Pippa’s dilemma: the moral demands of affluence

To give his example: if one is walking past a shallow pond and sees a child drowning, one ought to wade in and pull the child out. This might mean ruining an expensive pair of fashionable shoes. But most of us would accept that this is insignificant compared to the death of a child.

While everyone would agree with the above example, the implications are profound and radical, as Singer recognised:

If acted upon…our lives, our society and our world would be fundamentally changed. For the principle takes, firstly, no account of proximity or distance. It makes no difference whether the person I can help is a neighbour’s child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away…

Singer asks whether it should make any difference if there are other bystanders who also see but do nothing. He concludes:

One has only to ask this question to see the absurdity of the view that numbers lessen obligation. It is a view that is an ideal excuse for inactivity; unfortunately, most of the major evils – poverty, overpopulation, pollution (and, one might add, asylum-seekers, environmental degradation, cruelty to animals, climate change)– are problems in which everyone is almost equally involved.

During the program, Damon made the point that, although people would admire Pippa if she chose to give the money to charity rather than spend it on an overseas trip, no one could expect this of her. She could not be judged harshly for not doing so, because in his view there was no moral duty on her, or any of us, to act in this way.

As Singer points out, however, this misconceives the nature of our moral obligations. Her giving should not be regarded as charity.

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.

When we buy new clothes not to keep ourselves warm but to look ‘well-dressed’ we are not providing for any important need. We would not be sacrificing anything significant if we continued to wear our old clothes, and give the money to famine relief. By doing so we would be preventing another person from starving…

To do so is not charitable or generous. Nor is it the kind of act which philosophers or theologians have called “super-erogatory” – an act which it would be good to do, but not wrong not to do. On the contrary, we ought to give the money away, and it would be wrong not to do so.

Although most charities support the ‘charity’ model and appeal to donors’ generosity, Singer’s view is supported by those agencies like ActionAid which are committed to a ‘rights’ based model, where giving arises out of a moral obligation to recognise the basic human rights of others. On this view, giving is simply doing the right thing. Not to give when you can, and when it would involve no sacrifice of anything of comparable moral significance, would simply be wrong.