DeShaun Lew

Dr. Palmer-Fernandez
PHIL 2610
29 September 2014
Emotional Poverty
Upon asking individuals whether or not they have any obligations to help the less
fortunate abroad, they will generally be able to give a definite yes or no depending their personal
political, economical and cultural identities. Some, such as Peter Singer, feel that we have a very
strong obligation to help. Garrett Hardin, on the other hand, argues that helping the poor will
only lead to more suffering in the long run. The poor that are mentioned are those who suffer
due to a lack of resources which then causes them harm. Those with the purchasing power of
$2.00 USD per day live in moderate poverty. Even worse off are those in extreme poverty, i.e.,
those with less than $1.25 per day. These numbers help to draw definitive lines as to who are the
individuals with the strongest need. However, these numbers are also no interest to me here as I
will explore something I can only describe as emotional poverty.
Growing up, I had a very tight knit family. We were all extremely close and everyone
looked out for each other. My mother was my best friend and I could not imagine a day going by
without having that relationship that so many people lacked in their upbringing. That was,
however, until I lost all of that. I should also note here that this is not intended to be a work to
evoke a sense of pity. I am simply here to explore the overall concept and am using a specific
example as my evidence. Within a period of three years, my grandmother, my aunt, and my uncle
had all passed away from a hidden painkiller addiction, a fire caused by passing out with a
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cigarette in bed and general lack of health, respectively. That time was a very difficult one for all
of us. One person, however, took it the worst. That is when I lost any relationship I had with my
mother.
Having felt abandoned by the people she was the closest with, she started down a road of
self-destruction. This woman began abusing drugs, became homeless and took up the worlds
oldest profession as a means to support her habit. If I were to ask a random person on the street
whether or not I had any obligations to help my mother, even if I explained these circumstances,
I am confident that they would answer with some form of these actions are those of the drugs.
They arent really hers or your mother is just very ill. I heard these very often whenever I felt
the need to ask why mommy cared more about getting high than coming to see me perform on
stage with the lead role or in a competition in which I demonstrated playing ability on no fewer
than five instruments. Addiction is a sickness. That is something that can be agreed upon.
However, once I walk in on her getting high in my little sisters bedroom, have her telling me
stories of overdosing and having to be resuscitated or have her tell me to my face that she has to
go get high because she is starting to get sick when I was only sixteen years old is something that
pushes one to the conclusion that there is only so much that I am obligated to do for someone
like that.
Singer says that we ought to give as much as we can without self-inflicting suffering. If I
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were to provide emotional aid to my mother by allowing communication to continue and she, in
return, made an effort to get clean, this would be an instance that I would agree with saying that
there is, in fact, an emotional obligation to her. However, if she just continually lies and
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Peter Singer, Famine, Afuence, and Morality (Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1972), 10
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manipulates me into helping her and I have to watch my little sister in pain because of my
mothers actions, it begins to wear me down as well. There comes a point that putting myself into
the situation of suffering emotionally, academically, and in turn, in my health, becomes nearly
impossible. How are we to help people who arent even striving to help themselves? After years
of battling with this dark whirlwind going on in my life, I decided to say that enough was
enough.
Garrett Hardin argues that we (meaning those from the one-third of the world that are
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wealthy) are afloat amid a sea of morality. There are those suffering in the water all around us
but helping them would in reality cause harm all around. Those who do not want to be helped or
who are carried through their problems by everyone and never have to be alone or cut off from
those they love the most, especially after having consistently shown a lack of effort, are
emotionally poor. They are those who are in the water and there is a point when we in the
lifeboat have to stop allowing them to stop allowing them to come aboard lest they cause it to
capsize putting the rest of us in danger.
Some may not agree with this feeling that it is harsh or that it is only going to cause them
to get worse. I used to feel this way myself. I thought about how terrible it felt to be abandoned
by, as I said above, not only my mother but my best friend. It took a lot of unreturned phone calls
and empty promises to get to a point that I could understand this very concept that I have been
explaining. I consider myself to be a person with a substantial amount of happiness. Though I
dont say much to people in person or show it just by my appearance, I can say that I appreciate
life and the things it has to offer. I am emotionally wealthy. My mother, on the other hand, has
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Garrett Hardin, Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor, (Psychology Today,
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1974) 16
become not only lacking in emotional wealth, but it is virtually non-existent at this point. I was
essentially delivering her something that made her still feel connected and therefore, she could
pretend that nothing was wrong. However, by providing this aid, I was damaging myself. This
emotional debt that I was in, as I mentioned, was taking everything out of me and severing those
ties was probably the best thing I have ever done. Taking back the happiness that I had been
delivering to her as though it were an IV had allowed me to focus on myself. I have been able to
move forward in my musical, linguistic, and academic endeavors and essentially discover what
kind of person I really am when not constantly bombarded by the emotional barrage that I and
been enduring prior. My sister has recently submitted herself to this same way of thinking and is
also increasing her repertoire of skills including starting her own small business as a freelance
makeup artist. My mother, despite having been in and out of rehabilitation programs lasting up to
one year, still chooses to return to her ways.
What I describe as emotional poverty is an issue that is very easy to ignore of to even
encourage because it often deals more with conscious decisions rather than the placement in
negative situations. People who lack emotional wealth, or those who parasitically feed on the
resources of another due to the poor choices that they have made. They control and manipulate
the people around them according to their own agenda and have little consideration towards the
effects of their actions on the people around them. Unlike a drowning child in front of our face
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who we ought to make the decision to save without a second thought, the right thing to do for
those with these problems who refuse to address them is to simply remove them from the picture.
Once helping becomes so much of a burden that it begins to disrupt day-to-day activities and,
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Singer, Famine 5
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even more importantly, education or an occupation, the only thing to do is just pull the plug on
the twisted life-support they are being delivered and leave them to fend for themselves.

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