FEATURE
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Humility Kills |
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| An ancient virtue hampers the fight against extreme poverty | ||
 by Peter Singer, May 24, 2007 |
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Peter Singer is routinely described as "the most influential living philosopher" and occasionally as "the most dangerous man in the world," so it's with much giddiness that we introduce him for a second time as a contributor to Jewcy.
The background: Jewcy Senior Editor Joey Kurtzman recently paid enthusiastic tribute to his own $1000 contribution to the anti-poverty campaign Idol Gives Back, and railed against the expectation that charity should be given quietly and anonymously. Joey claimed this was "destructive nonsense" and "insufferable twaddl
Scrambling for Status: Joey Kurtzman boasts of past donations, predicts future onese" foisted upon us by Jesus, Maimonides, et al. Instead, charity ought to be given publicly and "with a sneer at the lowly neighbors," because extreme poverty can be whipped if middle-class people would come to regard charitable contributions as a source of status and an opportunity for "conspicuous consumption."
The response was mixed. "What a pretentious douchebag!" observed one commenter. "Hope you get a brain tumor and die while spasming and foaming at the mouth uncontrollably," noted another.
But Singer was more sympathetic to Joey's argument. He weighs in now.
Joey Kurtzman has made a significant point in his post titled “I Donated $1000 to American Idol. But You, You're Trash.”
Many of us already know that more than 10 million children die every year from avoidable, poverty-related causes. (That’s 27,000 a day, almost ten times the number of casualties in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.) Some of us might even be dimly aware, when we ponder what type of iPod to buy, that a billion people have less to live on for an entire year than we are contemplating spending more on a totally frivolous consumer toy.
Yet widespread extreme poverty is not inevitable. A UN task force led by Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs recently estimated the cost of achieving the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000. On that occasion, the largest gathering of world leaders in history jointly pledged to meet, by 2015, a list of goals that include:
- Reducing by half the proportion of the world’s people in extreme poverty (defined as living on less than the purchasing-power equivalent of one U.S. dollar per day).
- Reducing by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
- Ensuring that children everywhere are able to take a full course of primary schooling.
- Ending sex disparity in education.
- Reducing by two-thirds the mortality rate among children under 5.
- Reducing by three-quarters the rate of maternal mortality.
- Halting and beginning to reverse the spread of H.I.V./AIDS and halting and beginning to reduce the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
- Reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
The cost, according to his Sachs and his colleagues, is between $121 billion and $189 billion per year between now and 2015. Since there are roughly a billion affluent people in the world, the math is not too difficult. If we each gave $200 a year, we could pull it off.
Unfortunately, we are not doing that. Isn’t that just plain morally wrong? How can we defend spending money on luxuries for ourselves when that same money could save the lives of sick kids, get a few years schooling for children who otherwise will have none, and help women to control their fertility so that they can give all of their children a decent shot at a good life? The problem is that we don’t see it as wrong to give nothing or next to nothing to NGOs working for poverty relief. Somehow we think morality is all about how truthful we are, how good a friend or partner we are, maybe who we sleep with, or what substances we put into our bodies, and not about how many kids we save from dying of malaria or diarrhea.
So Joey is right to point out that if this situation is ever going to change, we need to start talking openly about it. It’s time to stop being so reverential towards those remarks of Jesus and Maimonides about giving anonymously or not blowing our own trumpet. Sure, we don’t want to humiliate those to whom we give, or make them feel that they are indebted to us, but the world has got so much bigger than it was when Jesus and Maimonides were around, so that’s not really a problem any more.
At the moment, many people would feel strange about giving away, say, 10 percent of their income to fight global poverty. Talking about it may make that seem a more normal thing to do, and would encourage others to do the same. It may also make people realize that it’s not really a sacrifice. You probably will enjoy life just as much with a little less money – in fact you will probably enjoy it more, because you will feel good about yourself and what you are doing.
That’s not to say we have to be distastefully boastful about it… but yes, if you are living comfortably while others are hungry or dying from easily preventable diseases, and you are doing nothing about it, there is something wrong with your behavior.
Want to know more about what you can do? My favorite poverty-fighting NGO is Oxfam. Check out www.oxfam.org or www.oxfamamerica.org |
Peter Singer is a preference utilitarian, a Jewcy radical, and generally preferable to Noam Chomsky. He's a professor of bioethics at Princeton, a professor of applied philosophy and public ethics at the University |
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François Blumenfeld-Kouchner
There's nothing wrong with buying an iPod. http://www.joinred.com/products5.asp (yo, Craig, how come I can never do links in the comments?)
Joey Kurtzman
Well I'm sold for $100 to Oxfam America. Confirmation below. If someone tops it and calls me a sissy, I'll try to restore my dignity. It's bullshit, people who donate to these organizations should be able to opt into a publicly accessible database of donations. If people are serious about the causes they'd do it regardless of how much they donate, because they'd know that overall more visibility and verifiability will produce more donations.
Transaction ID: 15864898
Date: May 25, 2007
Time: 3:11am (ET)
Gift Amount: $100.00
Campaign: Make a Difference - Donate to Oxfam America
Name: Joseph Kurtzman
Marcus
"At the moment, many people would feel strange about giving away, say, 10 percent of their income to fight global poverty. Talking about it may make that seem a more normal thing to do, and would encourage others to do the same."
An anecdote connected to this: I recently mentioned to some (rather well-off middle-class) people that Jewish law happens to require giving 10% if your income to charity (but the rabbis considered 20% more appropriate). It amazed me to what degree my interlocutors were provoked by the idea. Immediately they started defending themselves, their level of contribution and lifestyle, even though I didn't mean to provoke or criticize anyone.
So I fully agree - talking about the idea (and doing it!) really has an impact on people.
Anonymous
Um, isnt singer the guy who said it was ok to sleep with animals? I guess he isn't donating to PETA
Joey Kurtzman
PETA would not exist without Peter Singer. Ingrid Newkirk, founder of Peter, has said that reading Singer's book Animal Liberation changed her life and resulted in her founding of PETA.
But is it okay to sleep with our furry friends? On this, there is some disagreement. If the animal is not harmed in the process, is there anything really wrong with it, asks Singer? Omigod, of course there is! says Newkirk. Teku, guys, teku.
Anonymous
Are you people insane? Advocating the views of this zoophiliac? I would say he is the most influential douchebag on the planet.
Lauviticus
Justice is the charity of the wise, said Leibnitz, a famous boaster of all deeds. Yes to conversation and encouraging TITHE (the Christians kick ASS on this one) but YES to modesty and tastefull reserve when it comes to wealth and showing it off. The Hebrew word for charity Tzedaka comes from the word for Justice - Tzedek. You dont go around boasting how just you are, do you?
Anonymous
I am writing on behalf of my daughter, who just started college. There are no jewish scholarships for her in the PN area! Plenty if she was Christian!
Whats with that?
A poor mom who is trying to get her daughter through school.....
Nathan from Oz
Here's what I do to let others know how benevolent and superior I am hehe.
Its called Oxfam Unwrapped. You buy things like chickens and cows via Oxfam from the comfort of your computer desk for poverty stricken folks on behalf of someone you know. The person you know gets a card saying 'Thanks for the chooks (Aussie slang for a chicken)". I buy all Xmas and Birthday presents this way. Gives Oxfam 100s of $ every year and saves me time and effort.
Here's Aussie Oxfam's blirb:
Are you sick of giving socks, bath salts, or token gifts? Yes, trying to choose gifts for some people can be quite an ordeal - and that's why we've developed Oxfam Unwrapped. It's a unique collection of gift ideas that help you give something special to your friends or family and give something extra special to people who haven't got much at all.
Oxfam Australia works in 26 countries around the world, and this catalogue only contains real items that people around the world need to change their lives for the better. Our programs include emergency, farming, health, education, small business and advocacy. When you buy a gift from Oxfam Unwrapped your donation will help support the most relevant of these areas. This makes sure that your donation has the biggest possible impact on the lives of people living in poverty.
Nathan from Oz
Joey Kurtzman
Mik Moore from JSpot says this article is a load of bollocks!
Joey Kurtzman
A reader e-mailed me to say that "You and the Anon are dead wrong about Ingrid Newkirk and sexual contact with animals." My interlocutor informs me that Newkirk came to Singer's defense in that particular ruckus.
Mea culpa, for some reason I was under the impression that Newkirk and PETA had criticized Singer on that issue. In any case, since it's come up, I'll just say that I agree with Singer that, except in cases of non-consent or where unprotected sex is likely to serve as vector for STIs, sexual behavior is morally irrelevant. Ironically, you could also well describe it as "moral onanism" in the sense that the Biblical story of Onan is not a critique of masturbation, common usage be damned, but a more general cautionary tale about the non-procreative expense of seed, the most of precious of resources for a small tribe in the ancient Near East. The story is the scriptural starting point for the prohibition on non-procreative sex. Today, more accurate to describe preoccupation with sexuality as a non-procreative expense of precious moral energy, the Onanism of the 21st century.
So if some odd character enjoys having his dog hump his leg, I find that deeply icky, but I have a hard time thinking of it as a moral issue.
The problem with discussing these issues at all is that people who are unwilling to accept Singer's more consequential moral demands (20% of your income to the impoverished, please) leap on this kind of academic esoterica to persuade themselves and others that the whole Singer package is pathological. He's written one article on zoophilia, and volumes on our obligation to make material sacrifices for the benefit of impoverished children. Is it the zoophilia article that disgusts people, or the idea of a moral obligation to make material sacrifices?
invisible_hand
sorry to correct you josh, but:
the sin of onan was not the "Waste of Seed," in a general sense, but rather the shirking of his duty to provide his late brother with a posthumous heir (levirate marriage).
invisible_hand
i meant joey
Joey Kurtzman
I'm sure the Onan story has been subjected to all sorts of interpretations, and yeah the story involves Onan "pulling out" while doing a special cuddle with his dead brother's wife...but my understanding is that in Talmud tractate Niddah it's stated that the trespass for which Onan is killed is the spilling of seed, rather than violation of the duties of levirate marriage.
Mr. M
Peter Singer...what a coup! The discussion is fascinating. In anthropology, one of the key seminal texts you read in your first year or so is The Gift by Marcel Mauss(easily my favorite name for any social scientist). One of the things Mauss does is to break down the social aspects permeate and construct any act of giving, and in particular the moral exchange relationship that inevitably develops between giver, receiver, and the rest of society. This happens, importantly, regardless of the intention of the giver. In Hindu thought, for instance, it is simply impossible to give a 'pure gift' ie one without any karmic consequences, even if one's only thought is the gift itself and not the good juice you might get as a result. Yet despite its unattainability, the pure gift still remains an objective. (I think gods can give pure gifts, but I can't remember).
What Kurtzman may be after is a modern variant of the potlach, where we
essentially enter into a competitive - and very public - giving fiesta,
sometimes to our own ruin.
I have a good empirical example of that system working. It is the higher education system. The reason why Peter Singer gets paid more than his Australian and UK counterparts and can get his grad students to set and mark papers and exams while he can contemplate consequentialism is because Princeton, like most successful US institutions, are rolling in alumni endowments which pay for such a life style. British and Australian universities are desperately trying to engender a similar culture of ostentious giving amongst their wealthy alumns as government money to higher education dwindles to nothingness. We have a long way to go. So, US institutions are wealthier - but are they more equitable in the way the education is distributed? That I don't know.
For my part, I think I still side with modesty as a more worthy objective. Ultimately, you don't want any karma at all, even the good stuff. It ties you down.
Mr. M
mmausner
i find religious Jews in Israel are quite, well, religious about giving 10% of income to charity. This in part explains why so many religious jews are able to live OFF charity.
it's a thought provoking idea, to be sure, that donations shouldn't be anonymous. i'm not sure i agree... deriving ego/status (or even avoiding societal reprimand) doesn't sound like the healthiest motivator. it might WORK, admittedly, but in terms of the pure idea of what charity should be and how it appears before the divine, i like the anonymous method.
Mordechai
Here is my suggestion. Princeton gives all of the good doctors salary to charity and the charity gives him just enough to live in welfare housing. No vacations, no computer no nice suit.
Same for the editors of Jewcy, give all your money to Al Sharpton and let him decide how much he keeps for "charity" and how much you can have.
G-child
What Peter Singer said about it being ok to sleep with animals as long as we dont hurt them is totally wrong. The Bible tells us how sex was made special by God to enjoy within our marriages....And this is between male and femal..not male, female or animal. And it dosnt matter what Peter Singer thinks or believes. Its what God says is right or wrong that really counts.
Edmund
As usual, Singer's absolutely right.
BimBeau
Is not the model avoiding boastfulness, but open leadership and setting an example ? If not open there is no example to emulate; with no emulation the charity has - as other seeds in a fallow field - withered and died for lack of attention. Let's not stand on the corner boasting of our deeds of charity; let's set examples, make choices and do so openly.
Piney
And what if you're God doesn't exist? If he doesn't you don't have much of an arguement.
Anonymous
How nice to stumble upon such blatant examples of arrogance. I envision myself as a starving child sitting in the middle of a room, listening to all of you argue about how best to give me food while I edge closer to death. No wonder so many hate!