A Blast From The Past

...of second semester last year.

Every now and then I like to get out old papers I have written and look at the comments teachers have left. It's just one of those weird things. We all have them. Anyway, second semester last year I took a philosophy class called Contemporary Moral Issues. We had to write a term paper on an aspect of society we thought was the most important and the biggest threat to humanity. We also had to offer a solution. I wrote on world hunger and poverty.

And now, some excerpts...

The question of morality is one that needs to be answered right off the bat. Why should we feel morally obligated to help people who are starving half way around the world; who cannot even help themselves? The answer is in the question. They cannot help themselves. They were unfortunate to be born into an impoverished society that is almost impossible to escape. Then the question arises, we did not put them there, why should it be our job to get them out?...They have a claim on us. People have a claim on people. The sheer fact that we are all human beings should be enough to confirm this, but unfortunately that is not the case.

We try and separate ourselves from the world, when in reality; we are all in this together and need to learn to take on the responsibility of solving this problem as one.

People tend to blind themselves to situations they do not want to admit exist, and because they exist, admit they are not doing anything to help, or worse, may even be contributing to them.

According to Onora O’Neill’s article, “Ending World Hunger,” “population growth would continue to increase and we would over populate the world if there was not world hunger” (241). Leaving people to starve to death is not a justifiable way of preventing over population, if it is indeed happening. We need to stop thinking about ourselves when half of the world is dying due to hunger. There is enough food in the world to feed every person, yet it is unevenly distributed and there is not a reasonable answer to the question why. A major factor in hunger is malnutrition, protein-energy malnutrition being the most fatal form. Out of the 850 million people that are malnourished throughout the world, children are the group of people most affected by it, every fourth child to be exact. Nearly five million children die each year due to malnutrition (worldhunger.org). Although there has been a seventy percent increase in population in the past thirty years, seventeen percent more calories per person are produced. This increase means there is enough food for every person to consume 2,720 calories every day (worldhunger.org). However, this is not the case. People in poverty are prevented from access to these resources because of cost or there is not land suitable for farming.

One-hundred-eighty-nine countries of the United Nations agreed to “spare no effort to free our fellow men, women, and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty,” in September 2000 (poverty.com). Their estimated cost for problems of extreme poverty to be “substantially eliminated” was $195 billion a year, according to poverty.com. To raise this much money would call for the help of governments around the world. At the Monterrey Conference in March 2002, affluent countries agreed to make “concrete efforts” toward ending world poverty. Twenty-two countries attended this conference and agreed to give 0.7 percent of their nation’s income to aid this cause. In September of that same year, the twenty-two countries met once again to re-affirm their pledge.

Five of these countries have already reached their goal, and all five have exceeded the suggested 0.7 percent. Sweden has contributed 1.03 percent of their national income, which is a mere one hundred and three cents for every one hundred dollars earned. Denmark is contributing 0.8 percent, which is eighty cents to every one hundred dollars. Eleven of the countries have scheduled a year to reach their 0.7 goal, some as early as 2010, and no later than 2015. These eleven countries still give a percentage of their national income to fight poverty, Ireland being the closest with 0.53 percent. Six countries, including the United States, have not set a date to reach the goal of giving 0.7 percent of their nation’s income to better the world. Right now, the United States is second to last, above Greece by 0.01 percent, giving only 0.17 percent of our national income to help fight poverty. Greece is scheduled to reach their goal in 2015 (poverty.com). U.S. taxpayers have spent nearly $425,000,000,000 to aid the war in Iraq (nationalpriorities.org), and we cannot seem to spare seventy cents for every one hundred dollars earned by our workers.

Solving world hunger and poverty will not even come close to a reality until we change our mentality as a society, speaking especially of Americans. We like to place ourselves above other countries and patrol the world, but only when it is in our own best interest.

People will ask why it is the right thing to do and this is how I will respond: We are all human beings, and that should be enough. We live off of one another, and because of this some benefit and some are left to suffer. It is not fair that those who are unfortunate to be left to die a slow death while we prosper.

We are always trying to improve, to develop as a society. We think progress means advancements in technology and material objects. To truly make progress – to better humanity – we need to take a step back and away and learn to find value in human life. That would be the greatest progress of all.

And then I wrote a poem to conclude...

If you were dying of starvation, ribs sticking out to the sky,
Would you not sit and wonder why?
What did you do to deserve this and why does anyone not care?
Do they not know that a whole world is in despair?
And then you would stop and think, if I was them and they were me,
Would I help them out of this misery?
I would like to think I would try, but if I were as affluent as they,
It would be hard and they would probably die.
For money and power corrupt us all,
And these unfortunate countries we leave to fall.
It would be nice if this was not our mentality,
But then, things would just be too easy.

...That paper was my first A I ever got in college. And the above was only a sample.