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Journal on Peter Singer’s Drowning Child Tianran Cui

Before discussing the “drowning child” thought experiment, I want to first talk about Singer’s principle of equality. Singer’s principle of equality claims that equality should be applied to all members of our species. In the viking age, Vikinger and Norman each meant “human” in their societies and languages. It’s kind of interesting, because what can be inferred is that those societies only recognized their members to be the species that represented humans. As a consequence, it was not even necessary to think of the damages they made to other states and how they would influence the living of their residence. What I want to show here is that before human beings were defined in a biological context, where people draw the line of the cognitive recognition of being the same kind is very vague. Nowadays it’s still common to see that people with different cultural backgrounds are treated differently, despite we are all human beings.

Singer has good values, but his arguments are so unsatisfactory. Singer tried to prove the unjustness of speciesism by making an analogy that judging a group of people by whether they have certain properties is unjustified. However, following his argument, we can also conclude that plants, even micro-organism, should also have the same rights as animals. Why don’t you starve yourself to death, or let the micro-organisms grow freely without control? (I can go a little further here but it’s irrelevant to the argument I’m building. )

Clearly we cannot use Singer’s arguments to answer the previous question. In my opinion, the core that brings a large group of living creatures together (aside from outlooks, body structures, movements and the habit of living, which only works on uniting small groups of individual creatures), is the sympathy to the same culture. Human beings worldwide need to identify themselves as a member of the “ culture of the world ”, and recognize different cultures ( the meaning used here is what we usually mean by cultures ) as variations under the unity. Only then will we truly respect other members of the same species, because we all share the pride of being a member of the same culture. People will also voluntarily maintain the system and the relative equality among this group. Although there are still discriminations almost everywhere, nowadays the world has been more connected than ever because of the growth in technology and the spread of the internet. Hopefully the best case scenario, one day the human culture will grow to accept all subcultures among this species. （哈哈，虽然现在我不这么想了，但是还是要 为自己鼓掌lol）

With that argument set up, why is negative responsibilities a thing that everyone should be aware of? Because right now the human beings have not developed a culture that every member is equality taken care of by the group. My opinion is that the baseline of a stable society should provide every residence in different social classes chances to improve their current living conditions through a fair social selection system. But right now in our society, while

people struggling with poverty have so little education resources that can take them out of labour-heavy jobs, people with higher social status are trying to preserve the resources for their descendants. In this process of social class solidification, people who do not have access to secured basic living resources can only expect the same, if not worse living conditions for the future. Because we are all human beings, and throughout our long history we have always believed that everyone should have a chance to pursue a better life, also because the mechanism of our current society cannot ensure that basic need, as the residence who are capable of giving something extra, we should take the responsibility to fix what the society has not yet covered. (另外一方面，不给人生活的希望，过分被欺压的人民是要闹革命的，也不利于社 会的长治久安，我实在没想好这句怎么写)

At the same time we cannot ignore the pressure that everyone is facing. Under the current gain distribution mechanism(我猜想写的是社会分配系统), people who are still capable of improving their life are all stressed out about getting a better living condition for themselves and their family. Those people made up the majority of the population(correct me if I’m wrong here. I’m sure it’s the case in China. I didn’t research so I can’t speak for the world). Under such high pressure it’s really too much to ask people to take on their negative responsibilities, while the wealthier people are not putting in an adequate amount of effort into charity and supporting the flow of social classes(I cannot deny I’m thinking that rich people should do more, and a little bit in my heart I’m using it as an excuse to justify me not giving as much to help people who are in need ). Speaking of that, recently I have watched two documentaries called “Born Rich” and “The One Percent”. In the documentaries the director discussed the gap between rich and poor from the perspective of the top-class rich people. I noticed in the documentary that the majority of the top class sees expanding their family wealth as the primary task of their business, while the poorest people who struggle with everyday’s living have almost no opportunity to choose to live differently. Two details that I remember the most are that, the economist who had won the nobel prize(sorry can’t remember his name) claimed the current social structure and distribution mechanism in the US has the best performance(so that there’s no need to question it, inferred from the conversation context), and it had improved living condition of all residence, because even the poorest people are having a better life than any historical time before; and he thought it’s unnecessary and unrealistic to give them a better living environment. The second detail is from the director’s father and the police in the community next to the area under poverty. When they were asked how they feel about wealth and the gap between rich and poor, the director’s father said he didn’t want to talk about it, and the police said he thought the children in the poverty area had enough chance to change the living situation because a couple of them became sports stars. So many of us are covering our eyes up, avoiding to recognize the problems, while we persuade ourselves that what we are doing is decent. I believe no one will feel good when they witness the problems in the world we are living in. To make the world a better place, it’s important for everyone to take on the negative responsibilities and make a difference. This is a dilemma because taking on negative responsibilities can often mean disadvantage in comparative competition. This is not profitable, so it’s impossible to simply ask everyone to do their part because they should. The society does need to design its flow of wealth carefully so that the actions that are beneficial to the society itself are rewarded properly.

This is never easy, but seeing people helping each other under the outbreak of COVID-19 once again reminded us of the love and support we share among one another. Together we have the ability to make the world a better place.

As a conclusion, I want to end the discussion with an old Chinese saying, to help the world when you’re fulfilled, to help yourself when you’re not. (我非常确定我当时心里想的是，富则接济 天下，穷则独善其身) I’m only a student who’s supported by my parents to receive a higher education, to improve the living of myself and family, and hopefully to make more contribution to society. I hope soon in the future I will have the ability to do something more aside from contributing to society by having a job.

Another important argument here about “Why not help?” : There have been organizations and individuals either helping with charity or donating money. But for most organizations, people can not see what are the consequences of their actions. We have been hearing the words of charities for years, but at the same time, poverty still exists; many people still can’t afford a life with reliable living resources; many children still do not have the chance of getting enough education to change their life. With media reporting scandals of organizations abusing charity money, it’s difficult for people to believe that giving out part of their income is actually doing good to the world. While it’s true that no excuses should be made on avoiding the negative responsibilities, it’s also important to make sure that we have a rather transparent system that turns people’s donation into contributions and reflects that contribution to the donors. It’s more beneficial if people’s donation not only has improved the living condition of those who are in need, but also given them initial conditions to start to earn their own living. (I guess I’m also using the arguments from Martha Nussbuan here...)

This is not related to the topic. But if in the thought experiment, instead of making the case a drowning child, what if it was a female adult that was drowning, and what if it was a male adult?