Do all lives matter?
No.
Obviously not.
Should all lives matter?
Absolutely.
And in an ideal world, all lives would matter.
But we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a broken, fallen, imperfect and deeply damaged world, one filled with injustice, unfairness and inconsistency.
It’s for this reason that not all lives matter equally, even though they rightfully should.
The problem with saying “All Lives Matter” is that it is an aspirational statement, a declaration of the way things could be and should be, not a statement of how things are. It fails to recognise the obvious disparity in the value of various forms of life.
In some parts of the world, white lives matter more than black lives.
In other parts of the world, adult lives matter more than children’s lives.
Still, elsewhere, female lives don’t matter nearly as much as male lives.
And for those who don’t recognise the value of all sentient life forms, human lives matter far more than animal lives.
So, if all lives are going to truly matter equally, we’ve got a lot of hard work to do! But it is work worth doing.
One of the challenges inherent in moving toward ensuring all lives do indeed matter equally is an awkward truth that we all must face, and it is simply this: we all have different ideas about which undervalued lives are the most at risk and therefore need to be prioritised.
You may believe that black lives matter but not believe that unborn lives matter as much.
You may believe that female lives matter but not believe that animal lives matter as much.
You may believe that children’s lives matter but not believe that elderly adult lives matter as much.
You may believe that indigenous lives matter but not believe that gay lives matter as much.
If we are going to narrow the gap between the way things are and the way they should be, the gap between reality and possibility, then we will have to agree that one set of undervalued lives cannot be more important than another.
Sure, the specific context will determine which lives need to receive priority attention and how best we rally our collective resources to narrow the gap, but there needs to be a wide acceptance that, ultimately, all lives will need our combined and concerted effort if they are going to matter equally to all of us.
