From class discussions and reading various blog posts I have deducted that most of the class finds at least some flaw or problem with utilitarianism. I find it interesting then, that when voting for which charity we wanted to give the money to, Evidence Action – which is, from what I can tell, the most cost effective charity that will help the most people in need of all the nominated charities – won by a landslide. This is the charity, of the ones that were nominated, that a Utilitarian would most likely pick. This tells me that the problem most of us, including myself, have with utilitarianism isn’t that it aims to help the most people, but that it could potentially harm people. One person could be sacrificed for the benefit of many in the eyes of a strict utilitarian. Perhaps a better moral theory is a less extreme utilitarianism, a utilitarianism where the aim is to help the most people possible, only if no one is seriously harmed in the process. Of course, “seriously harmed” is extremely ambiguous, but I think the point gets across. The Giving Game was a great example of this; our class chose to go the utilitarian route. I don’t think we would utilitarians though, if someone had to be seriously harmed to help those in need. This act of utilitarianism did not require anything from us, which is another reason we chose it. Utilitarianism asks a lot of people, so perhaps a less extreme version wouldn’t require that the benefit of others must be maximized, but only increased in some degree.

International service trips are a good example of a type of charity that is unsustainable. Oftentimes, people who are unqualified to do a certain type of work are sent to a developing country and then expected to complete that work for a community in need. This creates a multitude of problems. Not only is the work they complete not up to par, but it also does not teach the community they are helping the skills needed to complete that work. Take building a library for example. Volunteers can go lay brick for the library, but the bricks that they lay are probably not going to create a sound structure. This is exactly the issue Pippa Biddle seeks to address in her blog post titled “The Problem With Little White Girls, Boys and Voluntourism.” In her post, she says the she paid $3000 to go to Tanzania to build a library with her classmates. She says that each day they would lay bricks for the library and each night men from the community would have to undo their work and rebuild it. She states that it would have been “more stimulative of the local economy” for them to just have donated their money. Another thing to consider is that by going to that community to build the library, volunteers are depriving people of the community the opportunity to learn how to build a school/library so once the volunteers leave they are able to not only maintain the completed building but also build others. By going to the community and then leaving only a school, they are not going to gain any skills. Biddle hopes that before embarking on an international service trip, people evaluate their own abilities and consider if they are implementing a short term solution or a long term one.

In Devah Pager’s 2003 dissertation, “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” the American Sociologist, best known for her work with racial discrimination, detailed the results of an experiment she hosted where she enlisted young men with similar characteristics to pose as job applicants. She found that a black applicant received a call back or job offer half as often as a similarly qualified white applicant. Even further, she found that a black applicant with a clean criminal record received a call back or job offer as often as a white applicant with a felony conviction. I think this research definitely points to the unfair disadvantage being white has in American society. Nobody chooses what race they are born, and with such distinct statistics detailing the importance of race, it is obviously an unfair disadvantage to be born black in America.

According to the principle of utilitarianisn, our one moral duty is to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. An objection to this idea is that there is more to life than pleasure; knowledge and virtue are important among many other things. A response to this would be that utilitarianisn requires that we consider everyone’s pleasure and not just our own. There is more to life than just physical pleasure and that many people could even say that they find pleasure from acquiring knowledge and some other things people do not view as physically pleasurable (pleasure is relative). Another objection would be that just because something makes people happy does not make it right. It is wrong to harm individuals in order to make others happy. The example used in class was if five people each needed a certain organ and one healthy person could supply all five of those organs – it seems beneficial to kill one person to save five, right? A response could be that the person could willingly sacrifice him/herself to help these five people live, since he’s saving more people than he might be worth. If all lives are equal then you are saving four lives.

In class on Friday we talked about the example of a child falling into a mirror lake and if a person is there and sees the child drowning it is there moral responsibility to help the child. This example in class reminded me of the bystander effect that I learned about in AP Psychology in high school. Specifically, the example of Kitty Genovese. She was a 28 year old woman who was returning to her apartment in Queens, New York after work at three in the morning. On her way back she was stabbed multiple times by a serial rapist and murderer. She screams for help, and the attacker finally fled after being seen by a neighbor. In actuality though there were numerous people who had heard her screams and not one came in her defense. Just as in the case of the individual witnessing the child drowning it was and should have been the witnesses moral responsibility to go help Genovese after they heard her screams even if they might inflict wounds trying to help her. They could have simply dialed 911 instead of watching. Moral responsibility in this case and in many other cases is overshadowed by a thing called “social proof”. When multiple people are around, each individual looks to see how another reacts because in social situations we don’t want to seem flustered. People therefore fail to act if they don’t see others acting. This social proof also creates a “diffusion of responsibility” which is that if someone else is present and they are probably doing something about it. “Moral responsibility” therefore seems nonexistent and in fact what exists is some ridiculous social mechanism.

One thing that comes up in almost any discussion on altruism is that an action is never truly altruistic because the person is performing the action is his or her self interest. I think this is true, but why should it matter? Say one person gives $10,000 to a charity out of truly altruistic purposes, and another person does because they feel guilty if they don’t. That $10,000 doesn’t do less good if the action is not purely altruistic. Whether or not altruism exists does not matter; doing good does. Furthermore, it almost speaks poorly of your character if you don’t feel happy about helping out someone in need, and it speaks poorly of your character if you don’t feel guilty by not helping. That happiness that you feel could then be the cause of more helping of those in need, which certainly does not make your contribution mean any less. You’re even affecting more people positively if by helping others you feel some sense of satisfaction and happiness because you are improving your own life as well. Singer never says that this should not be the case with effective altruism, as he discusses in his TED talk many people whose lives have improved after they began giving, including a woman who was deeply depressed before she began devoting her life to helping others, and some time after she began this endeavor she became one of the happiest people she knew. She was able to positively affect the lives of many others in need as well as her own, all without acting out of purely altruistic tendencies.

While I was watching the Ted Talks video and Singer mentioned the video of Wang Yue, I couldn’t help but tell one of my suitemates about it. When I showed her it, she showed me this picture of a little girl that collapsed on her way to a feeding station and a vulture waiting behind her until she dies to prey on her, which is apparently a normal situation in Sudan. It’s a picture that Kevin Carter, a South African photojournalist, took in 1993 to showcase the poverty and hunger children are facing in Sudan and the rest of Southern Africa. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. That same year, he committed suicide. The main assumed reason for this is the pressure and backlash he received from this photo became too much for him. Everyone was shocked and mortified that he spent all that time adjusted the lens and trying to get the perfect picture instead of helping her to the station. This reminded me of the altruism topic that Singer discussed, on how it’s everyone’s responsibility to help people less valuable. I am aware that when people like Carter visit to take pictures and report on the issues in these places, they are advised not to touch the children too much in case of diseases that they might have but it raises the question–is it ok that he spent so much time taking this picture, watching this little girls suffer and be in pain in front of him? Yes he did a good thing exposing this situation to the public, but personally, I don’t know if I could live with myself after spending so much time taking one picture then running off instead of helping her make it to the feeding station. The St. Petersburg Times said this of Carter: “The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering, might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.” My personal opinion is that Carter felt remorse and regret in his actions, this is why he committed suicide. It relates to the idea that altruism is everyone’s responsibility who can give it and was Carter wrong in what he did.

I definitely agree with Scheffler’s article that the existence of future generations helps give our life purpose and meaning. What we leave behind – values, norms, inventions, etc., – are what future generations will learn from and will expand upon. This is why individuals care so much about the legacy they will leave behind. There was one point in Scheffler’s article in which he mentioned the importance of religion and the consolation one receives when they think about death/afterlife in a religious perspective. Here I would like to discuss the Hindu religion and its unique beliefs about afterlife and death. Most Hindus believe in reincarnation of the soul which is immortal in a sense. The soul is part of this “jiva” or being that is liberated over and over again and allowed to return to Earth. Because one is liberated over and over again, one’s karma although important seems somewhat insignificant. The purpose of this “jiva” or being is to ultimately reach and understand what is means to be whole (pure). Afterlife therefore is a nonexistent concept. Hindus therefore believe that they will have a chance to contribute over and over again in society. Many find comfort in this idea and therefore leave for various pilgrames in their later life in which they truly devote themselves to the study of god.

This past year I read a book called The Stranger by Albert Camus. The book is about an apathetic man named Mersault, who is essentially indifferent to the world. Mersault is sentenced to death in what could be perceived as a justified killing, yet his indifference and withdrawal from the trial leads him to be found guilty. While awaiting his death, Mersault adapts the idea of absurdism; he becomes aware that it does not matter if he dies soon by beheading or far into the future, and he becomes aware that like him, the world also displays an indifference. This discovery does not lead him to be depressed, but instead it is a weight off his shoulders, almost as if he is less burdened by knowing that there is no meaning. I wouldn’t say my own viewpoints are as extreme as Mersault’s, but this book, along with the discussions we’ve had in class, have led me to a viewpoint similar to this one. I understand that on a large enough scale, everything I do does not matter. I am not as enlightened as Mersault, but understanding this fact almost allows someone have a burden lifted off of them; they know and are okay with this realization. An absurdist can live a happy, meaningful life (on a small scale). When Mersault makes this realization, in fact, it is the first time during the whole book that he seems to really care about something; he gets very excited to be greeted by the jeers of the people who are there to witness his beheading that do not see the world the same way he does.

I think it’s safe to say that most of us in class agreed with Scheffler’s passage on the importance of an afterlife to us. To me, knowing that there will be future generations present after I pass gives me a sort of comfort, I know that I everything that I put effort into is worth it in a way since I know that people after me will benefit from it–whether it’s a professional thing like a business I’m building up or if it’s a personal thing like having children to have their own children who will have their own. I think that knowing that there will be generations after us gives us all reason to do what we want to do and gives us a brighter look like “Hey, someday, someone is going to appreciate what I did and in some way, I will benefit their life”. This, to me, gives us all a purpose and a motivational push to do what makes us happy since our happiness will lead to more generations that will be impacted by our actions. Who’s to say that we would be happy doing what we are if we knew that it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone if there is no future generation? It’s the idea that we will mean something to someone in the future that gives us a purpose and makes a feel like we have some type of legacy to leave to others. Because of this, I do agree with Scheffler’s argument that knowing there will be future generations does give us a purpose in life and we do depend on that thought.