JayWalken

Hello, Peter. Thank you for the AMA. I had intended to ask you this at your Q&A with QUB but panicked (I hope that this did not disrupt the session). My question is:

The view that one should not buy non-necessities when poverty-induced suffering exists seems to result in an ethical asceticism, a lifestyle where one consumes no more than one requires so that one has more money to donate. Do you concede this? If not, how do you justify not donating all that one can, provided that doing so reduces suffering and does not, in an unlikely event, cause the donor greater suffering than that experienced by the recipients, the extreme poor?

Thanks in advance, Peter. Be well.

Thanks very much for your answer, Peter. If you are willing to answer follow-up questions:

How do you justify wearing anything but sackcloth, given that, by wearing it, you save money otherwise spent on clothes, money that can be donated to reduce the suffering of the extreme poor, a suffering greater than that of wearing sackcloth?

Here is an article of Peter's on having children.

Thanks a million for the follow-up.

For what it's worth, I suggested something like this in a recent essay of mine. On Giving What We Can's prescription of donating 10% of one's income over voluntary poverty, I argued that this was akin to prescribing Meatless Monday over veganism, on the grounds that it is better than nothing, and any more may deter one from acting morally at all.

I asked Peter your last two questions here.

I love Dorothy Day's position:

Love of brother means voluntary poverty, stripping one’s self, putting off the old man, denying one’s self, etc. It also means nonparticipation in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others. While our brothers suffer, we must compassionate them, suffer with them. While our brothers suffer from lack of necessities, we will refuse to enjoy comforts.

She continues this line of thought throughout her meditation here.