“Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies

are not starving someplace, they are starving

somewhere else.”

– Jack Gilbert, A Brief for the Defense

My son says I am not allowed to read the news anymore. It makes me depressed.

Perhaps that is understandable. There seems to be no shortage of bad news.

As these lines from Jack Gilbert’s ‘A brief for the Defense’ point out, there will always be suffering in the world. How are we to make sense of that? How do we balance caring about others and finding joy in life when there is so much suffering in the news?

Peter Singer has a thought experiment to deal with global suffering.  First, imagine that you walk past a shallow pond and see a child drowning. If you save the child, you will damage your suit and your expensive shoes.  Everyone, however, agrees that it would be heartless to make this calculation when someone’s life is at risk.  Of course you are going to save the child. You have a moral duty, and besides – it is simply the human thing to do.

But now Singer complicates matters.  What if, he says, that child is halfway around the world, in another country?  He or she may not be drowning but may be dying of malnutrition.  You can, however, save that child by contributing to a charity that works in that field.  Therefore, your responsibility is not to buy the expensive clothes (or cars or phones), but rather to spend your money saving whomever you can, no matter where they are in the world.

I find this an overly heavy moral burden.  Surely, I can’t be expected to save all lives, to worry about all lives and all injustice?  Surely that is more than everyday morality requires?  And more importantly, can I really live a good (and happy) life by doing so? Instead of being happy about the lives that I have saved, I would keep beating myself up about the ones I could do nothing about.

The other extreme is that we simply do not care. We lock ourselves off from the suffering of others.  We move through life with lightness and without care, unattached to the suffering around us. Is that living a good (and happy) life?

While not really dealing with ubiquitous human suffering, Milan Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ explores the lack of meaning that goes along with not having attachment and care.  As the title suggests, he finds it unbearable.  One of my favourite lines from any song is ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” by Kris Kristofferson.  If we live lives that are uncaring about the well-being of others, simply floating through the world without moral concern and connection, it ends up a vacuous existence.

The answer has to be somewhere in the middle.

Some might argue for the ethics of proximity.  I care about those closest to me:  my family, my friends, my workplace, my community.  The child that I see drowning in the pond.  I care because I am there and I can make a difference.  I contribute to my family and my community.  I belong.

Stephen Covey wrote in his famous book ‘The 7 habits of highly effective people’ that we should balance our circle of concern and our circle of influence. My circle of concern is what I care about, and my circle of influence is what I have control over.  If I care about things that I have no control over, it creates stress and I can become despondent. It is therefore not the wise thing to do (as my son points out).

I do, however, feel that not caring about anything that is outside our immediate sphere of influence is also not where we should draw the line.

One problem with merely focusing on proximity is that those outside of our group lose moral status. They become the other. This can be people from a different class, a different tribe, a different race, a different religion, a different province, or a different country.

Is it OK for the president of one country to benefit his own people at the expense of another country? Some might say it’s his duty.  But if that is the case, then it is no morality at all. We are simply living in an ethic of power.  He who is the strongest takes what he can, and the others can’t do anything about it. We are now not arguing about whether we should save the lives of children halfway around the world, but whether we should be actively doing them harm simply to benefit our own people. Surely we’ve lost the moral plot.

Another failure of the proximity argument is that we can’t balance things simply by proximity.  For example, is it then right for the president of a country to do what is best for his own family before doing what is best for the country? To benefit his family from state contracts at the expense of his country? As South Africa’s experience has taught us, clearly not.

And if I only look at things that are within my sphere of influence, do I stop caring about the world at large?  For example, I can influence my family and my community, but what about my country? Can I really do something about the state of corruption in South Africa? What about the world as a whole? Can I do anything that will influence climate change?

Individually, we can do nothing about these things, but collectively we can. And there is power in our collective beliefs. If we simply draw the line of moral concern at the end of what we can directly influence, it would make us callous about whatever happens outside of that. We need to think about the world that others live in, because invariably it is also the world that we will live in.  Or as the Manic Street Preachers said, “If you tolerate this your children will be next”.

So how do we find a happy balance?

Yes, there is sorrow everywhere, but we must continue trying to live happy and meaningful lives. And yes, we must care about those close to us, but must not forget those who are far away. We have a right to be happy, but also a responsibility not to do harm. And always, if we collectively aim for a better world, it might be attained. If we selfishly think only of ourselves, it won’t.

As Jack Gilbert points out in the opening poem:

“If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,

we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

… We must have the stubbornness

to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world.”

Or as TS Eliot said it:

“Teach us to care and not to care.”

 As with everything ethics, it is usually about finding the middle way.

About the author: Kris Dobie is Executive: Organisational Ethics at The Ethics Institute (TEI). He has worked in organisational ethics since 2004, with a particular interest in corruption prevention, and has contributed to significant South African government ethics and anti-corruption policy initiatives. He holds an MPhil in Workplace Ethics (Cum Laude) from the University of Pretoria.