LAUSR

moral status can be violated if, for example, their organs are retained without permission, the Holocaust is denied, or their systemic enslavement is downplayed. Our descendants feature, too, with their moral status violated if we devastate the ecosystems they’ll need. In time, we may extend our sympathies similarly to nonhuman animals, whether those killed for our sport and luxury, or those to be harmed by climate change. If Parfit broadens our sense of who ought to matter, by having us look past our present, Ingold reminds us to look past our perimeters. We’re not just dots looking to be joined. Instead, as the Xhosa say, “a person is a person through other people”— including those who went before (Matshabane et al. 2022). Ingold imagines us similarly. He casts us as wayfarers, the tracks of our lives as threads, each of which matters within a shared fabric that’s always being made (Ingold 2022). “Everybody matters or nobody matters,” insists fictional detective Harry Bosch. As an answer to my title, he evokes Parfit’s claim that without objective moral truths, nothing matters. Ingold might resist rigid delineation of subjective from objective, pleading that our truths are made with real hands and real imaginations alike. Like Ingold, I suspect the philosophy is needed, but “with the people in.” Moral status isn’t just a property to be detected, like radioactivity. Neither is it a mere convention, applying tape that reads “handle with care.” Like compassion, it’s also experienced and expressed. We feel it and, within it, grow together, protective and prepared to act. FUNDING