Introduction
Philosophy, in most people’s mind, is distant from real life and over-complicated for normal people to understand. However, philosophy, according to its definition, is about the love of wisdom. There are countless occasions in life that we apply philosophy even if we don’t know. I find it necessary for philosophy to be applied in daily life just like what Socrates and Aristotle in the past. In this post, I’m going to apply some of the philosophy concepts I learned in Phil 211 to deal with a real life case. Also, I’ll be applying some ideas in my response that I learned in case competitions.
The Food Bank Case
Michelle is the director of a neighbourhood house in downtown Vancouver, a role she has been in for eight years. A neighbourhood house is like a community centre, in that it brings together local residents, offering opportunities for people to inexpensively gather, socialize, share food and experiences, and learn new skills like cooking and growing vegetables in the community garden. One of the services for which Michelle is responsible is the food bank, which provides non-perishable food items for people in need. The food bank regularly receives donations of high-calorie, high-fat, high-sodium, low-fiber, nutrient-poor foods: cans of baked beans, boxes of macaroni and cheese, ramen noodle backs, cans of pasta in sauce with meat of questionable quality, and so on.
Michelle knows many of the people who use the food bank regularly, and has seen a number of them becoming increasingly unhealthy over the years. Her clients have told her they’d like to eat better, and they know how to cook from attending the house’s free cooking classes, but they can’t afford to pay their rent and buy all the food they need for the week. Michelle doesn’t want to continue to provide them with food that contributes to ill health, and so she decides to ban donations of processed foods. She begins to refuse food donations that she determines to be nutrient-poor, telling would-be donors why the food bank can no longer accept these goods. The number of donations go down, and the food bank’s shelves begin to look bare.
Michelle’s associate, Tim, asks her to change her mind. He says that this decision can’t be right. Even though he recognizes Michelle’s good intentions, he argues that the bad consequences (low donations, bare shelves) surely outweigh her reasons.
My Response
In my response, I’ll address three issues concerning the dispute we see between Michelle and Tim. First of all, I’ll simplify the dispute and find out what is the fundamental tension between the two. Second of all, I’ll apply different theories about motivation to analyze their behaviors. Last but not least, I’ll propose a plan to reconcile their conflict.
What’s the dispute about?
The battle between Michelle and Tim was, in fact, a disagreement of each one’s vision about the food bank. Michelle began to realize that the food bank was providing unhealthy food that led to illness to the community. The adverse consequence was against the intention of Michelle—to provide non-perishable food for people in need. The inconsistency drove her to take action. She decided to refuse the unhealthy food donation based on her judgment. For Tim, the associate of Michelle, he was worried about the consequence of Michelle’s decision because a lack of donations, which is the primary source of food for the food bank, will directly affect food bank’s capability to provide food. Even if the food is nutrient-poor, as long as it can fill people’s hunger, it’s still better than nothing at all.
Next, let’s move on to see what are the values behind Michelle and Tim’s decision. It’s important to notice that despite their disagreement, their goals were the same: to contribute to the overall Eudaimonia(Happiness) to the community. Aristotle argued that happiness was the highest aim of human beings because the pursuit of any other values was for the sake of happiness (AT-4 6)
How would Plato explain their motivations?
I’ll engage with two different models to analyze their action: Plato’s theory of motivation and Maslow’s Need Hierarchy. First, let’s look at the motivation of Michelle. Her decisions, according to Plato in Republic, are driven by Logos (reasons), Thumos (self-esteem), and Epithumia (appetite). The decision to reject the unhealthy food was a conscious choice after rational contemplation of Michelle. Since she judged unhealthy food to be counter-productive to the well-being of the community and people in it, she believed that there was no reason for her to keep the food. She was also driven by Thumos: a sense of desire for reputation, desire, and honor (SEP n.p.). As the director of the neighborhood house for the past 8 years, it was her honor to serve the community and its people. If she to provide healthy food, people may doubt whether she had what it takes to be a leader. Michelle was also motivated by Epithumia, the appetite and desire (SEP n.p.). She had an appetite for a healthy food and prefer that people have more healthy food even if they might get less food.
Likewise, Tim was also influenced by these three factors. His judgment that the consequence of Michelle’s action outweighed her decision was an outcome of her logical thinking. He argued against Michelle’s plan because he was the associate who also needs to be responsible for the operation of the food bank. His Epithumia was to feed those people in hunger, and therefore health might not be that important if they would have to risk losing the primary source of food from donators.
How would Maslow explain their motivations?
Next, let’s try to analyze their value from the perspective of Maslow. Maslow defined his Need Hierarchy as “a systematic arrangement of needs according to priority, which assumes that basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused.” (Psycho n.p.) From the first to seventh level, there are physiological, safety and security, belongingness and love, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, and self-actualization. In this case, we only need to think about the relation between the need for physiological and safety. Though it may seem that physiological is a part of the need for security, in the case of the food bank, however, the safety is a higher value than the physiological. There is a difference between guaranteeing the basic survival of human beings and ensuring that they live a healthy life. Michelle wanted the food bank to not only feed the need on the basic level but wanted people in the community to enjoy a healthy and stable lifestyle. The logic of Tim was that if the food bank can’t ensure that everyone gets enough food for survival, there is no way that it can support a higher level of demand.
Based on the analysis above, I believe that both of their motivations are legitimate concerns. Their dispute was focused on the difference in Epithumia and the approach to move from the physiological level to the security level. Therefore, I believe that there is a way to resolve their conflict by targeting at these two differences.
How to solve the problem?
I believe that Michelle was too hurried to refuse the donations. A direct refuse might deter potential donators from helping the food bank. However, it would still be against Michelle’s Thumos to leave people in the community unhealthy. Michelle and Tim can try to negotiate with donators. Since they decided to donate food, even if it is not very healthy, they definitely had the intention to help in the first place. Therefore, it’s likely that donators would be willing to sit at the negotiation table.
Let’s assume that these donators are mainly supermarkets or convenient stores. Then the food they donated would be non-perishable food that was close to the expiration date. However, these supermarkets usually can’t sell all of the vegetables. Most customers refuse to buy vegetables that look not fresh even if they are still good for health, like green leaves vegetables or mushroom. Owners will likely to donate these vegetables because it is also consistent with their value. It is possible that the reason why they chose to provide unhealthy food like frozen pizza was that they might think these are what homeless people need since they can’t cook by themselves. However, since it was mentioned in the case that the community already taught them how to cook, Michelle and Tim could tell supermarkets the real situation and thus get the healthy food they need for the well-being of the community.
Reference:
[1] Kraut, Richard, “Plato”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/plato/>.
[2] Griffin, Michael. Athenian Thought: A Reader, 4. Plato & Aristotle. 2014. 1-19.<http://socrates.arts.ubc.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/4-Plato-and-Aristotle1.pdf>.
[3] Psychology of motivation and emotion. Psychology class notes. <http://www.alleydog.com/101notes/mot-emot.html#.WEjIzaIrLVp>