The 2024 Legal Defense Fundraiser has ended early due to the Board's decision to settle the suit. Donations will go towards the creation of a legal defense fund. Discussion on the matter can be found at the RationalMedia Foundation noticeboard. Thank you for your generous support.
Charity
Thinking hardly or hardly thinking? Philosophy |
![]() |
Major trains of thought |
The good, the bad, and the brain fart |
Come to think of it |
“”And so 'charity', to whom mammon erects super-temples finds sanctuary in the heart of the proletariat.
|
—George Herriman in "Krazy Kat"[1] |
Charity refers to the act of helping other people for no personal benefit, typically by donating money or other resources to those considered less fortunate than oneself.
Criticism
Guilt relief
Giving a charitable donation, according to Slavoj Žižek, is a great way for more fortunate people to relieve guilt while being the least involved as possible.[2]
When, confronted with the starving child, we are told: "For the price of a couple of cappuccinos, you can save her life!", the true message is: "For the price of a couple of cappuccinos, you can continue in your ignorant and pleasurable life, not only not feeling any guilt, but even feeling good for having participated in the struggle against suffering!"
Doesn't fix the cause of the issue
According to Oscar Wilde, charity is a temporary fix to a broken system:[3]
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it…Charity degrades and demoralizes…Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Instead of charity, Wilde suggests preventing poverty and the need for charity in the first place. A parallel argument can be made for the concern about the wage gap in the states; instead of an off-place slave analogy. Instead of promoting higher minimum wage, people should try and see the root cause of the wage gap. According to this argument, for both poverty and the wage gap, these are products of a capitalism; a socialist economy
strives to eliminate poverty and disease. Anyway, the views of socialism by Americans are divided to say the least, with roughly 17% having a positive view of socialism, another 16% having a positive view of capitalism, another 16% having positive views of both, 17% having negative views of both, and the rest either being undecided or refused to answer.[4]
Abuse of charity
In the United States, abusive charity tactics include donating paltry sums to those in need (as low as 3% of money raised), giving away undesirable cast-off items at inflated prices (e.g., air fresheners), hiring for-profit organizations to solicit funds (or even having the charity be a front for the fund-raising company), and paying high salaries to staff.[5] Dubious charities can even benefit the founder in the form of golf easements on land donations, and donations between charities among celebrity- and politician-based charities, that would seem mainly to serve the purpose of cementing political ties.[6]
Effective altruism
Effective altruism is a utilitarian philosophy which attempts to use evidence and reason to bring about a net positive change to the word — partly by avoiding charities with limited or negative impact on the problems they are trying to address — of which there are, sadly, a large number — and focusing on more effective charities. In general, this is not a bad idea, but has been criticized for mostly the same reasons as utilitarianism has. It also suffers from one of the main drivers being Eliezer Yudkowsky's Machine Intelligence Research Institute, who want to spend the money on pseudoscientific artificial intelligence "research" (fanfic and blogs) rather than mosquito nets.
Dubious charities
- Most televangelists
- PETA
- Greenpeace
External link
See also
References
- ↑ http://artssantamonica.gencat.cat/web/.content/exposicions/2018/Pdfs-comics/George-Herriman-Krazy-Kat-05-05-1918.pdf
- ↑ Slavoj Žižek (2010). Living in the End Times
. Verso. p. 117.
- ↑ Oscar Wilde (1891). The Soul of Man under Socialism.
- ↑ "Stark partisan divisions in Americans' views of socialism and capitalism" - Pew Research
- ↑ Above the law: America's worst charities by Kris Hundley and Kendall Taggart (Updated 7:50 AM ET, Thu June 13, 2013) CNN.
- ↑ Proof of Trump's charity giving elusive by Jeff Horwitz (Aug. 2, 2015 8:21 PM EDT) AP.