One of the most popular schools of thought in global ethics today is a movement called Effective Altruism. Founded on the work of Princeton philosopher Peter Singer, it draws heavily on ideas developed in The Life You Can Save (2009) and The Most Good You Can Do (2015). Effective Altruism encourages us both to give more and give better. When it comes to charitable giving, there is no greater fan of “bang for the buck” than Singer.
There is much here that Shrewd Samaritans should like, most specifically to the twin principles of generosity and effectiveness. To the extent that Singer’s argument can be summed up as, “We should all give more and give more effectively,” I am attracted to Effective Altruism. It presents a coherent framework for weighing the “needs” of rich people relative to the much truer needs of the poor. It forces us to think through logical inconsistencies in our choices, and it leads many in the right direction with their giving.
Peter Singer
Yet I cannot fully embrace Effective Altruism. And I will try to explain why it is one of those ideas and movements where I believe it is important to chew the chicken while spitting out the bone.
There are three assumptions I can identify that Singer makes in developing Effective Altruism’s ethical framework:
1) Diminishing marginal utility of resources applies to each life in increasing pleasure and/or reducing pain;
2) The quality (and even value) of life depends on its relative experience of pleasure to pain;
3) Every life has equal value.
The first of these implies that a few hundred dollars may buy a frivolous luxury for a rich person, but yield the basic necessities of life to the impoverished child, increasing the child’s happiness significantly more for the same amount of money. The second and third of these imply that the only ethical response is for the rich person is to make this transfer to the child. And in the extreme version of Singer’s world, we should only stop giving when we ourselves become so increasingly desperate that our need for the next dollar becomes equal to that of the poorest person on earth.[1]
This is hard stuff, maybe even crazy stuff. Even Singer himself admits that he doesn’t go that far. (Instead, he claims to give about one-third of his income away to the most effective charities he can find on the web.)
But there are problems with Effective Altruism as a guiding philosophy. Like many others I am troubled with Singer’s assertion that the value of life is based on an ability to experience pleasure and pain, from which eventually flows his moral case for infanticide.[2] (One has to give Singer some credit for honestly following his train of reasoning to its logical conclusion even as the train tracks lead it over a cliff.)
But I would like to focus here on a different struggle I have with Singer’s framework: It appears to rule out the role of commitments. Since “all lives are equal,” Singer writes off our commitments to those close to us, our family and friends, to mere sentimentality, and he argues that our responsibility to those with whom we have ties should be no greater than to an anonymous person overseas.
Not only as a Christian do I feel like there is very little biblical or historical church support for this idea, I’m not certain that there is any widely accepted religious, moral, or ethical framework that in practice supports it. It is a significant jump from the idea that “all lives are equal” to concluding that every individual bears equal moral responsibility for the wellbeing of every other person on the planet. How many people, for example, would say that it would be morally correct for a parent (or anyone else responsible for a particular child) to divert the money necessary to buy their child’s food, medicine, or school supplies to a charity that works with more needy children elsewhere?
We do not share an equal moral responsibility between those with whom we have explicit and implicit commitments and those to whom we do not. This is in practice recognizable to everyone, but is codified into the moral norms, and often formal law, of essentially every human society.
In terms of our giving, the commitments we make are not bad things, they are good things. When we commit ourselves to the welfare of a group of people in our own community or, as many have done, to a community overseas with even greater need, this choice also means we prioritize the needs of this chosen group (or individual) over others.
Again, this is not to imply that the chosen group is inherently or objectively more valuable than other groups from the standpoint of the love and value of God for all people. It is rather delineating what we believe God intends to be specifically valuable to us. It clarifies and helps define our individual calling, recognizing the true finitude of our own humanness and domain of our primary concern. That we choose to extend ourselves more broadly and deeply in our care for others outside our normal sphere is a facet of spiritual growth. But this must always be balanced by a sense of calling, specific (rather than wildly general) commitments to others, and a humble recognition of our own human limits. Perhaps there is nobody less effective than the person who glibly proclaims that he or she “loves the whole world.”
As a philosophical framework to guide our actions in addressing global poverty, while Effective Altruism can often point us in some helpful directions with our monetary giving, I don’t believe that it is the rock on which we want to build our charitable house.
I want to offer an alternative to Effective Altruism that instead places human dignity and human flourishing at the forefront of our concern for the global poor. The roots of the Human Dignity framework lie in Catholic social teaching with even deeper roots in Judeo-Christian texts and ethical traditions. It is a framework that has been adopted either consciously or unconsciously by most faith-based global poverty organizations.[3] Echoes of the Human Dignity framework even appear in other world religions such as Islam[4] and Buddhism,[5] and a secular version of it underlies the United Nations’ development roadmap toward the year 2030.[6] A considerable amount of public funding supports faith-based organizations espousing the Human Dignity framework: World Vision and Catholic Relief Services are two of the largest recipients of funding from USAID.[7]
The Notre Dame Volume on Human Dignity
Some of the growing interest in the Human Dignity framework is driven by a concern that international development placing human dignity on the back burner can quickly become de-humanizing. Governments, donors, and NGOs can become too easily attached to a metric in which human dignity becomes subservient to a score sheet of economic and welfare outcomes. As my colleagues at Notre Dame, Paolo Carozza and Clemens Sedmak, write in their introduction to a new volume on human dignity, “Development work without sensitivity to human dignity is blind, and an understanding of human dignity without paying attention to human experiences and practices is empty.”[8]
So what exactly is human dignity? The Judeo-Christian belief is that human beings have intrinsic value as creatures that are in some way made in the image of God, or the Imago Dei, as portrayed in the first chapter of the book of Genesis.[9]
Good interventions recognize and affirm human dignity, redressing its violations. When we buy a meal for a hungry person, we recognize his dignity and communicate to him his intrinsic value. When we sponsor a fresh-water well in a remote village, we affirm the dignity of the villagers to drink without becoming sick. When we help the exploited child prostitute off the street, we redress violations to her dignity. As such, the work of recognizing, affirming, and redressing violations to human dignity is that of elevating human beings to their status as made in the Imago Dei. Recognition of human dignity is perhaps the most fundamental quality of a Shrewd Samaritan. It reflects a deep, penetrating insight into the value of every human being.
Related to human dignity is the concept of “human flourishing,” which concerns the status of human beings as made in the Imago Dei but emphasizes human outcomes. As human dignity is restored, people begin to flourish, developing unique gifts and talents. They begin to express their individual creativity in ways that benefit others, and in small but important ways, reflect the creativity and goodness of the Creator. Some of the fruit of human flourishing is exchanged in markets to the mutual benefit of all. As a result, helping the poor to participate in markets can facilitate important aspects of human flourishing.
The relationship between human dignity and human flourishing is somewhat analogous to the secular relationship between relief and development. Redressing violations of dignity is the rectifying of a negative; fostering human flourishing is the promotion of a positive.
Human flourishing is captured in the Hebrew word shalom, which conveys the idea of human beings living in wholeness, wisdom, prosperity, creativity, and tranquility. Living in shalom, people exist in a state of harmonious mutuality with neighbor, nature, and Creator.[10] Barriers to shalom and to human flourishing exclude the poor from social relationships, from having a voice in decisions that affect their welfare, from a fruitful and sustainable relationship with the earth and its resources, and from participation in the natural exchange within markets—or it forces them to participate in ways that violate their human dignity.
The Human Dignity framework does not contradict the principles of Effective Altruism. Rather, it subsumes them. Altruism and effectiveness are important to the Human Dignity framework. We cannot help those in need if we are not altruistic, and we are unhelpful if we are ineffective. Both are necessary but often insufficient for human flourishing.
But most human beings do not flourish living in destitution. This is why gains in areas such as health, education, and economic outcomes are extremely important goals. Yet they are intermediate goals, not ends in themselves. Obviously not: Hitler’s Germany had one of the most educated and technologically advanced populations in history, but no shalom.
A Human Dignity framework shapes not only the motivation and objectives of poverty work, but the nature of it as well. Not just our goals themselves but our interventions, our means, must acknowledge and affirm human dignity. Consider the difference between carelessly tossing a ten-dollar bill at a homeless person (a violation of human dignity) with handing him the money, stooping down to look him in the eye, and wishing him well (affirming his human dignity).
Moreover, the end goal of human flourishing is not purely definable in material terms. As Carozza and Clemens suggest, it is not best understood as an “outcome” like we might think of in terms of specific goals for graduation rates, eradicating a disease, or growth in GDP, although these may form important components to human flourishing. The tangible and material are important to global development within a Human Dignity framework; malnutrition, disease, and ignorance are violations of human dignity. But the spiritual, ethical, social, psychological, non-material, and intangible are central too.
As an example, consider the construction of an infrastructure project, say of a dam to control flooding and generate electricity, where the project would involve a mass relocation of a subgroup of people while perhaps benefiting the majority of citizens overall. A consequentialist framework would evaluate the dam project based on the outcome of a financial cost-benefit analysis. A Human Dignity framework would consider a positive result from a cost-benefit analysis as one condition for undertaking the dam project. It would also ask other questions: Does the uprooting and relocation of indigenous communities cause a violation to human dignity that exceeds the gains to human dignity that would accrue from building the dam? Is it possible in the process of relocation to find ways that minimize disruptions to relationships and community life? Such an approach aligns an assessment of costs and benefits more closely to human dignity and human flourishing rather strictly in terms of material gains and losses.
Another example is a decision we made recently in Guatemala with Mayan Partners, the NGO I help lead. We had developed a pattern of holding health clinics on visits, where doctors and nurses in our group would attend to hundreds of patients in a church or school classroom. Upon some reflection, we decided to switch to undertaking home visits to the sick, partly because they were sicker than those who could make it to the clinic, but also because it allowed us more time and care with each patient in a way that we felt was more consistent in affirming their dignity. With the clinic, it felt like we were running them through a mill. Efficiency is important, but it is not the paramount value. Our ultimate responsibility is not to efficiency, but to love people as we love ourselves.
A Human Dignity framework values empathy, mutuality, and accompaniment.[11] It avoids blanket interventions that may be ineffective outside context. Rather it listens, studies, and responds to the poor within the context of their articulated problems, needs, and aspirations. One specifically neglected characteristic of the Effective Altruism movement is the absence of mutuality. Singer’s narrative of the helpless drowning child and the hero-savior jumping in the lake summarize the approach well. The poor have nothing to offer the rich and must be saved by them. The role of the rich in contrast, is to act as human ATMs who funnel cash through NGOs to the poor. Here there is little emphasis on mutuality or partnership. The poor are assumed to have little to offer; they are the recipients, and the rich are the givers. Yet even secular research has demonstrated how a patronizing approach becomes disempowering.[12] Human Dignity seeks partnership, accompaniment, and mutuality, perhaps even at some sacrifice to material objectives.
The Human Dignity approach views giving as an integral part of human flourishing. In the counter-intuitive math of heaven, givers likewise receive, perhaps even more than they give.[13] The Christian belief is that, as we enter into relationship with the needy and the poor, in some mysterious way we actually commune with Christ himself: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for Me.”[14] In my experience, this phenomenon seems at times to transcend actual belief. Christ often seems to meet the giver in the act of giving, whether they know it or not, and is manifest in a kind of mysterious joy. Some of the richest and most rewarding aspects of people’s lives, whether they consider themselves secular or spiritual, often come from accompaniment of the needy and the poor through their adversity. If the secular view is really true, and the material is what ultimately matters, one wonders why this would be so.
The Christian view leaves little ambiguity regarding motivation to serve the poor: in serving them, we serve Him. While a more torturous process of reasoning is required to create a prescriptive link between atheism and altruism (Singer identifies as an atheist), serving the poor is an action congruent with Christian belief at the most fundamental level. The statistics connect the dots: Faith-based NGOs disproportionately populate the international development world. About 60 percent of US NGOs working in international development are faith-based, the vast majority of them Christian.[15] It also explains why many faith-based development efforts of organizations like Food for the Hungry, Hope Worldwide, Compassion International, and World Vision are difficult for governments and secular efforts to replicate. This is simply because so much of their labor is supplied by in-country volunteers from local churches. The cost of motivating paid employees to replicate care for children with the same energy of church-based volunteers, at a Compassion International tutoring center, for example, is prohibitively high.
Personally, even more than carrying out fruitful research projects (from which I genuinely derive great satisfaction), I receive something greater from visits with our partners and friends in western Guatemala. Moreover, many of us in Mayan Partners feel that we receive more than they do from the partnership, although the balance on their side is greater in purely material terms. Serving the poor, especially in a direct way, is not the “cost” it is identified as in the secular utilitarian framework. We find joy when we align our will with our Creator’s purpose for our lives—to put it in a California way, as we “surf His wave.” In giving, we begin to imitate our Creator, and as a result we find joy. Part of human development is to help create the capacity for the poor to give in new ways as well and to help them experience the Divine joy in giving.
[1] Because under diminishing returns to income, that the marginal utility of income diminishes as people become richer implies that it increases as people become poorer. Thus in Singer’s framework, to maximize aggregate utility, the rich should continue to give their resources away until the marginal utility of income to the poor falls and their own marginal utility of income increases until they become equal.
[2] See Mark Coffey, “Ten Reasons Why I Love/Hate Peter Singer,” Philosophy Now 59, 2007: 28–32.
[3] See for example, the perspective of the largest evangelical relief and development organization, World Vision, in Kari Costanza, “From Dependence to Dignity,” World Vision Magazine, August 2014. Other evangelical organizations commonly appeal to the Human Dignity framework such as Food for the Hungry (https://www.fh.org/about/), Compassion International (https://www.compassion.com/newsponsor/sponsoring-a-child.htm), and Mennonite Central Committee (https://mcc.org/stories/providing-pathway-dignity-tps-recipients).
[4] Mohammad Hashim Kamali, The Dignity of Man: An Islamic Perspective (CITY: Islamic Texts Society, 1999).
[5] “Buddhism and Human Dignity,” Soka Gakki International, accessed January 23, 2019, https://www.sgi.org/about-us/buddhist-concepts/buddhism-and-human-dignity.html
[6] See, “The Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet,” United Nations, December 2014, http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/reports/SG_Synthesis_Report_Road_to_Dignity_by_2030.pdf
[7] Eliza Villarino, “Top USAID NGO Partners: A Primer,” DEVEX, September 2, 2011, https://www.devex.com/news/top-usaid-ngo-partners-a-primer-75803
[8] Paolo Carozza and Clemens Sedmak, “Introduction: Human Dignity and the Practice of Human Development” in Human Dignity and Human Development (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2020).
[9] Some modern scholars emphasize God’s election of human beings to be created in his image, not based on our innate qualities but simply as those chosen by grace to bear the Imago Dei, much as Abraham and more fully the tribe of Israel were chosen to be vehicles for the redemption of a fallen world. See Joshua Moritz, “Chosen by God: Election, Evolution and Imago Dei,” BioLogos, June 27, 2012, https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/chosen-by-god-part-3-election-evolution-and-imago-dei.
[10] For more on the Hebrew concept of shalom see Al Tizon, “Cultivating Shalom In A Violent World,” Evangelicals for Social Action, 2015, https://www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/sanctity-of-life/life-and-peace2/. Also, Ron Sider, Completely Pro-Life (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1987). A biblical text that is often referenced for shalom is Leviticus 26:3–6: “If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove wild beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country.”
[11] Carozza and Sedmak, “Introduction: Human Dignity and the Practice of Human Development,” 8.
[12] Roland Bénabou and Jean Tirole, “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation,” Review of Economic Studies 70(1), 2003: 489–520.
[13] Paul, as he relays the words of Jesus: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts of the Apostles 20:25.
[14] From the parable of the sheep and the goats, Matthew 25:40.
[15] Dan Heist and Ram A. Cnaan, “Faith-Based International Development Work: A Review,” Religions 7(3), 2016. Hilary Benn, “Faith in Development,” Department for International Development (DFID) in Berkley Center for International Peace and World Affairs, Georgetown University, 7
Why I Cannot (Fully) Embrace Effective Altruism
One of the most popular schools of thought in global ethics today is a movement called Effective Altruism. Founded on the work of Princeton philosopher Peter Singer, it draws heavily on ideas developed in The Life You Can Save (2009) and The Most Good You Can Do (2015). Effective Altruism encourages us both to give more and give better. When it comes to charitable giving, there is no greater fan of “bang for the buck” than Singer.
There is much here that Shrewd Samaritans should like, most specifically to the twin principles of generosity and effectiveness. To the extent that Singer’s argument can be summed up as, “We should all give more and give more effectively,” I am attracted to Effective Altruism. It presents a coherent framework for weighing the “needs” of rich people relative to the much truer needs of the poor. It forces us to think through logical inconsistencies in our choices, and it leads many in the right direction with their giving.
Yet I cannot fully embrace Effective Altruism. And I will try to explain why it is one of those ideas and movements where I believe it is important to chew the chicken while spitting out the bone.
There are three assumptions I can identify that Singer makes in developing Effective Altruism’s ethical framework:
1) Diminishing marginal utility of resources applies to each life in increasing pleasure and/or reducing pain;
2) The quality (and even value) of life depends on its relative experience of pleasure to pain;
3) Every life has equal value.
The first of these implies that a few hundred dollars may buy a frivolous luxury for a rich person, but yield the basic necessities of life to the impoverished child, increasing the child’s happiness significantly more for the same amount of money. The second and third of these imply that the only ethical response is for the rich person is to make this transfer to the child. And in the extreme version of Singer’s world, we should only stop giving when we ourselves become so increasingly desperate that our need for the next dollar becomes equal to that of the poorest person on earth.[1]
This is hard stuff, maybe even crazy stuff. Even Singer himself admits that he doesn’t go that far. (Instead, he claims to give about one-third of his income away to the most effective charities he can find on the web.)
But there are problems with Effective Altruism as a guiding philosophy. Like many others I am troubled with Singer’s assertion that the value of life is based on an ability to experience pleasure and pain, from which eventually flows his moral case for infanticide.[2] (One has to give Singer some credit for honestly following his train of reasoning to its logical conclusion even as the train tracks lead it over a cliff.)
But I would like to focus here on a different struggle I have with Singer’s framework: It appears to rule out the role of commitments. Since “all lives are equal,” Singer writes off our commitments to those close to us, our family and friends, to mere sentimentality, and he argues that our responsibility to those with whom we have ties should be no greater than to an anonymous person overseas.
Not only as a Christian do I feel like there is very little biblical or historical church support for this idea, I’m not certain that there is any widely accepted religious, moral, or ethical framework that in practice supports it. It is a significant jump from the idea that “all lives are equal” to concluding that every individual bears equal moral responsibility for the wellbeing of every other person on the planet. How many people, for example, would say that it would be morally correct for a parent (or anyone else responsible for a particular child) to divert the money necessary to buy their child’s food, medicine, or school supplies to a charity that works with more needy children elsewhere?
We do not share an equal moral responsibility between those with whom we have explicit and implicit commitments and those to whom we do not. This is in practice recognizable to everyone, but is codified into the moral norms, and often formal law, of essentially every human society.
In terms of our giving, the commitments we make are not bad things, they are good things. When we commit ourselves to the welfare of a group of people in our own community or, as many have done, to a community overseas with even greater need, this choice also means we prioritize the needs of this chosen group (or individual) over others.
Again, this is not to imply that the chosen group is inherently or objectively more valuable than other groups from the standpoint of the love and value of God for all people. It is rather delineating what we believe God intends to be specifically valuable to us. It clarifies and helps define our individual calling, recognizing the true finitude of our own humanness and domain of our primary concern. That we choose to extend ourselves more broadly and deeply in our care for others outside our normal sphere is a facet of spiritual growth. But this must always be balanced by a sense of calling, specific (rather than wildly general) commitments to others, and a humble recognition of our own human limits. Perhaps there is nobody less effective than the person who glibly proclaims that he or she “loves the whole world.”
As a philosophical framework to guide our actions in addressing global poverty, while Effective Altruism can often point us in some helpful directions with our monetary giving, I don’t believe that it is the rock on which we want to build our charitable house.
I want to offer an alternative to Effective Altruism that instead places human dignity and human flourishing at the forefront of our concern for the global poor. The roots of the Human Dignity framework lie in Catholic social teaching with even deeper roots in Judeo-Christian texts and ethical traditions. It is a framework that has been adopted either consciously or unconsciously by most faith-based global poverty organizations.[3] Echoes of the Human Dignity framework even appear in other world religions such as Islam[4] and Buddhism,[5] and a secular version of it underlies the United Nations’ development roadmap toward the year 2030.[6] A considerable amount of public funding supports faith-based organizations espousing the Human Dignity framework: World Vision and Catholic Relief Services are two of the largest recipients of funding from USAID.[7]
Some of the growing interest in the Human Dignity framework is driven by a concern that international development placing human dignity on the back burner can quickly become de-humanizing. Governments, donors, and NGOs can become too easily attached to a metric in which human dignity becomes subservient to a score sheet of economic and welfare outcomes. As my colleagues at Notre Dame, Paolo Carozza and Clemens Sedmak, write in their introduction to a new volume on human dignity, “Development work without sensitivity to human dignity is blind, and an understanding of human dignity without paying attention to human experiences and practices is empty.”[8]
So what exactly is human dignity? The Judeo-Christian belief is that human beings have intrinsic value as creatures that are in some way made in the image of God, or the Imago Dei, as portrayed in the first chapter of the book of Genesis.[9]
Good interventions recognize and affirm human dignity, redressing its violations. When we buy a meal for a hungry person, we recognize his dignity and communicate to him his intrinsic value. When we sponsor a fresh-water well in a remote village, we affirm the dignity of the villagers to drink without becoming sick. When we help the exploited child prostitute off the street, we redress violations to her dignity. As such, the work of recognizing, affirming, and redressing violations to human dignity is that of elevating human beings to their status as made in the Imago Dei. Recognition of human dignity is perhaps the most fundamental quality of a Shrewd Samaritan. It reflects a deep, penetrating insight into the value of every human being.
Related to human dignity is the concept of “human flourishing,” which concerns the status of human beings as made in the Imago Dei but emphasizes human outcomes. As human dignity is restored, people begin to flourish, developing unique gifts and talents. They begin to express their individual creativity in ways that benefit others, and in small but important ways, reflect the creativity and goodness of the Creator. Some of the fruit of human flourishing is exchanged in markets to the mutual benefit of all. As a result, helping the poor to participate in markets can facilitate important aspects of human flourishing.
The relationship between human dignity and human flourishing is somewhat analogous to the secular relationship between relief and development. Redressing violations of dignity is the rectifying of a negative; fostering human flourishing is the promotion of a positive.
Human flourishing is captured in the Hebrew word shalom, which conveys the idea of human beings living in wholeness, wisdom, prosperity, creativity, and tranquility. Living in shalom, people exist in a state of harmonious mutuality with neighbor, nature, and Creator.[10] Barriers to shalom and to human flourishing exclude the poor from social relationships, from having a voice in decisions that affect their welfare, from a fruitful and sustainable relationship with the earth and its resources, and from participation in the natural exchange within markets—or it forces them to participate in ways that violate their human dignity.
The Human Dignity framework does not contradict the principles of Effective Altruism. Rather, it subsumes them. Altruism and effectiveness are important to the Human Dignity framework. We cannot help those in need if we are not altruistic, and we are unhelpful if we are ineffective. Both are necessary but often insufficient for human flourishing.
But most human beings do not flourish living in destitution. This is why gains in areas such as health, education, and economic outcomes are extremely important goals. Yet they are intermediate goals, not ends in themselves. Obviously not: Hitler’s Germany had one of the most educated and technologically advanced populations in history, but no shalom.
A Human Dignity framework shapes not only the motivation and objectives of poverty work, but the nature of it as well. Not just our goals themselves but our interventions, our means, must acknowledge and affirm human dignity. Consider the difference between carelessly tossing a ten-dollar bill at a homeless person (a violation of human dignity) with handing him the money, stooping down to look him in the eye, and wishing him well (affirming his human dignity).
Moreover, the end goal of human flourishing is not purely definable in material terms. As Carozza and Clemens suggest, it is not best understood as an “outcome” like we might think of in terms of specific goals for graduation rates, eradicating a disease, or growth in GDP, although these may form important components to human flourishing. The tangible and material are important to global development within a Human Dignity framework; malnutrition, disease, and ignorance are violations of human dignity. But the spiritual, ethical, social, psychological, non-material, and intangible are central too.
As an example, consider the construction of an infrastructure project, say of a dam to control flooding and generate electricity, where the project would involve a mass relocation of a subgroup of people while perhaps benefiting the majority of citizens overall. A consequentialist framework would evaluate the dam project based on the outcome of a financial cost-benefit analysis. A Human Dignity framework would consider a positive result from a cost-benefit analysis as one condition for undertaking the dam project. It would also ask other questions: Does the uprooting and relocation of indigenous communities cause a violation to human dignity that exceeds the gains to human dignity that would accrue from building the dam? Is it possible in the process of relocation to find ways that minimize disruptions to relationships and community life? Such an approach aligns an assessment of costs and benefits more closely to human dignity and human flourishing rather strictly in terms of material gains and losses.
Another example is a decision we made recently in Guatemala with Mayan Partners, the NGO I help lead. We had developed a pattern of holding health clinics on visits, where doctors and nurses in our group would attend to hundreds of patients in a church or school classroom. Upon some reflection, we decided to switch to undertaking home visits to the sick, partly because they were sicker than those who could make it to the clinic, but also because it allowed us more time and care with each patient in a way that we felt was more consistent in affirming their dignity. With the clinic, it felt like we were running them through a mill. Efficiency is important, but it is not the paramount value. Our ultimate responsibility is not to efficiency, but to love people as we love ourselves.
A Human Dignity framework values empathy, mutuality, and accompaniment.[11] It avoids blanket interventions that may be ineffective outside context. Rather it listens, studies, and responds to the poor within the context of their articulated problems, needs, and aspirations. One specifically neglected characteristic of the Effective Altruism movement is the absence of mutuality. Singer’s narrative of the helpless drowning child and the hero-savior jumping in the lake summarize the approach well. The poor have nothing to offer the rich and must be saved by them. The role of the rich in contrast, is to act as human ATMs who funnel cash through NGOs to the poor. Here there is little emphasis on mutuality or partnership. The poor are assumed to have little to offer; they are the recipients, and the rich are the givers. Yet even secular research has demonstrated how a patronizing approach becomes disempowering.[12] Human Dignity seeks partnership, accompaniment, and mutuality, perhaps even at some sacrifice to material objectives.
The Human Dignity approach views giving as an integral part of human flourishing. In the counter-intuitive math of heaven, givers likewise receive, perhaps even more than they give.[13] The Christian belief is that, as we enter into relationship with the needy and the poor, in some mysterious way we actually commune with Christ himself: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for Me.”[14] In my experience, this phenomenon seems at times to transcend actual belief. Christ often seems to meet the giver in the act of giving, whether they know it or not, and is manifest in a kind of mysterious joy. Some of the richest and most rewarding aspects of people’s lives, whether they consider themselves secular or spiritual, often come from accompaniment of the needy and the poor through their adversity. If the secular view is really true, and the material is what ultimately matters, one wonders why this would be so.
The Christian view leaves little ambiguity regarding motivation to serve the poor: in serving them, we serve Him. While a more torturous process of reasoning is required to create a prescriptive link between atheism and altruism (Singer identifies as an atheist), serving the poor is an action congruent with Christian belief at the most fundamental level. The statistics connect the dots: Faith-based NGOs disproportionately populate the international development world. About 60 percent of US NGOs working in international development are faith-based, the vast majority of them Christian.[15] It also explains why many faith-based development efforts of organizations like Food for the Hungry, Hope Worldwide, Compassion International, and World Vision are difficult for governments and secular efforts to replicate. This is simply because so much of their labor is supplied by in-country volunteers from local churches. The cost of motivating paid employees to replicate care for children with the same energy of church-based volunteers, at a Compassion International tutoring center, for example, is prohibitively high.
Personally, even more than carrying out fruitful research projects (from which I genuinely derive great satisfaction), I receive something greater from visits with our partners and friends in western Guatemala. Moreover, many of us in Mayan Partners feel that we receive more than they do from the partnership, although the balance on their side is greater in purely material terms. Serving the poor, especially in a direct way, is not the “cost” it is identified as in the secular utilitarian framework. We find joy when we align our will with our Creator’s purpose for our lives—to put it in a California way, as we “surf His wave.” In giving, we begin to imitate our Creator, and as a result we find joy. Part of human development is to help create the capacity for the poor to give in new ways as well and to help them experience the Divine joy in giving.
Note: This post is an updated version of “An Impact Framework for Shrewd Samaritans,” in Shrewd Samaritan: Faith, Economics, and the Road to Loving Our Global Neighbor (2019, W/HarperCollins Publishing). Follow AcrossTwoWorlds on Twitter @BruceWydick.
[1] Because under diminishing returns to income, that the marginal utility of income diminishes as people become richer implies that it increases as people become poorer. Thus in Singer’s framework, to maximize aggregate utility, the rich should continue to give their resources away until the marginal utility of income to the poor falls and their own marginal utility of income increases until they become equal.
[2] See Mark Coffey, “Ten Reasons Why I Love/Hate Peter Singer,” Philosophy Now 59, 2007: 28–32.
[3] See for example, the perspective of the largest evangelical relief and development organization, World Vision, in Kari Costanza, “From Dependence to Dignity,” World Vision Magazine, August 2014. Other evangelical organizations commonly appeal to the Human Dignity framework such as Food for the Hungry (https://www.fh.org/about/), Compassion International (https://www.compassion.com/newsponsor/sponsoring-a-child.htm), and Mennonite Central Committee (https://mcc.org/stories/providing-pathway-dignity-tps-recipients).
[4] Mohammad Hashim Kamali, The Dignity of Man: An Islamic Perspective (CITY: Islamic Texts Society, 1999).
[5] “Buddhism and Human Dignity,” Soka Gakki International, accessed January 23, 2019, https://www.sgi.org/about-us/buddhist-concepts/buddhism-and-human-dignity.html
[6] See, “The Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet,” United Nations, December 2014, http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/reports/SG_Synthesis_Report_Road_to_Dignity_by_2030.pdf
[7] Eliza Villarino, “Top USAID NGO Partners: A Primer,” DEVEX, September 2, 2011, https://www.devex.com/news/top-usaid-ngo-partners-a-primer-75803
[8] Paolo Carozza and Clemens Sedmak, “Introduction: Human Dignity and the Practice of Human Development” in Human Dignity and Human Development (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2020).
[9] Some modern scholars emphasize God’s election of human beings to be created in his image, not based on our innate qualities but simply as those chosen by grace to bear the Imago Dei, much as Abraham and more fully the tribe of Israel were chosen to be vehicles for the redemption of a fallen world. See Joshua Moritz, “Chosen by God: Election, Evolution and Imago Dei,” BioLogos, June 27, 2012, https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/chosen-by-god-part-3-election-evolution-and-imago-dei.
[10] For more on the Hebrew concept of shalom see Al Tizon, “Cultivating Shalom In A Violent World,” Evangelicals for Social Action, 2015, https://www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/sanctity-of-life/life-and-peace2/. Also, Ron Sider, Completely Pro-Life (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1987). A biblical text that is often referenced for shalom is Leviticus 26:3–6: “If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove wild beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country.”
[11] Carozza and Sedmak, “Introduction: Human Dignity and the Practice of Human Development,” 8.
[12] Roland Bénabou and Jean Tirole, “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation,” Review of Economic Studies 70(1), 2003: 489–520.
[13] Paul, as he relays the words of Jesus: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts of the Apostles 20:25.
[14] From the parable of the sheep and the goats, Matthew 25:40.
[15] Dan Heist and Ram A. Cnaan, “Faith-Based International Development Work: A Review,” Religions 7(3), 2016. Hilary Benn, “Faith in Development,” Department for International Development (DFID) in Berkley Center for International Peace and World Affairs, Georgetown University, 7