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The life you can save
Posted 2 September 2011
Melbourne’s most famous ethicist Peter Singer has helped stimulate pledges for more than $34 million in the past three years to help eradicate world poverty.
The Melbourne-born professor of bioethics at Princeton University has achieved this feat using his 2009 novel, The Life You Can Save, where he throws down a simple challenge: If you could save a life, would you?
The Life You Can Save calls for people to pledge to donate a small percentage of their income to an organisation that helps people living in extreme poverty.
The suggested pledge level for the average income is just 1%, which amounts to a $750 annual donation for someone on a $75,000 income.
The website for Singer’s campaign has an online pledge option, where more than 10,500 pledges have been made in less than three years; if all those pledges are fulfilled they’ll have a combined total of more than $34 million.
Singer uses his favourite scenario to illustrate why we should donate to these causes, an example he has used since the 1970s, which reads something like this:
Imagine you are walking through a park one morning, when you come across a young girl struggling in a shallow pond. As you realise she is drowning you scan the park for her parents; nobody is there... What do you do? You run to the pond to help the child, of course. But wait, you’re wearing your favourite pair of shoes, which are quite expensive, and will be ruined by the water. Now the question is, do you ruin the shoes to save the life of the young girl, or do you let her drown?
The usual answer to this question is unflinching; ruin the shoes!
“UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, estimates that about 24,000 children die every day from preventable, poverty-related causes,” Singer’s website says.
“Yet at the same time almost a billion people live very comfortable lives, with money to spare for many things that are not at all necessary.”
Singer has helped bring attention to the public’s ability to end world poverty, and The Life You Can Save campaign continues to grow. His campaign echoes the words of Nelson Mandela:
“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”
The Melbourne-born professor of bioethics at Princeton University has achieved this feat using his 2009 novel, The Life You Can Save, where he throws down a simple challenge: If you could save a life, would you?
The Life You Can Save calls for people to pledge to donate a small percentage of their income to an organisation that helps people living in extreme poverty.
The suggested pledge level for the average income is just 1%, which amounts to a $750 annual donation for someone on a $75,000 income.
The website for Singer’s campaign has an online pledge option, where more than 10,500 pledges have been made in less than three years; if all those pledges are fulfilled they’ll have a combined total of more than $34 million.
Singer uses his favourite scenario to illustrate why we should donate to these causes, an example he has used since the 1970s, which reads something like this:
Imagine you are walking through a park one morning, when you come across a young girl struggling in a shallow pond. As you realise she is drowning you scan the park for her parents; nobody is there... What do you do? You run to the pond to help the child, of course. But wait, you’re wearing your favourite pair of shoes, which are quite expensive, and will be ruined by the water. Now the question is, do you ruin the shoes to save the life of the young girl, or do you let her drown?
The usual answer to this question is unflinching; ruin the shoes!
“UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, estimates that about 24,000 children die every day from preventable, poverty-related causes,” Singer’s website says.
“Yet at the same time almost a billion people live very comfortable lives, with money to spare for many things that are not at all necessary.”
Singer has helped bring attention to the public’s ability to end world poverty, and The Life You Can Save campaign continues to grow. His campaign echoes the words of Nelson Mandela:
“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”
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