Member-only story
No One is Indispensable
The story of Bill & Lou, and believing the grass is greener on “the other side”
This is part two of a two-part mini-series. If you haven’t read part one, I recommend doing that first.
When I left off, I was agreeing that, having brought domestic animals into our society and “incorporated them into our schemes of social co-operation”, we owe them a duty of care above our inadequate standards of welfare. That said, the arguments put forth by co-authors Kymlicka and Donaldson to support their claim that citizenship would accomplish this are highly flawed.
No one is indispensable
In their 2014 article Animals and the Frontiers of Citizenship, co-authors Kymlicka and Donaldson assert “because [Bill and Lou] were not recognized as full members, their very existence was precarious, and subject to crude instrumental calculus”. Unfortunately citizenship has nothing to do with it, although I wish it were so easy to compel others to value a life. Citizens are killed or allowed to die avoidable deaths every day in North America.
As one example, more than one thousand people have been killed by police in the United States in 2024. This subject is much too complex to delve into here, and not the focus of this paper, however it must be noted that…