The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty
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This is the right time to ask yourself: “What should I be doing to help?”For the first time in history, it is now within our reach to eradicate world poverty and the suffering it brings. Yet around the world, a billion people struggle to live each day on less than many of us pay for bottled water. And though the number of deaths attributable to poverty worldwide has fallen dramatically in the past half-century, nearly ten million children still die unnecessarily each year. The people of the developed world face a profound choice: If we are not to turn our backs on a fifth of the world’s population, we must become part of the solution. In The Life You Can Save, philosopher Peter Singer, named one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World” by Time magazine, uses ethical arguments, provocative thought experiments, illuminating examples, and case studies of charitable giving to show that our current response to world poverty is not only insufficient but ethically indefensible.Singer contends that we need to change our views of what is involved in living an ethical life. To help us play our part in bringing about that change, he offers a seven-point plan that mixes personal philanthropy (figuring how much to give and how best to give it), local activism (spreading the word in your community), and political awareness (contacting your representatives to ensure that your nation’s foreign aid is really directed to the world’s poorest people). In The Life You Can Save, Singer makes the irrefutable argument that giving will make a huge difference in the lives of others, without diminishing the quality of our own. This book is an urgent call to action and a hopeful primer on the power of compassion, when mixed with rigorous investigation and careful reasoning, to lift others out of despair. The Barnes & Noble Review Five hundred years ago, slavery was the most natural thing in the world. So was the torture of criminal suspects, convicts, and heretics. So was the virtual ownership -- and regular physical chastisement -- of women by their fathers or husbands. Most of us (I hope) now abhor these things, but anyone time-traveling back to that era who informed a slaveowner, torturer, or wife beater that his behavior was shameful would have been met with incomprehension, perhaps even indignation.
The Argument1 Saving a Child 32 Is It Wrong Not to Help? 133 Common Objections to Giving 23Human Nature4 Why Don't We Give More? 455 Creating a Culture of Giving 63The Facts About Aid6 How Much Does It Cost to Save a Life, and How Can You Tell Which Charities Do It Best? 817 Improving Aid 105A New Standard for Giving8 Your Child and the Children of Others 1299 Asking Too Much? 14010 A Realistic Approach 151Acknowledgments 174Notes 177Index 199
