Bad premise for a good argument

Published on 23 July 2026

I’m currently reading “Ruined by design” by Mike Monteiro and I’d like to comment on one argument I saw in the book and see often in different contexts.

“Every human being on this planet is obligated to do their best to leave this planet in better shape than we found it. Everyone on the planet is obligated to respect every other human being on this planet.”

I can’t really agree with this. Why are they obligated?

I think people who make such statements are really trying to say “I’m scared of what happens if the majority acts differently. People will start killing each other, the planet will die soon, and it scares me”.

I can totally relate to the sentiment. It scares me too. I want people to respect each other, I want people to respect me. I want people to do no harm to each other and I want people to do no harm to me.

We’ve collectively encoded some of these values into law: don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t harm. That is good. But the fact that we chose these rules doesn’t make them objectively right, they are just our shared preferences. We could have chosen differently. We don’t always choose well.

So when someone says we’re ‘obligated’ to act a certain way, they’re treating it as self-evident. If your position is better, prove it.

And if you don’t want to prove anything, it is fine. Just acknowledge you’re speaking to people who already share your values. Most people who pick up the book probably already do.