There are a series of mental traps one can find oneself in when thinking about helping people in other countries.
The morally average person recoils at the thought that a neighbor may be suffering, and will usually pitch in either time or money to help out if they’re called on.
If someone falls down a flight of stairs, a crowd will gather to do what they can. When a bomb goes off during a marathon, average men and women will find some way to assist medical and police personnel.
There are too many examples of real heroism in the face of misery for anyone to dismiss how powerful empathy and courage can be.
But what are we obligated to do about disease, hunger and violence across the world? Add distance to the mix, and one’s entire sense of morality can become distorted and changed.
I’m not only talking about simple apathy. That’s common enough. Close friends of mine, after long arguments, will simply retreat to the position that the people around them are more important than people abroad.
It’s not logical; it’s gut instinct. Like racism, they are capable of restricting their empathy to a specific group of people. Instead of skin color, however, their level of “care” for a human being depends on how close someone is spatially.
People like that will always exist: there’s no getting around it. While the misery is just as real when transcribed onto video, or in one of those pitiful commercials (no matter how manipulative), these people will only dish out their help if they can see someone suffering in front of them.
But the same result (i.e. not doing anything for true suffering abroad) can be increasingly found in the kind of people who once would have done something: the young left.
The general idea is that by giving money to Doctors Without Borders or flying across the world to help others abroad, one is conflating humanitarianism by “flaunting one’s privilege.”
To put it another way: these people believe that American citizens are too rich, white and absorbed in one’s own culture to be capable of helping others abroad.
I won’t argue whatsoever with the fact that there are serious problems with how some people from Western countries go about administering aid.
For example, I am absolutely convinced that “mission trip” evangelizing is morally disgusting; if you’re going to help people, give them what they say they need. Using aid as a vessel for a religion is an act of preying on people who might not have other options. If your religion tells you to help others, then help others.
Additionally, the “Voluntourism” phenomenon, where college students go to other countries to take Facebook profile pictures, is also somewhat shameful and a waste of everyone’s time.
But just because some people use foreign aid in a way to promote themselves or their religion does not mean that there aren’t other ways to help. There are countless international groups devoted to causes that absolutely are worth supporting, many of which are seriously underfunded.
It’s a miracle of modern technology just how many polio vaccine doses $10 can buy.
It isn’t privilege to recognize the fact if you live in the U.S., then you are in a very rare position to help others who could use that money more than you can.