Something we all really wish would go away.
And nobody wants to talk about.
Click here to save a life.
Did you click? Did you give? I know you did, but just in case: go ahead, it costs just $5 to give another human being a desperately needed insect net. Now did you give?
Awesome, I trust you, you gave $5 and another person with thoughts and hopes and dreams is going to get an item critical to their survival. Now do it again. Why not? It’s just $5. You probably (definitely) spent more last time you went to Starbucks.
Is it worth it (I know those yogurts are just delicious)? We’re talking about people’s lives here. You could afford to skimp on the coffee, right? Give another $5.Give another person security in their health.
I know you did, because you’re a good person, right? But like, those organic fruits you are eating are just a few bucks more than the conventional kind. Maybe you buy the conventional kind and give another $5 and contribute to saving another living, breathing, human being.
Maybe.
Maybe that Uber ride, or that Ikea couch, or that Ice Cream, or that anything, isn’t worth it. Maybe it isn’t worth trading another human’s safety for a grande iced caramel macchiato even though you are just so tired and it’s just soooo delicious. Trust me, I’ve been there. So maybe you make the sacrifice, you donate another $50. Help save another ten people.
Maybe.
But probably not, let’s be honest, the vast, overwhelming majority of my readers aren’t going to give a single cent to Against Malaria. (I implore you to click here and prove me devastatingly wrong). I haven’t.
Here’s the easy question with the easy answer that doesn’t change how we live our lives:
If it is within our power to stop the suffering of another human being without causing greater suffering, should we?
Here’s the hard question with a hard answer that makes our lives harder:
If it is within our power to stop the suffering of another human being without causing greater suffering, and we do not, are we in the wrong?
It seems, to me at least, to be completely impossible to argue against the hard answer: Unequivocally, yes.
There is no room in this answer or in the question for a clause based on distance or cultural group or religious group or political group. If you have the power to help another human being you should, and if you consciously make the decision not to, you are in the wrong.
This is obvious in simple examples. If you walk down a street and a man comes out and tells you that he is going to shoot another person unless you ask him nicely not to, it is wrong of you to not ask him nicely not to (assuming, of course, he is telling the truth).
In this situation, it’s clear that while the man is clearly in the wrong, should you not intervene when it costs you nothing, so are you. If it is within our power to stop the death of another person and we sit idly by and allow it to happen we share in the burden of guilt.
Now what if the man about to get shot is 3000 miles away.
Oh shit.
If idly allowing others to die implicates us in their death, then our conscious decision not to give an inconsequential amount of money to help save the life of another human being implicates us in their death.
How far do we take this? Does it mean I should sell my TV and my couch and my bed and move to a cheaper house and sell everything I don’t absolutely need to continue giving and give all the money to help save other lives?
More importantly, would not doing so be wrong?
If we follow our moral compasses strictly, if we don’t allow the value of our own comforts to be multiplied exponentially when compared to the very lives of others, then yes.
Again: shit.
There is no easy resolution. There is no philosophical trick to be played to excuse our lack of giving, our lack of massive, overwhelming intervention.
All there is is our guilt, our small, or large, part in the deaths of millions.
So give. Give first, then please recommend this so others give too.
My name is Jonathan Reem and I am as guilty as the rest of us.
I wrote this because the answer to the questions I have posed here are unsettling to me, and cause me to question the very way I and many others live our lives.
As I said, I have no answers, no solutions to excuse our behavior. The best I can do is to start discussion and provoke a conversation that many are unwilling to have. I hope I’ve succeeded.
Seeing as Medium doesn’t have a comments section and I think this is a perfect example of why there should be an option to add one, please continue the discussion with me on Twitter @jreem or on Quora in the comments on this duplicate post here.
