OPPapers.com

Singer's Utopian Solution To World Poverty

Peter Singer’s provocative essay has aggravated a diversity of strong emotions in me, varying from shame to admiration, to anger and protest. In his writing he’s using some very dangerous techniques in order to attain his goal of getting readers to truly believe in his ideas, rethink their values and change their lifestyles. It is questionable though weather Singer is really successful at this difficult task.
At the beginning of the essay Peter brings up the story of Dora and the boy sold to organ peddlers. He points out that many people don’t want to notice the analogy of Dora’s situation and the situation where a person is making a choice to ignore the existing problem of poverty. “If the upshot of the American’s failure to donate the money is that one more kid dies on the streets of a Brazilian city, then it is in some sense just as bad as selling the kid to the organ peddlers.” I thought it was kind of inappropriate to compare letting a child be used as a donor and knowingly killing him, to failing to donate money that would make a child better off. Even though I believe that ignoring poverty is contributing to it, just as buying a prostitute for a night is a contribution to the thriving of prostitution, I could see how a lot of people would find this comparison offensive, and I was unhappy with the road that Singer chose.
The second story that Peter is developing into an argument is the story of Bob, his Bugatti and the choice he made to save his car and let the child be run over by a train. “We seem to lack a sound basis for drawing a clear moral line between Bob’s situation and that of any reader of this article with $200 to spare who does not donate it overseas. These readers seem to be acting at least as bad as Bob….”writes Singer. At this point I myself was offended and confused by the quotation because I do not believe that I would ever put all my money into a car and rather save that than...

Please login to view the full essay...