A few days ago I gave money to a homeless veteran who was in a wheelchair, on the streets of my hometown. He had a card that proved he was a veteran. He said he wanted to stay in a homeless shelter in Nashville and needed some cash for that purpose. Maybe so. I gave him $7. Why? Because (1) it was my town; and (2) he was a veteran. I didn’t do a calculus about whether the $7 would have been better spent on somebody far away. I think we should try to do good locally as well. If you ignore the suffering people in your immediate vicinity because it’s more expensive and possibly more distressing to notice the suffering in your immediate vicinity, because perhaps you are implicated in it, then that’s a problem.
A few days ago I gave money to a homeless veteran who was in a wheelchair, on the streets of my hometown. He had a card that proved he was a veteran. He said he wanted to stay in a homeless shelter in Nashville and needed some cash for that purpose. Maybe so. I gave him $7. Why? Because (1) it was my town; and (2) he was a veteran. I didn’t do a calculus about whether the $7 would have been better spent on somebody far away. I think we should try to do good locally as well. If you ignore the suffering people in your immediate vicinity because it’s more expensive and possibly more distressing to notice the suffering in your immediate vicinity, because perhaps you are implicated in it, then that’s a problem.