Asymmetric threats and ethical movements

Abstract

Many movements are built on the proposal that individuals ought to change their behavior in order to achieve certain goals. Whether it is saving human lives, other species, or the environment, individuals are told that their personal decisions can make a moral difference. However, I contend that we ought to abandon such ethical movements to the extent that their focus on individual action upholds systemic threats while we nonetheless accept the movements’ claims of what individuals ought to do. I do so by drawing a distinction between immediate threats and systemic threats and arguing that movements that uphold systemic threats can be rightly criticized for that failure, even if they include correct assessments about what individuals ought to do. I conclude that these movements ought to be replaced with movements that aim to remove not only immediate, individual threats but also overarching, systemic threats to innocent lives and the environment.