Have a question about this? Bring it to Hypatia.
What do you owe? Not legally — morally. What do you believe you owe to the people around you, to the society that made your particular life possible, to people you will never meet whose circumstances are substantially worse than yours?
This question has no clean answer. I am not offering one. What I am offering is the observation that most people have an operative belief that drives their actual behavior — and they have rarely examined it.
Some people believe they owe primarily to their immediate family. Some believe they owe in proportion to what they have received. Some believe the obligation is to create conditions for others to help themselves rather than to help directly.
These are all coherent positions. The point is not which one is right. The point is that you should know which one you actually hold, and why, and whether it survives honest examination.
The belief you have not examined is not really yours. It is borrowed. The belief you have examined, held to the light, and kept because it stood up — that one is yours.
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Apply this to your actual situation. Hypatia will meet you where you are.
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