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DoingWrongByNotDoing 14 - 17 Apr 2010 - Main.CeciliaWang
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| | I keep thinking back to something Eben brought up in class last week (Tuesday)- namely, the idea that if you see a problem, or something that you don’t think is OK, you should be doing something about it. I think Eben’s comments resonated with me because they struck a chord with a sort of guilty feeling I’ve often had. The guilt doesn’t come from actively doing anything wrong, but from not actively doing anything that seems particularly right. I’ve often felt uncomfortable with the idea that my life could be considered a moral life when I don’t really think I do anything to correct problems that I see around me. I think the issue boils down to a question of inaction as a morally culpable offense. I do think there is a moral imperative to act when we see something that we think is wrong. I think this idea leads to guilt because I don’t think that I do enough to act, and it’s something that I hope to change if I can figure out how. It made me start thinking about ideas that I’ve struggled with before- for instance, what difference is there between letting someone die before your eyes and not giving them (for example’s sake) the five dollars in your pocket that could save them by buying them food, and not sending food or support somewhere when you can spare it and where it could have a similar lifesaving impact? When does not doing something become as wrong as doing something positively wrong? It’s hard for me to figure out the difference- maybe this is because there isn’t a meaningful one.
I’m wondering what other people think about this. If a person sees something wrong in the world and doesn’t do anything about it, is he or she more culpable than someone who simply doesn’t see the wrong, by choice or by chance? It sort of reminds me also of the philosophical question- is a person brave who isn’t scared in the face of danger, or is a person truly brave who is scared and proceeds anyway? I can’t really articulate how these are connected, but I think it has something to do with making active choices and being aware of situations and choosing to overcome them (as opposed to not facing those choices whatsoever). | | | As an aside, this particular issue may very well become "out of sight, out of mind" as Bloomberg appears to be constructively forcing many inhabitants of homeless shelters out of the city. Although I tend to think it's "out of sight" because many of us (me included) tune out the problem.
-- EricaSelig - 14 Apr 2010 | |
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> | To your credit, though, I don't think even the thought you had of offering a homeless person a bed has crossed the minds of all that many people, at all. It is also very easy to become desensitized to homeless people in New York, and perhaps someone more nuanced than I can broach the topic from a race perspective. It's not even a question of whether we would give more money to the young white female asking for money to go home in Bryant Park than the homeless black man asking outside of Appletree Market; it's whether certain types of people even register. Honestly, I was stricken by the sight of a girl sitting cross-legged in front of NYPL's Bryant Park Branch in the cold, with a sign asking for money so that she can go home, and the arguments against giving money to people who ask ("improper uses," fraud, availability of homeless shelters, etc) did not even across my mind. Though, later, the thought that she might have been a college student conducting a social experiment did.
Anyway, I was working on an essay about this and then I remembered I got the whole idea from this discussion. In high school Ayn Rand was very popular and sometimes I still catch myself remembering her rhetoric, such thoughts as: at what point of doing good does the benefit to someone trump the burden to me? The answer to that question is always be very selfish because it would be centered on some concept or another of deriving happiness from having done a good work surpassing that of the pleasure of leisure. I realize now that such a answer is very wrong, because it is centered around an amorphous, inconstant thing that is the pleasure of the "good-doer." Such an compulsion cannot last through the toil of working to the best of one's abilities. At least, I don't think it can. I think far more reliable is Francisco's simple declaration that it is wrong to live a life without helping others. A duty is far more immediate and compelling, and the best answer and conclusion to thoughts about why we should strive to do good work. |
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