My kitchen is warm, though it is cold outside this morning. The coffee is dark and strong, made from freshly ground beans. My bills are paid and I face no overwhelming debt. To the best of my knowledge, I am in reasonably good health. My wife is safe and asleep in bed.
I have what I need. I want what I have.
There are millions and millions of people on this earth who cannot say the same. Is there a reason for me to feel guilty about the abundance in my life? That's a question that warrants exploration. What do I deserve? What does anyone deserve? How can anyone reconcile that, but for chance circumstance, one's life could be measurably worse off? Or that others who suffer could be measurably better off?
I think the answers to those questions involve a great deal of thought. If I dismiss the questions as too hard, I have abandoned my responsibilities as a human being. If I allow myself to enjoy the luxuries with which I live without acknowledging that they may come to me, at least in part, at the expense of someone else upon whom hardship is visited, I have allowed myself the easy way out.
More than simply thinking about these things, I think I need to do something about them. In my view, it's not enough to feel compassion for people who are less fortunate. If, instead of allowing myself to enjoy yet more luxury, I redirect the resources that would have been used to obtain it to enable someone else to live with a little less pain and a little less hardship, I will have done something worthwhile. Is it enough? I may never know.
It occurs to me that keeping a running tally of the luxuries we enjoy and comparing that tally with one that records the good deeds we do to help others would be a telling and humbling exercise. I will do that for myself.
I cannot stress it enough: I have to act! Thinking about making the world a better place without doing something to make it so may be worse than simply ignoring the needs of the people of the planet or proclaiming one's lack of responsibilities for others.
Will any of this matter to me in 100 years? No. But it matters now.
Whether my philosophy of life shapes who I am, or the other way around, my perception of the world matters. It matters deeply.
I've been thinking about this post today, since I read it this morning. For some reason it made me go and re-read Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin. I also thought about the whole concept of "Think Globally, Act Locally." Part of me believes that if we make small changes in our own lives: how we use fossil fuels; what foods we eat; what precious metals we can learn to live without, etc., we start to change the world. But I also believe strongly that our over-populated planet cannot endure the weight of all of our desires. If we keep everything intact and as-is, suffering is inherent.
ReplyDeleteRobin, thanks very much for your very thoughtful comment! After reading your comment, I read Tragedy of the Commons again and it made me remember so many great arguments against assuming there are technical solutions to our problems. I once wrote an essay (where IS that thing?) I entitled "The New Malthusian Imperative" that argues there is no "technical" solution to the challenges of overpopulation. Instead, intelligent policy based on both rational and moral foundations must be established to counter the natural tendency for population to grow out of control. I think each of us must make good, moral choices (the definition of which creates its own set of battle lines, I suppose), but society must collectively agree to endure "suffering" that amounts to controls on population, plus controls on consumption. For future reference, I'm including a link here to Hardin's exceptional piece: http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html.
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