![]() Britain, for instance, has given rather more than most countries. Generally speaking, people have not given large sums to relief funds they have not written to their parliamentary representatives demanding increased government assistance they have not demonstrated in the streets, held symbolic fasts, or done anything else directed toward providing the refugees with the means to satisfy their essential needs.Īt the government level, no government has given the sort of massive aid that would enable the refugees to survive for more than a few days. At the individual level, people have, with very few exceptions, not responded to the situation in any significant way. ![]() Unfortunately, human beings have not made the necessary decisions. The decisions and actions of human beings can prevent this kind of suffering. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war have turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees nevertheless, it is not beyond the capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to very small proportions. The suffering and death that are occurring there now are not inevitable, not unavoidable in any fatalistic sense of the term. ![]() Full Text of Famine Affluence and MoralityĪs I write this, in November 1971, people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical care. While members of Giving What We Can and the effective altruism community have a diverse range of ethical views, this essay has been very influential to many of those driven to use their resources effectively to most improve the lives of others. Philosophers Toby Ord and Will MacAskill set up the organisation Giving What We Can (a community of people who pledge to give a meaningful portion of their income to improve the lives of others) which led to the formation of the effective altruism movement. Singer challenges the reader to question the common intuition that physical distance and the means of using money reduces our moral obligation to help others. What is our moral obligation to distant strangers? This is because we live in an unprecedented time in history where we have unprecedented opportunities to use charitable donations to save far away lives at a relatively small cost to ourselves. Yet many of us could spend a similar amount of money to save the lives of children who are only separated by geographical distance. We have a strong moral intuition that the life of a child is worth far more than the cost of our iPhone. ![]() We wouldn't think twice about damaging our new iPhone that's in our pocket. Most of us would jump in and save the child. Imagine walking in a park and seeing a child drowning in a pond. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |