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| 21 April 1998 | |||||
| While the way we treat ourselves is an important part of every moral philosophy, the way we treat others tends to figure more prominently in any set of moral codes. From Emmanuel Kant's theory that every person should be treated as an end even as he is treated as a means to Emmanuel Levinas' idea of a human face evoking responsibility and obligation, a moral code has usually been developed in terms of social practice rather than personal practice. Within these terms, the issue of providing assistance to foreign people is one that goes to the heart of the moral matter. What obligations does a person have to another person? Does any one person have a moral obligation to ensure that someone lives? Is it morally wrong to help someone stay alive? To what extent should a person assist his fellow man to be in the moral right? These questions deal with the very basic concepts of morality, and all are involved in assistance to foreign peoples. | |||||
| In Peter Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" (293), the moral correct choice is obviously one of action. He says that we should do everything that we can to help alleviate someone else's suffering without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance. He completely rejects the idea that giving aid is an act of charity that should be viewed as voluntary and instead says that every person has a moral duty to help. He disregards the importance of distance and the presence of other people as reasons not to help. To illustrate this, Singer offers an example of a child drowning in a shallow pond. Nearly no one would hesitate to admit that he has an obligation to save the child if it is in his power, yet few people draw the correlation between the drowning child and the starving country. Singer also gives the example of the envelope. Here, an appeal for money to be used for humanitarian purposes should be answered because every person has a duty to sacrifice his luxury spending to help others. In this case, the hundred dollars that would be spent on poorer people is worth more to those people than to the average, relatively affluent Americans. As a compromise, he feels that each person should give ten percent of his earnings to help others. | |||||
| John Howie takes a different approach. He argues that every person has a right to sustenance and that every country that can provide that sustenance without endangering its own population should do so. Howie says that two basic rights are being violated during famines. These are the rights to subsistence and physical security. In order to stop this violation, every country that can should "avoid depriving other persons and other countries of their means of subsistence....protect other persons and other countries when their means to subsistence is threatened and....aid those who are unable to provide for their own subsistence" (AA 111). According to Howie, the limit to this aid should be based on the "equivalent need condition" (AA 112).� This condition states that aid should be given as long as the act of giving will not put the giver in the same or worse condition. | |||||
| Another persisting view on this issue is reflected in the writings of Garrett Hardin in "Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor" (302). In this essay, Hardin writes that there is a moral duty not to aid people that are starving. This is based on the neo-Malthusian view that, sometime in the future, there will not be enough food to feed everyone. According to Malthus, people grow exponentially while the supply of food grows algebraically. Hardin uses a lifeboat analogy to show that it is morally wrong to aid hungry people. In this analogy, affluent nations do not have the means to help ailing nations without endangering their own populations. He says that affluent nations have a moral obligation to the welfare of their own descendants. Hardin also uses the "tragedy of the commons" to illuminate his point. Here, Hardin suggests that trying to accommodate everyone's needs based on the supplies that we have can never work because poorer countries fail to subscribe to mutually coercive laws that would prevent overuse of resources. "In a crowded world of less than perfect human beings, mutual ruin is inevitable if there are no controls," he writes (304). The ratchet effect also figures prominently in Hardin's argument. According to him, giving aid only draws out the time until a massive famine destroys the population that an area can support. Hardin argues that people have a moral obligation to let countries in need learn the hard way because it is the only way that to learn something permanently. | |||||
| As for Hardin, I feel there are many problems with his argument. First, he says that we should not help because we cannot endanger our own safety factor. I do not see how our basic needs - food, water, shelter, personal freedom - can be in danger from sharing our surpluses. Quite in contrast, I feel that our national integrity is in danger if we do not help. Even if we must sacrifice a bit of our luxuries to help others, at least we have maintained the sense of brotherhood and loyalty to our fellow man if not to our own purses. Hardin also argues that we have an obligation to the welfare of our own descendants not to squander their sustenance. To this, I take much offense. What could possibly make the lives of future generations more sacred than the generation that is alive today? Also, do we really want to pass on the legacy of stinginess and selfishness to our progeny? Would it not be better to set an example of generosity and unselfishness while we have the means to do so? Should we not provide for them morally as well as physically? | |||||
| The ratchet effect that Hardin so vehemently advocates as an excuse is not a valid reason to refrain from helping. While more people may end up dying in the end, no one can predict the future. No one can know what is to happen. It is prudent to plan for the future, but, once again, what future are we really planning for if we do not help? Hardin takes all of humanity and squeezes it on to a lifeboat. But humanity is bigger and better than that. The optimism and the caring, the consciousness and emotions that make us human are not on the lifeboat. If man is to ever rise above his nature, he must be willing to look beyond himself, beyond his lifeboat, and reach out to other people. Freedom is nothing when it is confined to only one person. Ratchet effect or not, people need help now. The future is there, but only like a mist. The present is now, vivid and in full Technicolor. The needs are now; the means are now. The man that turns his head now can look back in the future and realize the mistakes he made. | |||||
| My own view about the issue tends to reflect Singer's basic idea, although I feel that this road leads to a different destination. I think that there is a given moral obligation to help others. As Singer so excellently illustrates in his drowning child example, no one would hesitate to help. I do not see why this does not carry over to people from different countries. The line between chance and destiny may be a thin one, but anyone on whom luck has smiled has a duty to share his spoils with others, especially if it is no detriment to himself. Protecting someone else's right to live means nothing to that person if they do not have the means to live. Besides, I must seriously question the quality of anyone's life who does not feel a certain obligation to help. In this, I associate with Levinas; the man that can look at another man who is so much in need and turn his back has no soul to me; he heart may well be made of stone as far as I am concerned. To look at numbers on paper and calculate who lives and who dies is nothing short of triage, and my faith in mankind does not allow me to think that man can stoop so low. It is much worse to know that you can help, even know that you should help, and not do it. Morality has so little to do with what is popular at any given time; slavery was never more wrong than when it was widely practiced. | |||||
| Practically, nearly no man can live his life only to help others, as Singer suggests. Instead, I think that each person should do as much as they can until they feel that they have done all that they can. As for foreign aid from governments, I do not feel that there should be conditions to aid. If someone is in need, they are in need absolutely; petty politics mean nothing to the starving man. Even if we know that only ten percent of food given is reaching the people in need, at least than ten percent is helping. Rather than stop sending aid, we should give more so that the ten percent amounts to more help that is given. An oppressed people can not overthrow their oppressive dictator without sustenance to get the people to their feet. We can not ask more from these people than they can give. Yet, it is the same for them. They can not ask for more than we can give, but they have a moral right to ask for all that we can give. | |||||
| In conclusion, the issue of giving aid to people in distress poses a problem that is the basis of many theories of morals and ethics. It hinges on the treatment of other people. Although there are many different theories that approach the problem many different ways, one of the more extreme views says that we should either give all that we can without sacrificing anything morally significant. Another view says that if would be morally wrong to give anything. After much thought, I have reached the conclusion that doing nothing would be morally and absolutely wrong. Instead, we should do all that we can do in the hopes that the race of man will be better for it - both in the present, and in the future. | |||||