Noting two different levels of media and public interest in two recent air disasters, Julian Baggini offers some reflections on the way in which people's attitudes to the deaths of others depend upon how close to them those others are, and argues that we should not lament this kind of 'parochialism'; there are good reasons for it. Although all lives have the same value ethically, it is perfectly proper for each of us, personally, to value some lives more than others. As Julian puts it:
Most people believe, more or less, that the value of a human life is the same, irrespective of where on the planet it happens to find itself. But, of course, not every life has the same value for us. Indeed, it would be inhuman if that were so. A parent who does not value his or her own child over that of a complete stranger is not fit to be a parent. Someone who grieves over his dead partner no more and no less than he does over the death of someone he merely reads about in the news was not worthy of the departed's love.
Julian is right in what he says here about valuing the lives of those close to us, but I think he is wrong to use the force of the example as if it were relevant to our reactions to the deaths of two groups of people who are, even on his account of things, strangers to most of us.
First, as to the different levels of interest aroused by different events, if what we really mean is only interest - wanting to find out about them, read more, discuss etc - this is not in itself a moral issue. A person's interest can be aroused in many different ways, some of them quite accidental, and it doesn't automatically follow from the fact that your attention was attracted to this incident but not that one that you have been morally remiss in some way.
Second, you may act to help some people and not others, and to that extent appear to care more about the first group, without being at moral fault. This is for reasons I alluded to in (amongst other places) the second post of this 'Us and them' series. You can do only so much; that your acting here rather than there appears to show that you care more about these people than about those doesn't mean that you value the lives of the former more highly; it may be due to no more than the practical limitation of your capacities.
Third, geographical proximity and even nationality are not, or at least should not be considered, comparable to family and other intimate connectedness in how we value lives; I mean in how we value them, whoever we are, and not only in what value they have when viewed from a detached and universalizing vantage point. To value the life of your child, your spouse, your friend, no differently from the way you value the life of a total stranger would be to treat as nothing the specific relationships involved and the ties of love and obligation that come with that. This doesn't apply where it is, say, people of French, or even British, nationality who die in an air disaster, rather than, say, Yemenis. Some may, as a matter of fact, value lives differently depending on the nationality of those whose lives they are; but I can see no justification for their doing so. There are obligations we owe to our co-nationals that we don't owe to others, but these flow from the fact of their being, precisely, co-nationals. A willingness to contribute some part of our income in taxation to meet the health or unemployment needs of others, even though we ourselves may be well and have a job; the obligation to serve on a jury to try and determine the guilt or innocence of our fellow citizens if they are charged with a crime - these are the sorts of specific moral ties we have with people close to us in that sense, the sense of common nationality. But being British doesn't entail valuing British over other lives. To assume the contrary would mean giving priority to saving British lives as against saving non-British ones. It's not clear that this is a generally shared ethical commitment - that charity for everyone always begins in their national home - or should be one.
There is also a question I'll only gesture towards here without trying to deal with it properly. What counts as proximity in this context? A mother of young children may feel closer to another mother of young children in need in a distant place than she does to her extremely wealthy neighbours who vote against higher taxation and spend on every conceivable luxury including lavish parties; ditto a teacher who hears of teachers on the other side of the world who are under threat; and so on.
We should not value lives according to nationality but equally and regardless of nationality. (For a longer but related discussion, see this earlier essay of mine.)
