Subjective Ethics

In class someone mentioned that one way of evaluation a being's worth as an individual is by looking at how much that being contributed to the whole of the world. If one were to base their argument on this logic then we can assume that human beings would be at the top of the list and other beings would fall in line subsequently. This is faulty logic at its core because not all human beings contribute equally the society and some of the things that human beings do is detrimental to the planet. Then what do we base the worth of a being (human or non-human) on? I would love to see a theory of ethics on this topic that is not subjective but I don't see how this is possible being that humans act subjectively even when we try our best not to. The bottom line is that some beings matter to us more than others even if we know that is ethically wrong. Our family and pets mean more to us than someone else's family or pets simply because they are a part of us. The farther removed from a person a being is the more difficult it is to consider them objectively. Humans have inherent preferences but I do not think that this is an excuse to skirt our ethical duties. It is important to try to be objective in ethical and moral consideration because even if a being means nothing to us, they do matter to someone who matters to someone else and so on. It is a never ending trail of moral duties.


My question for this blog is do you think that if a being has no meaning to any human being that it does not deserve ethical consideration?