A wedding by the shallow stream
It is your wedding day, months of planning have lead to this day. Life is good, you’ve found the person of your dreams and while the two of you arn't as well off as some people you’re getting by quite nicely now. Over the last year or so you’ve been saving every last spare penny in order to spare no expense in making sure you and your guests have a incredible day today!
It’s just before the ceremony, you’re in your wedding attire. Rented of course. You couldn’t afford to buy something this fancy out right, but it’s a special day and you were only going to wear this once, so what the hell, you went all out.
The nerves start to kick in, you tell your friends in the wedding party that you just need to go and get some air for a bit. You leave the venue and go for a walk down by a nearby stream.
Around 10 minutes into your walk through the tranquil scene, you notice a little way down the path a small child has fallen in the stream and is struggling to keep above the water, gasping for air. Adrenaline flushes through your body, there are no nearby parents that you can see, in fact there's no one.
I know that this sounds like an absurd hypothetical but believe it or not this very scenario happened last year in Canada
However as a story and hypothetical question, this is what philosophers refer to as a thought experiment (Although, I’m guessing when I ask you this question this is likely what you call an insult). They work like a sort of "what if" problem. This one aims to exam our the inner moral workings.
Sadly it’s not over yet.
The overwhelming majority of people that are asked this question will say yes, of course they have an obligation in to help in that situation. The risks to themself are minimal and the gains (or mitigation of losses) to the child are huge.
There is another question to this thought experiment though:
Over the last 20-30 years the world has changed dramatically, we have become phenomenally well connected. Whereas before it was difficult for us to act at a distance for the betterment of others, now however it is as easy as a few mouse clicks. We no longer need to be in the right place at the right time in order to save a life, we can do it anytime we want just by moving a small portion of our money to an effective charity.
This is the moral argument for giving put forward by the Australian philosopher Peter Singer (Picture right: Wikipedia credit), and if you find it uncomfortable to think about don’t worry you are not alone! When I first heard this around 4 years ago, it got under my skin, I really wanted to find a loophole, something that would allow me to look at the money I was earning as anything other than potential lives saved. It reminded me of this scene at the end of Schindler's List where Alfred Schindler breaks down when he realises that he could have sold his ring or sold his car to save more live (Clip).
Since then I have come to terms with this but only through dramatically changing my values and the way I live my life. Singers thought experiment of the shallow pond was a helpful means of getting me to critically examine my own moral beliefs. It’s not always easy to do so but in this case I’m very glad I did
Good post. This is my though sequence while reading it.
At first I thought, "Of course I would jump in and save the child, screw the suit"
Then I though as you point out, it's a connected world, I can donate money to help a child in a distant country. Yet I don't. Shit.
I was checking out the ChildFund website a few weeks ago. Guess it's time to act.
Thanks! Yeah it’s a kick to the gut for sure. Singers short essay on the topic is worth a read at some point. Once you run out of things to read on this platform that is.
While I've got you, do you have any recommendation for others, like yourself, to follow here on Steemit? By now you've likely got a bit of an idea of the sort of thing's I'm interested in (mostly the intersection between science and society), seen anyone blogging on this lately? Cheers!
I have no real favourites yet. Just been on the platform since January.
Well, nzs, have you taken any philosophy courses? I don't like such hypotheticals because I think that deciding what one would do in such a situation isn't equivalent to deciding what to do when one is actually in that situation. I escape the conundrum that way. As for what's actually happening...I stick to dealing with that!
Thanks for your comment. Why do you ask? Do you think I've misrepresented Singer here? There's a good chance I have.
In my experience the story works as a way of connecting the actions that we do and don't make everyday to the very real impact they have. I spent a lot of my time around people that work in cost effective analyses for various health intervention in low income countries. This example isn't so wild, it is possible for us to simply wake up one day a decide to save a life if we so wish. By say investing in long lasting insecticide treated bednets. Whether it is a moral obligation however is up to you. For more on this see The Life You Can Save
No, I don't think that you'"mis"represented anybody. Even if you had, I'm always doing my best to avoid accusing folks of having performed "mis"deeds! Sometimes I question their behavior (and the implication is almost always clear!) but there's a distinction between a query and an accusation. Sometimes I can actually get away with the latter, but practically never the former!
I wonder whether you'll answer my question about your experience, but whether you have or haven't taken formal courses doesn't matter very much to me. What's important to me is whether you and I might have a progressive discussion of ethical approaches and their various applications to moral discernment.
As I mentioned, I did take those courses; twenty of them, and ethics was and is a subject of great interest to me. It’s central to my model of higher order thinking. So what I’m interested in is what you’re interested in discussing, and what possibilities are or aren’t open to you for inquiry and accommodation.
Practical wisdom and social flourishing are core values in my schemata. Those ethical ideals were described long ago by Aristotle, and Kant famously picked up on the first of those.
I've studied many approaches and ideas which were generated by wiser people than I (the sages of the ages!). We might discuss them, but I have no idea yet what’s possible here, so I’m working to find out.
I suggest that you read my second blog entry and discuss that stuff with me. If we can get clear together on a consensual interpretation of science and the nature of inquiry, then we could proceed; otherwise, if we work according to conflicting presumptions and either of us (not me!) insists that he knows the truth, then we’d be very unlikely to progress.
Excelsior! (?)