J. Howard Moore: Being (page 4)

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J. Howard Moore: 366   quotes 0   likes

“There is a kinship of all beings, for the life process has sprung from one source and evolved according to one fundamental principle. Consciousness of kind, therefore, the ability to participate in the psychic states of others, is cultivated by a knowledge of the nature and content of those around us, and anything which tends to increase or complete our knowledge of others, as identity of language, association, or ambition, tends to intensify consciousness of kind, and whatever limits or prevents knowledge of others tends to cause us to consider them of a different order or kind from ourselves.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Egoism and Altruism, pp. 117–118

Knowledge , Life , Nature

“The tradition that the universe was originally constructed and has ever since been, and is to-day, guided by the cerebral processes of an all-wise brain, is responsible for it all. Blinded by this inheritance, human beings condone the most palpable defects in the economies of the universe—limitations which, it is not violent to say, if possessed by a fellow human being, would be characterized as those of an imbecile.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Problem, p. 87

Universe

“All conscious beings are struggling, struggling to keep themselves in joint with their environment. Those things and creatures and events that aid them in their struggles are desirable and they call them good, and those things and creatures and events that oppose and defeat the satisfaction of desires are called bad.”

J. Howard Moore

Right and wrong exist as conceptions of mind, because there are portions of the universe capable of happiness and misery. Erase sentiency from the universe and you erase the possibility of ethics. Every conscious portion of the universe, therefore, has ethical relations to every other conscious portion (man, woman, worm, Eskimo, oyster, ox), but not to inanimate portions (clod, cabbage, river, rose), because the ones are sentient and the others are not.
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Problem, pp. 81–82

Bad luck

“Each living being of the universe, therefore, sustains to every other living being the relation of possible right and wrong, but to the insentient universe no such relation exists. Right is that relation which is conducive to happiness, or welfare, or complete living, or whatever synonym is preferred. Wrong is that which conduces to the opposite of happiness—misery, ill-fare, maladaptation.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Problem, pp. 79–80

Universe , Relation ships , Happiness

“Inventions are a blessing. They tame the wild tendencies of the inanimate and train them to do human bidding. They save human bodies hard and laborious exertions by becoming their obsequious aids. But they are not invariable and universal blessings. The sad and peculiar conditions prevailing in human industry cause inventions to be to many human beings a catastrophe and a dread. To those who are able to own them and have lands on which to operate them they are blessings. But to the great disinherited class, who have nothing on earth but their hands, inventions are a disadvantage and an evil.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Problem of Industry, pp. 40–41

Universe , Training , Sadness , Evil

“The human beings who possess the dominion of land and machinery and compel others, in order to obtain the essentials of existence, to serve them, are as truly masters of slaves as they who exact blood from the dorsals of their fellows with literal slave whips.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Problem of Industry, p. 37

“Man, in satisfying his desires, in avoiding misery and achieving happiness, strives to do two things with the inanimate universe: to manage it and to foreknow it. The inanimate is not devoted to us. We are not birdlings cuddled in an order of things where we need simply to yawn and be filled. We must bestir ourselves, or be in a position to compel others to bestir themselves for us, or perish. We are waifs, brought into existence by a universe whose solicitude for us ended with the travail that brought us forth. The inanimate universe is our mother, but without the blessed mother-love. The first thing we are conscious of, and about the only thing we ever absolutely know, is that we are whirling around in a very helpless manner on a whirligig of a ball, out of whose substance by the sweat of our brows we must quarry our existence. The universe is practically independent of us. But we, alas, are not independent of it. The food we eat, our raiment, our habitations, our treasures, our implements of knowledge, and our means of amusement are all portions of the inanimate, which we living beings must somehow subtract from the rest. In order to obtain these indispensable portions of the universe about us, we must halter it and control it and compel it to produce to the tune of our desires.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Problem of Industry, pp. 19–20

Food , Universe , Knowledge , Love

“Every pain is to be avoided, except those whose endurance will enable the avoidance of greater pain, and every possible happiness is to be harvested, save those whose foregoing will help the universe to larger happiness. There is no obligation commanding any being to endure misery save to avoid misery, and no consideration demanding any one to neglect happiness save for larger happiness—those ascetics who proclaim the divinity of wretchedness to the contrary notwithstanding.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Problem of Industry, p. 17

Universe , Pain , Help , Happiness

“I am a vegetarian, therefore, because cannibalism is unnecessarily. I can live just as well and be just as happy without drinking the blood of my fellows and why should I slay them? Why should I not live and let live—especially when I can do it just as well as not? It is not necessary that ten thousand creatures should give up their lives in order that I may keep mine, and if I make any pretensions to morality why should I require them to do it? If you say such a thing is necessary in your case, I say to you it is not—and further, that if it were, it would be your duty as an ethical being to call on your undertaker. There is no sense in carnivora talking about ethics and justice and mercy, for their very existence is a travesty on such things. It makes me indignant and sad when I hear men deplore sin and prate about justice and love and mercy when the very energy they expend in preaching justice and mercy is obtained from the skeletons and sensibilities of their fellows. It is a spectacle that ought to make the imps of netherdom tremble for their laurels—man, the remorseless glutton, going about with a tongue and a knife, with his tongue preaching peace, mercy, and love, and with his knife making the very earth sodden with blood.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: Why I Am a Vegetarian: An Address Delivered before the Chicago Vegetarian Society (1895), pp. 39–40

Peace , Drink , Justice , Sense

“I became a vegetarian by my own reflection. I did not know at the time of the vegetarian movement, and hence, supposed myself among republics of carnivora. It did not seem to me graceful or ideal that I, an ethical being should maintain my existence at the incessant expense of misery and death to others.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: Why I Am a Vegetarian: An Address Delivered before the Chicago Vegetarian Society (1895), pp. 11—12

Death , Time

“I came to the conclusion out there on the Kansas prairies that the animals were not treated right by human beings. I thought we had not even a right to kill them for food and came to the University of Chicago to study the matter. At that time I had never heard of vegetarianism.”

J. Howard Moore

The National Humane Review, Vol. 4–6, American Humane Association, 1916

Study , Time , Food , Universe

“Every being is incomparably precious to himself. This is the most mournful feature in human psychology. We did not invent it. It was handed to us along with our fingers and our fondness fo eating. It is the psychic calamity of the animal kingdom.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: "Human Nature is Defective", speech to the Young People's Socialist League, The Chicago Tribune, 20 Oct. 1910

Animals

“It is impossible for me to express my loathing and horror of the practice men have of killing things for pastime so-called 'hunting,' or 'sport. No one but a barbarian can engage in such pursuits, or can look upon them or know of them without pain and indignation. It makes me want to fight and cry whenever I think of them. And when I see men engaged in such execrable activities (the crippling, killing, and terrifying of whole communities of innocent and happy beings, shooting them down in cold blood, and with hellish enthusiasm), my feeling is that I must stop them at all hazards. And there have been times, when I have come upon men engaged in these fiendish doings, when I would have shot them down if I had been armed, the enormity of their crimes has come over me with such vividness and power.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Perils of Over-population, pp. 157–158

Sport , Pain , Time , Happiness

“Men are not zoophilists (being-lovers). Not many of them are philanthropists (man-lovers). They are barbarians. And the wrongs inflicted by them on non-human beings are for the most part inflicted simply because they feel like it. Human nature is so constructed that men get pleasure out of doing the most monstrous deeds. It is worse than this. Human nature is so constructed that it contains elements which demand exercise, demand motor expression, and in whose expression the most lamentable and appalling effects are produced.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Perils of Over-population, p. 154

Nature , Pleasure , Men , Lovers

“No being will do his most luminous and exalted thinking with his stomach a morgue.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Food of the Future, p. 137

Thinking

“Flesh foods are coming to be recognised more and more by physicians, teachers, writers, and progressive and scientific people generally, as being not only unnecessary and immoral, but as actually inhibitory of the highest efficiency and well-being in man himself. The meat fetish is nothing but an idol, a delusion pure and simple, which has been foisted upon us, like so many other delusions, by tradition, and the time is not far distant when it will be recognised as such by all who really think.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Food of the Future, p. 132

Time , Food , People , Teachers

“A carnivorous animal is not an ideal animal, and never can be. The life of a carnivorous animal is a perpetual onslaught. Every meal is a murder. Eating is not the harmless activity it is to one who sits down to fruit and grains. The carnivore must kill somebody, or have somebody else do it for him, in order to eat. It cannot be otherwise. And an animal whose life is one unbroken succession of such necessities, whose stomach is the grave of hundreds and thousands, and even of tens of thousands, of his fellow-beings, may be meritorious in other respects — may preach the Golden Rule, decry war, give money to the missionary, and rail at the rich — but so long as he continues to fill himself every few hours with the blood and vitals of others, he is not only not an ideal animal, but has in reality no just claims on life. Flesh is a painful form of nutrition for any organism, but it is especially so for man, because it is unnecessary, and because man makes so many pretensions and occupies a position in the world of such exceptional responsibility.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Food of the Future, pp. 131–132

Money , Pain , Success , War

“The carnivorous life is denounced by the tenderer and more enlightened elements of mankind, and so those under indictment begin to rake and scrape to see what they can turn up in vindication of their beloved and imperilled rapacities. They find, happily, that Nature is 'red in tooth and claw,' that man has 'canine teeth,' and that human beings are without the five stomachs of the ruminantia. Of course, man is a carnivorous animal; couldn't be anything else if he wanted to be; would probably peter out if he attempted it; and it is not necessary to try to be anything else, anyway, if he could be, for he is in harmony with the all-wise and perfectly lovely regime of bloody Nature already. Mighty slim pegs on which to suspend a life of crime, considering that their substance is purely imaginary! But sufficient for those who have made up their minds beforehand to be satisfied with whatever there is.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: The New Ethics (1907), Is Man a Plant-Eater?, pp. 111–112

Nature , Animals , Love , Life

“[T]he belief that the bodies of other beings take a necessary part in human alimentation is more than a tradition: it is a convenience. For if human beings can hold on to the feeling that the flesh and blood of their fellows are in some way necessary to them, they are comparatively immune from those disturbances which the most cowed conscience is at times disposed to stir up.”

J. Howard Moore

Source: The New Ethics (1907), What Shall We Eat?, p. 78

Way , Time , Feeling , Parting

“Suppose we human beings were hunted with traps by a race of giants loo feet high, very ingenious, and absolutely without conscience so far as their treatment of us was concerned. Suppose that, in spite of all our vigilance, we were continually falling into these traps, which were hidden all about us, and compelled in order to escape to eat off our own arms or legs. Suppose that even then one out of every five of us was so ill-starred as to be caught a second time, and ended up, after hours or days of unspeakable agony, by having his head smashed into a jelly by a big club. Suppose we were absolutely helpless in the matter, and that our victimisers had no higher purpose in inflicting these fiendish outrages than to get a scalp or a jawbone to dangle about their demoniacal necks. Suppose, finally, in order to complete the analogy, that these people imagined themselves to be highly civilised and enlightened. What sort of an opinion do you think we would have in the course of ages as to the real character of these people and of their fitness to be the models and superintendents of a planet?”

J. Howard Moore

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Cost of a Skin, pp. 70–71

Imagination , Time , Star , People