I should precede this post with a disclaimer: I am an American woman, I am a social scientist (in training), and I want to help people in other parts of the world.
Lately, staking out this position has meant submitting oneself to a firing squad of proud hipster cynics. Because my country -- its political leaders, its private sector, even its celebrities -- has done a lot of damage in the world, my position is seen as naive, selfish, or both. I should clarify: I am not seeking your sympathy. It doesn't suck to be me. I own the shame of coming from a country that has killed, tortured, and destroyed livelihoods. That sucks, but it sucks immeasurably more for the victims of these tragedies. I can deal with the hipsters, don't you worry.
I should also say that I don't think I am any better than you, or anyone, for that matter. Maybe you are someone who doesn't prioritize helping people in other parts of the world -- you prefer to focus on your family or your local community, where you feel you are most needed or can have the most impact. That's cool. I am glad we both exist.
The way many in my generation deal with the shame of bearing witness to the horrible things going on in the world is by self-atomizing into a landscape of honed and sharpened blades of snarky and incisive critique. (Or at least, that's what we like to think we are doing. "Yeah! I'm incisive!") Unfortunately, this only adds up to a universal feeling of despair. We tell the stories of those with naively good intentions, or worse, with naive and self-serving intentions, who say that they are going to "save the world" and end up failing or making it worse. "Look at the cultural imperialist," we say. "Look at the neoconservative", "look at the liberal interventionist," "look at the corrupt investor." Look at the Westerner who pokes and prods people in the developing world so that he or she can sleep at night feeling like a humanitarian who has served the greater good. Or so that he or she can sleep at night knowing they'll be rich the next day. "How does that person sleep at night?" [Pats self on back for pointing out other's hypocrisy; lies in bed staring at the ceiling feeling mysteriously unfulfilled.] How do any of us sleep at night?
There is an important wave of thought that claims that good intentions are not enough, and sometimes well-meaning interventions by "the West" into the "developing world" backfire in ways that could have been predicted had we been a little more thoughtful. This is often true. It is also critical to note that many people in positions of power are more purely motivated by personal gain than improving outcomes for others. To me, there is a categorical difference between those who can sleep at night because they believe they did something good for others (however accurate that belief may or may not be) and those who can sleep at night because they believe they personally profited. I am sure there is a rich ethical debate to be had here, but that's my simplistic opinion for now.
In any case, to avoid becoming either of these stereotypes -- the naive and reckless humanitarian or the greedy and exploitative profiteer -- should we simply spend our lives watching human-made crises unfold and drag on? We Westerners shouldn't presume to know what's best for "other" people and "other" cultures. Sure. But how about we humans think about what's best for our fellow humans? It seems we can agree on some basics: like, man-made famine is bad. Destruction of livelihoods for those who already possess the least is bad. Kidnapping, raping, and torturing are bad. The pill that I refuse to swallow is that we, as humans, cannot do anything about these human-inflicted tragedies. The entrepreneurial maxim that it is better to try and fail than to never try may not always apply. Sometimes, trying and failing makes things worse. But what about when there is a positive probability that you might try to make things better and succeed? It seems unrealistic to insist that such situations do not exist. Alternatively, we may be doomed to keep making the same mistakes, but we all share the blame for that -- including those of us who have chosen to sit back and disengage.
P.S. Thanks to my friend Suby for passing along this piece on the destructive role of irony in art, but also in broader society. Read it. Basically, David Foster Wallace said all of the above, but better.
P.P.S. This is a blog, which means I didn't think much, I just wrote it. Please tell me I'm wrong.
3 comments:
I think you might find a kindred spirit in Peter Singer's book, The Live You Can Save. Singer presents a disarmingly simple argument: If you were walking along one day and saw a little kid drowning in a lake, and if you could save the person at no risk to yourself, you would be morally obligated to do it. If you were wearing a nice pair of shoes that would get ruined in the effort, it wouldn't matter, since shoes are way less important than a person's life.
The problem is that if you believe that, it's hard to escape the implication that people in wealthy nations should--as a matter of moral obligation--be giving away all their money (or the vast majority of it) to people in poor nations. Singer thinks that everybody in the US should be giving away their money to the point where they are living on just $20k per year or something like that. (Singer puts his money where his mouth is. He has a named chair at Princeton with a salary presumably far in excess of $20k, but he gives almost all of it away.)
There's a real admirable purity to that, and it inspires me to be a more generous person. That said, I think it is worth injecting other ideas into the discussion. Briefly:
- People in 3rd world countries don't need money. Money is just green paper. They need food, medicine, clean water, and so on. Dropping cash on their heads solves problems only to the extent the money attracts people to the relevant areas to build water treatment plants, produce medicine, and so on. Thus, to work, Singer's argument relies on the very profit motive that it seems to cast as disreputable.
- As with Rawls' philosophy, what seems pure in one light can seem authoritarian in another. If justice means that we all work to the advantage of the least well off, doesn't that mean we don't get to have poets, musicians, writers, television producers, and many other things that make life great? These guys (Rawls and Singer) are really serious about their focus on material want. A standard rejoinder from some philosophical circles is, "Excuse me, but I have hopes and dreams of my own, and part of respect for me as an individual is that I have some liberty to pursue those. To suggest that I need to toil away to solve the world's problems until they're all solved is slavery by another name."
- Finally, I'll say how I process my own existential and moral angst. An astonishing insight from Adam Smith is that when a person pursues his or her self interest by doing whatever he or she is good at, it often (not always; that's a straw man) has fantastic benefits for other people. At the same time, the best of intentions often have perverse effects (my unintended consequences buzzer, which I retired a few years ago, though not for lack of opportunities to use it). This is why it would have been stupid for Steve Jobs to go and build huts in India. He was way better at inventing iPhones, which made the world a better place and augmented the ability of other people to build huts. That's just division of labor.
So for my part, I think there is value in understanding political psychology and that I'm pretty well suited to chip away at it. I work very hard to get it done. And I try not to be excessive in my pleasures. (Living on a grad student stipend for the last few years, I haven't had many opportunities.) And I try to be generous--with time, with money, with understanding. But beyond that, I try not to feel guilty about enjoying life, because I think that's ok too :)
Ooops. The Life You Can Save, not The Live You Can Save
Thanks, Tim. I have not read the Singer book, but I should check it out.
A number of studies have been done on the effectiveness of direct (conditional or unconditional) cash transfers to poor families in the developing world. Not knowing the literature too well, my impression is that these types of transfers can be very effective at fighting poverty, improving education and health outcomes, etc. So, your argument about the "profit motive" required for cash transfer to be effective seems to assume a longer time horizon -- i.e. that eventually, when enough cash is transferred from the developed to developing world, the same inequalities will emerge within developing countries that we now see between countries. Perhaps. But I suppose that's a philosophical question -- do I wish to make a difference for people within my lifetime, or must I consider the much longer-run consequences of poor countries getting richer and the perverse effects that might have?
I agree with your second point. Again, I haven't read Singer but it sounds like the argument is taken a bit too far for freedom-lovers such as yourself. Enforced redistribution has been tried in other contexts and failed miserably. My personal beef is with people who deride those who choose to allocate their resources (time, $$, etc) toward addressing problems in other, less fortunate parts of the world. The criticism is often framed as one of the two characterizations I mentioned in my post: either the good intentions will backfire, or the intentions are not so good after all. I think these are often overly cynical conclusions.
Re: Apple and huts and India, that's one way to look at it. I do believe Apple has done great things, but I also believe they've been linked to some pretty crappy things (see, e.g., conditions for factory workers in China). I guess attention to when Adam Smith's observation doesn't hold is important. Even if the economic costs don't outweigh the benefits of capitalist development, the human costs may, depending on our values.
And yes, enjoy life! I don't mean to make anyone feel guilty about that. :)
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