A Consequentialist's Thoughts on John Travolta's trip to Haiti

To quote Kurt Vonnegut's Uncle Alex, "Well, if this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

What's nice? This.

John Travolta uses his personal jet to fly supplies to the people of Haiti (I hope it isn't lost on you that I say "the people of Haiti" rather than "Haiti"). This is an action of positive moral value. Why? Because it will help people who need to be helped.

I am going to belabor this point, so bear with me.

It's moral value is not affected by being in accord or not being in accord with the man's principles, or the principles of Scientology. It may or not be, I don't even know. Would being in accord with said principles be the cause of the good done by the action?

It's moral value is not affected by being in accord or not being in accord with the principles of "Christian morality" (whatever they are supposed to be!). Again, would being in accord with these principles be the cause of the good done by the action?

It's moral value is not affected by the presence of the press. Even if he did this for the sake of publicity, it doesn't affect the moral appraisal. That is to say, his intent is not relevant. Would performing this action out of a desire to become famous preclude the good that is done by the action from being good?

What I want to say is the basis for evaluating Mr. Travolta's actions (and not just his, ours as well, and those of anyone else) ought to be the consequences of the action. There are problems with this standard, to be sure, just as there are problems with any other ethical or moral standard (if anyone wants to raise some of them, I'll happily try and defend myself).

Mr. Travolta's claim in this clip echos a standard of Peter Singer's ethics: If we can help someone in need, at relatively little cost to ourselves, then we ought to do so. In his book, The Life You Can Save Singer goes to great lengths to spell out exactly what "relatively little cost" means for acting to end world poverty. I think we can summarize it somewhat imprecisely by "whatever you can stand to lose anyway without altering your standard of living." That doesn't, of course, mean that there won't be sacrifices. A pet example of Singer's is drinking tap water rather than bottled water. Another is wearing canvas shoes rather than shoes that are a) more expensive and/or b) made from animal skins. We can lose these luxuries without changing our standard of living, however.

Further, the cost is "relatively little" compared to the harm that may result from failure to act in accordance with this principle. Not flying supplies to the people of Haiti, say, may be tantamount to allowing someone to die. We needn't pad the numbers, although surely more than one life can be saved by Travolta's action: just one life saved is sufficient to outweigh the cost of flying the supplies there yourself, in your own jet, especially if you have the time and resources to do so.

Now, we don't all have private jets, or millions of dollars. And if we all did, and we all flew supplies down there, we'd probably not be able to land our planes. My point in holding up this example as an example of an action with positive moral value is not to say that we should do what John Travolta did. But to say that we should act according to the principle that explains why his action is good.

Well done, Mr. Travolta, and thanks for the good news.