Hey there! Simone again with a final wellbeing rubric. For this last one of the year I will be taking on the famous proverb ‘sharing is caring’ (or ‘samen spelen, samen delen’, for those with a Dutch inclination). It’s a phrase that I think we’ve all heard too often as a child. Let’s put it under a microscope and see if it holds up.
If we were to look at this philosophically, the central premise behind the mantra lies in the idea that it is morally good to ‘give’. If we were to view this principle through a more structured moral lens, like say, consequentialism or deontology, both cases present one central question: Where does it stop? Consequentialism is a simple moral philosophy with one central goal: maximizing the amount of human wellbeing. As long as an action increases the total wellbeing of the people involved, it is a morally good deed (even if it hurts some specific individuals (except if you’re John Stuart Mill, but I won’t torture you with a rubric that long)). That means that you can take this principle very far. Think about it. When you come across a homeless person on the street, you have the opportunity to give him some money. If we were to interpret Jeremy Bentham’s consequentialist philosophy as a moral duty, like the way the quote at the top of this article is often used, this would mean that the only morally correct option would be to give them everything you can, until it is hurting you more than it is helping him. The problem is that, given the advent of the information age, every single one of us have the ability to give to the less fortunate at every single second of every single day. Meaning that, as soon as you get your paycheck, unless you donate every cent that you don’t necessarily need for the bare minimum of continued existence like room and board, you are an individual of rotten character. This would be a good time to mention that our moral judgments are meant to form our philosophical frameworks, not the other way around. I think I can fairly say that the logical conclusion would be to toss aside consequentialism as a moral framework for this case study, as society would collapse if it was applied.
So let’s take a look at deontology. Specifically, I will look at Kantian ethics and his Categorical Imperative. Kant’s two main formulations of these are as follows:
- Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law;
- Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end;
In layman’s terms they mean the following:
- Identify the principle of an action (what it boils down to) and only act that way if it would be acceptable if everyone in the world followed your lead (i.e. don’t steal, because if everyone was a thief ‘The Purge’ would take place).
- Don’t treat other people as tools, but as equal individuals with autonomous rights and dignities (i.e. it’s okay to make use of a barista’s services but that doesn’t mean you can treat them like shit).
I think it’s pretty obvious that our chosen proverb obeys the second rule. Devoting your life to giving to others seem like the opposite from seeing other people as a means. It’s the first rule where it gets complicated. Here we can run into a similar issue as with consequentialism: if everyone always gave away everything they had, ruin would approach us. However, here is where I think we can find a bit of leeway. They key here lies in the ‘principle’ of the action. If we were to use our earlier example of the homeless person one comes across, we could boil down the principle of you giving that person 10 bucks to: ‘Giving the less fortunate that which you can easily and without any noticeable discomfort to yourself, miss’. If you wanted to, you could nuance the rule even further. This is where personal interpretation also rears it’s ugly head, but if we employ the principle mentioned earlier, that moral systems should be shaped by moral judgments, I think you could make a very strong argument for this position. As a general rule, acting with altruism in one’s day to day life is a very praiseworthy principle. With the nuance employed here, you could easily apply this rule to our general society without any socio-political disaster. In fact, the world would probably look like a much better place.
In case you’ve forgotten, this is supposed to be a wellbeing rubric. To get back on topic, I’d like to pose this to you. It can be easy to look around at the world, see all the misery and anguish that has become so everyday to so many people and feel immensely guilty for your own comfort. While we can praise sacrificing your own well-to-do life for the sake of altruism as a noble cause, It is certainly unreasonable to expect this of people as a given rule. At the end of the day, an individual can only do so much in this rigged game of an economic and political situation. Although the virtue of giving is a worthy one to carry near your heart, it is important to remember that the greatest act of rebellion one can display to the fascists and nazi’s is, in the face of the greatest adversity in recent times, to laugh, to smile, to love and to be loved. Let me leave you with a great quote from LGBTQ+ activist Dan Savage:
“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.”
Have an amazing summer and always keep dancing.
Yours truly,
Simone Sluijs
