In
this paper, I will argue that the importance of a life’s autonomy is enough
moral obligation to give the excesses of people who are already living
autonomous lives so that others may have a more fulfilling life. I will show
that the need for an autonomous life is such that moral obligation to donate
through aid agencies will supersede the wanting of things not as important as
granting a person an autonomous life.
Before
I begin, I must clarify the true aims of this paper. I will be focusing on the
autonomy and the quality of that autonomy that all human lives share. For this
paper, we will assume that in order to have a good life, one must be autonomous
in the fullest extent in whatever situation, place, or state he or she resides
in. We will also assume that the definition for autonomy is one that applies to
how much real choice a person has to go about living his or her life in a
certain locale based on the amount or access to certain goods, services, and
social functions he or she has. For there to be complete autonomy, a person
must fulfill the criteria [1] for all those necessary components needed to lead
a normal life in relation to their place of residence. For instance, an
autonomous life should be free to not only choose trivial things like food
sources or perhaps even consumer goods, but also allow for some flexibility in
the enrichment of one’s life. Whether it is by fulfilling a certain goal or by
adopting a lifestyle that requires a unique combination of required goods
and/or a specialized belief system (i.e. vegetarianism, religious beliefs
etc.), one must be able to wholesomely convey these senses of autonomy. In
order for that to happen, one must be in a community that has the means to
support the enrichment of all people's lives and generally support their autonomy.
That being said, there must be suitable conditions that in no way take away
from the autonomy of people before someone is said to be living a complete
life.
Taking
all things into account, we can move on to understanding how poverty negatively
affects autonomy. More importantly, we need to identify how lack of funds at
the micro level severely limits the fulfillment of both “societal” and “stand
alone” criteria of autonomy. Let's take education as a preliminary example.
Education is an important aspect to a person's autonomy because of the
essential building blocks it provides to further enrich a person's life. Education
works to not only broaden the options of work for a person, it also expands
their possible aspirations, effectively adding autonomy. Yet education is
dependent on societal functions; without certain institutions and human
interactions, education would be a useless requirement for autonomy unlike
perhaps basic needs which stand alone as a sector of autonomy. The simple
distinction of how these provisions relate to autonomy is what is important
here; there are some provisions which support autonomy based on societal
functions, and others that can stand alone to preserve physical life. Although
those that stand by themselves may seem more important, both types are crucial
to the development of autonomous lives. Applied to real world problems, the
cost of education serves as its biggest threat. While many believe that
education should be free (and some speculate a right as well), we know this to
not be true about many poor countries. Many poor African countries in fact do
not spend more than 3% of their GDP for education across primary, secondary,
and tertiary schools (Guardian) and some don’t even fund education at all,
while the United States invests 5.7% of its GDP (NationMaster).
This
lack of support of education is in that sense a denial of education to a
section of the world that could very well do with increased levels of education
for all children regardless of grade level. Because spending on education is so
low, it is expected that education to many families is not a given but instead
a difficult choice, and in many cases another sacrifice made to simply survive.
The levels of education needed to achieve autonomy then, as stated above, is
not being met in countries with severe poverty. Consequentially, we can make a
distinction that lack of certain goods or services does not describe poverty,
but rather that poverty causes these lapses in suitable conditions, and the
loss of autonomy.
Taking
the importance of the positive relationship between autonomy and living a good
life into consideration, we have proven that poverty has a profound effect on
the quality of autonomy and therefore the quality of life of a person. We must
however be cognizant of the fact that a simple demonstration like a lack of
education is normally not the only factor which leads to a lessening of the
quality of autonomy and one's life; even “stand alone” provisions suffer
because of poverty. It seems to stand to reason then that we may feel some sort
of obligation to cure poverty so that unsuitable conditions affecting autonomy
disappear altogether. Yet poverty in itself is not a reason to feel morally
obligated to give any aid. Thinking that simply curing poverty for the sake of
increasing personal wealth is a moral obligation is a flawed argument if we
develop the idea of moral obligation.
A moral obligation is a response to an
internal judgment brought about by what many would take to be a conscience in
relation to an outside stimulus. How that "conscience" is developed
or what develops it can be debated, but the important aspect is that moral
obligations come about when there is an absolute external stimuli to which
someone takes it upon him or herself to settle. We take poverty to imply an extreme lack of
funds, but we have no means to figure out at what limit one becomes
impoverished. It is very difficult if not impossible to pinpoint a global
poverty line. Many institutions try to strike an arbitrary line, which can help
in understanding the plight of very extreme poverty cases, but it still does
not answer the practical question. It seems foolish to imply that someone who
is one cent above the poverty line has full autonomy whilst the person one cent
below does not. Therefore, poverty must be dealt with in relative terms, not
absolute terms. The conflict of autonomy on the other hand must be dealt with
in absolute terms. One cannot simply have partial autonomy; there either is
autonomy, or there is not autonomy. Relating the problem of autonomy and the
problem of poverty then, moral obligations can only arise in problems of
autonomy (absolutist) and not poverty (relativist). That is why there is only a
moral obligation to ensure a full and autonomous life and not to ensure private
financial security.
This can be shown with the easy rescue case
[2]. The point of the obligation in the example is not to ensure that the
drowning victim be in possession of a flotation device. It is instead to ensure
that the drowning victim does not end up drowning. There is a moral obligation
to protect life in general, not private holdings in general. The pond example
can continue to stretch our thinking as to how much one should really invest
into fulfilling their personal moral obligation to ensure autonomy amongst
other people. Clearly, before trying to do so, one must ensure that his or her
autonomy is not put in danger. Sacrificing one's chance at an education to
provide an education for another seems like the lifeguard exchanging places
with the drowning victim. That somewhat defeats the purpose of embracing
universal autonomy if at the end of the day there is still someone who drowns.
Yet we cannot simply stand idly and try to calculate exactly how much energy
and time will be sacrificed by the person tossing the life preserver in. By the
time those calculations are through, the life preserver has become rather
useless. Instead, we can make a simple judgment to toss the life preserver into
the water because it is of no use to us, because we are not in a position of
needing it. That is the key to understanding exactly where the line must be
drawn.
If
autonomy is to be described as the fulfilling of criteria concerning the
quality of life of a person, we can imagine different categories being filled
to reach a certain acceptable level. Whatever those levels may be will differ
from community to community, but the concept is universal. There must be a
pre-decided minimum level for each criterion that allows for any member in the
community to become completely autonomous and able to enrich his or her life.
Anything over those levels that grant autonomy can be seen as excess; excess
that can be better used if invested in giving autonomy to those who lack the
minimum basics for being autonomous. This is not to be interpreted as a
redistribution endeavor. This rule simply implies that any excess of goods,
funds, or social capital be not allowed to waste after a person's autonomy has
been completely satisfied. There is indeed a moral obligation to not allow
those things to go to waste, and rather to allow them to improve the life of
someone who has diminished chances at autonomy. An example will illustrate this
process. Say you are at a restaurant eating a nice dinner. You are more than
wealthy enough to afford the meal, as well as the valet service outside. You go
out to dinner to celebrate a birthday or an anniversary, both of which are
goals or aspirations whose completion is as much of a reflection of past
ability and effort as it is about personal "on the moment" enjoyment
and pleasure. Once the meal is done, food scraps remain on the plate that you
decide was just too big of a portion for you or anyone else at the table to
handle. You therefore reject to go on any further with that meal and allow the
waiter who you will tip handsomely to take the plate away from you.
Those
food scraps now have two possible places to go. The landfill, where they will
sit for months idly rotting away into nothing, or the coal burning plant which
has been retrofitted to process food scraps as sources of energy. Clearly, the
more efficient choice is to send the food scraps off to the plant where the
excess food will be used to its fullest extent rather than wasting away. That
is the same principle behind what level of obligation people with more than
autonomous lives have to give. I'm not implying we should give out food scraps
to those less fortunate than us. I am implying however that at the end of the
day, people who live fully autonomous lives have gathered a certain excess of
goods in many categories, an excess that we are morally obligated to donate. In
some if not most cases, there is much more than "food scraps" in
terms of quantity of excess in many wealthy nations. If we visit Singer's
efforts, we can see that a small donation can really go a long way towards
helping someone gain autonomy (Singer 90-93) in a place where the standards to
achieve it are not as high as wealthier states or communities. So the argument
stands clear; if one is already living an autonomous life as described by the
fulfillment of criteria regarding autonomy in a community, then whatever excess
is to be had in each of those criteria should be donated to those who still
struggle to gain autonomy. Aid agencies will help help distribute the excess in
a way where the “ratio effect” will work the best, so the donations must go
there.
What
happens however when someone does not have any excesses? Do they now no longer
have an obligation to give? Perhaps those that barely cover the necessary
autonomy and struggle to maintain it could be forgiven for not feeling the same
moral obligation to help out someone else. Yet there could be people who are
very well off but still feel that certain lacking aspirations need to be
fulfilled before they are completely autonomous, and will therefore never be
obligated to give. This makes a system so that those who are very well off and
can generate copious amounts of different aspirations will continue to do so
instead of generating excess to give to those in need. Essentially, one might
end up paying for an infatuation with tennis rather than saving someone's life
which sounds very bizarre if not downright wrong.
There
are two approaches to resolving this problem. The first is the time constraint
approach. If someone is so wealthy to keep continuously generating new things,
they will inevitably continue to do so, only until there is a crucial time
constraint. We can assume that most of the people who would be able to do this
have a job that allows for them to pay for such things, but also takes away
crucial time to do them in. For cases of inheritance, the lack of a job may
give more hours to do things in, but not so many that would give the person a
chance to circumvent there only being 24 hours in a day. In that case, there
would still be considerable excess to be donated as a person may only be
constrained to a handful of truly wanted aspirations which could be seen as
legitimate if they stood alone.
The
second approach deals with the fact of evaluating a situation dealing with no
excess at all for someone who is not extremely wealthy but rather well off and
technically autonomous, yet still oddly not morally obligated to give to
someone who really is in need. This may require a reworking of the
understanding of autonomy in order to settle the matter of aspirations. Instead
of dealing with the previous definition of autonomy as including aspirations,
we could have the fulfillment of autonomy include only the basic necessities of
life within a community [3] and have aspirations stand alone as an optional
sector. The basic necessities of life would also have to be placed in a range
of acceptable values for each sector so as to determine what is absolutely
needed to be autonomous and which is over-indulgence or excess. To obtain
autonomy, those sectors must be fully filled and be in a stable condition. Any
excess in those categories still has a moral obligation to be donated to those
who still strive to achieve autonomy. In that case, aspirations become
secondary values that can only be fully endorsed once autonomy has been
reached, giving a greater need to fulfill the needs of autonomy for people who
don’t have it as of yet. To ensure that aspirations do not become too
superfluous however, a standing limit must be met as to how much people are
morally obligated to donate. For this value, we can take a simple formula.
People should be morally obligated to donate the same percentage of their
yearly costs of maintaining aspirations to people who are still seeking
autonomy, but only up to 15%. In numerical terms, if Jones is looking to spend
5% of his $60,000 yearly salary on tennis lessons ($3000), he should be
prepared to spend an additional $3000 on donations.
This
order may sound arbitrary, but it has its own purpose behind it. These
donations only go to people who are still struggling to establish autonomy, let
alone their own aspirations. Normally, these people were born, without their
consent obviously, in places where the propensity to become autonomous is much
lower than in other places. This is a fact often overlooked when deciding on
the merits of donating and whether or not "fate" simply wanted there
to be people who struggle and people who do well; donating the equivalent
amount of what one would spend on his or her own aspirations forces one to look
at the disparity between even having no excess and living an autonomous life
apparently on the edge of not being autonomous and realizing the true cost of tennis
lessons or other aspirations. I cannot simply stay here and say that
aspirations are not important, but in relation to other people's plights, they
do start to dwarf in importance. The 15% limit also is in no way purely
arbitrary. There are people whose lives are definitely shaped by their
aspirations (professional athletes for example), and asking for them to match
their investment on that level seems too demanding and could possibly relieve
them of their autonomy, if not permanently momentarily. The 15% also ensures
that a sizable amount is donated (taking Singer's ratio example, 15% of Kobe
Bryant's investment in being a great basketball player would give eyesight to
many people), but this exact value can be evaluated and perhaps more precisely
defined with further research about the effects 15% would have on people who
truly take aspirations to describe their lives.
The
main goal of this provision however is that people should be morally obligated
to understand the worth of what they may take for granted put against the very
real problem of lack of autonomy in people’s lives. By showing the disparity in
autonomy and not funds, I have proven that a moral obligation lies in truly
valuing what some take for granted or take for useless, without having to
sacrifice autonomy, in hopes of helping gain autonomy to those that do not have
it.
Footnotes
1. These
sectors include things such as basic needs (shelter, food, water etc.),
aspirations, education, healthcare, social constructs, government aid, and
cultural enrichment. In order for people to have complete autonomy, they must
fulfill these criteria to their fullest extent by either investing in them
(education) or paying for them up front (food and water).
2. The
easy rescue case refers to the drowning victim needing you to toss the life
preserver in the water at no cost to you. Because it is so easy, you are
morally obligated to go ahead and toss the life preserver in the water.
3. The
new requirements of autonomy no longer require the aspiration sector to be
fully met; yet all previously mentioned sectors still need to be met.
Works Cited
NationMaster. "Education spending (% of GDP)
(most recent) by country ." January 2000-2002. NationMaster Website.
May 2011
<http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_edu_spe-education-spending-of-gdp>.
Singer, Peter. The Life You Can Save. New York: Random
House, 2010.
UNESCO. "African Education Spending." 2011. The
Guardian Website. May 2011
<https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdEVSNzJYd29Da2c0YjFtbmE4aWh0akE&hl=en#gid=0>.
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