It is your wedding day, months of planning have lead to this day. Life is good, you’ve found the person of your dreams and while the two of you arn't as well off as some people you’re getting by quite nicely now. Over the last year or so you’ve been saving every last spare penny in order to spare no expense in making sure you and your guests have a incredible day today!
It’s just before the ceremony, you’re in your wedding attire. Rented of course. You couldn’t afford to buy something this fancy out right, but it’s a special day and you were only going to wear this once, so what the hell, you went all out.
The nerves start to kick in, you tell your friends in the wedding party that you just need to go and get some air for a bit. You leave the venue and go for a walk down by a nearby stream.
Around 10 minutes into your walk through the tranquil scene, you notice a little way down the path a small child has fallen in the stream and is struggling to keep above the water, gasping for air. Adrenaline flushes through your body, there are no nearby parents that you can see, in fact there's no one.
The stream is not that deep, it would be perfectly safe for you to wade in and get the child.
Do you have a moral obligation to jump in and save the child?
That will no doubt ruin your very expensive wedding attire. Would you be willing to pay the fee for that?
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I know that this sounds like an absurd hypothetical but believe it or not this very scenario happened last year in Canada
However as a story and hypothetical question, this is what philosophers refer to as a thought experiment (Although, I’m guessing when I ask you this question this is likely what you call an insult). They work like a sort of "what if" problem. This one aims to exam our the inner moral workings.
Sadly it’s not over yet.
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The overwhelming majority of people that are asked this question will say yes, of course they have an obligation in to help in that situation. The risks to themself are minimal and the gains (or mitigation of losses) to the child are huge.
There is another question to this thought experiment though:
Would you have any less of an obligation if you had the equal ability to help but the child was much further away, in another country perhaps?
Over the last 20-30 years the world has changed dramatically, we have become phenomenally well connected. Whereas before it was difficult for us to act at a distance for the betterment of others, now however it is as easy as a few mouse clicks. We no longer need to be in the right place at the right time in order to save a life, we can do it anytime we want just by moving a small portion of our money to an effective charity.
This is the moral argument for giving put forward by the Australian philosopher Peter Singer (Picture right: Wikipedia credit), and if you find it uncomfortable to think about don’t worry you are not alone! When I first heard this around 4 years ago, it got under my skin, I really wanted to find a loophole, something that would allow me to look at the money I was earning as anything other than potential lives saved. It reminded me of this scene at the end of Schindler's List where Alfred Schindler breaks down when he realises that he could have sold his ring or sold his car to save more live (Clip).
Since then I have come to terms with this but only through dramatically changing my values and the way I live my life. Singers thought experiment of the shallow pond was a helpful means of getting me to critically examine my own moral beliefs. It’s not always easy to do so but in this case I’m very glad I did
