https://medium.com/@AmericanPublicU/drowning-child-scenario-exposes-moral-hypocrisy-part-i-4b308e36b1d5

https://medium.com/@AmericanPublicU/drowning-child-scenario-exposes-moral-hypocrisy-part-ii-257e1e9e5475

i cant function anymore the knowledege that my life is obnjectively worst for everyone else because i consume so many resources fucks with my head i dont wan tto spend my entire life slaving for moral purposes but i know its right i dont know what to do i think im having some kind of mental breakdown

    • catposter [comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      also "rest time" implies that actual rest/relaxation is the only acceptable form of "you" time. what about learning things? that takes effort and time. but every hour i'm learning how to play an instrument something like 1200 children die. i could have spent that hour resting so i could do more work to help them or helping them, then i ended up killing something like 20 children just so i could get mildly better at piano or something

            • catposter [comrade/them]
              ·
              3 years ago

              no i mean that if you can be blamed for not doing something and that not doing something leads to death so therefore you are responsible for those deaths then i am responsible for deaths that could be prevented by charity or buying fly nets or whatever thefuck

          • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
            ·
            3 years ago

            My comrade. My sweet, caring comrade.

            Even if you are close to the switch, the switch is a diversion. The trolley is moving forward with kinetic energy KE that will be partly dissipated as it crushes bodies. You did not push the trolley to reach that level of energy, and more importantly, nor did you tie those people to the tracks. Everything happens for a long chain of reasons, some more influential or determinative or culpable than others. In the trolley problem the main guilty party is the one that tied the people to the tracks, or made sure that the trolley would be on track to kill people, or didn't have a functional onboard hazard-detection mechanism, etc. In the drowning child scenario there is someone who either put the child in danger or let them become endangered. In the global reality there are people who are too poor to afford bednets.

            Whenever we are put in a reductive quandary where we have to choose between two evils, we must see the power forcing us into that situation as the evil that is to be resisted.

            We have a large amount of control over what we directly experience in our own lives and a small amount of control over what we are indirectly connected to. I hope you are able to see yourself as a good person after reading this, because I do.

            • catposter [comrade/them]
              ·
              3 years ago

              yes, but when you get to the point with the trolley, if you can't stop the trolley, you still should pull the lever. better yet, you should do everything you can to stop the trolley, no matter the cost to you.

              • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Any effort to pull the lever is justifiable, and any effort to stop the trolley is commendable. It's still the trolley itself doing the killing and the out-of-picture actor putting all the people in harm's way.

    • catposter [comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      im going to just leave this comment from someone else here, and then my own

      other person's comment

      This is a tricky subject but I’d say that yeah I agree with you and those dork blogs that consuming luxuries while others suffer is in a sense a moral failing. Sure it doesn’t make a large difference on a global scale, and maybe being mentally healthier could put you in a better position to help people in the long run, but I’d say this is just pretty lame copium to soothe the glaring cognitive dissonance. It’s hard to swallow but I don’t see any way around it.

      I would also say that this has nothing at all to do with materialism. The drowning child thing isn’t a flawed thought experiment like the utility monster, it’s something that could happen to any of us any day, and it’s not “materialist” to sit back and refuse to help because you don’t want to go down a slippery slope of being on the hook for every drowning child. Your individual actions do have moral weight, even if it doesn’t affect society as a whole. That’s the whole point of doing praxis- we’re not all going to be a Lenin. We have to make peace with this somehow, and it’s not by refusing to consider the scenario at all.

      For me the way out of this trap is to just accept that acting in a morally consistent way is not really part of being human. Like, although I care about others and try to comfort the hurting and so on - probably more than most people - if I’m being honest, at some point my personal comfort and mental health are just a higher priority for me than doing good for others. And the only reason I’d agree to ruin my phone to save the drowning child is because I would be emotionally unable to deal with seeing them die in front of me. We’re selfish, I don’t know what to say. If it’s any consolation, nobody else is perfect either.

      I second the advice to touch grass btw. I think this whole issue is a realization that hits everyone when they start looking into philosophy of ethics. It’s overwhelming but life goes on. Eventually you learn to accept that you’re not really as good as you thought you were but still try to do as much good as you can. There are no pat answers.

      my comment

      but from the perspective shown by the trolley problem or whatever, i am basically killing people when i choose to do something selfish instead of helping them not die. so the 35000 children dying every day are at least partially my fault. i could save dozens of them from early childhood diseases just by sending enough money for medicine to survive. i basically killed a dozen people today

      on second thought this is probably true, but it also implies that everyone on the planet has probably “killed” someone at least a hundred times (especially if we count choosing to eat to not starve instead of giving) so im not sure if any of this matters. moral nihilism might be it at that point