If someone organizes a charity to gather 50,000 USD to save a kid from a rare disease, I'm all for it. Even though that same amount could help or save a few people if invested more effectively. Screw effectiveness! A life is priceless!
I am not a fan of utilitarism at all. I don't care about arithmetically maximizing a well-being formula. These are human beings we're talking about.
But when the amount is as huge as 2 million USD... I start feeling like a threshold has been crossed. I feel like instead of saving a single kid, that money could save hundreds or thousands of lives, and I wonder why that kid is worth so many deaths.
It's like the trolley problem with 1 rare-disease-kid in one track, and hundreds of innocents in the other track. And everybody around me is choosing to save the child. And I can empathize with their choice, but it makes me feel uneasy.
Of course I don't oppose this specific charity. If saving my son's life costed 2 million, I would disregard these feelings and start campaining right away.
But from an outsider's perspective, I feel weird about it. And I have a hard time articulating why. Can someone help me understand what I'm feeling?
I'm very sorry for your loss.
I do agree with your view on the ineffectiveness of spending a lot of money on a dead person.
However... I think people find meaning from a wide range of things, and rituals around birth and death are two big ones since the origins of humankind itself. So in a sense, I can empathize with your family spending so much money. It seems to mean something to them.
Sacrificing material things in funerary rituals is as old as Ancient Egypt, and probably much older. The only new component in modern society is that now this sacrifice trans... (read more)