Imagine a man walking alone through a park on a clear day. The man walks through this particular park every weekday to get to his job, which is just through the park and up the street. The man takes pride in his appearance and always wears expensive suits. The park has a small pond, and the man must walk past this pond to get to where he needs to be. One day, while on his way to work and wearing one of his expensive suits, the man witnesses a small child drowning in the nearby pond. There is nobody else around to help, and the man must make the hasty decision of whether or not to jump in and save the drowning child. The man realizes that if he jumps in to save the child, he will ruin his expensive, thousand-dollar suit. The man decides not to ruin his expensive suit and pretends not to notice, leaving the child to drown and die.
This is quite a macabre scene, and I think most everyone will agree that the man who left the child to drown to save the integrity of his suit is a terrible human-being. The man can provide no good argument or justification for his actions. He is guilty and deserves severe public condemnation or a hefty prison sentence.
Let's consider another man. This man goes to a car dealership and has the choice to buy either a reliable car or the same reliable car in a sportier model. The sportier car only costs one thousand dollars extra, so he decides to buy it. The man certainly did not need the more expensive car, and he could have lived his life just as well if he had bought the cheaper model. The extra thousand dollars that went towards his car could have been used to save a life (or several lives) in a country or community stricken with poverty.
Now it seems strange to think that the man who neglects to save a drowning child for his own benefit is more guilty than the man who bought the expensive car. The man with the expensive car could have used the extra money to feed a starving community in Africa and thereby save many lives. Society doesn't condemn the man who buys the expensive car, but they are quick to condemn the man who neglects to save a single drowning child.
In the western, civilized world, many of us have incurred the mass delusion that it's okay to buy luxuries for oneself--to spoil oneself. You can go ahead and say to yourself that you deserve it, if it makes you feel better. You can tell yourself that you have worked hard for your nice things, as if that somehow makes it okay. But the reality is, we are all guilty of buying things we don't need. We are all guilty of spending a few extra dollars for those unnecessary luxuries.
It must be asked: What makes any of us morally superior to the man with the expensive suit who let the child drown? Every time you buy an unnecessary luxury, is it not dissimilar to letting a helpless child drown, even if the child is half a world away? I am guilty myself of buying luxuries. I try to vindicate myself for buying the expensive laptop which I am using to write this article. I wonder if the posters tacked up on my wall or the salt rock lamp sitting on my shelf were justifiably purchased. I am constantly brooding over ethical dilemmas like these. Am I living the best way I know how? When I am on my deathbed, will I be proud of those posters and that rock lamp, or will I be proud of devoting a good part of my life doing what I would want others to do for me if my fortune weren't so favorable?
I don't claim to be a morally righteous person, but it is something I want to strive to become when I have the means to; it is a lifelong commitment. The next time you buy something you don't need, ask yourself: "If I buy this, will I be any different than the man with the expensive who let the helpless child drown?" Ask yourself if the actions you take in life have any serious moral consequences. Only then will our moral psychology begin to bear any meaningful substance.
For further reading on this topic, read the moral philosophy of Peter Singer and William MacAskill.