Informal Writing

 After finish watching the videos, Peter Singer caught my attention the most. He uses stories to illustrate his point. I remember in high school, I wrote a paper that is similar to Singer's idea. I actually did a research about his idea.
   In Peter Singer's video, he mentions that the story of a drowning child. The child's parents are missing, and you see that the child needs your help. Would you save her? If we choose to save her, it will cost us a new pair of shoes, but if we choose not to save the kid, she will die. Obviously, most people will choose to save the kid and forget about the pair of shoe, because we are human. We care for each other especially when it comes to taking someone’s life away. However, Peter Singer also brought up an interesting topic. He said that for the price of the pair of shoe, why don't we donate it to the poor people? It could also save a life of a child or even more. This question makes me think about what I would do, donate or not donate? I probably would not donate the money to the poor. The reason of why I choose to save the kid but not give out money to the poor, is because the drowning child is right in front of me, if I don't save her life, it is like I am killing the child myself, and for the rest of my life I will life with the feeling of regret and guilt. On the other hand, we can't really see the poor people; we do not know how poor they are. Or how much help they need. It is hard to care about something when you can't see it.  Plus, I wonder that how can we make sure that 100 percent of the money that I donate will go straight to the people in need? It's is like giving out money to the air. Just because the people in need are not right in front of me, I would not feel a sense of guild if I don't help them. Why do I have to care about them? If I don't help them, someone else will take care of them.
     Peter Singer said that "Ethic is about the basic choice we made in our life." However, to apply ethic in the real world might be quiet challenging. The things that you think its right, other people will not essissary think the same. Then how do we determine what is justice or what is not? Some people think that we can only have ethic standard if we believe in religion. Because God hands down a set of commands that we have to follow. And the commands he gave out is justice, or morally correct. However, tend to agree with Peter Singer's idea over the God hands out a set of rules idea. Peter Singer believes that ethic has to come from our self, but it is not what you think is right is right, ethic is what everyone think is right to do.  This is kind of like the Freedom topic that what we talked about in class, there is not a real answer to that.

I think ethic is within our culture, our culture effects who we are. But different culture has different ethic standard, however, they are all very similar. If everyone follows the ethic standard, it will make our world a better place.