There is an immense amount of unnecessary suffering in the world.  At the deepest level, everything comes back to consciousness- what we feel and perceive.  Our collective goal as a society should be to maximize wellbeing and reduce suffering.  Both in the developed, and undeveloped world, there is suffering that can be prevented reliably by taking the necessary steps.

In the undeveloped world, people (to no fault of their own), have been born into societies riddled with HIV, malaria, and other diseases which they can’t fight on their own or are unaware of how they even exist.  As a result, by contributing some of our resource (whether that be time, knowledge, or money) we can alliviate some of this suffering without really much of a sacrifice on our end at all – hence why I support organizations like GiveWell.org each year.

Additionally, the massive amount of poverty in the world is a problem that we’re making good progress on as a society, but there is still a lot to do.  Educating people, creating businesses and opportunities, and removing corruption, among other things, can immensely reduce some of the unnecessary suffering.  A lot of the developed world has more money than we know what to do with, while much of the world has so little they’re suffering immensely through starvation, lack of education, and many other things that come with extreme poverty.  Roughly 1 billion people live on less than $1/day.  This is a problem we can solve, we just have to all do our small part in helping those less fortunate than us.  Organizations like Kiva.org help fund various people, groups, and families to create more wealth and prosperity in the world, something that reliably reduces suffering from poverty.

This page is my effort to share resources I’ve found useful and you may as well.

Organizations I Contribute To:

  • Kiva.org – Lend money to help others create opportunities in less fortune areas (where loans may not even exist).
  • GiveWell.org – make your dollar have the greatest impact on the world.

Podcasts/Talks Worth Listening to:

Books: