To live is to betray ethics – and to know it

Humans love to talk about ethics. They like to believe that morality is a rare quality they undoubtedly possess, perhaps more than any other creature. They have even turned the word “human” into a synonym for kindness, mercy and empathy. And it is not merely a cultural reflex or collective flattery – they sincerely believe it.

It is therefore legitimate to push this claim to its furthest limits. For, on closer inspection, that confidence in their moral superiority seems at least debatable, even downright irritating.

Consider everyday scenes, not the ones that shock the front page, but those that blend into respectable daily life. An old woman in a field force‑feeding a goose – something no one would wish on their worst enemy. Hard‑working farmers skinning animals alive so the fur keeps its shine. Upright citizens tossing live crabs onto a grill without hesitation. These acts are deemed normal, even honourable, carried out by people judged upright, balanced and respectable. And yet…

Let’s even set those edge cases aside

Assume they do not represent “the best among us”. Instead, look at those who truly try to do good: those who consciously refuse to cause harm, who want no sentient being to suffer, who keep clear of deliberate cruelty. Imagine a kind of saint, an exemplary figure of kindness.

One day this saint crosses a meadow, unaware, and crushes an anthill. A deluge of tiny yet real suffering rains down on hundreds of creatures. Some die instantly, others are wounded, paralysed, unable to crawl, dying slowly in confusion. All of it, of course, without the slightest malicious intent.

But this ordinary scene raises a real question: if this saint lives for sixty years, how many comparable acts will he commit unknowingly? How many lives damaged, interrupted and ignored simply because he is there, moving, breathing?

And then, what remains of that famous moral superiority? Is it still so solid once reduced to the scale of facts?

Whatever we do, we harm!

Here we shall speak of neither God, nor revealed morality, nor posthumous reward. Only naked ethics: ethics addressed to no one but oneself, needing no external gaze to remain valid. Ethics that alone deserves the name.

And this genuine ethics, when followed to its conclusion, imposes an implacable verdict:

To exist is to harm. Even involuntarily. It is to harm irreversibly. A person who refuses to harm, who wants to be totally ethical, pure, has only one option: withdraw from existence. To grasp this, we must ask that saint before he comes into being: dear sir full of good intentions, you will live sixty years during which you will do much good but infinitely more harm, because every ant or other sentient being counts as one. Do you still choose to exist, or would you rather not bear the weight of those sufferings?

What do you think he would choose if he truly possessed good intentions?

Real ethics starts not with action but with the decision to exist

Any conscious being, once aware of its capacity to act, must accept that its existence produces effects. And those effects inevitably include – even with the best intentions, even in the most careful gestures (and humans are far from careful) – a share of harm.

It may mean crushing insects while walking or killing hordes with pesticides; harming one’s fellows mentally or physically; eating living, conscious organisms – and the number of organisms consumed over an entire lifetime is staggering; or destroying invisible balances merely by being present, and so on.

These are not “collateral damage”: they are real acts built into the very act of living. Anyone who breathes assumes them. Whether they are conscious, intentional or necessary changes nothing – rather like an elephant lingering in a china shop.

Thus, to exist is to interact, and to interact is, for the most part, to harm.

Refusing injustice is not a posture but a sacrificial demand

Someone who truly wishes not to harm (not in words, not for self‑glorification, but deep down, naked and absolute) cannot ignore this fact. Wanting not to harm while continuing to live is wanting the impossible. One cannot keep living without accepting harm.

Even living “as cleanly as possible”, even being vegan, is not a solution. It amounts to saying, “I choose to be an unavoidable evil, but a moderate one.” Adjusting the definition of ethics to the practical reality of human life on Earth can only be an imposture, a farce.

True ethics does not moderate evil. It rejects it. That rejection, in this world, implies only withdrawal. Any other choice means accepting to harm for another thirty, forty, fifty or eighty years. This is not an invitation to withdraw, but an invitation to look in the mirror. Humanity, by accepting mere existence, already agrees to harm. We must erase that other dictionary definition of “human”. The human has nothing humane about him: he thinks his own life outweighs the suffering of thousands, perhaps millions, of other sentient beings – and he accepts that.

Granted, for a being filled with absolute non‑harm, one might grant the benefit of the doubt: you are sure you will harm no one, then remain in existence. But at the first, second or third misstep – for that would indeed be one – at the first, second or third suffering caused, that man or woman must make the only choice left if they truly wish not to harm.

The only innocence is voluntary withdrawal

This is not about being judged by others. It is about judging oneself – not by intentions, but by effects. Once a being realises it cannot exist without causing harm, continuing to exist becomes a deliberate act of accepted harm. That is a confession. It can no longer say, “I didn’t know.”

It knows. And it continues.

It agrees to persist as a source of injustice. From then on, even if it hides behind noble reasons (helping others, loving, creating), it has already chosen the moral threshold that tolerates minimal injustice. It has chosen compromise with evil, not its disappearance.

And hiding behind the eternal excuse “all beings harm” or “animals eat one another” is only another confession: to be, in fact, no more than an animal. Nature offers no alternative but animality; and animality – if we exclude pure evil – is indeed the opposite of ethics. And here we are talking about ethics that is genuine, clear, undeniable.

Common human morality is a theatre of illusions

Society tolerates injustice out of pragmatism. It denies it, justifies it or dilutes it. It says, “We do what we can.” “Nobody’s perfect.” “That’s life.”

But real ethics does not tolerate imperfection. It is not satisfied with “efforts”. Even the worst tyrants might, deep inside, make efforts. Do we not often hear psychopaths or paedophiles apologise because they couldn’t control their urges?

Real ethics refuses what is unjustifiable, even if it is unavoidable.

That is why authentic ethics does not propose to “live better” or “reduce harm”. It proposes only one thing: stop being a cause. Stop being a destructive presence, even a gentle one.

Those who claim they can offset the harm they commit with the good they do would be ill‑advised to request an objective judgment and a balance sheet to verify their claim. How many insects do you think you have killed or condemned to horrible, lingering suffering just by walking? And that is only one example.

And when we speak of ethics, lives and sufferings carry equal weight. Thinking otherwise is already far removed from ethics.

Ethical suicide: not as escape but as loyalty

Under this logic, withdrawal (voluntary, lucid, without hatred or anger) becomes the ultimate moral act. Not a refusal of life through despair, but a refusal of harm through loyalty to justice. Anyone who cannot live without harming and who truly wants not to harm has only one option: step aside.

This is not a curse. It is not a punishment. It is a choice – the only one that remains ethically coherent to the end.

And of course, we are not inviting anyone to this, let us repeat a thousand times. Yet humanity must stop, once and for all, claiming eligibility for genuine ethics. As long as a person breathes by choice (or withdraws for other reasons, such as despair), they have already turned their back on genuine ethics.

This is merely a clarification

This text asks no one to withdraw. It does not glorify death. It does not condemn the living. But it states clearly: anyone who continues living after understanding that all life is injustice can no longer claim to be just.

They may believe they are, or strive to be, sincere, generous, loving. But they are complicit – first by fact, then by awareness. And as long as they have not withdrawn, it is because they have chosen to accept that. Truth cannot be “radical”. It simply is. It does not force, shout or provoke; it is the absolute zero of discourse. A human being, by the mere choice to accept existence and by the suffering he unavoidably causes throughout his life, is not and cannot be perfectly ethical. For him, his life is worth countless others, and multitudes suffer because of him. Is that what it means to be ethical?