3.1 Lifeboat Ethics

Read the Lifeboat Ethics, and notice that the author talks about his opinion on how the world’s condition should be protected and action should be taken in order to prevent anything from happening to the land of our future generations and the available resources. He believes that we should allow the poor countries to eventually die of hunger and disease, while the rich sit around getting fat and never being happy with the extravagant lives they live. I strongly disagree with his ideas.

To start off, I'd like to make an analogy of my own. We have three seeds, all in a bag together. The planter takes the bag out to the fields one morning to plant seeds and begins dropping them along the plowed rows ready to be filled with seeds in the hope that an abundant crop will flourish. These these seeds are picked up at the same time, and tossed out onto the ground. Our first seed lands perfectly in the trench, nestled in a soft warm mound of dirt, where nutrience is present constantly. Our second seed was not so fortunate. He landed off to the side, where the freshly plowed dirt is still soft yet is might be difficult to get all the nutrience he needed in the future. Our third seed was not fortunate at all. He landed way off to the side on the dry cracked powdery dirt where he would be forced to die there and wait to be eaten by a bird, die of the heat and dehydration, or simply die of lack of nutrience. None of these seeds had a choice or any control over where they landed. The first seed is perfectly happy where it is, and probably will not give the other two seeds another thought. The second seed sees where he would like to be and maybe where he might end up one day but also sees the third seed. The seed who, by no fault of his own, was thrown into a place where he is going to die a miserable and slow death, no matter what is done. 

This is a analogy on a much less dramatic scale but at the same time very exact to how our lives work. We have no control over where we born, what kind of family we have, or what kind of life we are born into. We could be born into a middle class American family and never have to worry about going hungry for a day while we have people on the other side of the world that are dying of hunger and malnourishment and it is through no fault of their own. Yet we have the audacity to say that our resources are too scares and we have to preserve them for the rest of our own nation and the other fortunate people of the world, while the majority of the population is starving. 

Given that the world does have a limited supply of resources, I am not advocating that the rich countries give up all their resources to the point of impoverishment, but the rich countries of the world should start to reconsider what is more important… a new line of luxury cars or the possible schools that could be built in the East?