If everyone just stops doing charity for one second, giving these stupid organizations a monetary amount that's probably scraps compared to what they or their parents earn... if people would just stop and think, instead of jumping on the bandwagon of a new charity that sounds appealing to them... if fraternities and sororities would for the love of God stop the pretense that they are organizations dedicated to community service... maybe we will start to notice that there are larger, systemic issues with the world, with roots that run so deep in the history of injustice that your puny dollar is not going to alleviate it, let alone solve it, and is possibly worsening it by making yourself complicit in that injustice. You're not giving to charity, you're giving to the system.
Maybe if we stop and ask ourselves, why do these problems persist? Why is it that we've been doing charity all throughout history, but it seems like nothing has gotten better? Are things getting better? What is ten dollars, ten thousand dollars, a million dollars even, going to do for a country that is suffering from poverty, war, famine and epidemics all at the same time? Why are we paying out of our own pockets for Alzheimer's research? What is the U.S. government, indubitably the country with the most resources in the world, doing with all its fucking money that it can't give a significant portion of it to medical research to save the lives of their ageing citizens?
When you start asking questions, that's when truths are uncovered. Or at least, lies start to come undone.
Just for one second, maybe we'll realize that there is a reason why the amount we give them will always be just scraps, compared to how much money we will continue to have and make. That there is a reason the rich will always get richer, and the poor will stay poor. It's a selfish, unfair world. (Evidenced by how the US, a First World Country, has the widest income gap. How did we let this happen?) I wish people would just recognize that, instead of constantly giving. I think that is a far worthier task than donations. It's a travesty, really, almost patronizing. I live in a four bedroom house with five cars, and I'm going to give you ten dollars so you, oh mighty fraternity brothers, will cure Alzheimer's. It is all utter bullshit.
Maybe if charity just stops for a second, and even if there is a risk of things getting worse and exploding into an all-out war, or worldwide epidemic, or global food chain collapse - something that gets to our thick, privileged skulls (and our living rooms), then maybe we'll notice that there is something fucked up about the system, and that it's high time something is done about it.
Oh well. Second over. You can go on back to your lives, I guess. Go back to being the charity-er, and the charitable. Go on picking spare change out of your wallet and giving it to the this-and-that foundation. Forget that your privilege is guaranteed off the backs of the lesser person. Go back to living in your little bubble, where your attempt at reaching out to different societies is to insert a coin into whatever slot you can find. If you can't find a slot, make one. We both dream of utopias anyway...
PS - I glanced over the comments to this post and it has only proven my argument above that people are idiots, and hence I don't read my comments. (Really, I don't. Don't bother leaving them to enrage me, you're better off sending me an e-mail mayzhee (a) gmail (dot) com so I can have a good laugh.) People still think charity genuinely does something. What the fuck does giving a family a hundred dollars to buy a couch do if they're going to be poor for the next ten years, and more? People who are poor will stay poor, and there is NOTHING anyone can do about it. Get it into your thick skulls. You can give all the money you have, and you can do NOTHING about world problems. People who are poor are trapped in the cycle of poverty. And what is the biggest factor to this? My biggest guess: education. (How's that for ivory tower?) They'll never escape because they will never get the education that we are getting, and the jobs and dreams that follow a good education will go down the dumpster for them.
Every hundred dollars you give, a corporation has probably screwed over a community by millions of dollars, by taking away their housing for more profitable projects. (Hyperbole, but is it hard to believe?) If you think us "intellectuals" (really, because I write with such a grandiose vocabulary that no one can probably read...) are doing even less of a favor by just sitting in our ivory towers, you might want to look at what you are doing. We are privileged, but it is our privilege that rules over the unprivileged. We live in supposed democracies. That means our vote counts. We can say no to the power abuses that are ongoing. We can speak out and say you need to tax the shit out of these corporations and that no, trickle-down economics is bullshit. That the entire field of economics is bullshit, and full of racist, misogynistic motherfuckers. We can speak out at every turn we take in our lives, and that's the most we can do, and that's all I have to say on the topic.
Maybe if we stop and ask ourselves, why do these problems persist? Why is it that we've been doing charity all throughout history, but it seems like nothing has gotten better? Are things getting better? What is ten dollars, ten thousand dollars, a million dollars even, going to do for a country that is suffering from poverty, war, famine and epidemics all at the same time? Why are we paying out of our own pockets for Alzheimer's research? What is the U.S. government, indubitably the country with the most resources in the world, doing with all its fucking money that it can't give a significant portion of it to medical research to save the lives of their ageing citizens?
When you start asking questions, that's when truths are uncovered. Or at least, lies start to come undone.
Just for one second, maybe we'll realize that there is a reason why the amount we give them will always be just scraps, compared to how much money we will continue to have and make. That there is a reason the rich will always get richer, and the poor will stay poor. It's a selfish, unfair world. (Evidenced by how the US, a First World Country, has the widest income gap. How did we let this happen?) I wish people would just recognize that, instead of constantly giving. I think that is a far worthier task than donations. It's a travesty, really, almost patronizing. I live in a four bedroom house with five cars, and I'm going to give you ten dollars so you, oh mighty fraternity brothers, will cure Alzheimer's. It is all utter bullshit.
Maybe if charity just stops for a second, and even if there is a risk of things getting worse and exploding into an all-out war, or worldwide epidemic, or global food chain collapse - something that gets to our thick, privileged skulls (and our living rooms), then maybe we'll notice that there is something fucked up about the system, and that it's high time something is done about it.
Oh well. Second over. You can go on back to your lives, I guess. Go back to being the charity-er, and the charitable. Go on picking spare change out of your wallet and giving it to the this-and-that foundation. Forget that your privilege is guaranteed off the backs of the lesser person. Go back to living in your little bubble, where your attempt at reaching out to different societies is to insert a coin into whatever slot you can find. If you can't find a slot, make one. We both dream of utopias anyway...
PS - I glanced over the comments to this post and it has only proven my argument above that people are idiots, and hence I don't read my comments. (Really, I don't. Don't bother leaving them to enrage me, you're better off sending me an e-mail mayzhee (a) gmail (dot) com so I can have a good laugh.) People still think charity genuinely does something. What the fuck does giving a family a hundred dollars to buy a couch do if they're going to be poor for the next ten years, and more? People who are poor will stay poor, and there is NOTHING anyone can do about it. Get it into your thick skulls. You can give all the money you have, and you can do NOTHING about world problems. People who are poor are trapped in the cycle of poverty. And what is the biggest factor to this? My biggest guess: education. (How's that for ivory tower?) They'll never escape because they will never get the education that we are getting, and the jobs and dreams that follow a good education will go down the dumpster for them.
Every hundred dollars you give, a corporation has probably screwed over a community by millions of dollars, by taking away their housing for more profitable projects. (Hyperbole, but is it hard to believe?) If you think us "intellectuals" (really, because I write with such a grandiose vocabulary that no one can probably read...) are doing even less of a favor by just sitting in our ivory towers, you might want to look at what you are doing. We are privileged, but it is our privilege that rules over the unprivileged. We live in supposed democracies. That means our vote counts. We can say no to the power abuses that are ongoing. We can speak out and say you need to tax the shit out of these corporations and that no, trickle-down economics is bullshit. That the entire field of economics is bullshit, and full of racist, misogynistic motherfuckers. We can speak out at every turn we take in our lives, and that's the most we can do, and that's all I have to say on the topic.
8 comments:
Idiot.
Pseudo-intellectuals will always find an excuse to not DO anything about the problems that they're ranting about. Got a concrete solution? It's the SYSTEM. Got some money to spare? Destroy the SYSTEM first. As if staying in the academe and writing papers and books that nobody will ever read is going to change anything.
Yes, "public" charity is largely motivated by social image. But despite the pretentiousness, they have consequences that matter. Reading 19th century philosophy and writing in your ivory tower jargon, while freeloading off the wealth that your family passes on to you through hard work and sacrifice, does not.
"[Lee Harvey] Oswald, the commission said, was driven by several factors, including a psychological “hostility to his environment,” failure to establish meaningful relationships with others, difficulties with his wife, perpetual discontent with the world around him, hatred of American society, a search for recognition and a wish to play a role in history, and, finally, his commitment to Marxism and Communism."
Sounds familiar.
Mayzhee, I love reading your blog, but you need to read Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save. He refutes all the comments you've made in this post.
Come back with 2nd opinion. After musing-over during a puff. Post rigorous sex.
Couldn't agree more with the first anonymous. Looks like the author of this post is falling into the age old habit of the seemingly idealistic, or rather jaded, young adult - ranting about the state of the world and how everything needs to reformed. True, the system sucks. The general public is in delusion and will believe that money will solve everything, or at least the core of the problems. At first, it has actually made conditions better to some extent. What would have become of so many developing countries were it not from the funds from donors? Literacy rates would be much lower, diseases would be infinitely more prevalent, and people would continue living in unimaginable conditions. Just think of the microloan project, which helped save so many women of third world countries from poverty.
Yet the devastating conditions still exist, and to a great extent. Thus begin the collective efforts of the more fortunate. People from the average citizen to highly publicized celebrities set up foundations. School children take part in door to door sales of merchandise to raise money, and bake sales in front of classroom buildings and fraternities have become a part of a sunny day on American university campuses. Sure, it helps, but the efforts are leveled off only when people begin to ease their conscience and gain the satisfaction of "having done something."
Then comes the frustration. It's the SYSTEM, and nothing will get better until we improve the SYSTEM. This sounds very similar to inventing a device that malfunctions, and going back to the blueprint, and RESTARTING. But the system is there, and it is impossible to grasp and revamp from step 1. So the rants and hopeless exhortations of "there is nothing I can do" begin.
If you really want to do something, you will achieve it, eventually. The world is not a perfect place by any means. But the immense problems that you have mentioned can be eliminated to an extraordinary degree if proper measures are taken. We just need to find them. But with the status quo - the ongoing cycles of blinded self reassurance at "making a difference", trying to avoid thinking of those with less privileged lives, and lack of persistence out of being hopeless - things will not get any better.
This piece of whiny wannabe has no truth in her. She's just like the typical woman - mostly lies and more lies within them, and when they aren't, they are only capable of speaking convenient truths. Shitty.
just like u mentioned, 'every vote counts' , its of the same as 'every penny that goes into a NGO, cause or donation counts. putting the blame on the "system" and then continuing with our so called lives aint gonna make things better, if not worse. your type of thinking, many other teens had been thru that.
just like u mentioned, 'every vote counts' , its of the same as 'every penny that goes into a NGO, cause or donation counts. putting the blame on the "system" and then continuing with our so called lives aint gonna make things better, if not worse. your type of thinking, many other teens had been thru that.
Post a Comment