While helping the poor, remember to be human
Steve Hays recently wrote a post analyzing Peter Singer’s (the infamous advocate for infanticide) arguments about poverty. To briefly sum it up: Singer argues on a strictly utilitarian principle that every dollar earned beyond what someone absolutely needs should be given to the poor. No doubt, even if we haven’t read Singer’s arguments, many readers of this blog will have heard this logic expressed by a well-intentioned person at some point in their travels.
Now, Steve already replied along some lines, focusing partly on biblical principles and partly on ones of common sense, that would problematise Singer’s argument. But I wanted to suggest another possible line of response.
Stuart Brown (M.D.) and Christopher Vaughan have written a book about the function of play in the life of human beings (with some mention of its presence in other species as well), arguing about how important it is for human flourishing. They even spend time showing that some business managers have recognized this fact of human nature and have incorporated it into their businesses in some way or another, to good benefit for productivity.
These facts about human nature, then, would seem to suggest another problem with Singer’s position. For, if as all business-people know, “time is money”, by Singer’s logic, we should never spend any time playing. Yet, Brown and Vaughan have shown that play is necessary and beneficial for psychological flourishing and for productivity. The unavoidable conclusion from their work is that, in some sense, human beings need to spend some of their resources on play, rather than only charity, to be the best people they can be. Thus, Singer’s logic will inadvertently, if obeyed, lead to people being less helpful for the poor than they would be if they behaved more like human beings, and less like machines for helping the poor.
And in case the true darkness of such a Singerian ethically pure world escapes anyone, consider what Brown and Vaughan say:
The ability to play is critical not only to being happy, but also to sustaining social relationships and being a creative, innovative person.
If that seems to be a big claim, consider what the world would be like without play. It’s not just an absence of games or sports. Life without play is a life without books, without movies, without art, music, jokes, dramatic stories. Imagine a world with no flirting, no day-dreaming, no comedy, no irony. Such a world would be a pretty grim place to live.
In terms of developmental psychology we don’t need to rehearse all the reasons why it is useful to know whether or not a child “plays well with others”.
Those who play well together eventually work well together. This has been most patently obvious, in my purely anecdotal observation, of every successfully paired off couple I have ever met. Singer wouldn’t suggest that people mate on the basis of who plays the least, would he? Well … he’s Peter Singer … so he may already have. 
Also, Neil Fiore wrote a book on procrastination which argues for the importance and necessity of “play time” for people to be optimally productive:
http://www.neilfiore.com/thenowhabit.shtml
So what you are saying is that my purchase of ukulele is ok? But now that I have two ukuleles, shouldn’t I be forced to give one away to the one who has no ukuleles?
He’s saying you can commission me to write a two-part invention for ukulele duet.
Few thoughts:
(1) Who says you need money to play? What we need is Sabbath, not money or material items. Generally, the world’s poor appear to know this better than the world’s wealthy.
(2) If contributing to the poor interferes with your ability to fully actualize yourself as a human being (or whatever) than maybe it is part of inhabiting the crucified God to accept this. If others are not permitted to be human beings (or are not even permitted to live), than maybe it is for us to enter into that so that we may create a space where more people may live more humanely. It strikes me as arrogant and selfish to prioritize one’s full realization of one’s human status (or whatever) over against the deeply dehumanizing situations in which others are forced to live. I remember watching a (really good) documentary called “Born Rich” and one European noble was talking about how his wealth enabled him to discover full human potential (he had the best education, was a polyglot, knew all the theorists, studied the arts and sciences, was well traveled, had lived as a sensualist and as an ascetic, and so on) and he basically believed that the poor would never attain the level of human enlightenment that his wealth had afforded him. I remember thinking it might help him be more truly enlightened if somebody boot-fucked his teeth down his throat…
(3) My Concertina is way cooler than P-Dub’s Ukulele… unless he converts it to a kazookeylele (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAg5KjnAhuU).
Word.
(1) misses my “time is money” point. I tried to reiterate this with the “human beings need to spend some of their resources on play” line, because time is a resource.
(2) This also misses the point that we are less productive when we have no or insufficient play. Less productivity means less money to share with the poor. God created humanity to have a common good, so that what is good for each individual is good for all; that’s the case here. If we take some time to play, we will ultimately be of better use to everyone.
I notice that even you like to read fiction [Edit: and consume tobacco and alcohol?]. So you must grant my point at some level.
Of course, there’s no need to take my comments to an absurd extreme. Obviously there comes a point where we should stop playing and help people. But there IS an extreme in the opposite direction.
Further, the original post I linked to mentioned ways in which Jesus violated Singer’s utilitarian logic; surely the life of the Crucified should help us to understand what “carrying the cross” means to some degree.
“I remember thinking it might help him be more truly enlightened if somebody boot-fucked his teeth down his throat…” You should learn to control your violence and class envy.
“Who says you need money to play? What we need is Sabbath, not money or material items. Generally, the world’s poor appear to know this better than the world’s wealthy.”
You really are quite reductionist. Your theology is impoverished. For humans as co-workers with the Creator participate with Him to make new things, including forms of recreation. Sure, we can have Sabbath rest, but also many forms of recreation require the outlay of capital. Even the example of the ukulele–it does not feed, cloth or shelter anyone, but it cost money which I could have otherwise given to the poor. But it has become a major source of enjoyment for me, along with my Taylor and my two recorders and my King trombone.
But Andrew has a good point about your cigarette smoking. If the street people that you insist are the true poor use their money to buy cigarettes and drugs to get a moment’s pleasure, how is it that you would deprive the wealthy of the enjoyment of their own money? Tell you what, I’ll end my gym membership the day that the street people in Toronto who receive our help stop spending their money on cigarettes, alcohol and crack (and other such wholesome products)–then I will give the money I save to the Yonge Street Mission.
Andrew,
I didn’t miss the time is money point, I just disagree with it (time isn’t money, from a Christian perspective) and that’s why I mentioned the importance of Sabbath. For liberated slaves (the Hebrews who came out of Egypt), time was never to be reduced to money and rest was encoded into the law.
Furthermore,”helping the poor” is not really a matter of productivity but is a matter of recognizing the common wealth given to us by God. We don’t need to be more productive to help the poor. We need to stop stealing from them, and stop hoarding that which does not properly belong to us. If this is done, there is more than enough for everybody.
Also, you (and perhaps P-Dub) may be happy to know that I have quit smoking. The unfortunate thing about that is that smoking is a really great way to make contact with street-involved people. For example, when I lived in the downtown eastside, I spent a fair bit of time trying to build relationships with the low-track sex workers in my neighborhood. However, because I am male and they are female, when I approached one of them, I was automatically taken for a john. However, if I was walking by with a cigarette visible, they would frequently stop me and ask me for a smoke. Thus (and this is quite significant), it would be them initiating contact with me. Then, in the time it took to get the smoke out, light it for them, and so on, they would feel me out to see if I wanted company, I would politely refuse, and then we would have a bit of a pleasant chat as a couple of neighbors. The more this went on, the more we got to know each other, and good things developed. I’ve never found something, apart from smoking, that works as well in this regard. Dang.
P-Dub,
No class envy. You should listen to the guy on the documentary. He talks as though only he (and a very select few of his uber-elite peers) are truly human (Nietszche’s “Supermen”) and all the other members of the species are only good for fucking (literally or figuratively) and serving his needs. As far as I can tell, it would be appropriate to call him a sociopath, but one whose wealth permits him to be a sociopath (there are actually some interesting studies out there that explore the connection between wealth and one’s ability to care for or empathize with others… not surprisingly, more of the former tends to result in less of the latter… but I’ll leave it to you to look those up).
xoxo.
I’m not sure how the Sabbath undermines my point that time is money; in fact, the very fact that God had to command the Hebrews to take Sabbath would suggest that they saw it that way: they were losing opportunity to make money. I think it’s fairly self-evident that that is correct: if you’re resting in any way, you’re not also not-resting and spending [!] that time earning money to give to the poor. [Edit: And frankly the purpose of the earning would be irrelevant. If you are resting, you are not working and earning money. This means time is potential money. I can't see any logical way to avoid that. The fact that Christians and Hebrews place more value (!) on rest than work in some situations does not disprove this, it only proves they considered rest something important enough to spend their resources on.]
I’m glad to hear about your smoking, but that doesn’t eliminate my first example of your fiction reading.
Also, regarding not needing to be more productive:
That’s perhaps true if you take all the relatively wealthy people in the world in a hypothetical class, but as you know all those people are not going to be sharing all their wealth tomorrow. So as it is, the few rich people who have any degree of compassion will, by Singer’s calculation, seem to have to give away every spare penny and make even more to make up for the lack of compassion among their rich neighbours. After all, given that there are enough poor people in the world who need money right now or else they will die, that they could take all your surplus wealth and there would still be dying poor people left over, and given that it’s highly likely many of our rich neighbours will not do their part, any amount of resources (time or otherwise) you spend on play takes away potential resources from people who need it else they die. Thus not doing all the extra work your body can handle (and more, perhaps, since we want to carry our cross?) is murder.
Dan O. I suggest you tone down your violent rhetoric. No matter how much of jerk that man may be, it is wrong for you to advocate violence against him and in such a public manner. If you ask, I’m sure would Andrew would be willing to remove your suggestion of violence against this person. You make a show of being lovey-dovey, with hugs and kisses, but rhetoric like this makes you appear ready to explode at any moment.
I think this is all a bit of a false dichotomy because both Singer and Hays appear to presume that helping the poor is a burdensome thing that would involve throwing money at them as opposed to say, participating together in life. Of course this is how we all live, inviting mostly people from our own economic or social background into our lives, but I guess my point is that it need not be so.
Moreover, I would be careful about valorizing play, since most of us have little trouble spending our money and our time on these kinds of pursuits (at least I don’t). On some level it’s akin to exhorting people to urinate regularly so as to avoid bursting their bladders – if left alone most people accomplish this anyway.
Dan, your first sentence makes little sense to me. Is there a negation missing or something?
As for valorizing play, it seems particularly necessary, since the New Pharisees insist that Christians spend on the poor every remaining penny above what they need to subsist, and this would practically invalidate every form of play that requires the outlay of funds that could otherwise be used to feed someone. So that means no golf, no bowling, no expensive musical instruments like a $200,000 Stradivarius or a $2000 Taylor, no $200 dollar shoes from the Running Room, no gym memberships, no therapeutic massages, no dinners at Alice Fazoolis or Moxies, no San Benedetto or Perrier, no business class tickets or even economy class trips to Hawaii or Grand Cayman or Florida.
Andrew’s suggestion is far more biblical, healthy, and holistic. Here is one biblical passage that should help (1 Tim 6.17; RSV):
As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches but on God who richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous, thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life which is life indeed.
If God furnished us richly with everything to enjoy, how is it then a sin to enjoy them? I.e., even Paul takes the time to valorize the enjoyment of the created world. In 1 Tim 4.1, he says that those who would forbid the enjoyment of the created world, extreme ascetics, are inspired by demons, and he counters with this line: “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” So this is my recommendation to Keith: pray and give thanks on the golf course.
Then there is the reminder of Paul that a worker is worthy of his hire and that one should not muzzle the ox that treads the grain (1 Tim 5.8). If the working rich earn the money, the Bible would support their right to derive enjoyment from the fruit of their labor.
This came true to us, after we had helped someone he sat at our table and said to us, “Why do you drink this?”, pointing to our San Benedetto. We said because we enjoy it and it does not make us fat. He responded, “It’s a waste of money!” This poor person had benefited from our largess yet had made himself a nuisance in our home, criticizing even our consumption of bottled water! Presumably, we should just drink tap water and give him the rest. Afterward, we affectionately referred to our San Benedetto, Perrier and San Pelegrino as “Waste-of-money”. Honey, could you please pass the waste-of-money?
In order to avoid our own resentment toward ungrateful and unworthy recipients of our charity, we found it necessary to stop depriving ourselves of certain benefits that our own money could afford us, for we had learned to live on little–asceticism had become our lifestyle while I was doing my graduate studies. This ability to enjoy our own money has set us free to live a more biblical balanced and holistic lifestyle. But of course, it opens us to attack from the New Pharisees, and so part of the reason that I started the Righteous Investor (http://righteousinvestor.wordpress.com/ ) was to counter their heresy.
I would second Peter’s defense of my defense (valorization?) of play.
Dan: As for your analogy with urination, the author of the book suggests some facts that might indicate otherwise (see the interview on page I linked to):
“I began thinking about the role of play in our lives while conducting a detailed study of homicidal males in Texas. What I discovered was severe play deprivation in the lives of these murderers. When I later studied highly creative and successful individuals, there was a stark contrast. Highly successful people have a rich play life. It is also established that play affects mental and physical health for both adults and children. A severely play deprived child demonstrates multiple dysfunctional symptoms– the evidence continues to accumulate that the learning of emotional control, social competency, personal resiliency and continuing curiosity plus other life benefits accrue largely through rich developmentally appropriate play experiences. Likewise, an adult who has “lost” what was a playful youth and doesn’t play will demonstrate social, emotional and cognitive narrowing, be less able to handle stress, and often experience a smoldering depression. From an evolutionary point of view, research suggests that play is a biological necessity.”
It’s a biological necessity like urination, but one which can be resisted for much longer, and to more destructive effects, because it is not as immediately painful as holding one’s bladder.
I once knew someone who told me that his doctor told him that he should pee more frequently.
One of the major tendencies in religion is asceticism–and this can sometimes result in extreme and unhealthy forms which would deny every kind of enjoyment. So I find it unsurprising, as Andrew has made clear, that it is often necessary to remind people to play. I’ve decided as a result of reading his last comment, to make sure that I play more (because I think that I pee with sufficient regularity).