I was moved to write this book because I was
aware that there are so many people in extreme
poverty in developing countries who we can
help.
There are effective organizations.
We can assist them and save their lives or
restore their sight if they’re blind or
prevent them going blind.
Many other things that we can do.
That a lot of people don’t realize how cheap
it is basically to save a life of somebody
in a developing country.
Whereas here in the United States or other
affluent nations we would spend hundreds of
thousands, perhaps millions of dollars to
save the lives of people who are very ill
through intensive care units we save their
lives.
But for the amount that we’re spending to
save one life here in the United States we
could maybe save many hundreds or a thousand
lives in developing countries.
It seems to me wrong that we are not doing
something about that when we have this opportunity
to help people at relatively little expense.
We’re not doing that and instead we’re
buying ourselves things that we don’t really
need.
Things that might range from expensive cars
to simply buying bottled water when we can
drink the water out of the tap.
All the time we’re spending things that
either by themselves or added together could
save somebody’s life or give somebody a
much better quality of life.
There is something about human nature that
makes it harder for us to give to strangers,
especially distant strangers who we don’t
really see.
And that’s because we evolved from our primate
ancestors already living in social groups
as chimpanzees, for example, live today in
small social groups where they know each other.
Every chimpanzee in the group recognizes every
other chimpanzee in the group and knows that
they’re part of their group.
So they will help each other in need.
And as we emerged we also lived in small groups.
Gradually they got bigger.
A lot of anthropologists think that the typical
human society was about 150 individuals.
But still if you’re living with 150 individuals
all your life you will get to know them all.
And so you develop an ethic of helping other
people in your group and you develop a kind
of emotional response to seeing their needs
and you would go and try to help them and
meet their needs.
But now that we’re living in societies of
tens or hundreds of millions of people and
a world of billions of people we don’t have
that personal connection.
So we can’t rely on that immediate emotional
response to someone else’s need and to someone
who we know.
So we have to really use our head as well
as our heart.
I think our emotions are still there.
We still have a sense that it’s bad that
people should suffer.
It’s bad that children should die.
But we have to do that operation in our head
of saying yes, and even though I can’t see
these people I know that they are dying.
I can read the statistics, the report on this.
I know that there are organizations that will
take my donation and reduce the number of
children dying.
So that’s what I want to do.
But that’s a step that isn’t based on
a kind of evolved intuitive response.
It’s a step that really has to come out
of our rational reflection on who we are,
where we are and where the other people in
the world are.
Well there are still many challenges in relating
to helping people in poverty.
One of them is simply the failure to put sufficient
resources really targeted to help people who
are very poor.
Now I know a lot of Americans will say hey,
wait a minute.
Isn’t our government the biggest donor of
aid in the world and aren’t I already doing
that through my taxes?
A lot of people don’t realize that even
though in dollar terms the United States is
the biggest donor.
It’s also a very big economy and as a percentage
of the economy size, of the gross national
income, the United States is actually giving
very little.
It’s giving about 21 cents in every hundred
dollars that the nation earns.
So less than a quarter, a couple of dimes
for every hundred dollars that we earn.
And that then doesn’t look so generous.
Plus, a lot of this aid is not targeted to
helping the world’s poorest people.
It’s used for strategic purposes.
So at the moment the biggest recipient of
U.S. aid is Afghanistan because we have troops
there.
We’re fighting a war there and we want to
sort of get support and goodwill by donating
aid.
Prior to that it was Iraq when we were fighting
the war in Iraq.
And Iraq certainly was never one of the poorest
countries.
It always had a lot of oil revenue.
There are many other poor countries in Sub-Saharan
Africa, for example, who get very little aid
from us because they’re not strategically
that significant.
This is a barrier really to try to get more
resources going where it’s needed most.
And that’s why in the book I ask people
to check online at websites like The Life
You Can Save for the most effective organizations
that really have thought about these issues,
that know what to do, that are directly helping
the poor.
In some cases they’re advocates for the
poor like one of the organizations recommended
by The Life You Can Save is Oxfam because
Oxfam is an international advocate for the
poor trying to promote better trade deals
for the poor, for instance, to help them trade
their way out of poverty.
Trying to stop bribery and corruption by getting
companies that are extracting oil or minerals
from poorer countries to publish how much
they’re paying to the governments of those
countries so that the people know what the
governments are getting and can try to hold
them accountable for the money they’re receiving.
So there are lots of ways both directly and
through political advocacy to try to really
continue to reduce extreme poverty.
