"Selective altruism"

On the subject of weasel words... Martin Raymond of the 'Future Laboratory' studies twentysomethings. He has identified a new ethical framework in their heads, which he calls 'selective altruism'. This is his arbitrary term for people who are, for example, against animal testing but for euthanasia. I might call them something else, perhaps 'animal supremacists'. People who think like that would rather people suffer than animals be tested on for their lifesaving drugs, and are careless about how human life fares in the moral swamp of euthanasia.

What such views amount to is the worst yet most tempting kind of wickedness. That which will prefer to choose an option that makes the individual feel good about themselves, rather on the basis of its effect or of the broad principles which it enacts and supports. To believe in human dignity and value is a basis for thinking about how to behave. In combination with an ethic that has room for self-sacrifice, it can ground hard decisions that might take the shine off our self-image but do some serious good. Forgetting these, and just going for the warm fuzzy feeling is not how you build a civilisation. It is how you leave one to pull it down. If this is how the new generation thinks, there are savage times coming.