Recently, I've encountered an ethical dilemma in my own life regarding one of the most indisputably positive events hosted by my high school: a canned food drive. The drive was a competition between classes to determine which class could collect the most canned food to donate to the local food pantry. The food collected would be graded on a point system, with cans under 5 oz being worth 1 point, canned vegetables and such being worth 2 points, and canned meats and such being worth 3 points. The winner would receive a victory breakfast and the food pantry would receive enough cans to be well-stocked for the holiday season. It was a very clever and important annual event.
With one day left to contribute cans, my class was neck and neck with another class for the first place position. We had one last night to gather cans and rally to beat the other class, so we all pitched in money and a few of us went on a shopping trip to try to get enough points to come out on top. However, after we arrived at the grocery store and crunched some numbers, we were surprised to find out what the highest point-to-dollar ratio item actually was: soda pop.
At 2 points per canned drink and only $10 per 24 cans, soda was undoubtedly the most valuable item in terms of points. This is where the ethical dilemma arose: would it be ethically wrong to spend all of our money on soda to maximize our points in the competition?
The major ethical obstacle we encountered was simple: although it may be valuable in terms of points, soda is among the least nutritionally valuable items we could possibly donate. Although it was listed as a valid item in the food drive competition, in reality soda was of limited value to any hungry person, and it seemed morally wrong to buy soda when the money could be spent buying more nutritionally-dense foods such as canned vegetables.
However, as a class we had already spent a huge amount buying other foods for the drive, including a variety of canned vegetables, meats, pastas, soups, and other nutritionally valuable items. In light of this, spending a fraction of the money on soda seemed much less egregious, and since nothing else came close to soda in terms of point value, we would be giving our class the best chance at winning if we maximized our soda purchase.
Plus, who were we to decide that the people that utilized the food pantries wouldn't be interested in soda over canned green beans? In donating to the food pantry we were indirectly deciding what these families should eat. Personally, I know that I enjoy having a soda every once and a while, and my quality of life would be decreased without such an indulgence. From this perspective, problems arise via the conscious decision to not donate any soda and therefore indirectly claim that families using the food pantry should not get to drink soda, even though we ourselves may choose to do so.
In the end, we decided to compromise. We ended up spending a small fraction of our money on soda (which still managed to buy a lot of cans) and spent a vast majority of the money on more nutritional food like canned vegetables. We didn't achieve as many points as we could have had we only purchased soda, but we still managed to get a lot of points and also contributed more nutritional value to our food donation.
Katy, I completely understand where you're coming from. With all the hullabaloo about the competition aspect of the canned food drive, I was immediately concerned that the true purpose of the fundraising event would be lost along the way. For example, if all the classes realized that the best "bang for their buck" was soda pop, I am sure the quality of life that you described would greatly diminish for the families who are receiving our aid. Additionally, it could be argued that by making this process a simple competition for classes or even guilt-tripping people into donating cans, contributions lose their sincerity. People are no longer thinking about who they are passing along their help to, the kind of impact they are having on other people's lives. But, it could also be argued that without these techniques and marketing strategies, people would not donate nearly as much, which would in turn reduce the amount of cans that reach the people who need them. Some sort of precarious balance needs to be struck, which reminds me a great deal of the subject of Matthew Bondy's blog: altruism. It would definitely be interesting to examine the interplay between selfishness and selflessness in our schools' infamous canned food drives.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting post, Katy. I agree that the canned food drive raised a lot of ethical questions about what our motives truly were. But like it or not, humans are selfish and competitive. Of course, it feels really amazing to help people, but is doing something beneficial to feel good about it later really just selfishness in disguise as well? I think we've already had this conversation in Academy during freshman or sophomore year so I won't go too much into it again. Either way, everything we do is in someway to benefit ourselves. In the end the consequence is good: people get food that they wouldn't have otherwise have gotten. Altruistically giving to the food drive wouldn't have had nearly the same result. Even if people had good intentions, they might forget or only donate a couple cans. Adding the competition suddenly causes people to care. Regardless of what food it is, there will always be more of it when there is a competition. Even if all they get is soda, that's still sugar that can fuel them that they may not otherwise have had. But does does the end always justify the means? In this instance, it probably does. Calculating how to win the game may be ethically questionable, but it doesn't cause any direct harm. But what if could kill 1 billion people right now to save half the world's population (human and non-human) from dying as a result of overpopulation? Do the ends justify the means here? I would argue that they don't because overpopulation is a long ways down the road and therefore difficult to predict. That means that you don't know for sure that overpopulation will happen, but you do know that a lot of people will die in the short term. Any other thoughts?
ReplyDeleteUpon re-reading my original comment, I realized how silly the scenario I set up sounded, so I will attempt to re-explain:
DeleteEvery scientist, computer model, etc. believes that catastrophic environmental collapse will sometime in the future and there's nothing we can do about it in the short term (just pretend that you can't control whether people are more environmentally-friendly, use birth-control, etc.). So do you kill many fewer people now (ends justify means) or let them die later (ends don't justify means).
I would argue that in this instance the means are so terrible, that they don't outweigh the ends. Furthermore, we can know the means because we are the ones taking action. We know definitively whether the means are good or bad. But, we don't necessarily know the ends. We know what the ends are likely to be, but not for sure. To me, even a miniscule risk that the the final consequence may not happen is enough to outweigh the terribleness of the means.
Hopefully, that helped clarify. Any thoughts?