exponentially.

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           And yet, how am I to take moral responsibility for such a community, particularly a large one? Beginning with my immediate contacts, I would treat people as my guests, following the example of the bodhisattva, who teach that we should offer kindness and love[4]. This could take the form of offering whatever help I can provide when and wherever people are in need of it. These opportunities could be manifest in daily life, such as assisting my mom when she cooks, or preparing birthday surprises for close friends. For those who are beyond my immediate reach, I currently employ two methods of offering kindness and love: making donations and creating content. For people who are suffering from either permanent or temporary hardships where financial help could help to relieve their suffering, I can donate to various organizations I find trustworthy, such as UNICEF. (On a lengthy aside, this practice is still in agreement with my earlier proposal of reciprocity because I am not making donations based on an altruist purpose or motivation. I began monthly donations to UNICEF some time ago when I was hoping for a good results from my college applications, as I somehow believed that the universe consists of reciprocal relationships; hence, I conjectured that, since I felt I could not really offer much of anything to the admissions office, I could at least offer other things, other types of giving to the larger world in the hopes of reaping some benefit from that.) For internet users who follow my video channel, I try to provide knowledge through my content with a healthy dose of positivity. When I started this channel, I established a sense of social responsibility, namely, that it is my duty to make some positive impact on whomever is watching my videos. Most of the content that I create and post is related to women’s well-being and empirical discussions of women’s rights. I see it as a major means of giving back to my community especially since I have received feedback from my viewers stating that their anxiety was alleviated by watching certain content on my channel. Another surprising impact of this video work has been that, for instance, women who are my immediate contacts started viewing themselves and their body image more positively. They have confessed that exposure to my video content has helped them a great deal with such issues.

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           Is there anyone else I am supposed to be morally responsible to, other than those persons with whom I have close contact and those internet users who share similar interests with me? If I were to take the advice of the bodhisattva, “inviting all sentient beings as our guests”[5], animals should not be excluded from this community. To be honest, I have not thought of animal rights and human’s morally questionable treatment of them until I was struck by Norcross stating that “any meat-eating readers of this article are now deprived of the excuse of ignorance”[6]. Indeed, if the relationships within the community are promoted as reciprocal, where giving and taking are in a dynamic balance, it is hard to justify human’s brutal exploitation of animals compared to the demands that animals make on humans. Thus, it is only reasonable to include animals — not only pets and endangered species, but also farm animals — in my previously proposed community.

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           Then what could be an ethical approach to eating animals? Is there such an approach? If so, how can it be justified in light of the evidence against it? Having lived my entire life as an omnivore and a meat-lover in a culture that celebrates meat consumption, I find it hard to imagine a complete abandonment of animal products. Other than sacrificing the gustatory pleasures of consuming meat, the most difficult part of eliminating meat from the dinner table is giving up its culturally connotative significance. For example, in my culture being a minority who refuses to eat meat during the Chinese New Year means foregoing half of the dishes on the table with the added risk of being roasted by elder family members who have spent more than a week preparing the food. This is especially so when their expressions of love, is to feed loved ones with the best food, which usually means a variety of meat dishes prepared in various styles. Now the act of refusing meat might induce the dismay of the immediate family members, which contradicts what was argued previously, namely, that I am responsible for their well-being. Nonetheless, having a diet with meat in almost every meal sounds less desirable for me now that I am deprived of the excuse of being ignorant of animal abuse. On top of the animal abuse found throughout factory meat production, eating meat can also be more expensive, less environmentally friendly, and can impose health risks[7]. In this case, Yaser’s proposal for a “meatless Monday”[8] sounds more plausible: the gustatory pleasure is not completely cut off, I could still avoid family conflict by enjoying omnivore dinners with them, it is more environmentally friendly solution, and it has a positive impact on my personal health.

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           In conclusion, both people with similar interests to me and animals are included in my proposed community to and for whom I perform my moral obligations. I would offer kindness and love to my immediate human contacts, and I would donate or produce videos that contain positivity and knowledge as a content creator to people out of my immediate reach. Even though completely cutting off animal products is considered undesirable in a culture that prizes such a culinary sense, I would have less meat or even set meatless Mondays to get started on treating animals morally.

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[1] Simon Keller, “Are Patriotism and Universalism Compatible?,” Social Theory and Practice 33, no. 4 (November 1, 2007): 609–24, https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract20073345.

[2] Keller.

[3] Keller.

[4] Thich Nhat Hanh et al., “How to Be a Bodhisattva - Lion’s Roar,” January 19, 2021, https://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-be-a-bodhisattva-2/.

[5] Hanh et al.

[6] Alastair Norcross, “Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases,” Philosophical Perspectives 18, no. 1 (December 2004): 229–45, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2004.00027.x.

[7] Heidi Lynch, Carol Johnston, and Christopher Wharton, “Plant-Based Diets: Considerations for Environmental Impact, Protein Quality, and Exercise Performance,” Nutrients 10, no. 12 (December 1, 2018): 1841, https://doi.org/10.3390/nu10121841.

[8] Jessica Yaser, “The Environmental Impact of Meat Consumption: Meatless Monday Can Do More Good Than You Think,” The Pursuit, 2019, https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2019posts/meatless-monday-010219.html.