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The people who are actually better off because of how you live.
Names the people who are actually better off because of how you live.
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Worth your time on this question
Everything worth your time on the question: What is my contribution, honestly measured?
Five things on this subject: one TAIU exercise and four things to read. It opens with Famine, Affluence and Morality by Peter Singer. The strongest version of the demanding case. Two of these take opposing positions, and both are kept, because the disagreement is the useful part.
This page is for going further on your own. If you would rather work the question out with somebody asking, that is the conversation.
Who benefits from my life besides me: talk it throughREAD · ESSAY
Famine, Affluence and Morality
Peter Singer
The strongest version of the demanding case. Also the one most people have never actually read.
The argument that distance makes no moral difference: if you can prevent serious harm at modest cost, you should.
One view
Impartial obligation. Distance is morally irrelevant.
Another view
Special obligations. Partiality towards those close to you is not a failure of reasoning. Persons, Character and Morality
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READ · BOOK
Give and Take
Adam Grant
Best for contributing in a way you can sustain.
Grant's finding that givers occupy both the top and the bottom of most performance distributions is the practical heart of this. What separates them is not generosity but whether the giving is bounded. If you have ever concluded that you should do more while quietly running out of road, read this before you add anything.
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READ · BOOK
The Generative Society
Dan McAdams and Ed de St Aubin
Best for the impulse to be useful to people who come after you.
McAdams has spent a career on generativity, the concern for establishing and guiding the next generation. His work shows it is not confined to parents and not confined to later life, and that people who have it tend to tell a particular kind of story about themselves. Useful for locating contribution you already make and have never counted.
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READ · RESEARCH
Spending money on others promotes happiness
Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton
Best for knowing what kind of giving actually registers.
The effect depends far less on the amount than on whether the giving was chosen and whether you can see what it did. That is a useful design constraint. A small, specific, visible commitment does more for the person giving than a larger anonymous one, which is worth knowing before you set up something you will never think about again.
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