Reflections on Perpetual Catastrophe

In Ethics of International Development my junior year at Gustavus we read Peter Singer's Famine, Affluence, and Morality on famine in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Singer calls for living as frugally as possible - second-hand clothes, simple food, only basic travel, etc. - in order to fund the basic needs of others whose lives are stricken with poverty, malnutrition, and disease. His point is that a child drowning in a lake requires us to save her/him to the same degree that a child across the globe who is starving requires us to act appropriately. Distance is not an argument against ethical treatment.

One criticism that arose in that class is, given our potential to respond to a greater degree if we are financially successful through investing that money - in stocks, business, education - then we may use it to greater end by postponing our ethically motivated charitable expenditures. The issue with this argument is that in the case of crisis - such as the Bangladeshi famine, but by no means the only one - action is required immediately to save lives. That is, we live in a world of perpetual crisis to which we must respond ethically if we are to be good people. In some ways how we ended up in a world of perpetual crisis is beside the point, only that if we are to make good actions, we ought to save lives.

This is a pretty straightforward argument: If you can save a life with little to no harm to yourself (you may get your shoes ruined by leaping into the lake to save the drowning child just as you may not be able to purchase a new pair by feeding one half a world away) then you damn well ought to. Failure to do so means that you are not concerned with good actions and that your absence to deprive yourself of something essentially petty (a new pair of shoes) means you are performing bad actions through inaction. This distinctions Singer from earlier consequentialists (ethicists concerned with outcomes of actions) by incorporating inaction as something we are just as liable for as action.

Now more than ever we seem to be witnessing a world of perpetual crisis. Whether it is in the American heartland where conservatives are putting workers' rights in time capsules and sealing them away for distant generations, or the partial meltdowns (don't let the news tell you otherwise, what is going on is some scale of nuclear meltdown that will leave the facilities irreparable and nonfunctional) in Japan in the midst of a national humanitarian catastrophe, or the madness on more than one front in Libya and elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East, humanity is showing just how good it is in causing problems. I concede that these are different types and different scales of crises, with different sources and locations and solutions (where solutions exist, at least), but that is why I lump them so. By recognizing the relationships between these crises, we can appreciate the depth and breadth of the problems in which we find ourselves.

What to do with that knowledge? In the first place, we can recognize whatever level of fiscal well-being we enjoy, most of us are able to alleviate some of the suffering in the world by small or large monetary sacrifices. If we understand the ethical premises of Singer, then these are not, though, sacrifices so much as recognizing the basic dignity of persons with whom we share this planet and our own humanity. Deeper appreciation for these crises suggest a larger scope for capacity-building, organizing, and political maneuvering to resolve the conditions that make these crises so, well, perpetual. One way I have attempted to do this, which connects with the first statement, is through lending through Kiva microloans. Microfinance is the providing of small loans to entrepreneurs in the Global South (including the South of the North) to bring them and their communities out of poverty. In addition, these loans can be refunded into a PayPal account or, more easily, reinvested in further homegrown businesses.

Such financing, I hope, builds strong households, strong citizens, and strong communities that can then engage in larger political participation and calls for justice in their municipal, regional, and national governments. In a very different way, unrelated to Kiva, this has been the call in the protests and revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. These challenges of and changes to government arise from the often latent integrity of oppressed communities rising up, bound in their simultaneous calls for justice, health, participation, and more. How one can participate in such movements from outside is difficult, except in showing solidarity and pressing our own governments to express the same. Secretary Hillary Clinton was recently called out by youth in Egypt for America failing to do just this, while Egyptian protesters voiced their solidarity with Midwest protesters attempting to preserve union and workers' rights. In a way, I would hope this is enough, but I know that it is not.

What lies beneath empowered citizens and communities is the way in which that new potency can precipitate social and policy change. Some of this is through transparency and education. I am deeply appreciative for Julian Assange's public statement of Wikileaks that, "We are not pacifists. We are transparency activists." Why are citizens barred from knowing the activities of their own governments? If governments are "of the people" - a tenant of Western Constitutionalism - then how can we be left in the dark about their activities? I do not consider this lightly, but wish to comment ask, how are we to determine, establish, and maintain a fair and just government if we are unaware of its acts?

It is of little use to ask these questions when people live in poverty and hunger. Colonialism; globalization; ethnic, sexual, and religious marginalization; and, on occasion, natural disasters are some sources for inequality and oppression. Our planet, politics, and places are rife with these problems. To resolve them, I cannot see a better out than responding to the immediate crises of emergency need - water, food, shelter, medicine, sanitation, environmental protection - with the other hand supporting the community-based, grassroots political and economic work needed to built community security. Such security takes many forms - water, energy, food, economic - and helping any, if it is effective, helps all. These are not different crises, they share roots deep beneath us. As we disentangle them and uproot these crises, we must start our cultivars of peace, justice, participation, respect, education, and security to replace it. These roots of crisis are deep, the plant hearty; if we wait too long, it will only take hold again. Start digging and start growing, every moment is precious.