“Famine, Affluence, and Morality” –Peter Singer
In “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Peter Singer states that the decisions and actions of human beings can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care. He spoke about how if people were to lose a little bit of comfort in helping others, these problems of suffering throughout the world could be solved. He brings up the example of a child drowning in a pond. When one saves the child in the pond, their clothes may get wet (discomfort), but it is much less suffering than what the child is going through on the way to death. Singer goes on to argue against every excuse that people have for not helping others. He says that the world has become connected enough for people to not just focus on local issues, and that the bystander effect is not valid because if everyone is taking part of being a bystander, then nothing gets accomplished.
Singer is a deontologist, meaning that he believes humans have a moral duty; in his case, human’s moral duty is to help others. He argues that there is no charity, only duty. Basically this means that it is people’s duty to help others, and that they should not necessarily be praised for doing their duty, rather that they should be shamed for not doing it.
Some points were brought up in discussion about if his drastic moral shift would work. We talked about how if everyone in the world were to donate to one cause, the cause would be solved, but there would be an excess amount of money, so some people’s discomfort would be in vain. We also talked about how his concept of duty vs. charity would not work because people are very interested in having others see them do good things, such as tip a waitress, or donate to a charity organization. Another good point brought up in discussion was about the choices of helping. How does one know where to donate, or what cause is worse than others? Should people focus on famine outside of their countries or inside? Knowing where your money goes is also another reason for not helping. There are many scam charities and organizations that claim to help people, and we don’t know exactly where are money is going when we are trying to help at times. In the video we watched in class, Singer talked about getting a high paying career so that one can donate more to charity organizations to help others. However, the world would not function if everyone became an investment banker, so the moral argument here is a little undefined.
I think that Singer’s argument would work in an ideal perfect world, however, realistically, we do not live in an ideal perfect world, and it would not work. Not enough people would agree that the act of not giving is morally wrong. Many people argue that they have earned every cent of their money, and that others should work for their own money, going back to the ideals of Social Darwinism in the Gilded Age. The truth is, most people are not comfortable with the idea of living an average life and helping others and Singer’s idea would not work. However, I do agree that people could be more generous as a whole.
This connects to many psychology experiments about people on the street pretending to suffer but not getting helped by anyone. I dug around and this one is the best I could find. http://www.youtube.com/watch?
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