"This year in D.C., when so much has felt existential and out of our control, a clear, actionable way to care for the planet has emerged: kill spotted lanternflies. The ecological case against them is real: They are invasive, destructive, and bad for trees. But I still can't bring myself to do it. Each time I see one, with its flickering polka-dotted wings and its clumsy jumps, I hesitate. I know what I'm supposed to do."
"We tell ourselves it serves a higher purpose: protecting an ecosystem, a nation, a cause. In politics, we flatten people into symbols of everything we dislike. At work, we treat colleagues and their pesky emotions as obstacles to what we need and efficiency. On the street, we talk ourselves out of giving a panhandler money or even making eye contact, convincing ourselves we'd only be "fueling the problem.""
People experience moral tension between ecological necessity and empathy, exemplified by reluctance to kill invasive spotted lanternflies despite their harm to trees. Humans routinely justify small harms by invoking higher purposes—protecting ecosystems, nations, or efficiency—which flattens others into symbols and dismisses emotions as obstacles. Those justifications erode the instinct to care and encourage skipping self-kindness in pursuit of productivity. Questioning ends-justify-means thinking preserves humane instincts and resists normalizing violence in daily choices. Kindness and grace function as part of moral balance rather than distractions, reinforcing personal and collective capacity for care.
Read at Psychology Today
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