Living Low and Crime High
For thanksgiving this year, I spent the entire first half of the holiday (along with my entire family and many other members of my church) delivering hot turkey meals to homeless people in downtown Philadelphia (wherever we could find them...in subways, under overpasses, begging on the sidewalk, train tunnels, etc). Most of these people have lived pretty long lives, and are just on hard times, and could greatly appreciate a warm meal (especially on the cold semi-rainy day that thanksgiving turned out to be). They may have lead lives of crime, or drugs, or any other number of things. They are in many cases no way innocent. But they were in need. However, they are in no way as needy as the innocent children in wherever UNICEF needs to send those hydration salts. They are not among the most needy individuals on the planet. But as a combined effort, our parishioners informed us, we fed over 1000 homeless.
Am I right in thinking that one of the consequences of Unger’s arguments, is that what my church and my family did was morally atrocious? We could have better spent the money for all that food. Merely granting a night of warm bellies for some overaged degenerate bums is not even close to what we could have accomplished through UNICEF saving hundreds of innocent lives. (Maybe I’m falsely attributing a strict utilitarian view to Unger, but the way it seemed in class today with arguments over donating money to cancer patients instead of Unicef, it seemed the Ungerian argument was of that sort of bend...even so, I still have an objection to the stealing thing I’m going to address in the next paragraph).
If Unger is right, and it is good for us to steal from others to help those in greater need, we should have TAKEN meals from those bums that had them (they would not be too terribly hurt by it, for they’ve lived fairly long lives as it is, one meal won’t make or break them, and they are not doing anything to morally pull their weight in the world anyway) and we should have used any money we could get from those meals to serve the innocent young dying of starvation. How far does this stealing thing go? If there is no serious damage done to taking small sums from mass amounts of homeless people (as opposed to one large sum from a single rich person)...according to Unger, It’s morally good to do that too. It’s okay to take the poor lady’s last three pennies...she can go without a meal for another week. We’ve got hydration salts to buy for kids across the world!
In Unger’s conclusion to chapter three, he says “When needed to lessen the serious suffering of innocent enough people, it’s morally GOOD to engage in what’s typically objectionable conduct, like lying, promise-breaking, cheating, stealing, and so on.” Why not add to the list stomping on the homeless. Or stealing from lesser charities where the money wouldn’t do as much severe good, (like say, the special Olympics). How about killing (in a pleasant painless way) your elderly cancer-ridden neighbor and selling all her things on the black market, where it can make substantially more money that can be put toward UNICEF than if you sold it back to the store...you would be putting her out of her misery anyway. PLUS you stop two serious cases of suffering with one stone. She will no longer have a long and painful death. Her death was needed to save as many innocent children as possible. Your intuitions that it is bad to kill your elderly neighbor are misguided. The liberationist view clearly shows that it is just as good to kill her as it is to steal the yacht or the money from the rich guy. Killing in this sense is always morally good behavior, because it lessens serious suffering of the innocent(on two counts!).
Maybe killing is too harmful for Unger to let it be passed by his need for relief of suffering. But is it really THAT harmful in the case of the cancer ridden elderly? I'm still concerned about my new found moral goodness in stealing from the poor. They couldn't suffer too badly, or even nearly as much as the kids who are dying of easily curable diseases. Perhaps even the small amount of suffering these people would undergo would be more than Unger meant would be allowable. However, if we are morally required to give until it HURTS, I see no reason why poor should not be required to do so as well. And since it doesn't cause them severe suffering (it doesn't HURT in a significant sense), they should shovel over the dough.
I'm pretty sure Unger isn't unable to come back from any of this. In fact, i'm more sure he'll have plenty to say in reply. But I had to write about SOMETHING and this (probably unfair attack) is the only thing I could impassion myself to write about.
Am I right in thinking that one of the consequences of Unger’s arguments, is that what my church and my family did was morally atrocious? We could have better spent the money for all that food. Merely granting a night of warm bellies for some overaged degenerate bums is not even close to what we could have accomplished through UNICEF saving hundreds of innocent lives. (Maybe I’m falsely attributing a strict utilitarian view to Unger, but the way it seemed in class today with arguments over donating money to cancer patients instead of Unicef, it seemed the Ungerian argument was of that sort of bend...even so, I still have an objection to the stealing thing I’m going to address in the next paragraph).
If Unger is right, and it is good for us to steal from others to help those in greater need, we should have TAKEN meals from those bums that had them (they would not be too terribly hurt by it, for they’ve lived fairly long lives as it is, one meal won’t make or break them, and they are not doing anything to morally pull their weight in the world anyway) and we should have used any money we could get from those meals to serve the innocent young dying of starvation. How far does this stealing thing go? If there is no serious damage done to taking small sums from mass amounts of homeless people (as opposed to one large sum from a single rich person)...according to Unger, It’s morally good to do that too. It’s okay to take the poor lady’s last three pennies...she can go without a meal for another week. We’ve got hydration salts to buy for kids across the world!
In Unger’s conclusion to chapter three, he says “When needed to lessen the serious suffering of innocent enough people, it’s morally GOOD to engage in what’s typically objectionable conduct, like lying, promise-breaking, cheating, stealing, and so on.” Why not add to the list stomping on the homeless. Or stealing from lesser charities where the money wouldn’t do as much severe good, (like say, the special Olympics). How about killing (in a pleasant painless way) your elderly cancer-ridden neighbor and selling all her things on the black market, where it can make substantially more money that can be put toward UNICEF than if you sold it back to the store...you would be putting her out of her misery anyway. PLUS you stop two serious cases of suffering with one stone. She will no longer have a long and painful death. Her death was needed to save as many innocent children as possible. Your intuitions that it is bad to kill your elderly neighbor are misguided. The liberationist view clearly shows that it is just as good to kill her as it is to steal the yacht or the money from the rich guy. Killing in this sense is always morally good behavior, because it lessens serious suffering of the innocent(on two counts!).
Maybe killing is too harmful for Unger to let it be passed by his need for relief of suffering. But is it really THAT harmful in the case of the cancer ridden elderly? I'm still concerned about my new found moral goodness in stealing from the poor. They couldn't suffer too badly, or even nearly as much as the kids who are dying of easily curable diseases. Perhaps even the small amount of suffering these people would undergo would be more than Unger meant would be allowable. However, if we are morally required to give until it HURTS, I see no reason why poor should not be required to do so as well. And since it doesn't cause them severe suffering (it doesn't HURT in a significant sense), they should shovel over the dough.
I'm pretty sure Unger isn't unable to come back from any of this. In fact, i'm more sure he'll have plenty to say in reply. But I had to write about SOMETHING and this (probably unfair attack) is the only thing I could impassion myself to write about.
posted by Tommy G! at
8:11 PM
2 Comments:
Between Tommy and Zac's posts I got to thinking about how chaotic a society that operated this way would become. If it became morally good for acocuntants to steal from their rich clients, a sense of trust would be lost between the client and the accountant. Furthermore, this could occur with all sorts of occupations and relationships. What if it is instead your parents that are incredibly rich? Do you steal money from them? Unger feels that if enough good is at hand it is ok to break promises and steal, but what if there's always enough good? In this case it is always ok to break promises and steal. What kind of society would that produce? As long as there are staving children in the world, there will always be a good great enough to break common societal and moral rules. If everyone is required to steal and break promises for this good, it would be detrimental to society. A society cannot function with at least some degree of trust because no one is self-suffient. There are reasons that there are rules against stealing, and if we were to steal every time there was a greater good society would not be able to function.
I agree with Tommy that Unger would have much to say. To play his role for a minute, I think he would argue that in the case of the poor it would be wrong to steal from them. If Unger really does agree with Singer he would say that one should give until the point that they only have enough to get along decently. One is allowed enough to survive relatively comfortably and to be able to live in the professional world in order to make more money that he or she can donate. It is probably the case that Unger feels this is the case of stealing too. One is not permitted to steal from someone who is not up to a certain point of wealth. However, I'm still not certain how he can recover from the ideas of the elderly having lived full lives and the idea that cancer charities are wrong. It seems that Unger needs something more up his sleeve to handle these thoughts unless he's willing to swallow these seemingly wrong entailments of his view.
By
Christa, at 4:45 PM
This is the same argument that was brought against consequentialism at the beginning of this class. Unger is recommending that the accountant steal the money because it will maximize consequences. You guys are just pointing out that Unger's suggested course of action won't, in the end, lead to the most well-being. If you guys are right, then Unger would gladly concede that the accountant can't steal.
Of course, this assumes that Unger is a consequentialist. If he's not, then I don't know what to do for him.
By
Joshua Frear, at 11:52 PM
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