The Life You Can Save – Peter Singer
I’ve just finished reading Peter Singer’s new book, The life you can save – Acting now to end world poverty. In it he presents his arguments for why we ought to be acting to help those below the poverty line, discusses the obstacles and suggests methods for making sure that the money you give is effective.
Singer is a philosopher and an ethicist and, as such, presents a robust case for the need for charity as well as the wrongness of withholding aid when it is within our means.
He sets the scene with a scenario where you are passing by a pond and notice a toddler drowning in it. Most of us would be prepared to ruin our new shoes and clothing as well as make ourselves late for work in order to save the toddler. This would indicate that we actually value the life of this child over the cost of our clothing and over the interruption to our everyday lives.
But why don’t we act with the same urgency when we know for a fact that for a similar cost and/or inconvenience we would be able to save the life of a real child in, say, Africa?
Here Singer addresses many of the psychological issues that surround immediacy, perceived unfairness when others don’t give, balancing our legitimate selfish urges, being more vocal about our charity to create a better culture of giving and much more.
Having established that if we are able to help and we have no good reasons not to he then goes on to examine how to invest your aid wisely and ensure that your money is being used for what you intended. (I’ve often chosen my charities based largely on how little is wasted on administration – he deals with this and shows that it is more complicated than that).
The last part of the book is dedicated to establishing how much it is reasonable to expect us to give without turning us all off. Singer holds himself to his own standards and admits that even he can’t live up to them (he doesn’t mention it in the book but according to a radio interview I listened to he gives around 30% of his income). Think of it; if you can afford to buy a coffee when you could have had tap water then you have diverted potential aid from those who clearly need it more than you. Instead, he suggests a more realistic scale of percentages which, for most reading this, would be between 1-5% of our incomes before tax.
And all is not lost as he points out: in 1981 there were 1.9 billion people below the poverty line whereas today there are only 1.4 billion. Those numbers may seem close but consider that the fact that the world population has increased in the time and what this amounts to is that we have almost halved the percentage of people living below the poverty line in 30 years. Ending world poverty is achievable.
I thoroughly recommend you read this book.
Tags: book review, charity, peter singer, poverty
The title of this book is deeply ironic, given that Singer argues in favor not only of abortion, but also of infanticide and euthanasia.
I was wondering how long it would take for that topic to come up. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re unpredictable Bnonn!
indeed! ethics are always based on value-judgments. Which makes me curious as to Singer’s value-judgments which lead him to the conclusion (see Singerian principle #9) that a baby can be terminated even post-birth?
interesting wording: ‘legitimate selfish urges’. legitimate and selfish are typically thought to be contradictory. I’d simply want to point to the goodness of taking care of yourself – which is value-based (me = good + worth taking care of).
and… as for being more vocal about charity. It’s very tricky, eh? Already with Facebook, we see all manner of ‘social justice groups’ which people can easily join and rant and rave about (very ‘vocal’), whilst giving little or nothing… pessimistic, but true? other thoughts?
Dale,
If you and I (and Singer) can agree that we would find it immoral to leave a toddler to drown because we didn’t want to damage our shoes then we have a basis from which to point out that failing to do so just because the children happen to be far away carries its own moral dilemma. It doesn’t matter where our morals come from or how other aspects of our morals manifest themselves in other areas.
That Singer has a different perspective from you on suffering and rights to life doesn’t come to bear on this topic because, I assume, we all agree that it is wrong to leave a toddler to drown through our own inaction. This is called a ‘common understanding’ and we can work with this.
Learn to separate ideas from the people who hold those clusters of ideas. This is a book review about the topic of finding ways to alleviate poverty that happens to be written by a guy who has other ideas with which you strongly disagree. If you want to find out about Singer’s other ethical issues then go and read his other books.
Re: ‘legitimate selfish urges’. It’s legitimate and selfish to not want to starve yourself. It’s also legitimate and selfish to want the maximum comfort and happiness for yourself. In the context of this review these are words I’ve used to highlight the fact that there is a very real balancing act to be performed when asking people to give away some of their comfort in order to make the lives of others better.
rather than calling it ‘common understanding’, I’d say it’s more a mere point of agreement on an example of ethical action. It’s simply a case where we both answer ‘yes’ to the ‘is it ethical’ question. No deep ‘understanding’ at all. Just a nod. Which is why such obvious examples (i.e. drowning toddler) aren’t helpful.
What we really need is an approach that will help us with the far more complex and multi-faceted moral issues that are far more common to us than walking to work and making the painful choice if we will save that drowning toddler or if we’ll ignore it so we can have time to buy a latte.
(as for me, it’s definitely 1) save the toddler AND 2) buy the latte!) 
as for ‘legitimate selfish urges’, I (and many others, of whatever ideological persuasion?) don’t think it’s legitimate to want ‘maximum comfort’ (and/or ‘happiness’) for myself. It’d be an interesting conversation to discuss how putting pressure on people affects their generosity, etc. and compare that with the effect of people having their values changed. From your review, Singer seems to want to find a middle/balance point in the gradient of pressue (from too much pressure to not enough pressure)?
Oh really? That’s interesting because I’ve just read this fantastic book where this guy goes into the complexities of the moral issues that surround alleviating global poverty… you should read it sometime.
nice…
well, if it doesn’t address value-judgments, then maybe it’s failing to treat a key complexity in moral issues of all kinds (from global poverty to shoe-shopping with your tennaged daughter)
Maybe, Dale, maybe. There’s got to be something wrong with it.
Thanks for the book review and the video, Damian. I really must read this book. I have heard a few interviews and think hew makes some great points. And I’ll certainly watch the video. He seems an interesting character.
I have noticed that Singer seems to be a target for Christian apologists. I wonder if they are basing their comments on their reading of his books, etc., or on their readings of apologetics scripts?
I find the latter are usually very unreliable and would always prefer to go to the horses “mouth.”
for what it’s worth, I’ve also have a distaste for what might be called ‘James Dobson-ish’ knee-jerk reaction to people who disagree with them in general and Peter Singer in particular.
I appreciate more thoughtful responses. I respect Singer for at least being consistent. And (as always) can appreciate that there will be many points of action that we’d agree on. I’m just interested in how he (as a philosopher) forms his conclusions, that’s all.
Dale,
From the very little I’ve heard about Singer I understand he’s a preference utilitarian and represents his position best in his book Practical Ethics.
Again, from the very little I know of his arguments I suspect I don’t agree with some of them but because I haven’t read them I’m not going to be so silly as to try to attack or defend them.
I do acknowledge, however, that people are made of many different ideas and believe it is immature to reject something someone says out-of-hand simply because I don’t agree with him on another topic.
Ken,
If you want to borrow the book I’d be more than happy to post it to you once my wife has finished (she’s on the last chapter).
Glad that I didn’t do that, then
No, that would have been very immature of you and Bnonn if you’d done that.
Bnonn noted irony in the book’s title (far from rejecting the book’s contents out of hand)…
I responded to some points in your review (also far from rejecting the book’s contents out of hand)…
Uh huh, uh huh.
wow – OK…
Thanks for the offer Damian. However, I have already put in a request to our local library which has copies – so that’s probably simpler. Thanks anyway.
Re Bnonn’s first comment. I think plenty of people who accept abortion and euthanasia also have a humane attitude towards poverty.
I have heard Singers comments on infanticide and think they are easy to distort. Fortunately in our society the choice to abort a genetically deformed foetus is usually available. I have some familiarity with spina bifida problems and know that many mothers who have experienced children with these problems would probably have selected to abort if that choice had been available.
As for euthanasia – as I grow older I become more aware that the right to voluntarily end one’s life is very precious when facing terminal suffering. I certainly support it.
The other thing I picked up from Singer is the question of animal rights and vegetarianism. Like a lot of people who have considered Singer’s arguments I would probably like to be a vegetarian but have been rather weak about activating that choice.
Interesting—I didn’t realize you were a eugenicist, Ken. Not that it surprises me. Still, it is chilling to hear someone who lives in the same country as me saying that it is “fortunate” that we can “abort” (what a nice, neutral word; like when we say someone “passed away”) genetically deformed “foetuses” (there’s another neutral word…like saying “immature female” instead of “girl”).
Tell me, will the Third Reich rise again?
DBT,
I don’t think the ‘Third Reich’ comment is helpful – it’s (needlessly) inflammatory.
Now, having said that, I agree that this is a serious enough issue (life or death, frankly!) to warrant a… well… serious tone. And Ken, I know you probably didn’t put hours of thought into your word ‘fortunately’, but I think it’s safe to say that abortion (however justified – or not justified) is never ‘fortunate’.
Dale and Bnonn, when a foetus is developing it will often mutate and spontaneously abort (~25% of the time this happens and we don’t even know about it). However sometimes a mutation is not enough to cause spontaneous abortion but will still result in, if taken to full term, an individual who’s in for a life of suffering.
I think that Ken’s use of the word ‘fortunate’ was in the context that, unlike some countries, we are fortunate to not be forced to go through with these kinds of pregnancies.
Now, I understand that you both believe that there is somehow a little soul created at conception but you, also, need to understand that people like Ken and I can see no reason for such a belief and that life develops in a gradient.
If you can’t acknowledge this fundamental difference and be prepared to use logic and reason to convince people like us to believe in a soul then any conversation such as this will be futile.
Throwing around phrases like “Third Reich” aren’t going to get us anywhere. If you are not here with a goal of reaching a common understanding then I respectfully ask you to take such conversations elsewhere.
Whether or not human beings have souls is irrelevant to my argument. The fact that you think otherwise is telling. And, indeed, unless you or Ken holds to the position that it is morally permissible to kill genetically deformed people at any stage of their lives, it would appear that the genetic deformation issue is really utterly irrelevant; nothing but a red herring. I presume neither of you actually holds to such an extreme view (then the Third Reich comment really would be justified)—in which case, the obvious question arises: Why is it permissible, or even good per Ken’s “fortunate” comment, to kill people at one stage of their lives, but not at another stage? What is the relevant distinction which makes it morally reprehensible to commit homicide against an infant, a child, a teenager, or an adult—but morally permissible or even virtuous to commit homicide against a fetus (or to say that “homicide” does not apply to a fetus)?
Damian,
First, accidental/natural/spontaneous (or non-human induced) abortion and ‘on purpose’ (human induced) abortion are to be distinguished.
Second, all cases of human deformity (whether cancer, down syndrome, or any/all manner of biological defects) are also ‘unfortunate’.
Third, do you actually think that belief in ‘a little soul’ is the only thing that would be underlying our concerns!? You’re kidding, right? The (obvious) gradient is not the point. The point is the value of a human life (including that of the would-be parents and family/friends/circumstances/etc.), and doing anything and everything to protect/foster/grow/nurture it (inlcuding sexual self-control, etc., etc….).
Fourth, ‘suffering’ is a very, very subjective thing (and of course this does not make it trivial). In one sense, we constantly suffer anyway. But more to the point, I know of plenty of people with far less abilites than I have, who are very very glad to be alive, and have the gift of teaching the rest of us a thing or two about life. Some of the most mature youths I’ve dealt with have had brothers/sisters who are now sometimes being put in the ‘too hard’ box (and I’m aware of the nuance inherent to this issue – it’s not simple – but sometimes it is…).
Fifth, Hey, I’m not the one who threw out the ‘Third Reich’ phrase!
apparently… because the value of a human life is directly porportional to the weight of the human body…?
Bnonn and Dale,
I’m sorry but I don’t believe this conversation can actually go anywhere. I, for one, haven’t got the energy or the patience to commit to what is, I suspect, such a polarised topic that no common understanding would eventuate anyway.
I do find this a fascinating topic but not so when discussed from such different starting assumptions. (For a little background to my hesitance read this).
I’d really rather this conversation be kept to the topic at hand which is alleviating poverty – a rare topic where we probably do have a common understanding.
Condolences Damian – a nice book review on an interesting topic and it didn’t deserve the comments to go where they did. I find the abortion debate fascinating but this is absolutely the wrong place for it.
As for poverty, I have a rather extreme view on it. I think the third world should simply be left alone. A large amount of the trouble there comes from first world interference so I am not sure we should have the gall to then offer a paltry hand to try and fix it. We should get out and let them achieve success or failure on their own terms.
Perhaps it is too late for that to ever happen but in my opinion they need less first world money, not more. The way I see it information is far more useful to them than money ever will be. Yes we can build arguments that if the world’s wealth was more evenly distributed then there would be less starving people but that is socialism and it doesn’t work, despite how ideal it sounds.
Just my 2c
If we don’t have a common enough understanding to be able to even evaluate the arguments for or against abortion, then we certainly don’t have a common enough understanding to evaluate the comparatively more minor issue of poverty—as Dale pointed out quite early on in this thread.
hmmm….
Damian, fair enough on not wanting to go ‘in depth’ on the abortion topic…
…but Ian,
…I don’t think it’s “absolutely the wrong place”. With Singer being an ethicist, the link is pretty strong (though I can see Damian not wanting to ‘go there’ at the moment).
However, Ian, on this:
A couple thoughts: I virtually pat you on the back for taking a non-popular, yet (at least somewhat!) reasoned approach.
You’re right, I think, about our western ‘solutions’ not often being much if any help. For example, getting developing-world people out of the narcotics industry and into coffee growing made the price of coffee go down (too much supply), causing (in the long term) poverty. I think the developed world needs to be patient in its efforts to help, and take the time to discover from the ‘locals’ what is even happening, and then how solutions might come, and solutions that are owned and initiated by the locals themselves. And, just a passing point, Ian, whilst I 107% agree that money isn’t what’s needed most, the notion that their real need is ‘information’ is quite a western one 
But that starts to get pretty detailed so I’ll leave it there…
DBT,
I take it you’r referring to my words in comment #5? “What we really need is an approach that will help us with the far more complex and multi-faceted moral issues that are far more common to us than walking to work and making the painful choice if we will save that drowning toddler or if we’ll ignore it so we can have time to buy a latte.”
Bnonn, be that as it may. Feel free to discuss abortion (or poverty for that matter) with people with whom you do feel you have a common understanding with.
Ian, now that is an interesting take on it! At first I’m inclined to completely disagree with you on the basis that much suffering isn’t due to our actions at all (i.e. disease).
I acknowledge that the West’s interfering has been the cause of an enormous amount of grief and can see where you might be going with the ‘leave them be’ concept. And I agree that money is not a magic bullet but we can surely use our excess money to provide the technologies and knowledge that will alleviate a ton of suffering eh?
I do agree that sharing information is vital. I’ve been a big fan of supporting Wikipedia ever since I learned that they make DVD versions available to people who’d otherwise have very little access to information about the rest of the world.
How about the school of thought that trade is about the best thing we can do to raise the economy and living standards of poorer nations?
yikes – I’d just send them a good old set of Britannica or something. Flip, how many revisions of that DVD would there be each minute!?
As for trade – BINGO. Just (and yes, ‘Fair’) Trade is faaaaaaaaaaaaar more urgently important than mere Aid (as important as Aid is – a.k.a. disasters, etc.). Some DVD’s I recommend FULLY.
-The High Cost of Low Price (on Walmart Corporation)
http://www.walmartmovie.com/
-Black Gold (on coffee industry)
http://www.blackgoldmovie.com/dvd.php
-The Corporation
http://www.thecorporation.com/
@Dale: It’s nice to mostly agree on a topic for a change
Incidentally my choice of the word “information” was a poor one – I should have used “knowledge”.
@Damian: My main point is that their suffering is a relative term. A tribe in the Amazon with no contact with western civilisation doesn’t suffer. They just live lives that we wouldn’t want to. The problem with developing countries is that they are essentially the same people but now have all of the western worlds problems landed on their lap as well. Yes we can “help” make them more westernised but I fundamentally disagree with that strategy.
I think the best we can do is to pass on basic scientific knowledge like germ theory, medicine, engineering and the like which is what I mean by information (or more appropriately, knowledge) and let them decide how to use it (or not use it). In other words help them not to make the mistakes we made and otherwise leave them alone.
Ian, that’s a very interesting perspective that I’d not really thought all that much about before.
Do you think that most people to whom aid is currently going to would rather be left alone? What if they want to be westernised?
It is really hard to say particularly since we’ve been so insistent on “helping” for the last 50 years or so such that many places have come to almost expect it. Having said that it can’t be a satisfying life living on western aid. Sure without it many might die initially, but IMO it is better (for them and for us) for a stable independent society to exist than an unstable dependent one. And I am pretty sure the former would soon develop if they were left alone. As for westernising them, I am not sure the good aspects of western life are as easily transmitted as the bad aspects.
This is a complex issue and not easily solved by any means, but I think the whole issue is dominating by well-tugged heartstrings, not rational thought, and I don’t think that helps anyone.
I think that perhaps you are seeing ‘aid’ as simply pouring money into a country but the reality is that the options being talked about seem to be specific needs like emergency relief, simple surgery that can dramatically change lives, supply of essential medicines, infrastructure development and so on.
I see what you are saying about how people play the emotional card but I think you are playing a card that makes reality out to be ‘us’ in the west with all our stuff and issues and ‘them’, a barely discovered tribe in the Amazon who’d be better of for never having come into contact with us. But this really isn’t the case. The people who are suffering would dearly love to be able to produce a better crop, would really rather they didn’t develop rips in the lining between their vagina and colon causing unbearable stench, would rather not catch AIDs, malaria or sleeping sickness. None of these things are caused by the west but we have the means to help alleviate their suffering. And that’s pretty much the gist of the book.
Do you see where I’m coming from?
quick note on ‘heart strings’/emotions…
I think emotions can (not always of course) be carriers of truth, so for me, it’s a matter of a + b = c [ a) awareness of their suffering and our ability to aleviate it + b) our lack of doing what we know we can/should = c) feeling quite stink and watching more DVD's to put it out of our mind...]
I think it’s s’posed to work something like that
Re @ Dale – April 27, 2009 at 6:22 pm
My use of the word fortunate was not a glib comment. As I have said my family has experience with spina bifida. A nephew of mine lasted 39 years – disabled – and his was a fortunate case. There are many other cases who don’t survive birth or who are allowed to die by medical practitioners shortly after birth because of their condition. (Spina bifida usually requires an urgent operation soon after birth the close the spine and insert a shunt into the brain). (Medical practitioners also make this decision with some people at the end of their lives too). I think these are compassionate decisions.
The fact is – once one is aware that there is a family predisposition to something like this, and there is a possibility of testing the foetus at an early stage, abortion can well be the best decision. this is not to say the step is taken lightly. But life can be hard and sometimes we need to face up to that.
Thanks Ken,
When I said you probably didn’t spend hours thinking about it, I didn’t mean to imply you were being ‘glib’. We could no doubt go back/forth on this, but I’ll just leave it there.
@ Damian: I do see aid as far more than just money and I have no doubt there is a huge justification for the improvement of individual’s (or villages) welfare in doing so.
However I think that the big picture is often left out in discussing the poverty issue. It is often a case of putting a band-aid on a paper cut finger and ignoring the fact the whole arm is hanging by a thread.
In my opinion a developing country needs space to sort itself out and to develop their own forms of government and ultimately the ability to combat poverty internally.
@Dale: While emotions are important, the danger with them is that they can stop us from making the best long term decisions by trapping us in short term reactions.
Ian,
Can you give me an example of an aid program that fits the paper-cut-hanging-arm scenario and do you think that the examples I provided in #33 belong in this category? It’s just that so far you don’t seem to have objected to any of the specific examples I’ve provided and I’m not sure what particular type of aid it is that you are against.
For example western projects to fix cataracts rather than allowing a country to get to the point where its own health system can take care of its own citizens is an example. Yes it helps hundreds of individuals directly but it does basically nothing for the big picture.
Helping an individual to sort out their cataracts is obviously a “good” thing but it seems to me to be the short term band-aid approach rather than a systemic solution to the bigger problem.
I see your point now. It’s not that you don’t want to help people with these problems, it’s that you’d rather invest your money in such a way that “teaches a man to fish”, so to speak. Am I reading you right?
That plus the problems that poorly thought out help can cause such as generating reliance on aid and holding back developing countries.
To extend that analogy:
What to do with a hungry man:
You can give a man a fish. The man eats for a day but nothing changes.
You can teach a man to fish. The man eats for life but nothing changes.
Give the man’s village Independence and knowledge. The man may one day teach you something new.
Okay maybe that didn’t extend as well as I thought it would but you get the idea
The rest of the discussion aside (most of which I don’t have the time to read), I’m not familiar with any of Singer’s views, but this looks like a great book worth reading… I may have to get my hands on it.
You’re welcome to borrow my copy bro.
Cheers mate. I have a book allowance, so I may look at getting it with that.
On that note, I know what you’re really trying to angle towards is meeting me in person – you’re just too shy to say it
Wanna come and have a look around TEAR Fund? In light of this conversation, I’d be happy to run through any questions about development practice and aid – heck, we could get a few people along if you’ve got any friends that would be interested – an impromptu tour and discussion…
Ian, I think there’s a good medium between what you’re talking about and much of the extremely stupid aid practice out there.
Good development is quite far removed from the popular and public aid practices of the 80′s which is what I think most people have in their mind when they think about aid and development – swamping foreign countries with our ideas, solutions and over-abundance of resources…. which leads to countless numbers of problems.
I’m not sure a tour of TEAR Fund is necessary. Besides, I don’t have any friends. But I’m up for a coffee sometime (not this week thought). Email me sometime big boy.
Sweet as
Is that a camera next to your head or a you just happy to see me?
ooh ooh – do I get to come when you guys coffee-it-up?
As a chaperone? Sure.