My visits to Starbucks have lately become significantly less enjoyable.
This is partly because my shaky middle-aged body is more prone to caffeine jitters. But it’s also because I recently read a book called The Most Good You Can Do, by Princeton University philosopher Peter Singer, which introduced me to some stark ethical math. If I spend three dollars a day on coffee, that’s about $1,000 a year. Here’s what that same $1,000 a year could do….
- Protect nearly seven hundred people in countries like Malawi from malaria, a disease that kills about half a million people annually.
- Fund two complete surgeries for women in countries like Nepal with a horrible condition that makes them outcasts. (They have a hole between their vagina and rectum or bladder.)
- Provide ten children in countries like Nicaragua with surgery to restore their sight.
So enjoy your Frappuccino, asshole.
Because of this book and others like it, I’ve been experiencing extreme First World guilt. From this perspective, our hands are perpetually drenched in blood. Every day, Americans do the moral equivalent of walking by thousands of drowning children on the beach without stopping to extend a nearby tree branch.
It’s a powerful way of looking at life-and also completely overwhelming. Debilitating. Even Singer, an advocate of radical giving, says you shouldn’t become obsessed with guilt or you’ll drive yourself insane. He says a more useful outlook is embracing the joy of saving lives. We can all be heroes. We can all be Schindlers.
Many would argue that this moral algebra is naive and simplistic. Lots of smart people, as well as Ayn Rand devotees, have rejected its premise. And yet it’s got me rattled. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to give more to charity. Probably a lot more. But to which causes among the millions to choose from? There are charities for preventing malaria and reducing avoidable blindness, but also those for the environment, cancer, even one devoted to free tattoo removals for the disadvantaged (which, after doing research, I decide actually has its merits, since it erases gang tattoos and gives teens a fresh start-so I shouldn’t be so smugly dismissive).
