The Ethical Debate Pages
Druidry is about our relationships with everything around us: people, gods, places, spirits, forces of nature, ancestors, animals, inanimate objects, plants and more. We learn to expand our awareness and are encouraged to build honourable relationships with everything we perceive. The depth of each relationship will depend upon our perception of its importance, and the nature of our relationship will depend on the decisions we make within it.
Within our tradition, which honours nature as sacred, we seek to build honourable relationships. Each have a different sense of how this honourable relationship should be. In these pages, we hope to explore the different relationships, understandings and opinions within the Druid community around a number of contentious ethical issues. We are not seeking any kind of consensus, we hope the debate pages will be thought-provoking and demonstrate the beautiful and intelligent diversity which exists within our tradition.
Within each of the issues listed below, one or several questions has been posed, the answers explore the range ethical opinions within the Druid community. If you have an opinion, email us.
Air Travel
Is it ethical to travel by air?
Ancestral Remains – Research or Reburial?
Should we use ancestral remains in research or should they all be reburied?
Animal testing
Is it ethical to test chemicals on animals?
Is it ethically sound to use animals in medical research?
Is British food more honourable than imported food?
Charity
Is giving to charity a waste of money or the responsibility of the wealthy?
Energy
Is nuclear energy or wind farms more acceptable?
Habitat management or natural succession?
Is it ethically sound for people to manage habitats and species artificially or should natural succession be allowed to happen?
Intensive or Organic?
Is organic food more ethical than intensively produced food?
Investments
Do the companies I bank and invest with have an ethical impact?
Meat eaters, Vegans and Vegetarians
What is the most ethical thing to do be? Meat eater, vegetarian or vegan?
Sacred Sites
Should we preserve stone circles as museum pieces or use them and allow them to continue to decay?