Callysta wrote:
Just because I can't help everyone doesn't mean that I shouldn't help anyone.
First off, starfish are not self-aware because they do not have centralized nervous systems. This is also why I eat jellyfish and clams (which do have brains but very marginally developed ones). This is relevant because again your fable is an appeal to emotion and not reason.
To answer your point, this world's affairs are zero-sum. What you do for one, you do not do for another, and a good thing for someone, is a comparative disadvantage for everyone else. When you go out of your way to help, or express compassion, for only a limited part of the whole, based on your own value judgements, what you really do, is reinforce the status quo, and thus the injustices in the world. Hence my example of the horsemeat bill.
When you help some, based on your own value judgments, you're really practicing a form of bigotry, because you're not helping - and therefore hurting - those things that don't appeal to you. Think of it this way: if no one, ever, helped lovable dogs, people's compassion would lead them to deal with the problem with equanimity: helping all of god's creatures equally. The ugly and unlovable creatures would be able to sit at the table when the pie is cut. Instead they just get neglected, euthanized, or meet with indifference in their plight.
