Friday, April 5, 2024

Ethics & Aesthetics

Art is not what you see,
but what you make others see.

Edgar Degas


You use a glass mirror to see your face;
you use works of art to see your soul.

Bernard Shaw


Aesthetics is the mother of ethics.
Joseph Brodsky

Indefensible

Ethics is the aesthetics of the soul.
Pierre Reverdy


Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.
Albert Schweitzer


Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart,
cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

Mahatma Gandhi


From beasts we scorn as soulless,
in forest, field and den,
the cry goes up to witness,
the soullessness of men.

M. Frida Hartley


It is our hearts, not just our heads, that call
for an end to it all, that demand of us that we
overcome, for them, the habits and forces behind
their systematic oppression. That requires
both our passion and our discipline.
The fate of animals is in our hands.
God grant we are equal to the task.

Tom Regan


Reason is the slave of the passions.
David Hume


To have compassion means to have passion
for all things... for all human beings,
for the animals... everything the earth contains.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The opposite of love is not hate,
it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness,
it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy,
it's indifference.
The opposite of life is not death,
it's indifference.

Elie Wiesel


I've Seen You in the Meat Aisle
~ by Emma Murphy

I've seen you in the meat aisle,
Seen you choosing who to eat,
Eyeing up their body parts
In rows all nice and neat.

I've seen you grabbing bottled milk
That wasn't made for you
And I know you never think about
The suffering they knew.

I've watched your fill your trolley up
With misery and pain,
Eggs and cheese, a leg, a wing,
My heart just broke again.

You say I should respect your choice,
That it's your right to choose,
Well, legally perhaps you win,
But morally, you lose.

I don't know how you do it
But you close your ears and eyes
To the slaughterhouse, the blood and screams,
Their fear, despair and cries.

It doesn't even cross your mind,
You bite and drink and chew,
And you keep yourself from knowing
That they died because of you.

So no, I don't respect your choice,
There's no respect from me.
You are putting in your stomach
Someone you refuse to see.

The animals, they have no voice,
Convenient for you,
But have a heart and look at those
Who lost their lives for you.

Someone, not something

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