Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column that gives you a new framework for thinking through your moral dilemmas and philosophical questions. This unconventional column is based on value pluralism – the idea that we each have multiple values ​​that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. Here’s a Vox reader question, edited for brevity and clarity.

As a low income person, I am on public assistance and have public health insurance. My situation means I can’t donate to others, eat organic, buy slow fashion in an ethical way – it’s too expensive. And I can’t donate to people. I feel guilty for genocide and war in other countries, but I cannot donate money to others, not in other countries, not even in my own country. I’m barely above water, but I feel guilty for not being able to do something to improve my community, society and the world. Is it okay that I don’t donate because I can’t?

Dear Barely Above the Water,

We live in a consumer society, where there is a lot of focus on how we spend our money. It can make us think that our spending is the number one reflection of our moral character – as if buying cheap food or clothes automatically means we’re bad, and giving to charity is the only way to do good.

The reality is more complex. For starters, if you can’t really afford to buy ethically sourced products, it says more about you than it does about our society. It’s an indictment of our factory farm system, which produces cheap meat at a terrible cost to animal welfare, and our global supply chain, which is still tainted with forced labor. This is not an indictment of you as an individual.

18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously said “Should” means “can.” This means that if you take a hard look at your finances and decide that you really can’t afford to buy this or that, then you are not morally obligated.

But a larger point needs to be made here, which is that spending is one aspect of ethical behavior—it’s not the only aspect, or even the primary aspect. You write that you can’t donate money, which makes you feel guilty for not being able to improve the world. To which I say: donating money to charity is not the only way to improve the world!

A simple way to remind this is the slogan “Solidarity, not charity“The concept of solidarity became very popular against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, when modern capitalism was emerging and political theorists such as Karl Marx began to push back. In 1902, the Russian anarcho-communist philosopher Peter Kropotkin published a collection of essays. Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution. Pointing to examples of cooperation between and among different species, he argued that it was what enabled a species to survive through evolutionary history, and developed the concept of mutual aid as distinct from traditional charity.

Whereas charity involves givers and recipients, and implicitly establishes a hierarchical relationship between them, mutual aid is a voluntary exchange between equals. There is not a giver and a taker, because the assumption is that every single person has something to give to others – be it money, food, words of wisdom or a warm smile. The ways people help each other may be different, but that’s okay, because we all contribute in different ways.

Kropotkin made such a compelling case for solidarity—or, as he puts it, “the close dependence of the happiness of each on the happiness of all”—that it became a mainstay of communities neglected by the state in Europe and the United States. Known as black political organization Black PanthersFor example, there was a strong mutual aid program that included free breakfast for black children.

But it would be wrong to assume that the focus on solidarity only came into being in the modern era. The key insight here – that financial charity is only a small part of solidarity – has been around for ages.

You can find a great example of this in the Islamic tradition going back to the seventh century. The religion places a very high premium on charity — one of the five pillars of Islam. Every year, Muslims are supposed to donate a certain portion of their wealth to charity; It is a financial form of payment known as Zakat. But there is another form of giving, called sadaqah, which does not require money.

The hadith, a collection of sayings and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, contains a beautiful Sadakara’s explanation:

A sadaqah is obligatory for every joint of every person on the day of sunrise: A sadaqah to act justly between two people; Helping a person up his mountain, lifting him up or lifting his belongings onto him is a Sadaqah. A good word is a sadakah; And removing harmful things from the road is a Sadaqah.

In other words, sadaqah comes in many shapes and forms; What seems to unite them is a desire to help others. It is wider than mere charity. This is what I call solidarity. And note that it is arguably more morally demanding than monetary charity. All charities require writing a check — an action that can be frustrating, even effortless for someone lucky enough to have the money. It does not require commitment to a broader project of solidarity or justice. Indeed, a common criticism of charity is that it can act as a distraction from unjust ways of creating wealth. But sadaka requires you to be mentally and often physically engaged.

There are probably many ways you are already showing solidarity with others, perhaps without even realizing it. My colleague Rachel M. As Cohen reports, acts of service to family, friends, and neighbors are generally not considered volunteering, and opening your home to relatives or sending remittances to them is not considered charitable giving. But they arguably should be. Informal care and help express solidarity, too.

So, for starters, I’d encourage you to make a list of all the ways you’re already improving your community. Do you sometimes watch your neighbor’s baby, or help take care of an aunt, or bring food to a friend? Those things count!

Doing or organizing more formal volunteer work requires a currency that can be hard to come by: time. But consider the impact you can have, both locally and globally, as much as you can.

Can you volunteer an hour a week to help low-income children in your community develop their literacy skills? Can you join a labor union? Can you lead a petition to offer more meat-free options in your school or workplace cafeteria?

Since you mention that war and genocide in other countries weighs heavily on you, can you organize and vote for politicians who have a good stance on foreign policy? Given the large role the United States plays in the world, this is one of the biggest levers you have when you’re in America.

You’ll notice that none of these options require a financial payment. These are all forms of Sadakah. That said, I wouldn’t completely ignore the zakat part of paying unless you clearly can.

Some people have to. There’s not much point in donating money if you can’t meet your own basic needs, because then you’ll need the donation yourself. When people give and give until they get something, it becomes unsustainable and doesn’t end well, sometimes leading to burnout or collapse. Even Islam, with its overemphasis on charity, recognizes this: that is why only those who have more than a certain minimum amount of money are obligated to pay zakat.

But if you’ve only got a few extra dollars here and there, don’t underestimate the good they can do. For example, Maryam’s KitchenA DC-based nonprofit organization with a mission to end chronic homelessness, can serve a full meal to a person experiencing homelessness for just $1.25. And in poorer countries, your money can go further. If you donate Give directlyThey’ll pay your cash directly to people living in extreme poverty in Africa — where a dollar can buy far more than in the U.S. — with no strings attached. I like donating this way because it’s very cost-effective and it avoids the paternalism of more traditional charities, since it trusts people to make their own decisions about what to buy and how to improve their lives.

Donating doesn’t just help others—it helps you, too. Research shows that paying actually makes us happier and increases our well-being. I suspect it is because it transforms our own consciousness, reminding us that we are connected to others in a vast web of interdependence.

Actually, I saw this first. I grew up in a family on welfare. We always had enough for housing and food, but we could not afford the frills. Yet whenever my father and I went downtown, he always made sure to carry some change in his pocket, so he could hand it out to people experiencing homelessness.

To be honest, my baby-brain screamed with anxiety when he did it: what if we are Need money? But I saw how happy it made my father. He knew that this was not enough to change the lives of those we encountered. But as best he could, he lived within his values ​​— caring for people, respecting their autonomy to spend money however they saw fit — reminding himself that he was connected to others.

As an adult, I was fortunate to have decently paid jobs, but I continued to struggle with that meaning dysmorphia – Feeling nervous about money even after being financially stable. Donating felt scary to me, so I started small: $10 here, $50 there, and eventually more. My initial fear soon gave way to a wild, leaping joy. As strange as it may sound, Giving Tuesday has actually become one of my favorite days of the year. Just like my father, I discovered the emotional benefits of standing in solidarity with others with whatever resources I have.

I don’t want you to miss these benefits. I hope you reap them at every turn: by counting all the ways you already stand in solidarity with others, by contributing emotionally and physically, and – as much as possible – by donating financially as well.

Bonus: What I’m Reading

• I recently picked up ParfaitA biography of the British philosopher Derek Parfitt, who once beautifully described his transition from the agony of his own disconnection to the joy of connection with others: “I felt myself imprisoned. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was speeding every year, and at the end of which was darkness. When I changed my perspective, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and other people’s lives. But the difference is less. Other people around. I worry less about the rest of my life, and more about the lives of others.”

• I am really enjoying Islamic MusaJournalist Mustafa Akiol’s new book on the similarities between Islam and Judaism. Fun fact: The Arabic word sadakah is related to the Hebrew word tzedakah, which is often translated as charity but really has a A much broader meaning.

• Writer-activists Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendricks published a book called This Year solidarity. I’m a sucker for the history of the concept, so I loved the book’s explanation of how the concept of solidarity actually goes back to ancient Rome!

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