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From the time we were little, we knew there were starving people around the world. Our mothers made sure we knew it every time we refused to ear our vegetables. “Eat your food. Don’t you know there are starving children in _______? Fill in the blank. At some point in our young lives, we connected starvation to suffering to diseases and therefore knew, even if we did not really say it, many people (or children at least) were dying from diseases. If for some reason we did not make this connection, the numerous TV commercials asking for donations sufficed by knocking us upside the head and cluing us in. Peter Singer in his essay “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” decides to take a different route to get us to contribute to charities: guilt.
Guilt is a wonderful way to get people to do things for you. I admit I have used it myself, though I felt more than putrid afterwards. But from his first example, Singer uses this tactic to get us to donate to UNICEF or Oxfam
There is a new television show coming out called “Nothing but the Truth” that poses difficult questions to the contestants for money. The difference between this show and “Who wants to be a Millionaire” is the contestants on “Nothing but the Truth” are strapped to a lie detector and the questions are about their moral values. One of the questions asked on the commercial was “Do you really care about the starving children in
Singer emphasizes material possessions in his next example from Peter Unger’s book Let High and Letting Die. This is quite obviously a very similar situation to which Dora was in. Only now the material possession, Bob’s car, is in physical danger along with the boy. Bob must choose which will survive. But the reader must ask when looking at this situation “Who the hell would park their valuable I-poured-my-life-into-this car on train tracks?” It would seem Bob almost deserves this decision because of his idiocy. However, Singer mocks us for caring about the things we are proud of by stating
If you still think that it was very wrong of Bob not to throw the switch that would have diverted the train and saved the child’s life, then it is hard to see how you could deny that it is also very wrong not to send money to one of the organizations listed above. Unless, that is, there is some morally important difference between the two situations that I have overlooked.
Yet I can almost guarantee he is proud of his essay. How much money did he make for writing it? How much of it did he give to charities? Singer, a graduate of
All sane humans want to see themselves as a decent people. The truth is no one is perfect, so this is as much as we can hope for. This is the main reason why we try to ignore the fact people are dying from preventable and curable diseases. It is not that we do not care—I think we all do to some extent,—it is just that we do not want anyone to prove us wrong and pop the bubble of what little pride we have in ourselves. In a world full of violence, we strive for the most perfect and happy life we can get. When confronted with things we should be doing to help others achieve that kind of life, we turn away. But would not it make sense that if we were to make someone else happy, we, in turn, would be happy because or their happiness and the fact that we bettered ourselves in the process? Despite my surprising defense of the evil of humanity, this is what I believe. Unfortunately, most people do not see it that way, or just do not think about it. How do you truly “better” yourself? Some people think you can better yourself by exercising or spending thousands of dollars to get a “better” education at a four year college. Singer would argue a “better” route would be to give that time and those thousands to charities and go to a less expensive community college or not go to college at all, despite going to one of the most expensive colleges in the
On another note; how trusting can you be of charities? How much of your money actually goes to the cause? Obviously, there are respectable charities such as the ones Singer listed, but many who do give money, give to a variety of charities: some not so respectable. The news warns us to be careful who we give our money to. We practice the same caution giving our money to charities as we do to the homeless on the streets. “Are they actually going to use my money for food and shelter or are they just going to buy alcohol and drugs?” “Is my money actually getting to those kids or are the charity workers taking it all for themselves?” It is a tricky process to find out if charities are respectable or not. You have to research to find out. That takes time. Humans, I am sorry to say, are lazy. Researching may be incredibly easy with the use of the ever-helpful internet, but it still takes time: time we do not want to waste on researching (even though it will be wasted on something else anyway). In the end we just do not bother to do it. In our minds: “No time wasted, no one stealing my donated money.” It is an easy concept.
So have we been reduced to giving only when someone guilt-trips us into it? Sadly, that answer is a resounding “yes.” Guilt seems to be one of the only ways to procure a satisfying response to these certain situations. So few people give their hearts along with their money anymore. As I applaud the people who do, I also understand the horrible concept of human laziness and the evils that let us turn our eyes and lives from those who really need our help. So as much as I despise the guilt tactic used by Peter Singer in his essay “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” I concede to its necessity.
