The Argument of the “Lifeboat Ethics”
Runbiao Wei
Dr.Miller
English 96
17th September 2014
The Argument of the “Lifeboat Ethics” In the text of “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor.” Garrett Hardin introduces the lifeboat ethics, which is in complete antithesis to the humanism of helping people in need. To state his point of view, the author makes the metaphor of a lifeboat and divides the world into rich nations and poor nations. The rich nations seems like people inside the lifeboat, while the poor ones are people outside the boat. And then lots of assumptions are made, to illustrate the harm and danger for rich nations to help those poor ones. At the beginning, Hardin introduces the metaphor of a lifeboat to describe the main argument of “The Case Against Helping the Poor.” He starts with a simple comparison between the proportions of rich nations and poor nations. The metaphor, a lifeboat full of rich people can help the readers visualize the first object in the scene, lifeboat. Every lifeboat has a limited capacity and resources which are only enough for a small number of people. But the surrounding swimmers, poor people, who want to get onto the lifeboat, are uncountable. However, it comes to me that the lifeboat ethics is so ridiculous since it is based on a completely wrong metaphor of rich nations and poor nations. It seems that in the metaphor rich nations are playing the role of King while poor nations become paupers that could contribute nothing but only wait for help. This metaphor is so unfair because it totally distorts the relationship and exaggerates the differences between rich nations and poor nations. As we know, in the modern society no single nation could survive without the premise of intercommunication and mutual benefit. Even for the wealthiest and strongest nation the United States, imports and foreign help are quite necessary. For example, as one of the biggest consumers of gasoline in the world, every year the United States needs to
Dr.Miller
English 96
17th September 2014
The Argument of the “Lifeboat Ethics” In the text of “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor.” Garrett Hardin introduces the lifeboat ethics, which is in complete antithesis to the humanism of helping people in need. To state his point of view, the author makes the metaphor of a lifeboat and divides the world into rich nations and poor nations. The rich nations seems like people inside the lifeboat, while the poor ones are people outside the boat. And then lots of assumptions are made, to illustrate the harm and danger for rich nations to help those poor ones. At the beginning, Hardin introduces the metaphor of a lifeboat to describe the main argument of “The Case Against Helping the Poor.” He starts with a simple comparison between the proportions of rich nations and poor nations. The metaphor, a lifeboat full of rich people can help the readers visualize the first object in the scene, lifeboat. Every lifeboat has a limited capacity and resources which are only enough for a small number of people. But the surrounding swimmers, poor people, who want to get onto the lifeboat, are uncountable. However, it comes to me that the lifeboat ethics is so ridiculous since it is based on a completely wrong metaphor of rich nations and poor nations. It seems that in the metaphor rich nations are playing the role of King while poor nations become paupers that could contribute nothing but only wait for help. This metaphor is so unfair because it totally distorts the relationship and exaggerates the differences between rich nations and poor nations. As we know, in the modern society no single nation could survive without the premise of intercommunication and mutual benefit. Even for the wealthiest and strongest nation the United States, imports and foreign help are quite necessary. For example, as one of the biggest consumers of gasoline in the world, every year the United States needs to