The Life You Can Save Rhetorical Analysis

There are 1.3 Billion people in the world who live on less than $1.25 a day, this is significantly less than what we spend in one meal. 22,000 children die every day due to poverty related illnesses. These are tragic numbers that we don’t even think about when walking down to lunch. Philosopher and Utilitarian Peter Singer wrote “The Life You Can Save” an entire book about this exact issue, and how we the privileged American people can help, and how we should help these people who are meaninglessly dying. Some argue against Singers Utilitarian view, and many come short. Kant is one philosopher who may slightly disagree with some things, but overall had a similar stance to Singer. Singer uses philosophy, and moral arguments to show us how important

An example of Singers argument is the story of the drowning child. If we come across a shallow pond and find a child drowning, what should we do? The obvious answer is to step into the shallow pond and save the child. Now how does this idea compare to the thought of a person spending money on luxury items instead of donating it to people who need it much more that you or I do. Because it is a fact that there are people in the world who are starving to death, for they don’t have enough money, food, or resources to live a healthy life. These people in the world are dying, just like the small child in the pond could die. Is it not our responsibility to prevent any type of suffering let alone death if it comes at such a little cost for us? These two ideas are very comparable when considering Peter Singers argument to help others avoid suffering. They are analogous because we are aware of the suffering in both scenarios, and we have a means to help in both of the scenarios, just because one occurs right in front of you, and the other occurs around the world does not make you liable to ignore their situation. As Peter Singer said, “Suffering is bad.” We need to do what we can to help those in need whether they are drowning right in front of us starving thousands of miles away. The need for help is still there, and the means to help them is still