One of the most significant developments of the modern era has been globalization. Globalization refers to the worldwide process of interaction and integration of governments, nations, people, and companies. This process has economic, political, social, and cultural aspects. Though there were some hints of globalization in the pre-modern world, the creation of new communication and transportation technologies following the industrial revolution has facilitated this process and caused it to increase exponentially in the modern period. Like never before, our world is globally interconnected, with social, cultural, political and economic interactions occurring between societies all over the world. We have entered an era of globalism.
It is generally accepted that a person is not morally responsible to act to help someone in need if they are not aware that the need exists. For example, if I see someone drowning in a nearby river, I may have a moral responsibility to jump in and save them, but if I simply did not see that there was anyone in the nearby river, I cannot reasonably be held responsible for their death. If someone sincerely does not know a need exists, they can not be morally responsible for helping to meet that need. (The exception to this is if someone should have known a need existed and was negligent. For example, if it was someone’s job to patrol a river and watch for anyone who fell in, but they decided to take a nap instead, they would be morally responsible if someone fell in and drowned while they were napping.)
Similarly, it is generally accepted that a person is not morally responsible to do something they are unable to do. For example, if I see someone pinned under a massive boulder and try to lift the boulder but am physically unable, I cannot reasonably be held responsible for their death. On the other hand, if I see someone pinned under a smaller boulder that I could lift if I wanted to, but I just decide to leave them under it, I am morally responsible for their death.
Human beings are limited, both in knowledge and ability. These are realities of human existence that provide a limit on the choices we can make; having these limitations is not immoral (unless, that is, we have a limitation due to our own culpable negligence). Our limitations provide the boundaries within which our moral decision-making takes place.
Now, for most of human history, human beings had no way of knowing what was happening on the other side of the world. And even if they did know, they had no practicable way of doing anything about it, since a trip there would take an incredible amount of time, resources, and danger. Most people’s knowledge of the world and their ability to make changes in it was geographically quite limited.
In today’s world, however, things are radically different. Thanks to modern communication technologies, the internet, and global news organizations, we can often know instantly what is going on on the other side of the world. And, thanks to modern transportation and other technologies, we can often quite easily act to help people on the other side of the world. For example, if there is a famine in a country in Africa, I can quite easily be informed of this fact, and I can quite easily donate funds online that will fund famine relief efforts by international humanitarian organizations that are at work there.
Thus, globalization has quite significant ethical implications. Through most of history, human beings for the most part had a sphere of moral responsibility that was quite geographically limited. Now, in our interconnected, globalized world, one’s sphere of moral responsibility stretches to encompass nearly the whole world.
One of the difficulties with this is that the instincts of empathy and compassion that move us to act in a moral manner do not work very well on a globalized scale. If a person sees someone starving to death right next to them, it is very likely to trigger an immediate and strong desire to help this person. On the other hand, reading that a thousand people are starving to death on the other side of the world is unlikely to elicit a similar reaction; it is just a statistic. However, logically, it is clear that, if we are able, we do have a moral responsibility to help those in need on the other side of the world. And now, thanks to globalism, we very often are able.
Thus, discerning one’s moral responsibility is a much more complex endeavor in a globalized world. On the one hand, our sphere of moral responsibility now encompasses most of the world. On the other hand, it is still the case that it is often more practicable to take moral responsibility for doing good in our more local sphere. So, determining how we should spend our time and resources to help people in need requires taking into consideration both the degree of need and the degree of our proximity to, and thus responsibility for, the need. A very deep need on the other side of the world would create a greater moral responsibility than a small need in close proximity, while a deep need in close proximity would create a greater moral responsibility than an equally deep need on the other side of the world.
Furthermore, the global interconnectedness of the economies of societies around the world adds another layer of complexity to our moral decision-making in the modern world. We now regularly purchase goods produced on the other side of the world, sometimes by the economic exploitation and unjust treatment of the poor there. We must consider to what extent we are morally culpable for indirectly participating in global economic systems that involve systemic injustice and what, if anything, we can do to mitigate our complicity in such systems.
How to balance these various factors and discern one’s moral responsibility in a globalized world is a very complex question with no easy answers. But what is clear is that globalization has dramatically widened our spheres of moral responsibility, and that we must take this into account in our moral decision-making.
Very often, however, the moral debates of our society take little to no account of the ethical implications of globalism. For example, people will often demand that there be a fair redistribution of wealth, but they limit the scope of this demand to American society. Meanwhile, Americans are economically interconnected with people in other parts of the world where most people have only a fraction of the wealth of the average “poor” American. Yet almost no one demands that Americans should redistribute their wealth to these people. This is quite simply incoherent, and is a major blind spot in much of the moral discussion in our society today. If we want to be consistent and coherent in our ethical discussions, we must take greater account of the ethical implications of globalism.