To Love One's Neighbor

PHI208

    How much does nature compel a person to be generous or willfully be empathetic enough to share at least the spoils of our well-being?  In “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” (1972), Peter Sings write about creating vessels of bestowal through mutual responsibility for our fellow man.  He does so by first using concrete examples of gross unequal, wealth distribution by governments, and onwards to the words “assumption that suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad."  He did not think that position required defense, it is not much subject to relativism.  He goes onto the premise that without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, if we can prevent something bad from happening, we ought do so.  In relation to proximity, we may be more likely to help a woe that is closer to us, but there might just be a greater need further away, geographically.

    A lawyer seeking justification asked the Rabbi, “Who is my neighbor?”  And, Yesu answered him with a rather simple but complementary parable of a man who is beaten half to death and robbed on the road.  Three people pass by this man-a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan.  “The parable of the good Samaritan, as it has become known, is cited most often by moral philosophers to open a debate about the duty of rescue, i.e., a debate about the stringency of our obligation to help others as opposed to our obligation not to harm them”  (Walden, 2003, p. 334)

    The whole story explains the self-sacrifice it means to share physical aid with those who are suffering from structural violence or victims of blows seemingly not directly caused by oneself.  It is easier to dismiss helping a person if we think they get what they deserve.  However, most of the woe in life is a form of economic oppression or a sort of external bereavement.  When this schism is broken and more than a minority can thrive, we will increase our stature as a community, and all of us will have a better state of being.

    Sings mentions the concept of marginal utility, wherein a measurement of suffering received by one’s own dependents is compared to the measure of suffering the charity beneficiary would relieve if we sacrifice.  It’s like a scale is weighing impact.  But, the traditional distinction between duty and charity cannot be drawn, or at least, not in the place we normally draw it.  That’s because the monetary-market anti economy, I mean anti economy, because the majority of the lack is due to its fallacy, also known as structural violence, it does the opposite of simplify the management and flow of acquisition, which is the meaning of economize. 

    In the article, Sings gives special focus to a place called East Bengal where millions of people were dying because of lack of food, shelter, and medical care.  All of which would not be the case if the people of East Bengal had enough money to comply with the system made by corporations that monopolize everything from the food supply to labor.  Sings writes, “Because giving money is regarded as an act of charity, it is not thought that there is anything wrong with not giving. The charitable man may be praised, but the man who is not charitable is not condemned. People do not feel in any way ashamed or guilty about spending money on new clothes or a new car instead of giving it to famine relief. (Indeed, the alternative does not occur to them.) This way of looking at the matter cannot be justified.” 

    Humanity is a single, living organism, as is all energy and matter in the entire existence.  We should, for utilitarian reasons, unite by the grace that is love of one’s neighbor.  It is taught by many esoteric sages that one’s neighbor is actually one’s own desire to receive appearing outside of us to give us the opportunity to accept and correct it.  Everything starts with the individual, and the affinity for bestowal is learned and exists in various degrees from one person to the next.  So, that being said, the propensity and will to give charity cannot be left for others to do.  It is true, however, that “one feels less guilty about doing nothing if one can point to others, similarly placed, who have also done nothing.”  Sings radically suggests that it is more of a moral duty to help those who need it the most that may be father away from us than to help people with whom it is the more convenient action.  The view that those who objected have taken is simply that it is too drastic a revision of our moral scheme.  Sings condemns the idea of enjoying luxuries instead of donating to famine relief funds.
   
    In conclusion, Singer basically replaces the definition of charity with the definition of duty.  He proposed a hypothetical situation, where if everyone in a similar situation as him donated as much as they can spare, it would erase the problem of lack for the folks in more dire circumstances in other parts of the “global village.”   People usually do not offer help without hope of a reward.  Perhaps, the fulfilling of one’s capacity to improve life for those less fortunate satisfies the ego in a loving and compassionate way.  And, “if it is expected that everyone gives something, then clearly each is not obliged to give as much as they were obliged had others not been giving too.”  “There is a puzzle here, for helping people in desperate need is something that we ought to do; it would be wrong not to do it-in which case it is more like justice than benevolence”  (Walzer, 2011).













References

Singer, Peter  (Spring, 1972).  Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. pp. 229-243 [revised edition]

Waldron, J. (2003).  Who is My Neighbor?: Humanity and Proximity.  Monist, 86(3), 333.

Walzer, M. (2011). On humanitarianism: Is helping others charity, or duty, or both? Foreign Affairs, 90(4), 69-80. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/873487191?accountid=32521