The Life You Can Save

At my house, the annual preparations for the Christmas holiday are well underway. The tree has been bought and decorated. Shopping for food and presents is nearing a fevered pitch, though I still haven’t bought my wife’s Christmas present. Our college-age children will return home and Grandma (who is 90 years old) will not so subtly see to it that we all go to church on Christmas Eve to give thanks for the life we live and the prosperity and health we enjoy.  I don’t resent this annual moment of taking stock.  Then we’ll put all this serious stuff behind us with a big New Year’s party and ring in 2010 looking with optimism at what’s possible in a new year.

At Media Voices, we’re marking the end of 2009 with food for thought. Peter Singer is a philosopher, writer and the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Time Magazine has named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.  His work embraces many subjects but a principal theme has always been what does it take to lead an ethical life? What are our responsibilities to others? How can one person make a difference in a world where fully one fifth of the population is hungry and mired in poverty? In this installment of Speak Up for Children, Dr. Singer presents an often challenging and thought provoking discussion of what each of us can do to help alleviate global poverty and suffering. He speaks with conviction that it is possible for us to transform the world today, by simply giving our fair share, money we’d usually spend on luxuries or buying things we don’t really need. Maybe I’ll buy one less present this year and give that money to charity.

Using the example of a child drowning in a shallow pond, Singer asks us to consider if a child’s life is worth more than the inconvenience of getting wet or ruining our new shoes, while wading in to help save the child’s life. For most people the answer is immediate and obvious, of course you’d help the child, it would be wrong to walk away and do nothing and let the child drown.  If, on the other hand, you choose to walk ahead because your new shoes are more important to you than what’s happening back at the pond, are you complicit somehow in the child’s death? Does it matter that you weren’t actually present when the child drowned because your indifference and self-interest prevented you from helping? Always, with Professor Singer, one question leads us to another.  If the ethical person should help the drowning child, what about the 24,000 children who die each day from preventable causes, what’s our responsibility to them? Does the fact that we don’t see their suffering release us from responsibility? Ethics poses questions for us to ponder, big questions.

In December of 2006, I had just returned from Kenya after weeks of filming orphaned children living and dying on the streets of Nairobi.  While there, I had met a young  street boy named Emmanuel whose appeals for help had utterly gripped and confused me. That experience made me ask myself,  “What can I do?  What should I do? How can I help? Aren’t the world’s  problems too overwhelming for one person’s actions to matter?  Why should I feel guilty about children I don’t even know?” In other words, why do I need to enter the pond and ruin my new shoes?

Singer speaks and writes with compassion and the knowledge of a subject he’s explored for three decades. For the first time in history, he argues, we have within our reach the wealth and means to end world poverty. In his new book, The Life You Can Save, he makes the argument that we can all be part of the solution. This time, he has taken the argument to a new level creating a website, The Life You Can Save, where readers can take a pledge to join a culture of giving and learn more about how to pursue an ethical life.

2009 ends at Media Voices with some very personal thanks to colleagues who’ve given their time and talent to this effort. Steve Button is the design and technical guru responsible for the beauty of the site. Petra Lent and Chris Mara work with me daily, adding the content, editing the stories and keeping things up to date and Barbara Dupree manages our office. Our Board of Directors has been a working Board, helping any way they can. Georgia Morris is the steady voice and partner in every project.  In just a few months time, over thirty organizations have joined freelance filmmakers, photographers and journalists to contribute their work, ideas and vision to Media Voices. We look to 2010 with a sense of optimism and purpose. We feel fortunate to share these interviews with Dr. Singer and Archbishop Tutu with you over the holiday season. They are very much about giving, love and the central idea that we are all our brother’s keeper.

For the entire interview with Peter Singer, click here.

For a transcript of the interview, click here.