Topics Ethics

Question I enjoy writing and playing the piano. I would like to pursue both things throughout my life, at least at this point. They’re very special things to me. However, I feel a responsibility to lend my body and mind to serving humanity, fulfilling others’ more concrete needs such as food, shelter, clothes, and a physical sense of peace. It seems to me that music and literature are superfluous to those who lack the education to enjoy or access them thoroughly or are preoccupied with survival to bother with them. Are humans, when navigating their life paths (jobs, careers, etc…), obligated to live a life in service to others or a life in service to themselves? Is it possible to do both without being too focused on one or the other? Note: I am an atheist, so if this could be answered without reference to God, that would be the most helpful. Thank you!

Accepted:
September 22, 2011

Comments

Great question. You might try reading Peter Singer's recent book, "The Life You Can Save." In my view, once you start thinking this way then the most natural conclusion is that you should be, basically, a saint. That is, at almost every moment you are choosing what to do, and beyond providing for your necessities in life everything else is superfluous, or at least not necessary; and when you compare doing what is merely 'nice' for yourself with 'helping someone else in need,' you'll end up concluding, for almost each and every moment, that you should be doing nothing but helping others, once your basic minimum needs are met. But do you really think that you are morally obligated to renounce everything not absolutely necessary in your life, in order to help other people? If not, then there must be some cut-off point, some balance point -- helping others in need is obviously to be commended but it is not, at all moments, to be commanded ... (And put the other way around: if EVERYONE followed the previous reading then everyone would be busy helping others and no one one would be doing anything superfluous -- but then most of human history and progress would never happen -- if Beethoven had been busy feeding the hungry then we'd never have had his music ... etc. ... And surely humanity as a whole has an overall better quality of existence when humans are striving not merely to fulfill necessities but to do great (non-necessary) things .... So get on that piano and write a great symphony, at least once in a while!)