Originally Posted by
wiggin
Oh, but I do. I do treat different people differently, mostly because my responsibility towards different people is unequal. I have a greater responsibility to care for and protect my children than I do that of someone else. Ditto for my community, my nation, etc. But just because I have a greater responsibility towards a subset of humanity doesn't mean that anyone has greater or lesser worth.
At the margins, individual efforts do, on the balance, improve one's lot. But a huge proportion of success is determined by factors outside your control, most notably the birth lottery.
I believe that charity is righting a wrong - it's wrong that there are people who do not have the means to access food, or shelter, or healthcare, or any number of other things that are critical to human life. Righting this wrong is not a voluntary act of kindness, but a compelled act of justice, a balancing of what is wrong in the world. I don't mean 'compelled' in the sense that someone's forcing you to do it. Rather, we are compelled by our moral conscience. It is our duty as human beings to care for others.
EK, it's easy to engage this kind of rhetoric with practical arguments - how can we value people accurately? Who are we to judge? Look at what has happened in history when others have gone down this road! Etc. But to do so accepts the basic premise that people can and do differ in intrinsic worth. I think it concedes the argument when in fact I believe that human life has indivisible and innate value that we can't slice and dice based on a given person's path through this world.