The Darfur Puppy vs. 21 Million Starving Africans
Posted on 10. May, 2007 by kchristieh in articles, international, my life, religion, things that bug me
Why are even caring, generous people more moved by the plight of one needy child than the despair of millions? Nicholas Kristof examines this question in today’s NYTimes column, “Save the Darfur Puppy.”
In one experiment, psychologists asked ordinary citizens to contribute $5 to alleviate hunger abroad. In one version, the money would go to a particular girl, Rokia, a 7-year-old in Mali; in another, to 21 million hungry Africans; in a third, to Rokia — but she was presented as a victim of a larger tapestry of global hunger.
Not surprisingly, people were less likely to give to anonymous millions than to Rokia. But they were also less willing to give in the third scenario, in which Rokia’s suffering was presented as part of a broader pattern.
This isn’t surprising to me. I admit that I’m more likely to respond to a personal funding request than to a global one. Clearly, I’m not alone:
“Our capacity to feel is limited,†Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon writes in a new journal article, “Psychic Numbing and Genocide,†which discusses these experiments. Professor Slovic argues that we cannot depend on the innate morality even of good people. Instead, he believes, we need to develop legal or political mechanisms to force our hands to confront genocide.
It’s wrong, but when I know who’s receiving my aid, perhaps I’m more trusting that my money will definitely make a difference. I know it’s irrational, and it bugs me. A corrollary would be when I buy a new skirt or something else I don’t really “need,” even though that money could make a much bigger difference in someone else’s life. Kristof continues,
Even the right animal evokes a similar sympathy. A dog stranded on a ship aroused so much pity that $48,000 in private money was spent trying to rescue it — and that was before the Coast Guard stepped in. And after I began visiting Darfur in 2004, I was flummoxed by the public’s passion to save a red-tailed hawk, Pale Male, that had been evicted from his nest on Fifth Avenue in New York City. A single homeless hawk aroused more indignation than two million homeless Sudanese.
Several years ago the beloved crossing guard at my kids’ elementary school lost his adult son. Thousands of dollars poured in to help him pay for funeral expenses, even though he never said he needed financial help. Yet, when high school kids try to get people motivated to donate money to help kids in Uganda, very little is raised. Kristof says that perhaps the best way to get President Bush to pay the proper attention to Darfur would be to represent its problems with a sad little puppy.
So maybe what we need isn’t better laws but more troubled consciences — pricked, perhaps, by a Darfur puppy with big eyes and floppy ears. Once we find such a soulful dog in peril, we should call ABC News. ABC’s news judgment can be assessed by the 11 minutes of evening news coverage it gave to Darfur’s genocide during all of last year — compared with 23 minutes for the false confession in the JonBenet Ramsey case.
If President Bush and the global public alike are unmoved by the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of fellow humans, maybe our last, best hope is that we can be galvanized by a puppy in distress.
He’s probably right. And I’m probably no better than anyone else in this regard. I think we all need to work on putting our compassion into action.
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