Resolved: Individuals have a moral obligation to assist those in need.

The key definitions of the resolution are as follows.

• According to the online Free Dictionary, a moral obligation is “an obligation arising out of considerations of right and wrong.”
• But what's the test to know if something's morally correct? Hmm, religion, social contract? All societies - not just a majority of societies (esp Judeo-Christian teachings and religious sources of authority) - support the idea that morality demands pro-social behavior and helping those in a worse situation than yours.
• According to Merriam-Webster Online, to assist is “to give usually supplementary support or aid to."
• MW also defines need as “a condition requiring supply or relief."
• The value for this debate will be morality. The criteria in support of this value is the social contract.
• social contract: the chaos that would arise otherwise
• how it's a primitive but often cheaper form of insurance: I take care of you today when you fall, you take care of me tomorrow when I fall.

I'll now explain each of my arguments for affirming the resolution.1*Psychology

• Society has placed on all capable individuals a moral obligation to assist those in need.
  • This is clearly demonstrated by the public's response of blame in reaction to an individual not helping someone in need.
  • According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Moral responsibility, "When a person performs or fails to perform a morally significant action, we sometimes think that a particular kind of response is warranted. Praise and blame are perhaps the most obvious forms this reaction might take. For example, one who encounters a car accident may be regarded as worthy of praise for having saved a child from inside the burning car, or alternatively, one may be regarded as worthy of blame for not having used one's mobile phone to call for help. To regard such agents as worthy of one of these reactions is to ascribe moral responsibility to them on the basis of what they have done or left undone."
  • Just as bystanders frown on people not helping someone in need, individuals who do not fulfill their obligation to help someone in need also become uncomfortable with their conscience.
  • The conscience, by the way, is defined by Merriam Webster as "the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one's own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good." In other words, the little voice inside your head telling you
  • Morality is defined as "concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior." So they admit, if only unconsciously, to have neglected their moral obligations.
  • Self-conscious feelings of shame and guilt, which are psychologically accepted as an indicator of having neglected a moral obligation, are shown in accredited studies to have been immediately present in these people.
  • As Christian Miller writes in his article Guilt and Helping, which appears in Advances in Psychology Research and the International Journal of Ethics, "Self-conscious emotions [including guilt and shame] involve the self in their evaluations. More precisely, self-conscious emotions typically involve an implicit awareness of normative standards, of the self's individual responsibility for living up to those standards, and of the self's standing in relation to those standards. Success or failure in living up to these norms can elicit guilt, shame, pride, and/or embarrassment, among other self-conscious emotions."
  • So it's in man's very psychology to find pro-social behavior morally satisfying. Along these same lines...
  • Emile Durkheim, often called the father of sociology, writes that man has in fact evolved to be limited by morals for their own and for society's good. In Readings From Emile Durkheim's chapter on moral education, he writes:
  • "To live is to put ourselves in harmony with the physical world surrounding us and with the social world of which we are members; however extended their realms, they are nevertheless limited. The goals we normally seek are equally delimited, and we are not free to transcend the limits without placing ourselves at odds with nature. If such necessary limits are lacking, if the oral forces surrounding us can no longer contain or moderate our passions, human conduct - being no longer constrained - loses itself in the void, the emptiness of which is disguised and adorned with specious label of the infinite. Discipline is thus useful, not only in the interests of society and as the indispensable means without which regular cooperation would be impossible, but for the welfare of the individual himself....The idea I have proposed to you is quite otherwise. If we believe that the discipline of morality is useful, indeed necessary for the individual, it is because it seems to us demanded by nature itself. It is the way in which nature realizes itself normally, not a way of minimizing or destroying nature. Like everything else, man is a limited being: he is part of a whole. Physically, he is part of the universe; morally, he is part of society. Hence, he cannot, without violating his nature, try to supersede the limits imposed on every hand."
  • "I do not deny that man has an obligation to live, but I say that he does not fulfill a duty, through the sole act of survival, except when life is for him a means of achieving an end that transcends his own life. There is nothing moral in living just for the sake of keeping alive." "EVERYTHING HINGES ON THE USES ONE PUTS THEM TO, OR WISHES TO MAKE OF THEM. When, for example, one undertakes scientific research in order to reduce human suffering, then by common consent the act is morally praiseworthy. But it is not the same when the research is carried out purely for personal satisfaction. Here, then, is our first conclusion: behavior, whatever it may be, directed exclusively toward the personal ends of the actor does not have moral value. Put it in these terms, the question may be easily resolved. Not only is there not today, but there never has existed any people among whom an egoistic act - that is to say, behavior directed solely to the interest of the person performing it - has been considered moral. Hence, we may conclude that behavior prescribed by the rules of morality is always behavior in pursuit of impersonal ends."
• Moral obligation to assist, which is to help make the best circumstance for the person, whether it's standing back for their best interest or even creating strife.