My premise is that if life’s been good to you it’s not likely that you will give anything back worthwhile and are more likely to do harm than good. If life’s been good to you that means you’ve accepted the good that life had to offer, then when the time comes that you decide to give back, likely it won’t be much. Maybe some people have a change of heart and live an austere, yet active life, giving back all they can, but most wouldn’t have taken what they had to begin with if they had any intention of giving much of it back.
I’m not making the argument that people can’t give and take there whole life; and if they want to believe that they’re giving more than they’re taking, then I’m not going to nessesarily argue. The problem is that when people declare that they wish to give back for a life that has been good to them they are basically admitting that they never even had the delusion that their early life was based on any notions other than taking.
People may argue that what they mean by giving back after years of taking is not that they want to give back what they took; anything in their life that they value, but that they want to start thinking what they can do as a pastime that they would enjoy while also doing some good. That would be a sound argument except we have to wonder why they think they can be trusted to judge what is good. We respect those with expertise, those with experience. One who has only recently decided to give back after a long life of taking is far from qualified to make that judgment.
So if they admittedly don’t wish to give back much of value that they took and being that they’re inexperienced in the subject of giving, but very experienced in the subject of taking, it seems reasonable that they would be more likely to do harm than good. And it gets worse. The only reason we’ve even heard of those people who claim to want to give is back because they tell us, so we have to wonder how much what they’re giving back isn’t just in the form of giving others their uneducated advice on what it means to do good. It may create a multiplier effect of takers misadvising other takers how to give.
It’s a common expression, not one that I ever used, but used by the people I talk about in the OP. My premise is that essentially whatever they think they’re doing that is “giving back” it’s rather mundane at best. So to respond directly to your question; I don’t know what giving back means in this context, and I don’t think anyone else really does either.
What’s the point of saying certain people can’t give back, if you have no idea what giving back is? I mean, you brought it up…didn’t you know what you meant by your own words when you typed them?
Please read my OP. I was being slightly ironic to MM’s question being that, from the four paragraphs I spent speaking of the phrase, he could have inferred what I meant by “giving back”; or more accurately he could have inferred how it was that I was basically saying the term as it is usually used in that context was insubstantial and therefore indefinable. One can’t make an action when the action itself is unsubstantial.
If you were to say your definition refers to “giving”, not “giving back”, then I would agree. One can give and give, even if elsewhere they take and take, without the taking taking anything away from the giving, at least not in a literal sense. But, when one is “giving back”, they’re implying that they must have first taken from the same “place” that they are now giving. So if you were to tell me your giving back through volunteering and financial means, your saying you had first taken through some such means. So I have to ask, how much did you take and for how long, and when you stopped taking what was is that made you decided to start giving back?
To give back to the point where you break even or less is pointless and sort of insulting to those who helped you gain. Giving back should not be at a distinct loss to you.
So, I think this confusing question is really two easy questions.
If I get super filthy rich because life has been good to me, and I give a kid a quarter, then I ‘gave back’.
Question one: If life has been good to you, can you really give back? Obviously yes, see above.
Question two: If life has been good to you, can you back enough?
Enough for who? Some objective standard? There is none. Enough to satisfy some given critic of your wealth or wealth in general? Clearly not.
It depends entirely on what kind of society you happen to locally be living in.
In modern America, it isn’t an issue of you being willing to give back. Society is arranged that all is taken from you at every opportunity so as to support the government. That causes individuals to become more self concerned and not give even when they can because they intuit that whatever they have will be taken from them.
Within a family or small group, it can easily be a different story, but the outside world is still after your money by any means possible. But within the small group, one can be assured to be rewarded by one means or another by “sharing” or giving without accounting (aka “loving”). By supporting a close nit group, everyone wins regardless of who gave the most. And having a close nit group is far more valuable than almost anything that any single individual could give. So supporting the close nit group is actually more valuable than anything you have to give.
But there is also the concern of actual need. Most people cannot assess need and thus give to something that wasn’t worth giving to or hold onto far more than they needed. Again, it depends on what kind of group or society you happen to be dealing with as well as your ability to know when to give what and how much.
So this is another one of those cases where the best rule of thumb is to not make a rule of thumb and do the best you can moment by moment.
James, I agree with everything you said, but keep in I’m not talking about a requirement to give to society, I’m talking about those who claim to want to.
In that situation you’ve given, obviously, but you didn’t “give back” unless you happened to have taken the quarter to begin with. That’s why the term “give back”, in the context of this thread, seems to imply a certain social unity, as in, “the world is one and favored me and therefore given me much, now I’m going to give back to the world.” Your example just doesn’t work, because obviously the person is going to be giving, as James says, people are forced to give constantly. It seems the ephemeral “giving back” must be in the form of a substantial gift to “the world”. So I don’t know how much it would have to be, but I would think it would have to be enough to “hurt”.
But, of course they often claim they’re giving back their time more than anything, through establishing charities, where they ask others, to give. Now let’s go back to the issue I raised in my OP; what makes these people who’ve always taken think they’re qualified to know what causes are worth giving to anyway?
I’m not an advocate or a critic of wealth. Regarding wealth my purpose with this thread is only to advocate some honesty when it comes to it. But, this idea of claiming to be “giving back” is not restricted to those who are rich, those in the middle class do so as well.
Just like with FreeSpirit99, I would agree with you completely if you just use the word “giving” instead of “giving back”. I disagree with your statement as it is because it would seem that to give back it would have to be at a loss or at least meaningful in some way; look at the way the term “giving back” is normally used, there, the act of giving back is always meaningful.
Say if someone gave me some money for some bills, but I knew they couldn’t really afford to give me the money; I may feel bad and give them back their money, it would be a true loss to me, and very meaningful.
Another example would be if someone gave me a mundane gift by mail, but I didn’t want to receive gifts from him because of spite, I might mail the gift back. Yes, in that case it wouldn’t be a significant loss or gain to anyone, but the statement made in the act of returning it would be very meaningful.
So, where’s the meaning in giving back a pittance to some random charity? Perhaps one could argue that some beneficiary of the charity would find it meaningful, but that only assumes the charity is any good. Which once again goes back to my earlier question, what qualifies those who have always taken to know what charities are worth giving to anyway?
By definition, to be in a position to “give back” requires someone to have “taken” in the first place. A rich guy who wants to give back to the poor community he grew up in wouldn’t be in a position to do anything for anyone if he hadn’t “taken”.
Side-stepping the obvious joke about your sex life , I’ll point out that life is comprised of a lot of give-and-take and rarely is one in a position to be merely one or the other. I honestly don’t mean to be rude, but harboring the idea that an average person can take their entire life without giving, willingly or otherwise, is kind of naive.
That’s a good example of how “giving back” might work. Assuming the guy took from other communities to become rich. If he claimed that his own community supported him, emotionally, perhaps, and then later he gave back financially, it would almost make the grammatical requirements to be called “giving back”, rather than just “giving”.
That’s not true. That was merely a meme used to get people to be willing to take, steal, aggress upon, and even kill each other as a means to keep the population down. It is true that one must have something before he can give anything, but having it doesn’t equate to taking it.
The amount of money and power in society has increased tremendously in the last 100 years. Where did it come from? Some was by getting more people into the money struggle (getting women into the labor struggle). That counts as taking from families, “consuming them for economic fuel”. But that doesn’t account for the extreme increase. Creating jobs through demise is a type of taking (creating diseases so as to charge for treating them). Although that is indirect taking. That accounts for a lot of it, but still not all.
Creating jobs, value, and money is giving and it can be done without taking from people. Converting the useless into the useful is not a give and take balance. It might take very little to invent a product that creates 1000’s of jobs. Did the inventor take from society in order to do that? He might have acquired sufficient education from society, but its pretty guaranteed in the US that he already paid more than enough for that before he invented anything.
Reorganizing what was already there often opens opportunities - giving without taking. Redistributing, teaching, story telling, inspiring people, utilizing idle time in comfortable ways - giving without taking.
There is only one life that is strictly about gaining money. And it isn’t yours.
I billionaire I vaguely know founded the organization Giving Back, using his weath and networks to enable young people who’d normally not have much of a starting position in society. It seems like it works well enough.
The issue is not whether something such as that works or not, its with the honesty of using the term “giving back”. The misuse of terms such as that are responsible for much moral oppression. Personally, that’s one of the few types of oppression I’m concerned with. You could say I have a moral belief that one should be honest about their moral beliefs or lack thereof.
Just because someone wouldn’t normally be in a certain starting position, doesn’t mean they should be, but, if that’s the moral claim you wish to make, then who am I to argue after having just made a moral claim of my own?
I believe that there’s something to be said towards giving those with naturally abilities opportunities to compete with those without necessarily any naturally abilities, but plenty of opportunities, but, you didn’t specify that. Perhaps the organization gives imbeciles opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have.
, I’ll point out that life is comprised of a lot of give-and-take and rarely is one in a position to be merely one or the other. I honestly don’t mean to be rude, but harboring the idea that an average person can take their entire life without giving, willingly or otherwise, is kind of naive.