GibburtGiving
Suppose you are walking to work and by the side of the road there is a pond. Before your eyes a three-year-old, who was playing a bit too close to the water, falls in. What do you do? Do you risk your expensive suit and jump in or do you pretend not to notice and continue to work?
If you are like most people you will not hesitate to jump in and save the toddler. However when the child is not drowning in a pond next door but dying of hunger on the other side of the world nobody seems to care anymore. Of course this is the responsibility of governments, aid organizations and everybody else but ourselves and as such we do not need to worry about it. How can we be responsible when governments are not doing their work properly? Then again when the child is drowning in the next door pond, wouldn’t we scold its parents for inattentiveness only after we have saved the child?
When it comes giving money, most of us have a host of reasons ready to convince ourselves that it is not only perfectly reasonable to give just this little amount, it would even be counterproductive to give more because we would be helping a corrupt regime, we would be making people dependent on aid and, my personal favorite, our helping of people in need will only lead to more people being born and thus to more people being in need of help (the so called Malthusian explanation).
And without a doubt there is much that can be improved about how aid money is being spent. Nevertheless this is more a matter of selecting the right charities to give to than a question of should we give at all. Furthermore aid is said to make people lose their independence and to start relying on this aid money too much. Once again this is a matter of selecting the right charity: there are many organizations that ask a more active role from the people they help. The Malthusian explanation is one that deserves more attention than I can give in this article so I will dedicate a separate post to it on a later date.
In terms of how much we should give I would like to refer to Peter Singer’s book The life you can save. In it he argues that he thinks it is strange how we carefully weigh the 10 Euros per month that we might give to charity but that we do not think twice about how we spend many times that number on things like bottled water, gardening or a second car. As such he argued for a system where each of us strives to spend a certain percentage of his income on charity. How high this percentage should be,will depend on your income, but typically this would be 1-2%. If you would be interested in how much it should be for you, please use the calculator provided here. I must admit, that when I compared my actual spending on charity with the (already not so high) number the calculator provided, I felt quite embarrassed.
If you would want to increase your levels of giving way beyond what the calculator is telling you, you may want to look at the website of the 50% league which you can join if you are willing to give away 50% of your total possessions.
Of course everyone’s situation is different, and as such just looking at income – as the calculator is doing – is a tremendous oversimplification. The calculator makes an important point though and that is, that the amount most of us spent on charity, seen as a percentage of our income, is nothing to write home about, Suppose you are on your way to work and you see a child fall in a pond and you know that the child will drown if you do not act. What would you do???
Well, if I saving the kid costs about an hour or two, including driving back to home for some clean clothes, and I bill the kid my hourly rate, this is sooo much cheaper than spending 1% of my income.
Robert,
I think you are right. That is why so many traditions (Islam, Christianity) stress the need for providing for those in need.
I think one other thing that makes people hesitate (lazy) is the amount of time that they need to spend to find the appropriate aid organizations. Though I think it is everybody’s responsibility to determine how much they want to sacrifice within their doable limits, I believe proposed percentages will stimulate and bring reasonability. I am pretty sure everybody is helping to their local community but the hard thing is to donate to people that you don’t share the same values and I am afraid thats where we are failing the most.
You are right, it is important to contribute to our community, thats why I still support my old college and some local community work.
Don’t overlook the obvious: Many, if not most, active members of the big 3 religions tythe at least 8-10% of thier income. A large percentage of thything goes towards aiding those in need at home and abroad. Contrary to what many aethiests and skeptics would like to believe, this aid is generally provided with no spiritual strings attached.
The bigger question is “Where do you draw the line?” or “How much is enough?”
Mr Good German,
I know these things differ from location to location but here (in the Netherlands) I am pretty sure that there are very few people who give 8-10% of their income. And what I know about the US for example is that people do give a lot but by far the most of that money is going to either their local church or their university. Which is fine of course but that doesnt help the real poor people of the world.
@hawk:
I am not sure if you used the calculator correctly because if your hourly rate is as high as you suggest, you should pay at least 5% !
@ Good German
I must admit that that 8-10% also seems a bit high to me. The question how far to go is also an interesting question and as such I was planning to write another post about that at a later date (man has gotta work as well you know), but at this stage how far to go seems less important because one thing is for sure…. we need to go farther than we are going now.
I don’t give anything to charity at all. When people ask me directly, or beg, 9 out of 10 times I refuse. Sometimes I buy a paper from the homeless guy at my local supermarket, but I don’t consider this to be charity, ‘cos he’s selling me something.
The comparison you make is rather over the top. There is a fundamental difference between the kid that I see drowning and the kid with a big belly the tv shows me. The drowning child I see, hear, experience directly, meaning it appeals directly to my capacity of compassion. The child I see drowning is in acute need: if I don’t do anything now it will die.
The kid on tv I experience on a more abstract level. If I spend 100€ for the kid on tv, how am I to know whether my money will ever help this particular child? Maybe it takes a month or two for my money to be transformed into bread and delivered to this child, only to be placed upon its grave…
Actually, when I help the drowning child, is it really an act of charity?
I don’t exactly know why I don’t donate to charity. I don’t even feel bad about not giving anything. Why? I don’t know…
Cedric,
To me both in the case of the drowning child or in the case of the somewhere else dying of hunger child the core of the situation is the same: a child is dying that maybe does not have to. The fact that it FEELS differentl because one is so close and the other one is far away does not make it different from the point of view that we ought to help. The other questions you asked (how do I know my money really reaches the needy) is again more a matter of selecting the right charity to give to then a question of should I give at all.
Robert,
I really have to disagree there: the way an event enters our mind affects the way our capacity to judge interpretates the particular event. The fact that it FEELS differently is essential because this determines how we judge the situation.
But maybe you can explain more what you mean with the “point of view that we ought to help”, I mean, knowing something bad happens doesn’t imply a moral obligation to do something about it.
You make a good argument for giving and providing some helpers to figure out the right amount to give, but leave open the question on whom to donate to.
News like these aren’t exactly encouraging either: http://www.tagesspiegel.de/weltspiegel/WFP;art1117,2930582
@Jorn,
I read your link and I agree with you, it is not a very nice story but to me it only stresses the need to be selective in which organisations to give to.
@Cedric,
The fact that how a situation makes us feel, impacts our judgement of that situation does not justify our closing our eyes for things we may not feel but still know about. What this means is that instead of chosing who and why you will help,you want to be manipulated by anyone who can create a certain feeling in you.
And yes you are right: it is very hard to ‘proof’ what sort of moral obligation derives from knowing something. But his applies as much to the drowning next door child as the dying far away child