Where to Put My Time and Effort? On Effective Altruism
Since graduating, and in these times we live in when there is so much unacceptable injustice, force, and coercion wherever we look, I’ve been wondering where is best to put my effort into helping out. I know that I can’t be everywhere, and that if I tried, I would be spread thin and it would take a large toll on me, and I wouldn’t be able to effectively help anyone. But where should I choose to put my time and effort?
I think it is morally acceptable for people to care more for those closer to them, but only if we also morally require that people also extend such aid to those structurally deprived and disadvantaged.
Edit: Since writing, I’ve realized this doesn’t really help me decide where to help out much at all. The problem in the first paragraph still exists, but I’ve just chosen what felt most important to me, and then went with it. So long as you choose something and stick with it, you should be good. The rest of this post can be seen as a fun little philosophical argument, but don’t read that much into it, imo.
A Bit About Effective Altruists
Effective altruists might say that we should put our time and effort into wherever it can most efficiently do the most good or reduce suffering. Defining what is ‘good’ or ‘suffering’ can be a problem for utilitarians, but right now, there’s enough poverty and needless death that it seems like effective altruists generally agree that we don’t really have to worry about those edge-case problems yet.
Even within this model of effective altruism, some people might look at structural violence and think that the gains that would come from tearing down and replacing those structures makes addressing structural violence the place we ought to aim our efforts. And I tend to agree, and I think effective altruists at least see the benefits of fighting structural poverty (although they don’t really extend it into a critique of capitalism).
I’m not so convinced that effective altruism is the only or most practical way of solving our problems.
Let’s look at the problems in our world and imagine if everyone became an effective altruist overnight. Let’s also imagine that somehow people come to a general consensus about what are our most pressing issues. Perhaps then we could work to solve our problems in order from the most efficiently solvable to the most labor intensive. That would work!
But it’s not the only thing that could work. To see why, we need to look at one of Peter Singer’s most famous arguments. He points out that people would leap in to save a drowning child even if it meant ruining expensive clothing. But if we take a universalizing moral stance, Singer says, we should not think there is a difference between the money we lost on our clothes and the money we might spend to save the life of a child in the Global South. There’s no moral difference in the situation of the drowning child and a situation of spending less on clothing & donating the rest to save a life 10,000 miles away. With the internet, wire-transfers, and global charities, it’s possible to effectively take action to help people on the other side of the world, and we need to stop ignoring that problems exist far away from us and help others.
It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor's child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away.[1]
A Bias to Help Those Closer to Us Socially Can Be Morally Acceptable
What I want to focus on is the claim that, when we speak about morality, the distance or emotional closeness you have with a person you can help generally should not play a part in your decision-making of whether or not to help them. As I described a few paragraphs ago, if everyone were to become an effective altruist, this could work. But if we think that not everyone, or not enough governments, can be made to act like effective altruists, then we come to a tougher problem (and, I think, a more realistic appreciation of our situation).
It seems that Singer’s argument about the drowning kid doesn’t necessarily lead us to accept the idea that emotional closeness is not morally relevant. Instead, he introduces a principle of universality as a premise towards the conclusion that people shouldn’t care about the social distance to those in need, towards the conclusion that those who comfortably are able to ought to spend less and donate more.
Now, instead imagine a world where people actively care for those people in close emotional vicinity to them. Tabling the problems of systemic inequality for a moment—yes, I know it’s a big thing to table—if everyone were to do this, then people would be able to act as a kind of insurance and security for one another in times of unluckiness or times of natural downturn. Over time, we might say that we could address all problems like this. My point here is that such a way of acting seems to be a plausible rule-utilitarian position (a set of rules universalized to treat everyone the same, such that it tends to result in benefits for everyone).
Systemic Inequalities Mean That Such a Rule Cannot Work on Its Own
But systemic and global inequalities exist. They affect which communities, or groups of (sometimes) emotionally/socially related people are able to take care of those socially close to them in times of downturn. In cases like these, it seems that privileged people need to reach outside of their social bubble and provide aid for those structurally unequipped to meet their group’s interests.
Transphobia, racism, sexism, nationalism, poverty all act as hurdles that make it unfairly more difficult for certain people/groups to live securely or pursue their interests. Against these oppressions, we often see the oppressed/disadvantaged groups form a community in solidarity. Even if people facing the same oppressions don’t like each other, they recognize that, “We’re in this together”; solidarity grows out of a knowledge of shared fate and the knowledge that the oppressions they face are unfair, unjustified, and evil. Mutual aid, even among oppressed groups, is still helpful and also acts to bring people closer together emotionally. Nonetheless, it seems immoral that some emotionally close groups are unable to meet their basic interests of living a secure life by virtue of their position in a social structure. In these cases, again, we would need to see aid coming from privileged people who are not emotionally close.
If people did not have a universal moral commitment to provide aid to groups that aren’t able to help their members capacity to live securely, and ONLY had the commitment to help those socially close to themselves, then this is a surefire path towards the oppression of minorities. In-groups and out-groups would be culturally passed down generations and solidify into the creation of deep material and social inequality. A rule to help only those socially close to us is inadequate by itself. Not only does it avoid the topic of systemic inequalities, such a mindset helps produce them.
Even then, basic charitable aid from privileged groups seems practically inadequate. The social structures have to be changed so that people do not have to be dependent on the more privileged and therefore subject to privileged persons’ whims and preferences. A balance has to be struck between giving immediate aid and the more time-consuming task of empowering people.
With such a model of people helping those closer to them rather than far, and adding the moral requirement to aid those groups/people who are unable to effectively care for themselves, we could reach a stable kind of society that is able to address our problems in the world. That is, it seems to be a fine rule-utilitarian (potentially deontological) position aimed at increasing peoples’ capacities to live securely and pursue their interests. Effective altruists would say that we shouldn’t give such primary treatment to those emotionally closer to us. Their solution is that people should stop being biased in such a way. The solution described here is that people should be less biased in that way, particularly in cases of structural injustices which prevent emotionally close webs of people from taking care of one another or meeting their interests adequately.
Morality as Universally Applicable
While Singer’s argument bases itself on a specific universalizing premise, what I have described is also universalizable, but in a different way. Every person capable of acting morally seems to be able to act in the way I describe. The difference is that its universalizing doesn’t ignore the relationship between the actor and the people interacted with in the moral actions. Singer’s argument seems to want to disregard that relationship as mostly morally irrelevant, but I see no reason why ‘universalizability’ should imply that. However, there might be another moral intuition that supports that disregard; I’ll leave that open.
People tend to be proportionally closer and more helpful to those who share more of their DNA, or whom they consider to be more similar to them. These norms of emotional closeness around social constructions might emerge as a byproduct of evolution, but seem to disalign from moral intuitions in the cases of certain social constructions like gender, race, and ownership. A shift to allow people to care more for those closer to them, but demand an extension of aid to those structurally deprived and disadvantaged seems closer in sight—more practical—than a dominant ideology of ‘effective use of money to prevent deaths’ that current effective altruists seem to advocate.
I think my critique here is similar to the critique that effective altruists are more interested in mosquito nets than structural causes of suffering, in that effective altruists might agree with the position if they slightly shifted their definition of ‘good’ or, in my case, ‘effective’. I also have certain qualms about how effective altruists don’t really consider ‘responsibility’ to be much of a naturally moral concept, and my criticism might also be related to that.
Final Thoughts
I’m wary to say that my solution, underlined above, is ‘‘‘better’’’ than that of effective altruists because it seems more ‘practical’ or ‘achievable’ because it allows for some social-group bias. I have a complicated relationship with the appeal to ‘practicality’, especially how it is often invoked by people who I think are afraid of large societal change. Appeals to practicality are often used as a way to leave unaddressed the more important structural problems. But I don’t think that it’s such a loss if we never reach a world in which everyone is an effective altruist, so I don’t think I’m getting in the way of a greater goal through my appeal to practicality in this blog post.
As for me, I’m presently planning on moving to Texas, primarily to volunteer with RACIES. I think most of my life I will be trying to better this place presently called the United States of America.
Citation
[1] Singer, Peter (Spring 1972). "Famine, Affluence, and Morality". Philosophy and Public Affairs. 1 (3): 231. JSTOR 2265052.
