Why don’t I do more Good Things?

            Lately I’ve been reflecting on why I don’t do more good things. I’m in good health, I have lots of free time, and I’m financially stable. I live a very privileged life.

            At the same time, I am aware that there are millions of people & other animals that are deeply suffering at this very moment. This is true at any given instant, but the Coronavirus pandemic has made me contemplate it more than ever before. As I comfortably sit at my kitchen counter, people all around the world are lacking their basic needs.

My heart breaks for the millions of daily wage earners in India, people who depend on their day’s earnings to afford food to eat & a place to sleep. These people were left jobless by India’s three-week lockdown. I can’t imagine what that’s like. On a global scale, the World Bank has estimated that the pandemic will push 60 million people into extreme poverty, along with the 700 million others already living in these conditions.

I believe there are things that I could do to help alleviate this suffering, but I don’t do these things very often. Why don’t I donate more of my time, money, & energy so that I can help these people? Why don’t I do more good things?

            It could be because I don’t care. But I’m pretty sure that I do care, and that I actually care quite deeply. Because whenever I see other lifeforms suffering, I start feeling very sad and begin to cry.

            Maybe I don’t do more good things because I don’t have the time & money. But the more I think about this justification, the more bullshit it appears to be. I tell myself, “I’ll be a better person later in life, when I have more time & money.” But when I actually think about this, I realize that at this very moment, I already have lots of time & money to spare.

            If I don’t have time to spare, then why does my screentime app tell me that I’ve been on my phone for an average of 5 hours a day during the past week? This isn’t even accounting for all the other ways I use my time when I could be doing good things.

            If I don’t have money to spare, then why do I eat out so often? Why do I buy clothes I don’t need? Why do I attend expensive concerts? Why do I spend so much money on nonessentials? If, instead of spending money on nonessential items, I donated this money to charity, I would have donated lots of money to charity by now. But I have not donated lots of money to charity. This feels selfish to me. If I don’t get to eat out, I will suffer far less than someone who doesn’t get to eat.

            But also of course, it feels kind of unfair to classify eating out as a selfish activity, when the millionaires & billionaires of the world are “eating out” at a much more despicable rate. Thinking about this makes me feel better about my self-perceived wrongdoings. I say to myself, “True, I could spend less money on nonessentials and instead donate to a charity that feeds starving people. But then again, the amount I could donate is so much less than the amount Jeff Bezos could donate. Therefore if anything, I should criticize Jeff Bezos and not myself.”

            After reflecting on this reflection, I do agree that Jeff Bezos should donate a larger share of his fortune than I do. It is more despicable for Jeff Bezos to spend billions of dollars on himself than it is for me to spend thousands of dollars on myself. Billions are incomprehensibly larger than thousands. But also, does a more despicable act make a less despicable act less despicable?

            My perspective changes when I start to account for people’s lives. Maybe I could have saved multiple lives by now if I had donated more of my spare time & money to charitable causes. My actions seem much less defensible when I frame it this way. How could I ever say that my desire to dress fashionably is more important than another’s life?

            But when the only thing I do is compare the amount of money I can donate to the amount of money Jeff Bezos can donate, my actions seem more defensible by comparison. Undoubtedly, Jeff Bezos has the power to alleviate more suffering than I do, but I am not powerless. I can help people if I choose to do so. Lack of time & money cannot explain why I don’t do more good things.

            Also I want to note that I don’t think philanthropy & volunteerism are the cure to the world’s ills. I would much prefer to live in a world that guarantees basic human rights like food, water, shelter, education, and healthcare. These provisions might render philanthropy & volunteerism unnecessary. Unfortunately, I do not have the power to guarantee everyone these rights, but I will fight to make this vision a reality. Political activism is on my list of “Good Things that I don’t do Enough Of”, along with volunteerism & philanthropy.

            I also want to mention some potential problems associated with philanthropy. Some common criticisms of philanthropy include: it doesn’t address root problems, it is self-serving, it comes with strings attached, it is an exercise of power by the wealthy, and it perpetuates unjust systems. Some people liken philanthropy to stealing bread and giving back crumbs in return. Some people argue philanthropy keeps unjust systems intact because it absolves governments of the responsibility to aid suffering people. I haven’t thought about it a whole lot, but I feel like these criticisms have some validity. But also, if not through philanthropy & volunteerism, how else can I directly help the millions of people currently starving & suffering?

            Maybe I don’t do more good things because I’m selfish. And actually, I think selfishness does partially explain my reluctance to do good things for others. But also, I know if I was presented with the options of

1. Hardly ever spend money on nonessential items for the rest of my life and save the lives of 5 people
2. Carelessly spend money on nonessential items and allow those 5 people to die

I would pick the first option in a heartbeat. But my brain doesn’t often think in this fashion. Why doesn’t my brain think in this fashion?

            Also it can be objected that the options above don’t actually apply to the real world, that this is a false dilemma. Maybe that objection is correct, but I don’t know, I feel like charities that feed starving people certainly do save lives, and that if, over a lifetime, I donated my nonessential money to these charities, I could probably save at least 5 lives, probably many more. Imagine what the world would look like if wealthy people from wealthy countries redistributed large portions of their income to poor people from poor countries. I feel like there would be a lot less suffering people.

            But back to my original question, why doesn’t my brain think in this fashion? Why do I hardly ever consider the opportunity cost of people’s lives when I’m eating out, or during my 5 hours of daily screentime? Why is it when I buy a new pair of jeans, that I don’t consider the starving people who could have been fed with that same money? I think there are three main reasons: a culture of selfishness, opaqueness, & numbing.

            Also thank you to Peter Singer (culture of selfishness), Karl Marx (opaqueness), Paul Slovic (numbing), & probably lots of other unmentioned people. They have inspired my thinking a lot.

A Culture of Selfishness

            It’s quite embarrassing & dispiriting to admit this, but I feel like a lot of my beliefs & behaviors can be explained by environmental factors. Culture is perhaps the most influential of these environmental factors. And unfortunately, my culture does not seem to be particularly passionate about philanthropy & volunteerism. My culture does appear to be quite fond of personal luxuries. Most people living in wealthy countries have excessive amounts of everything.

It is an unfortunate fact that if everybody else is living a certain way, it feels okay to live that way. Normal is synonymous with acceptable. Everyone else is excessively spending on food, fashion, cars, houses, concerts, phones, entertainment, personal items, why would it be wrong for me to do the same? Very few people are donating large portions of their income to charitable causes. These people are regarded as very generous & noble. My culture seems to say to them, “It’s so nice of you guys to do that! However, I’m not a bad person for not doing that.”

And so my culture seems to do a lot more to incentivize personal indulgences than it does to incentivize charitable donations. My culture thinks it’s acceptable, or even desirable, to spend excessive amounts of money on luxury items. Even more saddening, my culture often perceives luxury items to be necessary items. My culture thinks it’s okay if I don’t want to donate my time, money, & energy towards helping suffering people.

Since my culture thinks this way, I have also tended to think this way. But as I think more about it, I’m starting to feel like my culture is really wrong. I feel like it’s really selfish. If millions of people are starving, and I can prevent some of these people from starving by donating my time & money, then I should donate my time & money. My desire to eat at expensive restaurants, dress in fashionable clothes, go on fancy vacations, & attend expensive concerts, is far more trivial than another’s desire to not starve every day.

I feel like I have an obligation to help others who are suffering, especially when helping them comes at little cost to myself, especially when helping them can save a life, or feed a hungry mouth, or prevent a painful disease.

I don’t know how to change this culture. I suppose I should start by changing myself.

Opaqueness

            Something is opaque if I can’t see through it. Pretty much everything I have ever bought is opaque. The only thing I ever see is the final product, everything else about it is unknown. When I buy a T-shirt, where does it come from? What materials were used to create it? Were the materials synthetic? Were they extracted from the earth? To what extent did the extraction damage the earth? How was the T-shirt crafted? Were child workers or exploited workers part of the production process? How many miles did the T-shirt travel to get here? What happens to the T-shirt when I throw it away?

            Sometimes I can find out the answers to these questions, but a lot of the time I can’t. Businesses want to be profitable, so they want to be efficient, so they have supply chains to specialize in different aspects of production. These supply chains can get really long & complex. With complexity comes obscurity. These supply chains can obscure the eight-year-old Bangladeshi girl who works 100 hours a week for $2 a day. Her labor is used to create the inexpensive T-shirt that I wore only a couple of times.

What kind of person am I to sponsor such a system? How much cruelty, destruction, & evilness is embedded in the products I buy?

            If things weren’t so opaque, then I wouldn’t sponsor such evilness. I would never buy a T-shirt labeled “Made from Bangladeshi Child Labor”. But since everything I buy is opaque, I feel like I have a responsibility to gaze through this opaqueness, and learn everything I possibly can about the products I buy, and boycott the products that are produced by evil acts. I also feel like I have a responsibility to raise awareness and to support policies that will make things less opaque, and more transparent.

            Cruelty & suffering are not only concealed within the products I buy, they are also concealed by time & space. When I fly to visit my family in Chicago, I don’t take much time to consider the future generations who will suffer from the climate change resulting from my flight’s emissions. I don’t think about the millions of climate refugees who will be displaced by rising sea levels & natural disasters. I don’t think about the millions of people who will suffer from food & water insecurity. Climate change is already making people suffer right now, but future generations will undoubtedly bear the greatest portion of this burden.

Climate change particularly sucks because now I have to consider how my actions will affect people who are yet to be born. The time lag associated with climate change obscures the consequences of my actions. Which is really unfortunate because releasing carbon emissions into the atmosphere is perhaps the most harmful thing I will do during my time here on earth, but this is nonobvious. I wasn’t born with the ability to understand how eating beef will cause deforestation, and that this deforestation will release carbon into the atmosphere, which will cause some level of climate change, which will cause some level of human suffering. It’s kind of a cruel irony that releasing carbon is perhaps both the most damaging and the most obscure form of violence I can commit.

Geographical space also does a lot to obscure suffering. I live in a wealthy suburban community and I hardly ever see poverty with my own eyes. Since homelessness is not a major problem in my community, I don’t give it much thought. This effect becomes even more pronounced when I think about people suffering on another continent.

This same logic can be applied to animals on factory farms. These animals are treated with immense cruelty, and of course I don’t want to sponsor cruel treatment of animals, but sometimes it’s hard to remember this when the cruelty is occurring behind the opaque walls of some unknown location. Out of sight out of mind is too real.

There are so many layers of removal between me & the consequences of my actions. Time, space, the profit motive, and supply chains all play their part in generating the opaqueness that obscures my vision.

Numbing

            I think numbing is when I try to suppress negative emotions like grief, sadness, & guilt, through avoidance or denial. Sometimes I numb myself intentionally, like when I divert my gaze away from homeless people. Sometimes I numb myself unintentionally, like when I read a statistic that says something like “70 million refugees displaced worldwide”, but I feel nothing.

Sometimes I get coerced into numbing myself, like when I see everyone else doing something, so I start believing it’s ok to do that. Like eating eggs, dairy, & meat, even though these foods are the product of animals being brutally tortured on factory farms. Or when I see everyone else spending money on new back-to-school clothes, so now I want to buy new back-to-school clothes, even though I already have lots of clothes, and the new clothes have a good chance of being crafted by child workers, or exploited workers, and instead I could have donated the money to help feed starving people.

I think maybe it’s a good thing I numb myself, because if I was constantly dwelling on the suffering of others, I would rather quickly find my existence to be unbearable. But it’s also a bad thing I numb myself, because the main reason I try to alleviate suffering in others is because I can feel it in myself. I feel like empathy is a strength, and maybe it would be wrong to try to diminish its power.

But even if I tried to, there would be no way for me to ever comprehend the amount of suffering in this world. Obviously two starving children is worse than one starving child. And one million starving children is one million times worse than a single starving child. But intuitively, I don’t seem to comprehend these phenomena any differently. In fact, give the singular child a story, name, & face, and I’ll start caring about the singular child far more than the sum of the millions of others.

There are limits to my compassion, and my compassion does not exist in proportion to suffering. “70 million refugees” is unimaginable. I am more willing to spend my time & money to do good things for individuals with individualized stories, and less inclined to do so for groups represented with impersonal statistics. “70 million refugees” is a rather abstract idea that evokes very little emotion within me.

            Not only are humanitarian crises unfathomable, they also make me feel helpless & ineffective. Maybe I can help one family of refugees, but what about the millions of other families? It makes me feel like saying, “What’s the point?” It’s almost like if I can’t solve the problem in its entirety, then I feel like the problem isn’t worth addressing at all. But of course, helping one displaced family is made no less important simply because there are millions of other displaced families.

            Numbing is part learned and part innate, part intentional and part unavoidable. Numbing costs people their lives. A Culture of Selfishness & Opaqueness only serve to accentuate this numbing effect. I don’t know how to stop from numbing myself. I guess I just need to be alert & aware & care a lot.

How do I live my Life?

            If I were to live by the ideas I’ve expressed above my possible range of actions would be very limited. I wouldn’t be able to spend money on personal luxuries like new clothes, and new headphones, and lit concerts. For the things I would be permitted to buy, I wouldn’t be able to buy anything that was the product of child labor, exploited labor, animal cruelty, or unsustainable practices. Unfortunately in the world we live in, a lot of things are made with these ingredients.

            I wouldn’t be able to fly to see my family in Chicago. I wouldn’t be able to go for a leisurely Sunday drive in my fossil fuel powered car. I would have to justify every action that I know to emit carbon dioxide.

            It would be quite difficult to live this way. But I also think it’s the best way for me to live. I want to do the most good & the least harm. Doing good things makes me feel good & doing bad things makes me feel bad.

            Living this life is restrictive in a sense, but it is also very liberating. Liberating from my guilt, my hypocrisy, my cognitive dissonance. Living my life according to my values is harmonic. Harmony makes me happy. Striving for harmony gives me meaning & purpose. I’ll never live perfectly but I will try to.

Conclusion

            I don’t do more good things because a Culture of Selfishness & Opaqueness accentuate my innate tendency to numb and to act selfishly. I hope that identifying why I don’t do more good things will allow me to begin doing more good things. Doing good things is good for others’ sake as well as my own.