Overwhelming Evil

Christopher Devlin Brown argues that our wholesale destruction of animals makes veganism humanity’s primary moral imperative.

- CHRISTOPHER DEVLIN BROWN

Imagine you’re looking through a pair of binoculars at a park. At one end of the park you see a young person scribbling some obscene graffiti, while at the other end you recognize a serial killer from the news who seems to be creeping up on a fresh victim. Urgently, you grab a phone and call the police. First, you tell them about the youth who is scribbling graffiti, including their physical description, their location, and other information relevant to catching them. You make sure to be as thorough as possible, then ask the police to read their notes back to you to guarantee that they have correctly transcribed every detail. After all of this information has been properly checked, you then tell them that there is also a serial killer at the other end of the park, and provide them with the information relevant to catching the killer.

Have you done something wrong in this situation?

I believe so. There is a moral obligation to address significantly greater evils before addressing lesser evils, and the obligation becomes more pronounced as the relative difference between the evils increases. For instance, instead of a single serial killer, suppose you see a gang of psychopaths murdering dozens of schoolchildren at one end of the park, and again the graffiti artist at the other end. Trying to stop the graffiti artist before trying to stop the gang of murderers would seem a serious moral error.