What you're going to get now today is, you might say, my basic spiel about global poverty and what are the obligations of the affluent in the face of global poverty. But, this is only the first lecture, as I said in this topic, so we're going to be able to go into things more deeply in some of the coming lectures. And we're going to have visitors who are going to help us with those topics. So there will be gaps in what I say today which will get filled in. For many years now, I've started talking about this topic by asking people to imagine a little story that goes like this. So, you're walking through a park, and this park has a shallow ornamental pond. You know that it's shallow because you've walked through it, and you've seen kids playing in it. Maybe it's the pond that, where is it, over there, outside the Robertson Hall or Woodrow Wilson Center, you see kids playing in it in summer. So you're walking over there when you see something splashing in the pond. And when you look more closely, you see that it's a small child who's fallen in. And even though that pond is very shallow, it's too deep for this child to stand up. So it looks like this kid is in danger of drowning. The first thing you'd probably do is to look around and say, who's looking after this child? There must be some parents or a babysitter somewhere. But, unusually, that area is completely free of anyone else. You don't see anyone else. You don't know what's happened, but there's nobody else there around. Though your next thought is, well I better jump into the water and pull that child out. But before you can do that, another less noble thought occurs to you. That is that you've put on your most expensive pair of shoes and maybe other clothing that is going to get ruined by wading into that water. Let's assume the pond is not quite as clean as the one over there by Robertson Hall usually is. Let's assume it's a rather muddy sort of pond. So, the kind of clothes you're wearing are not going to really do well getting immersed in this muddy water. You're going to have to replace your shoes at some significant expense. Maybe you're going to have to go back to where you live and change your clothes because you don't want to walk around in wet clothes all day, and you've got other things to do. It's generally going to be a nuisance, and it's going to cost you some money. So, given that, perhaps the thought occurs to you, I don't really have any responsibility for this child. This is not my child. And I didn't push the child in the pond. Or I wasn't even asked to look out for this child. I have no responsibility for this child and no causal connection with the child being in the pond. So since it's going to be inconvenient to me and it's going to cost me something to actually pull this child out of the pond, maybe I'll just forget about it and go on my way. So let me ask you a question. If you did do that, if you said this child is not my responsibility, there's some cost to me in pulling the child out. So I'm going to go on my way. Would you be doing something wrong? Put your hands up if you think you would be doing something wrong. Okay, I see a lot of hands going up. Put your hands up if you think you would not be doing something wrong. I don't see any hands. Occasionally I get somebody who is committed to being an individualist who will put their hand up. But I think the overwhelming view is, in our community anyway, when I've asked a variety of different audiences, sometimes students, sometimes audiences from, not connected with universities. The overwhelming verdict is what you just saw. People think you would be doing something wrong if you didn't pull this child out and rescue this child. Well, can we generalize from that in some way? Lot of people say, what this illustrates is something called the rule of easy rescue. If you can easily rescue someone at modest cost to yourself, you ought to do it. It's wrong not to do it. It's not just that it would be nice to do it. That's easy, and it's not just that it would be something good to do. But it's actually that it would be wrong not to do it, that you would have done something that goes below the minimum that we think is required for right conduct. Well, if that's so in this case, is there a parallel with other situations that we're in? And in particular, is there a parallel with the situation of the affluent, as compared to those in extreme poverty?
