Peter Singer Famine Analysis

Peter Singer begins his argument on Famine, Affluence, and Morality with heart wrenching facts and statements about disasters happening all over the world but more specifically, East Bengal. He claims people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical care. The relentless poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war turned at least nine million people into refugees. Singer further explains that the richer nations have enough money to completely fix this issue and still have a surplus of cash in the bank. He calls the same attention to the individual level as well; he states with the exception of a select few, the mass majority of individuals do not morally feel responsible to help the situation in any significant way. Singer …show more content…
The first, suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad. He states it would be difficult and imaginably impossible to refute this principle. Singer provides the idea that we have misguided priorities. For example, we can drop $281 million dollars on a NFL football field without the blink of an eye, when every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger. His next assumption: If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought to morally do it. This principle simply requires us to prevent the bad, and promote the good, only when it can be done without sacrificing anything important to us. Singer provides the thought experiment, if I am walking past a shallow pond and I observe a child drowning, I should jump in with my clothes and save the child. Getting my clothes dirty is, and should be morally insignificant compared to the child’s life. This example brings about Singer’s proximity thesis. He claims that a person is more likely to help if the person in need is physically near us. On the flip side, this does not mean as Singer states that we ought to help the person near us and not the person who isn’t in eyesight of us. Singer goes on to explain that if we believe in equality we cannot, and shall not discriminate on whom to help just because a person may be physically closer to us. …show more content…
In just the time it took you to read this opening sentence, someone has died from hunger. I believe Singer is correct we must change our moral values and priorities. To put Singer’s argument into the lens of real world objects, to satisfy the world’s sanitation and food requirements it would cost 13 billion dollars. Thirteen billion dollars is what people in the United States and European Union spends on perfume each year. We have misguided priorities as a culture, and it should be our duty to keep something bad from happening if it doesn’t sacrifice anything of comparable moral importance. Many people claim that is would be impossible to end world hungry as a whole. I find this mindset very problematic. We have people buying personal planes that cost 300 million dollars, and a boat that costs 200 million dollars. Imagine what could have been done with that money all over the world, rather than spent on a plane and boat that is used maybe twice a year. The base of this problem I believe is the individual. I think Singer is correct in the terms that people do not morally feel obligated to make an impact on world issues in particular world hunger. Singer really knocks all his points out of the park and makes the reader stop and think about decisions he or she has made that could have been different and helpful towards the needy. Making the reader stop