Thursday Thoughts - March 24, 2022: Revisiting Peter Singer
The Father of Effective Altruism and the Internet Age
Who Is Peter Singer?
Peter Singer is arguably one of the brightest minds when it comes to ethics and philosophy. In 1972, Singer wrote a widely influential essay entitled “Famine, Influence and Impartiality”. The essay was in response to the bloody Bangladesh Liberation War that killed anywhere from 300,000 to 3 million people. The conflict, despite it’s large humanitarian impact, certainly didn’t readily register in the collective consciousness.
Singer was bothered by not only the sheer the loss of life, but the absolute depravation of basic resources that couldn’t get to refugees and other innocent victims of the conflict. He couldn’t understand how problems that have been generally solved by humanity, such as starvation, could still occur despite war and conflict. In a world of abundance, there will still those that went without.
It was at that moment when Singer wrote these compelling arguments:
It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor's child ten yards away from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away.
The moral point of view requires us to look beyond the interests of our own society. Previously,
From the moral point of view, the prevention of the starvation of millions of people outside our society must be considered at least as pressing as the upholding of property norms within our society.
This could be considered the beginning of the concept of “Effective Altruism”, the idea is that given what we know about the world through evidence and reason, we should pour our resources in those activities that we know will do the most good.
On the face, this seems like a worthy and commendable stance. We should all take some collective responsibility and prioritize those efforts that we can derive the most benefit from.
But, when we apply this concept of “Effective Altruism” to the current world of nonprofit organizations and philanthropic efforts, where does it leave us?
I can’t help but think right now with the conflict in Ukraine, there are many Ukrainians that are dealing with the absolute physical horrors of war - the pictures are devastating and breathtaking. Yet, there are average Russian citizens that are effectively being cut off from resources that may cause another humanitarian crisis, albeit less bloody.
Right now, in the world of social media, there are no shortage of voices encouraging philanthropic activities to take certain forms; giving to certain causes since it’s often coined as the “least we can do”. Such appeals are strong and tap into a collective sense of making a real and substantive change in our community and in our world. But, If I have learned anything in life, the problems in this life and our world are extremely complex and every solution is going to come up with it’s fair share of unintended consequences that could easily cause pain for others.
In this hyper-connected and instant world what is the proper role of philanthropy? Is philanthropy there to reduce harm? But if we give to the Russian family that can’t feed themselves over the Ukrainian refugee with a warm meal in Poland have we made the right choice? Who gets to arbitrate the decision between right and wrong on how we are doing the most good? These are hard thoughts to think.
And it goes back to one of the flaws in Singer’s argument. Singer wants us to use reason and evidence to help guide our decisions. And thirty years ago, maybe that made sense.
But, as I see social media and the deluge of information come up at our collective senses each and every day, I am witnessing the recession of reason and evidence. There are simply too many facts for us to reckon with, sometimes these facts are contradictory. It sounds incredible to say, but there is almost too much for us to know. And with all these facts, all this reason, how can we be expected to make reasonable and evidence based arguments to take an action over another?
We can’t.
More and more we are reverting back to stories to guide us and our actions; and those in philanthropy and fundraising have always known this. Facts don’t move a donor to give, stories do.
Tell me a story of a person who has improved their life through the actions of a nonprofit and how I can be a part of that story and you have found a donor. Tell me facts of outputs and outcomes and you have found fodder for an annual report.
Stay well,
Bill
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