This is a piece I wrote for my Ethics final a few weeks back. I never saw what grade I got for it, but it bumped me up from a C to a B, so I guess it went well. I didn't receive teacher comments on it though, so I'm curious as to what you all think.
The essay/paper I wrote was in response to a Peter Singer article we read. I've uploaded it
here if you want some background. Here goes:
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Peter Singer, in his article entitled “Rich and Poor”, explores the ideas of wealth and poverty as they are in our world. Peter makes the point that although our state of “absolute affluence” provides us in America and the west with much more than is used to fulfill our basic needs, we still ignore the obligation that that affluence implies; namely, to assist those in a state of “absolute poverty”. Mr. Singer proposes that since there is some absolute poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, we ought to make those sacrifices to prevent absolute poverty when and where we can. The question, the main question, raised by this argument is: Why don’t we?
This really hit home for me, as my life mirrors the criticisms I raise. On the day of the lecture in which we talked about this issue in class, it was a magic moment for me. When we started discussing the reading, something clicked. And then two or three more things clicked. It all fell into place, to make absolute, universal sense, and I was electrified! It felt like every nerve ending in my body was on fire. Yes! I thought. Why is it that we allow this sort of thing to happen? Every day! And without comment or consideration! What kind of people are we to sit idly by while this atrocious elephant in the room lingers on? This must be changed!
And then after class, after school, after I’d walked home¸ I plugged in my Xbox, and played for about 4 hours. I watched a DVD, listened to some music on my computer, and then was struck again, for the second time that day: This is what stops change from being made. We as Americans are so culturally married to our products and conveniences that we perceive them as having moral significance, and convince ourselves that we are unable to sacrifice these things. I don’t think this happens on a conscious level, but I do think it’s apparent when you look at what our money is spent on.
We lack, as a culture, an understanding of the responsibility that comes with the prosperity we enjoy. There are no ethics involved in the spending of our money; anything goes, all the time. There isn’t a compelling reason not to spend your money on frivolous things, when our culture places these products on such lofty pedestals.
We see Susan Sarandon walking through a sub-Saharan village on TV asking us to donate ‘just the price of a cup of coffee a day’ and we change the channel because on some sub-intellectual level, it’s just another TV show. It is removed from our experience, so different so as to be almost fiction. It has no meaningful connection to the reality of our lives, the reality that consists of commutes and credit cards, and then, ultimately, stops at the edge of our borders. There exists “us”, and there exists “them”, and the “us” gets more and more narrowly defined the further up the pay scale you go.
So the daunting question is now this: How can this be changed? The fact that it must be changed is self-evident. I think a period of time spent in service would be one solution, as a way to put a human face on this concern. We could possibly make teaching English classes in a third-world country as part of a bachelors program, or any other service project. More programs abroad in the vein of the Peace Corps would go a long way to developing the awareness of our, and perhaps more importantly, others’ situation in the world today.
But how do we transform the culture so as to develop a sense of ethical spending? How do we motivate people to look up from their own lives for that brief moment it takes for recognition of this travesty to set in? That question I do not know how to answer. And that’s unfortunate, because I’m willing to bet that no one else does either.
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Ugh, now that I've re-read it, I'm not terribly thrilled with it. I was trying to give it some voice, but I think it falls flat in some places. The Niestzche and Socrates papers turned out way better.
