The topic of last's night Cafe was, "what is our obligation in a disaster?"

The cafe, which would be the last one of the semester, was something of a disaster.
Classes are disrupted; tents still populate the campus; students are preparing for
finals amid aftershocks, and my college will be moving to another location in two weeks.
Amid this, I was unsure whether anyone would show up. We met outside of the
compound where my apartment is located, and were meeting in the conference room
adjacent to the hotel lobby we had slept just a few nights ago. Only about four
people were there at first. But by about quarter after about a dozen or so people had
gathered; on this last cafe I was reminded of the first cafe
where only a few were there when it began but we ended with about fifteen.

The theme I kept trying the circle the conversation back to tonight was: does one
country have a moral obligation to help another country in a time of need and
natural disaster. In an editorial titled, "China's Class Divide," a professor of political
science teaching in China discussed how after the earthquake he had debated with his students whether
the obligation to other disaster victims was equal to their obligation to
aid their fellow Chinese. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/opinion/21bell.html?ex=1212033600&en=eb5f32d20ecc5480&ei=5070&emc=eta1
In his editorial, he said that students not only reluctant to embrace this view but
were actively hostile to it. I was wondering how this group would view the situation.

I posed the question, whether other countries have a moral obligation to aid
China, or whether it is simply a nice gesture. So I did not begin with as extreme a
thesis, but I wanted to first establish the moral obligaton and then inquire into
the extent of it. At the beginning, the responses were
split. Some said one nation aids another, they do so out of self-interest, with many
pointing out that when China provides aid they often receive mineral resources
or the like from the country to which aid is given. Others believed helping others
was merely a nice thing to do but not morally required. I could not get much traction
for the idea of a general moral obligation.

The topic shifted from the obligation among countries to our obligtion among our fellow
humans.
DO we have a personal obligation to help others in a disaster. There is a natural desire to
save oneself first, and someone told a story about a teacher who more or less pulled
a George Constanza and when the earthquake hit bolted out of the building to
safety and hugged a tree as soon as he got outside (Recall George's behavior at
a birthday party). To counter that, another story was told that most seemed to know
about a teacher, who saved fifteen students while his son
perished. It was debated whether such an action neglects
the obligation to the family. It was generally admitted there is a corresponding
obligation one takes a a teacher, or in many occupation roles, that can override
the obligation to the family at times. So I asked, if we have an obligation as
a citizen of a country and an obligation as a result our occupation, is there any
corresponding obligation we have simply in virtue of being human.

The idea was floated that if we know and see the suffering, there is a natural
tendency to help, and that right now in China those in the room could know and
see the tragedy, so they wanted to help. But since similar
suffering exists around the world, and we can know about it if we want, is
there an obligation to assist? Is there something special about the obligation
to one's countrymen that transcends the mere fact that they are nearby and we know about
their suffering, since relatively speaking, everyone in the world is nearby and we can
easily learn about their plight.

Many agreed some level of obligation existed to the world community, but there was
some disagreement on the extent. Someone mentioned that if a country did not help China,
perhaps  China did not have an obligation to help that country.
But I asked, if someone behaves badly towards us, does that give us the right to behave
badly towards them, which reminded someone of a Chinese saying "Yi De Bao Yuan,"
which implies that even if someone does us wrong we should
return it with virtue. But why? What is the nature of the obligation. At the national
level, the idea was generally accepted that a society requires such behavior in
order to survive. Even altruism, someone argued, can be explained in terms of
an overall selfishness if one accepts that it is one's self-interest for one's social
group to survive. If one thinks about the role that relatioships play in the Confucian
world view, this idea makes sense. For although someone wanted to explain the
teacher's sacrifice noted above in terms of Marxism, it is also true that Confucianism
can account for it as well. This model as well might be applied at the international
level, although this gives a different basis for providing aid than one of disinterested
moral obligation.