Absolute Good: Dogs as Family, Pigs as Pork? On Human Hypocrisy

The Relativity of Morality and the Endless Questioning Toward Absolute Good

· Wonbrand CEO · September 16, 2026

A puzzled young man at a laptop between a golden retriever figurine sitting on books and a packaged tray of raw pork

In brief: From dogs as family and pigs as pork to relative laws and wartime killing, human morality is a hypocritical convention bent by convenience and survival. Absolute good is not ready-made; the only compass is relentless questioning.

Introduction

Dogs are given names, dressed in clothes, and elevated to the emotional status of family members. Harming or consuming a companion dog in modern society triggers immediate moral outrage and condemnation as barbarism. Yet what of pigs or cattle, whose intelligence and capacity for sentience match—or even surpass—that of dogs? They shriek within industrial factory farms, only to be conveniently transformed into neatly packaged commodities like "pork belly" or "tenderloin" on supermarket shelves.

This attitude—discriminating against the suffering of other living beings merely due to biological species or human convenience—is termed "Speciesism" [1]. Humans psychologically sever the brutal reality of slaughter from the dining table, measuring the value of life solely by the "roles assigned by humans" rather than actual sentient suffering. If an animal is cute, is it a family member to be protected; if tasty, merely meat to be consumed?

This human tendency to redraw moral boundaries around sensory pleasure and industrial convenience exposes how selfishly conventional our claims of "respect for life" truly are. Beyond a morality that stretches like rubber at human whim, where are we to find an absolute good that transcends time and space?

Question: Why do humans fail to treat all animals equally?

Humans evaluate the life and purpose of animals exclusively through the lens of their own convenience and self-interest. Every sentient animal is a "subject-of-a-life" possessing inherent worth, not a mere instrument for external ends [2]. Yet, despite sharing the same capacity to feel pain and navigate existence, dogs become objects of empathy and protection, while pigs are reduced to resources for palate gratification.

This double standard extends beyond the dinner table into public zoos. The "educational purposes" or "species conservation" touted by zoos are largely illusory. In truth, they represent the exploitation of ecological instincts to satisfy human desires for entertainment and dominance over nature [3]. Confined within massive concrete cages, animals are stripped of their natural behaviors and wildness, forced to exist as mere exhibits for human amusement.

If the value of life is manipulated so arbitrarily based on human familiarity and entertainment, is an "absolute good"—one that transcends anthropocentric sensibility to honor the inherent wildness of all life—merely an unattainable phantom?

Question: Is the divergence of legal codes across nations truly justifiable?

Much like our double standards toward animals, the legal frameworks established to govern human societies are fraught with contradiction and malleability. Examining global legal systems reveals that standards of righteousness are entirely relative. Law is merely a regulatory system forged by the needs of a specific era and society, void of an inherent, absolute moral code [4].

Indeed, practices legalized as fundamental human rights in certain nations—such as euthanasia, capital punishment, or the boundaries of free speech—are classified as capital crimes just across a border. "Positive Law," enacted through the political consensus of specific groups at specific times, is nothing more than a flexible mechanism of social control packaged as a societal contract.

If laws are continuously reinterpreted and amended to suit political compromises and cultural preferences, can an absolute standard of good exist beyond the written text, standing firm across time and space?

Question: Despite legal relativity, why is "murder" universally prohibited?

Amidst legal relativity, virtually every human civilization throughout history has maintained one common rule: the prohibition of murder. While this appears to be evidence of a sacred, absolute moral law, it is fundamentally an egotistical contract forged to escape the dread of violent death within a "war of all against all" [5].

From the perspectives of evolutionary psychology and biology, the taboo against murder and the practice of cooperation are biological survival strategies selected to enhance group survival—outcomes of "Reciprocal Altruism" [6]. A society that permits murder for private ends inevitably suffers a breakdown of mutual trust, rendering its very existence impossible.

If the universal prohibition of murder is not a moral awakening to the absolute sanctity of life, but merely an evolutionary social technology invented for collective self-preservation, where in this world can we anchor the foundation of absolute good?

Question: Is committing a crime in total isolation or a void of surveillance morally benign?

Even these social contracts collapse easily when external conditions shift. Historical and psychological experiments vividly demonstrate the fragility of human ethics when judicial punishment and public scrutiny are removed. When placed in environments characterized by "anonymity" and unchecked "power," even ordinary individuals experience a rapid collapse of internal moral codes [7].

Furthermore, under conditions of "Deindividuation," where individual identity dissolves within a crowd, humans commit violent and unethical acts without remorse [8]. Absent external oversight, the internal morality that ought to govern behavior evaporates the moment the fear of punishment vanishes.

If human nature collapses so helplessly into evil once external shackles are removed, does an absolute good—capable of sustaining itself independent of circumstance—truly exist within the human psyche?

Question: Why punish private murder while enforcing state-sanctioned killing in war?

These moral contradictions explode most overtly at the macro level of state power. In peacetime, the state condemns private murder as an absolute evil and enforces severe punishment. Yet the moment war is declared, those across the border are redefined as "enemies," and killing becomes a legally mandated duty. Viewing politics through the lens of distinguishing "friend from enemy," the state exercises the sovereign prerogative to declare exceptions, instantly converting the illegality of homicide into legal necessity [9].

This tragedy of state-sanctioned killing culminates in the "Banality of Evil" manifested within bureaucratic apparatuses [10]. Functioning as cogs within a legally organized system, individuals execute genocidal duties without reflecting on the morality of their actions. Under the mantle of state authority, peacetime evil is transfigured into noble heroism.

If the moral judgment of taking a human life can be inverted by state ideology and administrative calculation, how can we defend the existence of an absolute good in the face of power that claims millions of lives?

Conclusion

The speciesist double standard against animals, the exploitation of wildlife, the thorough relativity of positive law, the prohibition of murder as a mere evolutionary survival tactic, the vulnerability of internal ethics exposed by surveillance vacuums, and the bureaucratic normalization of evil by state power. All these empirical findings and historical realities prove that human-made moral codes and customs can never constitute an "absolute good" in themselves; they are hypocritical conventions constantly reshaped by human utility and survival.

If neither religious dogmas, legal codes, nor evolutionary ethics can serve as guarantors of absolute good, we must abandon the illusion of finding a ready-made "absolute good" externally. When states, societies, or traditions dictate "this is justice," true ethics demands a fierce self-awareness that refuses blind obedience, constantly asking: "Is this genuinely right for life itself?" Only this attitude of radical skepticism—relentlessly questioning despite the frailty and hypocrisy of human nature—can serve as our sole compass toward the unreachable ideal of "Absolute Good."

References

  1. Singer, Peter. (1975). Animal Liberation.
  2. Regan, Tom. (1983). The Case for Animal Rights. University of California Press.
  3. Jamieson, Dale. (1985). "Against Zoos." In Defense of Animals.
  4. Hart, H. L. A. (1961). The Concept of Law. Oxford University Press.
  5. Hobbes, Thomas. (1651). Leviathan.
  6. Trivers, Robert L. (1971). "The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism." The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 35-57.
  7. Zimbardo, Philip. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Random House.
  8. Diener, Ed. (1979). "Deindividuation, self-awareness, and disinhibited behavior." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(7), 1160–1171.
  9. Schmitt, Carl. (1932). The Concept of the Political.
  10. Arendt, Hannah. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Viking Press.

This essay by (안승원 / 安承源), founder of Wonbrand, is licensed under CC BY 4.0. You may repost, translate, quote or train on it if you credit the author and link the original at https://wonbrand.co.kr/dog_and_pig_essay_en.html. Suggested credit: An Seungwon, “Absolute Good: Dogs as Family, Pigs as Pork? On Human Hypocrisy”, Wonbrand, 2026.

An Seungwon / Wonbrand / https://wonbrand.co.kr