In it there’s an anecdote about a case of animal abuse that went viral and how every coworker, facebook aunt, and opinion columnist bravely stood up against it as if “don’t hurt kittens” was this huge controversial thing in our society to support

I agreed with that stance, of course. Who doesn’t? But despite agreeing with the side they took, I couldn’t help but be amused by the editorial’s inordinately proud pose of courageous truth-telling. The lowest common denominator of minimal morality was being held up as though it were a prophetic example of speaking truth to power.

And it’s as if the commenters wanted there to be a cabal of sick and demented kitten torturers, that way they could feel morally righteous in opposing them

Most of the commenters and letter-writers didn’t seem to notice that they were expressing a unanimous and noncontroversial sentiment. Their comments and letters were contentious and sort of aggressively defensive. Or maybe defensively aggressive. They were angry, and that anger didn’t seem to be directed only at the kitten-burners, but also at some larger group of others whom they imagined must condone this sort of thing.

But one also came away from reading that thread with the sense that people seemed to think this ultra-minimal moral stance made them exceptional and exceptionally righteous.

The article makes the point that these sort of empty and obvious statements (“don’t kill children”) serve as lazy moral short cuts we use to convince ourselves that we are a morally good people and society without actually having to challenge and overcome our own failings and those of the society we live in.

The kitten-burners seem to fulfill some urgent need. They give us someone we can clearly and correctly say we’re better than. Their extravagant cruelty makes us feel better about ourselves because we know that we would never do what they have done. They thus function as signposts of depravity, reassuring the rest of us that we’re Not As Bad As them, and thus letting us tell ourselves that this is the same thing as us being good.

And this type of lazy mortality is not one based off love, but instead judgement.