HONOURS. :
''' '' SUFFERING -
PHILANTHROPY-
SURFINGS* '' '''
ON THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY IT IS TOUGH -very tough- to work and honour journalism - a field that stares right at the world's problems - and not, and never become cynical.
Effective altruists, global founder framers of !WOW!, try anyway.They know it's impossible to take the care you feel for one human and scale it up by a thousand, or a million, or a billion.
Rather than getting overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem, they focus on the differnce a single person can make. ''Some people would think that what we do is just a drop in the bucket,'' Ord says.
''But it doesn't really matter what size the bucket is. If what you can do in your life involves really saving hundreds of lives, or transforming the lives of hundreds or thousands of people, that's just as big no matter how many other people need help.''
ATLAS SCHOLARSHIP - SUPPORTS TALENTED HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS around the world to work on pressing problems. On The World Students Society the students must get to work on the world's most pressing problems.
William Macaskill got his Oxford professorship at the exceptionally young age of 28, and began actively cultivating more multifaceted life. [Global Founders : Rabo, Darakshan, Haleema, Hafza, Sahar, Zilli, Shahzaib, Ahsen, Salar, Mustafa, Ali, Hamza, Zaeem, Hussain? ]
Still, EA remains a Iodestar. ''It doesn't impact my feeling of happiness in the way that dancing might impact my feelings of happiness.,'' MacAskill says. ''But there's this deeper sense of satisfaction or even harmony with the world.''
He might still worry about how bad everything is, or how much worse it could get, but he is largely doing his best to find solutions. ''The mode of everything sucks' is not helpful. Maybe it's true, but the relevant question is, What can we do?''
MANY EAs echo that sentiment : that doing something, even when the right course of action is unclear, is better than giving in to fatalism, which is often where I find myself. It can be tough to work in journalism - a field that stares right at the world's problems - and not become cynical.
When things feel particularly bleak, I sometimes tell myself that even if I had the time and energy to make the world better, I'd probably fail.''
Not all issues are equally tractable, but MacAskill still cares about a range; when we met in Oxford, he expressed concern for the ongoing political crisis in Sri Lanka, though admitted he probably wouldn't tweet about it.
With countless problems worth addressing, he knows '' moral vertigo '' can feel inevitable. Suppose you're going to raise money for people dying of malaria, he says. Then what about all of the people dying of tuberculosis, because you're choosing to focus on malaria?
''We're in this horrific situation where you've got to make trade-offs about what you do,'' he says. The answer, he believes, is to be honest about it.
In philanthropy, big donors typically choose causes based on their personal passions - an ultra -subjectivist approach, MacAskill says, where everything is seemingly justifiable on the basis of doing some good. He doesn't think that's tenable.
''If you can save someone from drowning or 10 people from dying in a burning building, what should you do? He proposes. ''It is not a morally appropriate response to say, well, I'm particularly passionate about drowning and so I'm going to save the one person from drowning rather than the 10 people from burning. And that's exactly the situation we find ourselves in.''
A big part of MacAskill's work these days is trying to persuade very wealthy people to change how they give away money.
Like so many others in philanthropy, he both counts on the largess of billionaires and worries about the risks of dependence.
''Look at any moral movement in the past, you will find examples of the ideas being misused to justify actions that aren't in line with with the best thing,'' he says, positing that liberalism was used to justify colonial atrocities, and Marx and Engels' concern for the working class was exploited by Stalin.
That's partly why he thinks it's crucial that EA continues to have culture-setters who are serious about their moral obligations. MacAskill and Ord see it especially important to the ''Frontier Pledge'' they both took to donate not just a certain percentage of their earnings, but everything above a set sum.
MacAskill currently lives on Pound 26,000 [$31,000] a year, which is slightly above the median household income in the U.K., and then proceeds of his new book all go to the Effective Altruism Funds.
''It's legible demonstration that I'm in this because I really care, I'm not getting any financial benefit,'' he says. That kind of commitment helps signal the moral seriousness of the EA community, he hopes, and is also personally reassuring.
''I might worry, am I drifting in values? OK, no, if I'm still doing these things, I guess I must still be a good person.''
As MacAskill works to advocate for the generations to come, he tries to keep in mind how ideas play out over decades and centuries.
In What We Owe the Future, MacAskill argues that a flourishing future is not fantasy; it may not be likely, but it is possible.
''It's a future that, with enough patience and wisdom, our descendants could actually build - if we pave the way for them,'' he writes.
Alexander Berger, CO-CEO of Open Philanthropy sums up gloriously : ' You can have a lot of impact without becoming a radical ascetic.'
The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Philanthropy and Mankind, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Naina Bajekal / Oxford and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Oxford,
William MacAskill.
With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - the exclusive ownership of every student in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :
Good Night and God Bless
SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless
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