M13-Lehman, Pam
I thought that the “Drowning Child” analogy was a conflation of situations, and disingenuous. One situation is an imminent threat to mortality that was not caused by society and only the individual witnessing has the power to prevent the child’s loss of life. Starvation in entire societies is caused by a multitude of choices made by various Venn-diagram circles of humanity, and throwing your money at the problem 1) does not guarantee the prevention of death; and 2) does not even ensure that your money equals food in a child’s stomach. Many governments of poor countries are corrupt and will steal donations right out of the mouths of the poor; this is one reason why their countries are poor to begin with.
On the other hand, I quite enjoyed Noam Chompsky’s video on drugs, especially his quip about sugar – the evil peddling of this addictive substance is my topic in my writing class this semester.