Topics Ethics

Question I live in the Northeast, U.S.A. Should I care more about someone starving in a distant U.S. state than I care about someone starving on another continent? Should the sufferer's proximity to my location or the precise form of suffering being endured affect the answer to the question?

Accepted:
December 28, 2005

Comments

It is hard to see why proximity (in the sense of physical distance) should make a difference. The kind of suffering and the nationalityof the sufferer may well be relevant, however. Both may provideevidence about your causal relation to the sufferer. And the former mayalso provide information about how severe the suffering is, which issurely morally relevant.

You focus on one kind of suffering inparticular: starvation. The UNDP reports some 850 million chronicallymalnourished people, and there are certainly more than this numberagain who suffer intense hunger occasionally. Suffering of this kind istoday pretty much completely avoidable through reforms of economicrules and policies on the national and global levels. Suffering of thiskind may then be suffering for which you and I and many others sharesome responsibility. Insofar as we do, we have more moral reason tocare -- and moral reason to care more.

The thought that webear some collective responsibility is very hard to dismiss when thestarvation occurs within the US. This country certainly has theresources and capabilities to organize itself so that the basic humanrights of its residents are secure. We are capable of securing thebasic civil and political rights (of holding free and fair elections,of underwriting an effective police force and court system, etc.). Andwe are also capable of organizing our economy so that all have accessto minimally adequate nutrition and clean water. If children arestarving in our country nonetheless (hunger is suffered by childrenmost frequently), this is our collective responsibility as citizens.

Thisgives you and me more reason to care. But we may not be able, even withsome effort, to achieve useful institutional reform. If so, we canstill help protect the hungry through volunteer work and donations toeffective non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Here the ordinaryreason for caring in this way -- the duty to help people in need -- isstrengthened by another reason: that such caring also compensates forour shared responsibility.

To be sure, it is possible that wealso bear some responsibility for starvation abroad. Much starvationmay be traceable to global economic arrangements in whose design andimposition our government has had a major role (see my answers toprevious questions 432, 568, 631). If so, we bear some collectiveresponsibility for what our government has done in our name. Onceagain, we may not be able, even with some effort, to achieve usefulinstitutional reform. And once again, we can perhaps, if this is so,still help reduce the harm we are co-responsible for through volunteerwork and donations to effective NGOs.