Finals Guilt
After I finished my final today, I came home and decided that I should treat myself for being almost half-done with my law school career (1.5 years down, 1.5 years to go). Whenever I feel like I deserve something special, I usually buy something for myself. It always feels a little like New Year’s Eve, when I get to watch the ball drop on television and wish myself and the dogs a Happy New Year while my parents are out at a party, but when whatever I buy comes in the mail, it makes whatever day it arrives into a very good day.
So I sat down at my computer and pulled out my credit card. After spending a half-hour browsing various books, movies, and computer games, I settled on one that I thought I might want to buy, and prepared to purchase it. It was a book called "Practical Ethics" by a philosopher I admire for several reasons: a man by the name of Peter Singer. In "Practical Ethics" Singer makes an argument that to the extent we spend money on personal luxuries we engage in an act which is morally akin to murder. His argument, now several decades old, runs something like this:
Imagine that you are an important individual walking across a college campus on your way to deliver a lecture and wearing your finest suit. As you pass by a pond on the campus you notice a small child about 30 feet out in the water splashing and coughing. Quickly you realize that the child is drowning. Do you think it is the right thing to do to jump into the water and try to save the child even though you will be late for your lecture and even though you will likely ruin your nice, new suit? Most people would say that doing so is not an act of charity, but rather an act which is morally obligatory. You would be a selfish and cruel person not to attempt to save the child.
Does it matter that other people are also standing around? None of them appear to be doing anything about the child. Surely in this case, your duty to aid the child should be that much more starkly apparent. What if the child was not 30 feet away from you, but instead was 50 feet? Would that make a difference? 100 feet? 200 feet? What if you were a former Olympic swimmer? Again, contends Singer, it ought not to make a difference. What matters, Singer argues, is that you have the ability to save the child without significant harm to yourself. In philosophical terms, Singer argues that one has a moral duty to do good for others, so long as what you sacrifice to do so is not of greater moral importance. For instance, if you were driving a busload of gunshot victims to a hospital (philosophers love weird hypos) when you noticed the child, you might not be obligated to stop and help the child, since the gunshot victims might die. In fact, stopping might be morally abhorrent since you would be ensuring the deaths of a busload of people to save one life.
Singer argues that since we know about the large amount of suffering in the world, and since we (as Westerners) tend to have excess money which we do not need to clothe, feed, or house ourselves in a minimal fashion, we are morally obligated to send aid to those who need it simply to continue to exist. The wide variety and efficacy of charitable organizations only makes it easier for us to help people since the only cost to us is the time and money it takes for us to write a check to the organization of our choice.
This got me thinking about the movie "Schindler’s List." Near the end of the movie, the German man who saved many Jews from death by having them ‘work’ in his businesses realizes that he had the ability to save many more and simply did not see it until it was too late. As he looks at his worldly possessions, he comments that he could have bought the lives of more individuals with his car, and even with the ring he wore on his finger.
Are we not all in the same (or even a better) position? We have worldly luxuries with which we surround ourselves, know of the profound suffering of people around the world, and could do something to help ease suffering and save people’s lives. If you have seen "Schindler’s List" and recall the scene which I describe, you have the added benefit of having seen a cautionary tale that shows you that there are ways to help and that all of the ‘things’ which we find so important don’t measure up to the value of helping a living person who suffers.
Finally, I reminded myself of the relatively privileged life I lead. 16 million people (yes, that’s 16,000,000) starve to death each year on Earth, and 800 million (again, that’s 800,000,000) people are malnourished which makes them easy targets for diseases they otherwise would have survived. Nearly 1 out of every 6 people on the planet lack adequate housing, and an additional 100 million are entirely homeless. Nearly 1 out of every six people on the planet can’t read, and almost 2 out of every six people don’t have safe, clean supplies of drinking water. Access to healthcare of any variety is not an option for between 980 to 1000 million (1 billion) people on the planet. And none of these problems reflect the wider problems which threaten humanity like the wholesale destruction of our natural resources and wildlife. If you added together all of the tropical rainforests in the world, they would create a landmass roughly the size of the lower 48 United States. Due to logging and clear-cutting practices, we lose about half of the state of Florida every year. I could go on, but I started to feel guilty.
Unable to live with the irony of buying a book espousing this (and my own) philosophy when I could use the money elsewhere, I put away my credit card, skipped my dinner, and began to study for my next final. Even though I did not donate any money to a charitable organization, I vowed that I would try to make a difference in the world with my life.
And now I can’t help but wonder whether I took the coward’s way out.
So I sat down at my computer and pulled out my credit card. After spending a half-hour browsing various books, movies, and computer games, I settled on one that I thought I might want to buy, and prepared to purchase it. It was a book called "Practical Ethics" by a philosopher I admire for several reasons: a man by the name of Peter Singer. In "Practical Ethics" Singer makes an argument that to the extent we spend money on personal luxuries we engage in an act which is morally akin to murder. His argument, now several decades old, runs something like this:
Imagine that you are an important individual walking across a college campus on your way to deliver a lecture and wearing your finest suit. As you pass by a pond on the campus you notice a small child about 30 feet out in the water splashing and coughing. Quickly you realize that the child is drowning. Do you think it is the right thing to do to jump into the water and try to save the child even though you will be late for your lecture and even though you will likely ruin your nice, new suit? Most people would say that doing so is not an act of charity, but rather an act which is morally obligatory. You would be a selfish and cruel person not to attempt to save the child.
Does it matter that other people are also standing around? None of them appear to be doing anything about the child. Surely in this case, your duty to aid the child should be that much more starkly apparent. What if the child was not 30 feet away from you, but instead was 50 feet? Would that make a difference? 100 feet? 200 feet? What if you were a former Olympic swimmer? Again, contends Singer, it ought not to make a difference. What matters, Singer argues, is that you have the ability to save the child without significant harm to yourself. In philosophical terms, Singer argues that one has a moral duty to do good for others, so long as what you sacrifice to do so is not of greater moral importance. For instance, if you were driving a busload of gunshot victims to a hospital (philosophers love weird hypos) when you noticed the child, you might not be obligated to stop and help the child, since the gunshot victims might die. In fact, stopping might be morally abhorrent since you would be ensuring the deaths of a busload of people to save one life.
Singer argues that since we know about the large amount of suffering in the world, and since we (as Westerners) tend to have excess money which we do not need to clothe, feed, or house ourselves in a minimal fashion, we are morally obligated to send aid to those who need it simply to continue to exist. The wide variety and efficacy of charitable organizations only makes it easier for us to help people since the only cost to us is the time and money it takes for us to write a check to the organization of our choice.
This got me thinking about the movie "Schindler’s List." Near the end of the movie, the German man who saved many Jews from death by having them ‘work’ in his businesses realizes that he had the ability to save many more and simply did not see it until it was too late. As he looks at his worldly possessions, he comments that he could have bought the lives of more individuals with his car, and even with the ring he wore on his finger.
Are we not all in the same (or even a better) position? We have worldly luxuries with which we surround ourselves, know of the profound suffering of people around the world, and could do something to help ease suffering and save people’s lives. If you have seen "Schindler’s List" and recall the scene which I describe, you have the added benefit of having seen a cautionary tale that shows you that there are ways to help and that all of the ‘things’ which we find so important don’t measure up to the value of helping a living person who suffers.
Finally, I reminded myself of the relatively privileged life I lead. 16 million people (yes, that’s 16,000,000) starve to death each year on Earth, and 800 million (again, that’s 800,000,000) people are malnourished which makes them easy targets for diseases they otherwise would have survived. Nearly 1 out of every 6 people on the planet lack adequate housing, and an additional 100 million are entirely homeless. Nearly 1 out of every six people on the planet can’t read, and almost 2 out of every six people don’t have safe, clean supplies of drinking water. Access to healthcare of any variety is not an option for between 980 to 1000 million (1 billion) people on the planet. And none of these problems reflect the wider problems which threaten humanity like the wholesale destruction of our natural resources and wildlife. If you added together all of the tropical rainforests in the world, they would create a landmass roughly the size of the lower 48 United States. Due to logging and clear-cutting practices, we lose about half of the state of Florida every year. I could go on, but I started to feel guilty.
Unable to live with the irony of buying a book espousing this (and my own) philosophy when I could use the money elsewhere, I put away my credit card, skipped my dinner, and began to study for my next final. Even though I did not donate any money to a charitable organization, I vowed that I would try to make a difference in the world with my life.
And now I can’t help but wonder whether I took the coward’s way out.
posted by The Academian | 4:11 PM
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