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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35461 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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I don't think the Christian response necessarily demands helping people in front of you more than distant people.

But this entire scenario is "there are so many beggars in front of you that you can't hlp them all without seriously harming yourself; what do you do?" To which the answer is "you really should be seriously harming yourself, but if you can't, help as many of the beggars as you can.".

I think this implies having to help people in front of you. The answer certainly wasn't "you have to help as many people as you can, but you might end up giving no help to these particular beggars at all since the world is so big"

Not exactly. The true authentic Christian response would be to help all the people at any cost to yourself, in which case physical proximity is not really relevant. The pragmatic response to having a selfish human brain is to help people when you can convince yourself to do so, which will tend to be when there is a high help to cost ratio, or when the direct feedback is strong enough that it actually feels meaningful. People near you are more physically accessible, and more psychologically responsive, so will be easier to directly help than people far away, so physical proximity is relevant.

But physical proximity can change. If someone lives in LA and, rather than stay and dedicate their life to helping the beggars who live there, decides to become a missionary in African and help poor people there, then they are in some sense choosing not to help the LA beggars. Or at least, choosing not to help them as much as they otherwise could.

So yeah, you do have to help the people in front of you. But you do not have to prioritize them to the exclusion of people far away from you, and you do not have to refuse to move to a different location which will change who's in front of you. It's okay to send money to a distant charity even if that diminishes the amount of money you have for people nearby. But part of the helping people you do should probably be non-monetary, in which case it almost has to be for people near you.

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