Is it immoral to kill an ant?


  • If we ask the ant, certainly yes.
  • If we ask a Jain saint, yes.
  • If we ask a Jain saint who inadvertently trampled on hundreds of them, no.
  • If we ask the person whom it was just about to bite, certainly not.
  • If we ask another person about the above person, probably yes.
  • If we ask the child who just killed it out of curiosity, no clue.
  • If we ask a priest about the child, probably yes.
  • If we ask the parents about the child, probably no idea. They might ask the priest…about the child. They don’t care about the ant.

    Morality by definition depends on the person who is passing the judgment, their individual values and the context. Moral laws are simply widely accepted standards which help us to function as a group, reduce destruction, increase net happiness and prevent chaos. Not absolute truths which cannot be broken. If they were, they would have been laws of Nature which cannot be broken even if we wanted to. The problem starts when we overrate them and feel disagreements are evil.

2 Comments

  1. How about killing a chicken or a goat .. 🙂 ?

  2. Again .. ask 10 people…you will get 10 perspectives!

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