By Anne RinaudoThursday 23 Aug 2018Open House InterviewsNewsReading Time: 5 minutes
Listen: Xavier Symons in conversation with Stephen O’Doherty.
As urban Australians rally to the aid of their drought stricken rural cousins, some are decrying spending on government foreign aid or focus on the needy outside Australia. Is there a hierarchy of care or a moral responsibility to look after ‘our own first’? Does spending overseas even affect the help we give our farmers?
While we as Christians, are called to care for our neighbour, is one neighbour more deserving than another? Should we help at home first? Indeed, is there a limit to compassion?
What does philosophy say?
For some guidance on moral philosophy and ethics Open House turned to Xavier Symons, a research associate at the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame. He is also a graduate student at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. Xavier Symons takes Open House on a tour of how we evaluate our responsibility to the rest of humanity.
Thai Cave Rescue
Xavier Symons says we say a similar thing to the farmers here verses spending on overseas need a few months ago with the remarkable events when the Thai soccer team were rescued from certain death in a flooded cave.
“The whole world watched the daring rescue of the Wild Boars soccer team in remote northern Thailand. More than 1000 people were involved in the rescue operation, including volunteers and technical assistance from more than a dozen countries. While the operation itself was remarkable, the amount of international media attention the rescue mission received was even more astonishing. ” says Xavier Symons.
Trapped Chilean miners
“What is it about these sorts of events that captures our collective imagination? To provide some sort of context, readers might compare this rescue mission to the 2010 Copiapo mining accident in northern Chile, in which 33 miners were trapped at the bottom of a collapsed mine shaft for 69 days. Close to a billion viewers watched as the miners were eventually winched to safety in an operation costing tens of millions of dollars and involving a specially built rescue-capsule designed with help from NASA.”
The Chilean mine incident included the use of a purpose built rescue capsule. Photo credits: Wikipedia CC BY 2.0
The “Identified victim effect”
“The Tham Luang and Copiapo rescue missions draw our attention to a well-documented psychological phenomenon known as the “identified victim effect” – the psychological propensity of human beings to expend more time and resources helping persons who have been identified as being at great risk of harm, as opposed to those who are in a similar situation though remain to some extent “unidentified”.” he says.
Symons explained on Open House that “Psychologists, sociologists and ethicists have written at length about how our capacity for empathy can, when engaged, lead us to act in ways that are (for better or worse) at odds with a rational and impartial approach to social life.”
Less attention for ongoing crisis
“Thus, significantly more attention is given to events such as the Tham Luang rescue than other ongoing, larger scale humanitarian problems. We might contrast the drama of the Thai cave rescue with, say, the countless unidentified Rohingya victims displaced from neighbouring Myanmar due to violence and ethnic cleansing. While the problem of Rohingyas living in terrible conditions in poorly resourced refugee camps in Bangladesh is an issue of far greater scale and comparable seriousness to the Thai cave rescue, internationally attention was, at the time, focused squarely on the rescue of the boys from the cave.” says Xavier Symons
Children on Nauru ignored
During the rescue of the Thai soccer team various people also contrasted our focus on the drama of the Thai mission with our comparative lack of concern for the 200 or so children held in detention on Nauru and throughout the Australian mainland. One commentator described our apparent lack of concern for those children (who indeed are enduring terrible conditions) as a “failing of our moral cognition.”
Supporting Australian farmers
A similar thing seems to be happening with people on social media decrying Australia’s Foreign Aid spending (which is a small fraction of the Federal Budget and falling) and claiming we should be supporting farmers here in Australia rather than sending money overseas.
That is a very simplistic notion and logically one does not preclude the other. However, it does perhaps betray a particular way of thinking that is rather racist or at least makes non-Australians simply ‘others’ that need not concern us. As Open House has reported before most Australians support the government’s Foreign Aid Program and believe we should give more.
Drought in Australia. Photo Credits_ CSIRO Atmospheric Research CC BY 3.0
Empathy an “evolutionary mistake”
Xavier Symons told Open house that the concern about a “failure of moral cognition” echoes the sentiments of Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom, who in a 2016 best-selling book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, described empathy as a “poor moral guide”.
“While I am all for addressing issues of greater humanitarian concern, I am sceptical of the attempt of a growing chorus of academics – including Bloom and Australian philosopher Peter Singer – to label empathy a dangerous mistake of evolution.” says Xavier Symons.
Commonsense morality
“The implication seems to be that the international community is wrong to show concern for these trapped Thai children. I disagree. Here are a few reasons why.” he continued.
“First, this rescue involved children who are at immediate risk of death. The idea that our visceral “rule of rescue” response is misguided seems totally out of touch with common sense morality.
Embrace international solidarity
“Second, this is an exercise in solidarity. The Thai community have developed a close bond of solidarity with the soccer team (the country’s king even intervened, urging a speedy rescue); it is also an exercise in international solidarity, something that is tragically so rare that we should embrace it.” Symons says.
A product of raw humanity
“Third, this incident is not mired in political controversy (as is the case with issues involving immigration policy). The empathy is without a doubt the product of our raw humanity, unalloyed by ideology. And finally, our commitments are not mutually exclusive – international interest in the Thai situation need not be to the exclusion of ongoing humanitarian support for refugees.”
Empathy fundamental to humanity
“While it is true that we should balance our emotive responses with rational reflection, this does not require that we pathologise empathetic humanitarian sentiment. The rescue of the Wild Boars soccer team is rare good news that to some extent has helped unite an increasingly divided global community. Empathy has been the catalyst for this; and it’s one indication of why we shouldn’t pathologise this fundamental feature of our humanity.” concluded Symons.
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