Journeyman Philosopher

Today I attended a party in which they were raising money for Burmese orphans. This got me thinking about the two main streams of thought regarding our responsibility to other cultures (in the context of support through recourse sharing).

To the best of my knowledge the two main streams of thought revolve around two basic ideas; the world as a spaceship or individual countries as lifeboats.

I was just curious as to how my different readers felt on the topic.Is the world in your eyes a holistic colony located in a spaceship in which we all need to ration and work together to survive?

Or is the world divided up by lifeboats each of these boats being a country/continent that is responsible for looking after itself?

Obviously whichever decision you make how you side with giving aid to other countries will differ. If you, for example, side with spaceship example it will be your obligation to support other countries as fundamentally it is the same as supporting yourself. If though instead you believe in the lifeboat example, you will thereby be restricted to reserving your rations for yourself alone.

I’m a space ship guy myself. What do you guys think (I hope to follow with a critique of both ideas shortly)?