[Ssf] Some thoughts by Adam Smith

[Dan]

Excellent quote!  Cheers Amp.

That difference between active and passive too - its importance for 
moral action in a globalised world is vital.  Every time we buy 
something, we're actively affecting trade - most likely in another part 
of the world; quite likely in a workplace where someone is being 
exploited.  But we can believe that action to be passive; that a 
purchase has no moral impact.

Here's another related quote from an excellent book called 'Illusions of 
Innocence' by Peter Unger:

"Each year millions of children die from easy to beat disease, from 
malnutrition, and from bad drinking water.  Among these children, about 
3 million die from dehydrating diarrhea.  As UNICEF has made clear to 
miilions of us at one time or another, with a packert of oral 
rehydration salts that costs about 15 cents, a child can be save from 
dying soon.

"By sending cheques earmarked for Oral Rehydration Therapy, or ORT, to 
UNICEF, we can help save many of these children.  Here's the full 
mailing address...

[]

... He then goes on about the realistic cost of helping these children, 
and comes to a figure of $3 for 'getting one more third world youngster 
to escape death and live a reasonably long life.'

Which leads to -

"If you'd contributed $100 to one of UNICEF's most efficient lifesaving 
programs a couple of months ago [I'm sure plenty of us spent more on 
drugs, booze and food this Xmas] this month there'd be over thirty fewer 
children who, instead of painfully dying soon, would live reasonably 
long lives.  Nothing here's special to the months just mentioned; 
similar thoughts hold for most of what's been your adult life.  And, 
more important, unless we change our behaviour, similar thoughts will 
hold for our future."

Unger then moves on to the same kind of sentiment that Adam Smith 
espoused - the common belief that "while it's good for us to provide 
vital aid, it's *not in the least bit wrong to do nothing* to help save 
distant people from painfully dying soon."

What he argues, though, is that actually - once we know the facts - 
"that each of us ought to contribute a lot to lessen early deaths; 
indeed, it's *seriously wrong not to do that.*"

I could go on, but you get the point (it's a really good chapter, and 
well worth reading.)

In the year of 'make poverty history', I think there's a really vital 
chance to hammer home to people a lot of truths about poverty and 
hardship - not just the one above, that it's our active moral duty to 
help those in hardship, but *much more importantly* its vital to 
consider the global system we live in.  That means what we buy; the kind 
of policies that 'our leaders' impose on other countries as solutions to 
their poverty (which will *always* be policies that rule out any kind of 
collectivism, co-operation or socialism), and that fact that we're 
living - and benefiting from - a system of global apartheid.  We take 
more money from the
Third World by far than they can earn by trading.  I'll find the figures 
for you.  Not only do we take their wealth - as the rich and powerful 
always have done - we get them to make our consumer goods in what 
amounts to 'outsourced slavery', and then tell them it's for their own 
good, and their only route out of poverty.  The question isn't why do 
they hate us, but why don't they hate us more?

The issues are f*cking complex:  I remember reading a post recently 
where someone was saying no-one should rent social space for radical 
activity, because then they were paying landlords, and thereby taking 
part in the all-pervasive, matrix-like capitalist system.

But he - and me - use computers made using Coltan from the Congo, where 
a million people - a million! - were recently displaced in further 
conflict over resource control (but the West still buys the end 
product...), computers assembled mostly in EPZs in East Asia, powered by 
oil taken from 'sites of special strategic interest' to the West...

I think my point is: get angry.  Then don't go and break things, coz it 
won't help.  Get even.  (But getting angry first helps with motivation...!)

Rant over

Dan
----
Amparo wrote:

>>     Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its
>> myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an
>> earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe,
>> who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would
>> be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful
>> calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very
>> strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he
>> would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of
>> human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could
>> thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was
>> a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the
>> effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of
>> Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And
>> when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane
>> sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his
>> business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with
>> the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had
>> happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself
>> would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his
>> little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but,
>> provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound
>> security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and
>> the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object
>> less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.
>> To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a
>> man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred
>> millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human
>> nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its
>> greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain
>> as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this
>> difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid
>> and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should
>> often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much
>> more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by
>> whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the
>> generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to
>> sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others?
>> It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark
>> of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart,
>> that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of
>> self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which
>> exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle,
>> conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the
>> great judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he who, whenever we
>> are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls
>> to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous
>> of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no
>> respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer
>> ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the
>> proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration. It is
>> from him only that we learn the real littleness of ourselves, and
>> of whatever relates to ourselves, and the natural
>> misrepresentations of self-love can be corrected only by the eye
>> of this impartial spectator. It is he who shows us the propriety
>> of generosity and the deformity of injustice; the propriety of
>> resigning the greatest interests of our own, for the yet greater
>> interests of others, and the deformity of doing the smallest
>> injury to another, in order to obtain the greatest benefit to
>> ourselves. It is not the love of our neighbour, it is not the
>> love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the
>> practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more
>> powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such
>> occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the
>> grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters.
>
>
> (...9
> From The Theory of Moral Sentiments
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ssf mailing list
> Ssf at lists.aktivix.org
> http://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/ssf



-- 
07968 997861
0114 2412723

The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.