I sincerely hope that Peter Singer’s “The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas about Living Ethically” will do a lot of good by inspiring a lot of people to do a lot of good.
But when I reached this sentence:
“Aaron Moore, an Australian international aid worker and artist, is one of the relatively few Christians who have taken the words of Jesus seriously. On his website, Moore links them to a statement of mine…”
I knew I would not be finishing this book[1]. I put it down when I got to:
“Everyone has boundaries. If you find yourself doing something that makes you bitter, it’s time to reconsider… Now Julia doesn’t scrimp on ice cream because, as she told the class, ‘Ice cream is really important to my happiness’.”
The book has the style of a self-help book, but of course it can hardly be that, since what it is promoting is other-help. I guess it’s not for me because what it is recommending already seems very obvious to me. But I was also disappointed to see most of it devoted to helping people, just as most charities are. Of course people need help, and certainly much more help than they are getting. But I’m not sure they need the most help, nor that they need help the most.
There is no misery that animals undergo that humans don’t undergo too, whether “natural” or human-inflicted. But most animal misery is human-inflicted, one way or the other. And most humans are not undergoing that misery. Nor is most of human misery deliberately inflicted on people by people; on animals, most of it is. And it’s legal to inflict that misery on animals. And most people inflict it, or demand that it be inflicted on their behalf. And most of it is not necessary to human survival or health. (Nor even to human wealth: there are more humane ways to make a living, or even a killing (financial). I also doubt that ice cream, hence bovine agony, is necessary for human happiness.)
I think the most good you could do would be to inspire people to stop causing gratuitous misery. I am not sure how inspiring people to get rich so they can donate most of what they make to charity to reduce mostly human misery is the most good you can do. But Peter Singer did write “Animal Liberation,” which has inspired a lot of people to help animals. Maybe there will be some trickle-down from “effective altruism” to animals too. I hope so. I don’t pretend to know any more effective solutions. I just wish this book had devoted more than a chapter to the most numerous and wretched victims on the planet — and to doing the least harm you can do with the money you spend.
[1] It is not at all that the contemporary philosopher of ethics who has inspired generation after generation to renounce meat and defend animals is not to be likened to the biblical prophet of charity: quite the contrary. It’s just my own squeamishness about who draws attention to the likeness. (The animus toward ice cream, however, and toward professions of its need for happiness, is not squeamishness but deep dismay at the implied trade-off.)