Which Dying Child Will Fix My Furnace? Part II

There are two reasons why I did not contribute my fair share--not to mention all that I reasonably and comfortably could--to preventing needless deaths. Neither of the reasons is in any way exculpatory, but they are worth pausing over.

One, as a good social democrat, I tend to think that fighting global poverty ought to be the domain of governments, both in organizing and distributing aid but, equally so, in levying taxes towards that end and compelling its citizens—compelling me—to give my fair share. (Or, for that matter, it need not raise more taxes at all but, rather, redirect some of the 470 billion dollars it annually spends on, say, defense towards something a bit more laudable.) But that is neither here nor there. Indeed, that the state does not play this role does not in the least absolve me of my responsibility—quite the opposite in fact. Two wrongs do not make a right.

The second reason I haven’t given my share of our household’s roughly $1300 is because, quite frankly, I am cheap. Now, let me say what I mean by cheap. At age 31, with a somewhat secure job that has a salary slightly higher than the US average, I am, now, for the first time in my life, after years of that special sort of relative poverty known as student and graduate student poverty—for the first time in my life I am able to save some money, and now that I have a taste of it, I guard every penny like a miser. I do so not out of greed, really, but because, having grown up not exactly poor, but not quite middle class either, I fear perhaps more than anything not having enough money to pay for some emergency should it befall me or my household. And my overactive, paranoid imagination has no trouble whatsoever inventing more and more costly emergencies that might befall us, from the very small, like what if our furnace stops working and we have to buy a new one, will we have enough money? To the very large, like, what if I get dreadfully sick and cannot work? How will we live?

In short, I am a pessimist, always imagining a series of never-ending worst-case scenarios for which I will need what little money I have in fact managed to save. Nor would increasing the amount of money I am able to save—say, by moving to a smaller house—likely alter my behavior or lead me to give away the surplus. I would still save whatever money I managed not to spend out of fear for what imagined or unimagined calamity lies around the next corner.

Now, one could argue that I may ultimately absolve myself of these sins if, assuming that none of these worst-case scenarios actually befall me and I keep saving money, I ultimately (after I die, say) give away all the money I managed to save. The problem with that, though, is that it does nothing in the meantime, when people continue to live in poverty and die and when, in theory at least, I could reasonably and comfortably give now what I intend to give at my death. In other words, I am still guilty of valuing my life—my furnace, my health—unconscionably more than others. I cannot imagine saying to a dying child that while I would like to help, they—or, not necessarily them but some other dying child in the future—will have to wait for me to die first before I will lend them a hand. In other words, I cannot imagine that they will care very much about my broken furnace--not to mention the mere possibility of my broken furnace.

I am, then, by any definition, acting callously, indecently, and wrongly by letting children drown all around me for no good reason. Still, it is worth trying to understand why I—and perhaps others—do not do what we should do given our beliefs. Singer would do well, too, to devote more thought than he does to why people do not give what he thinks they ought to. It is not always a result of consumption, the effect of our frivolous desire for new shoes, even though imagining that that is the final reason for our inhumanity helps to make us seem all the more inhumane. Rather, we may withhold our giving not because of our desire for new shoes but out of fears of being left shoeless ourselves. If so, then we might need to change the terms of our argument in order to persuade everyone to give what they should. It might also help if we felt like we lived in a society that would take care of each other if an emergency did arise, but our safety net has so many tears in it right now that it leaves us obsessed with keeping our balance on the trapeze above.

But the final moral of the story, I suppose, is that having saved a little bit of money this past year, and having worked through the insufficient reasons for why I did not give, I am resolved to contribute at least my fair shair this coming year. Perhaps more if I think I can coax another year out of our furnace.