Peter Singeer

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Recommended: A short essay on philanthropy

Peter Singer believes that our pattern of spending money on ourselves is immoral. Fancy dinners, long vacations and new clothes don’t help with preserving our lives. Singer gives us two very interesting cases of the dynamics of giving and non-giving. The first one he gives is about a man named Bob, who is given the opportunity to save a life or his life savings. Bob demonstrates Passive Non-Giving, he sees a runaway train and has the option to switch the path of the train so it doesn’t hit a young child and risk hitting his prize possession, his car. Singer see’s Bob as making the wrong choice, because he could have, but did not save the child’s life by sacrificing his car which is only a luxury and is less valuable than a child’s life. Most of the readers would agree that Bob’s conduct was morally wrong. Singer discusses how we can give to organizations like UNICEF. He calculated how much it would take to save a life of a sickened child, which he estimated to $200. Singer puts it into perspective that we are no better than Bob. We have the opportunity to save lives of children by sacrificing some of our luxury items, but we don’t. Therefore, like Bob we do not live up to our own moral standards. It was easier for Bob to not save the child’s life due to the fact that Bob did not have personal contact with the child and was emotionally disconnected. Singer relates this to the people that are working and able, but unwilling to donate to overseas aid. In essence, because we don’t have to see the hungry children we are able to turn a blind eye. The second is demonstrated as an Active Non-Giving situation. The Brazilian film “Central Station”, is about Dora, a retired schoolteacher who makes her living sitting at the station w... ... middle of paper ... ...asonable dynamics and supports them with such enthusiasm. The last few paragraphs of Singer’s proposal started to steer me into a different direction in understanding his drastic approach to solve world hunger. Although Singer points out that there will always be another child in need and I can understand donating the $200, I couldn’t comprehend why all Americans should donate even a larger sum of money to these organizations. Singer couldn’t give a thorough explanation as to why we should be giving all of our hard earned money to organizations when a generous donation has already occurred. A student in class brought up an interesting question: “ What if we donate too much?” My question is, is there such a thing as donating too much money? The only way one can come to a resolution in such a matter would be to start giving and then we can worry about when to stop.

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