Essays of an apostate

Okay, this entry was supposed to address the statement posed below, but I strayed a bit, but bear the question in mind when reading it anyway..

‘developed nations have an ethical responsibility to eliminate poverty in developing countries’

This is a very broad subject, filled with varying opinions, but this is mine and mine only. I don’t think the questions is so much that developed nations have a responsibility as it is the people in these developed nations that do, and my opinion is that the governments of developed nations don’t have an ethical responsibility. Developed nations and there governments are generally proponents of democracy and the free market, and for me, If these governments were to admit they did have a responsibility toward developing nations, it would be simple hypocrisy. The success of developed nations is that they are, they being both society and economy, built upon competition. And in this world, the success in this competition is reflected in the affluence of each countries people, and as a result of this affluence in people, there is an affluence in government. This, though, is where the ideologies and differences in the governing of developed nations comes in. Some are more socialist, while others rely on the free market principal. In more socialist governments, such as those in Europe, it could contested that as a result of this socialism, which is built upon helping to build and improve the lives of people within a nation, and consequently, you can argue that this provides enough basis to justify the statement. But another dilemma comes into play, and this is what the function of government is.

The function of government should be to improve there own nation, and as selfish as this sounds, thats all they should be. I resent that governments spend tax money on charity. Charity is not the responsibility of a government, a government is elected by the people to serve the people, and this means their only responsibility should be toward the people of that nation. Unless some sort of consensus is reached within a nation, votes and polls to judge public opinion on whether they want to help and donate money, then the government should work outside this framework. Encourage businesses and people to donate, but thats all it is, the responsibility of the people. That is the ultimate vice of the way in which our world functions. For someone to be rich or successful, someone needs to fail. As Newton once said, ‘every action has an opposite re-action,’ and that is the embodiment of the free market and democracy, and as much as I feel toward people who suffer from poverty, I agree with this principle. For me to feel happy, someone else must be unhappy. The money I use to buy something I want, as trivial as that something is, contributes to the poverty of another person who could better use the money.

This however, means stepping toward the left. Communism. Communism, in principal, has a wonderful outcome. But the question of communism is whether the end justifies the means, and the ‘means’ in this case, is human life. The same way Human life is sacrificed every day through poverty, Human life.. People, me and you, would have to give up our lives, our children’s and their children’s lives to reach the ultimate goal, a goal which might not necessarily become. Communism is viewed as horrible, disgusting and brutal, but further thought into this reveals one thing. Every communist government has only ever been in the transitional stage toward the utopia that communism ultimately is. The only way to have a system of equals is to eliminate the flaw that we all carry, selfishness. Everyone is inherently selfish, and that is why every communist government and country has failed. People in government will always be guilty of selfishness and the people themselves will always be selfish, whereas communism revolves around the hope that in time, through suppression (which is the only way to keep people in line when carrying out such a huge transition), humanity will reveal itself for what it really is, selfless.

Humanity isn’t selfless, nor will it ever be. Charity has little point because of this. If you want to give or perform charity, it is your choice, and should be a matter which concerns only yourself and the person receiving the charity. This selfishness that we all suffer from is the reason I believe in what I do. I justify not believing in God because religion is selfish, and this is the result of humanity and our interpretation of what are claimed to be ‘holy books.’ God is selfish, more so if you believe we were created in his image, and if God being selfish is the only way he can lay claim to being the purest form, but if God is selfish, what makes him any better than us?

Regardless, back to my point. This selfishness is one major factor that contributes to what makes us human. That isn’t to say, though, that people aren’t capable of selfless acts, or that human life can’t be dedicated toward the pursuit of selflessness. Humanity as a whole will never be capable of a selfless act, that is why we only evolve and never change. To bring the essay back to the statement, no person nor entity can have an ethical responsibility to anything as there is no such thing as a universal set of ethics. The Human race is a body, nations are body parts and functions, and we are each just minuscule cells in that patchwork. Just like a body has it’s own strength and weaknesses, so does Humanity, which is translated into affluence and poverty, selfishness and selflessness. Just like a body, Humanity can improve itself and build upon itself, but ultimately, just like a body, it will die.