The philosopher Peter Singer once devised a dilemma that highlights a central contradiction in our moral reasoning. If you see a child drowning in a pond, and you know you can save the child without any risk to your own life -- but you would ruin a fine pair of shoes worth $200 if you jumped into the water -- would you save the child or save your shoes? Most people react incredulously to the question; obviously, a child's life is worth more than a pair of shoes.
If this is the case, Singer asked, why do large numbers of people hesitate to write a check for $200 to a reputable charity that could save the life of a child halfway around the world -- when there are millions of children who need our help? Even when people are absolutely certain their money will not be wasted and will be used to save a child's life, fewer people are willing to write the check than to leap into the pond.
Our moral responsibilities feel different in these situations; one feels immediate and visceral, the other distant and abstract. We feel personally responsible for one child, whereas the other is one of millions who need help. Our responsibility feels diffused when it comes to children in distant places -- there are many people who could write that check. But distance and diffusion of responsibility do not explain why we step forward in some cases.
The second article, by Philip Kennicott, is also in The Washington Post.
The images coming out of Haiti are more graphic than those from recent natural disasters, and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's not clear if this reflects the magnitude and proximity of the disaster, or some change in the willingness of newspapers and other media to accurately present the full horror of the earthquake that devastated the desperately poor nation on Tuesday afternoon.If the media follow conventions (of polity society) that result in our failure to fully appreciate the moral imperative to provide humanitarian aid, that alone might help to explain why we can donate to save a local cat or dog while remaining passive in the face of endemic hunger and disease in poor nations and even in the face of mass death that could be averted.
Of course, the mass media tend to broadcast stories that "interest" their audiences, and apparently their executives feel they can find more audience for the peccadillos of celebrities than for humanitarian crises abroad. Perhaps we should use the political and information tools at our disposal to encourage the media to be more responsible in broadcasting the important rather than the meretricious.
I find the response of President Obama to the crisis in Haiti to be an interesting exception. He has moved the U.S. Government response to cabinet level, rather than leaving it to the much lower level responsibility of USAID as has been done in the past, and has gone to the public to express concern, where many previous presidents have remained mute in the face of foreign disaster.
Could his exceptional behavior be the result of having seen the face of poverty as a child in Indonesia? Could it be a broadening of his definition of the social group with whom he feels solidarity, in part because he has learned to include relatives in Kenya and step-family in Indonesia as family? Could it be because, like Jimmy Carter, he comes from a nuclear family that feels and taught singular humanitarian impulses? Could it be because as a community development worker he lived with poverty and need in the United States?
The continual improvement of the global communications and transportation infrastructure means that people are no longer isolated by geographical location. The growing economic power of modern society means that we have increasing ability to help people in need wherever they are. The continually growing capacity of military technology implies increasing needs to learn to live in peace. It may be helpful to figure out why Obama empathizes with Haitians in order that we may encourage others to do so.
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