It's always "empathize with vegetables and icebergs" and it's never "empathize with people in a non-hip part of the third world with mixed moral status."
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The Talmud teaches that the most cringe and unimpressive moron from the most boring part of the world has more value than the most majestic mountains or the mightiest rivers.
The stoic practice of oikeiosis formalizes the moral schema of "near" and "far" ethical obligations. In modern practice, the inclusion of the "far" margins of ethical life have been recognized in 2 ways:
1. The most popular practice is to find the most ethically "far" constituency and to use this constituency as the cause that you champion as demonstration of your ethical commitment.
2. The less common approach is to identify the seams, the frontiers of discontinuity for ethical practice.