Comission and Omission
Sunday, February 16th
From Voltaire’s The Age of Louis XIV:
A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.
I’m still hung up on the PEPFAR cut. One of my more atypical attitudes is ethically weighing acts of commission and acts of omission far more equally than most.
We shouldn’t be measured just by what we do, but also by what we fail to do. There is a meaningful sense in which ending PEPFAR is as bad as going to war, costing thousands of innocent lives for no good reason.
Omission is easy to rationalize. It’s hidden from view, easily dissolves into abstraction, and presents us with obligations that are nobody’s in particular (any wealthy country could run PEPFAR, after all). But that does not make it less real — just ask the parents of the children who will die thanks to the program ending.
But I don’t want to pretend I’m above this. The same principle applies at home — we’re just as culpable in neglecting our own duties to alleviate suffering, and even in our everyday habits of shying away from uncostly acts of kindness.