Giving It All Away

Peter Singer thinks that if you make more than enough money to satisfy your basic needs, you should give at least some portion of the rest away to keep children all over the world from starving to death or dying of preventable diseases. Preferably, he says in some of his writings, you should give everything you have above what you need to live. His argument for this claim is compelling, and if you are interested in seeing why, and making yourself squirm a bit in the process, try this exercise called "The Drowning Child". (The site this exercise is on -- philosophyexperiments.com -- has a lot of eye-opening exercises on it. I highly recommend it.)
Of course this argument comes back to the eternal question of what is enough. We've gone through this before. I have enough food, clothing and shelter, plus a lot of luxuries. BUT I also have a significant (to me) debt on my house as well as one child in college and another who will be there in eight years or so. Do I not have an obligation to my family first? Does my debt cancel out enough of my enough to excuse me from my obligation to help the rest of the world? What about my donations to the local volunteer fire department, library, arts organizations, food pantries, and benefit dinners for particular local people who have suffered tragedies? What about my support of public radio? I do donate to one international aid organization -- Heifer -- because it seems to give aid that helps people become self-sufficient and helps girls and women achieve higher status in their societies. But the percentage of my income that is donated is small, and it comes automatically out of my bank account each month, like many other bills, so it is completely painless. Is that okay? Am I giving enough? Am I digging deeply enough into my own complacency to give it?

Singer is controversial for a lot of his views, one being that animals have the same rights as humans; and, of course, this idea that we are directly, individually responsible for the health and wellbeing of people we have never met is controversial as well. How obligated should we feel to donate whatever we have that is "more than enough" for us? I know that I am very aware of my own feeling that I am not doing enough to help. I didn't need Peter Singer to tell me that. So why don't I do more? I guess I don't yet feel guilty enough.