The value of the tithe.

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
21

Actually, most of the charities that I support are in the US, where I am located. The recent exception would be disaster relief in Sichuan, but in that case aid money is designed to provide temporary support to a temporary problem.

As for my primary reason for donating, it is because I consider charity to be a virtue and as such, something I ought cultivate. Furthermore, I posted this because there is a lot of talk of morality in this section as well as moral theories. Most moral theories consider charity to be a good thing, though they vary in how they express that, and so it is reasonable to expect that most people in this section consider charity to be a good thing. As a firm believer in the unity of understanding and action, it therefore follows that people who say that charity is a good thing ought be practicing it. This is a useful metric since it is direct and personal; whereas most of the threads on morality, especially with respect to which groups are better at its practice (admittedly, a normative consideration), tend to rely upon statistics. While that is useful up to a point, most of those statistics deal with moral transgressions (i.e. which group commits the most crime) as opposed to actually manifesting morality (in this case, through the act of charity).

22

Say we have a herd of wildebeast, some more firm of limb than others, some just simply lucky. Old father time in the form of crocs and lions or anything else with sharp bits and an appetite tends to weed out the shakier members of the herd.

Then suddenly a coven of elite super-wildebeast arise, and out of the goodness of their lil’ wildebeastian hearts, stomp the crap out of the opposition.

Then the herd grows so prodigious in size it literally eats the land down to the bare and stagnant earth.

Then they all die.

I cheer the cyclones and scorn the begger. I didn’t use to, but now I’m wiser than I was.

23

Tab,

The problem with that isn’t the morality, but the likelyhood that ignoring the starving will take out the fortunate with them. Starving to death is a solution, but the diseases brought on by malnutrition are likely to kill the well fed as well. Consider the “charity” of helping find ways of limiting population growth if nothing else. Let’s see… I know! We just kill off half the females of child producing age and in a few years declining population will match up with resources. Now THAT is being charitable. I can hardly wait till Kris reads this… :laughing:

24

Whilst people of whatever colour and credo make short-term benefit decisions, the population will always bump right up against the availability of resource and damn the future cost. This is, as you well understand in evolutionary theory, a self-fulfilling prophecy. As is the tendency of the reciever to quickly forget both the act of charity and the underlying message of its need.

I too applaud the insight of your last line in the above, but feel it too, ducks responsibility.

Charity is just another short-term benefit behaviour, if done without consideration of the wider ramifications. We cull every other domestic and food-source species we possess, are we wrong to do so…? We carefully manage zoos, juggling space and materials… Foolish…?

The human race, particularly the West, reminds me of one of those air-headed beauty-queens, that pose on the podium, having donned their sash and put on the crown after many years of frantic dieting, tooth-bleaching and judge-fucking, who say “Gee, I just want everybody to be happy…”

But you look at her, and know right down deep in your gut, that if that pretty girl with the dazzling smile and the well-meaning intentions doesn’t wise up and grow a pair real soon…

…is toast.

25

Tab,

I’m not arguing with Malthus. He was right (although for many of the wrong reasons), but the charity of letting things be is a slippery slope. While a die-back would be useful in the short run, there is real danger in losing our ability to empathize. At what point do we begin to help others once on the path of “compassionate neglect”? We may well arrive at a point of no return as you have suggested, but I find nothing that says empathy dying is a preferable perspective.

26

Not really, empathy is a default setting, I remember feeling other’s pain intensely as a child, and even now, after years of being a bit of a git, a tear-jerker on the telly will do its job. And on the hopeful side, despite apparant millenia of uselessness - We all still have an appendix.

Empathy will grow back. It is too useful a trait to not to. My empathy which makes a part of me pine for the tearful child selling tissues at the traffic lights also allows me to enjoy movies and learn to play better football just by watching TV.

But at what point, while we are on this point, does a generous supply of empathy become a surfeit…? I remember my father having very little compunction against classifying people almost instantaneously by their accomplishments, appearance etc. His classic line was we should shoot an insurance salesman every day, and a member of any other group that took his fancy at any particular time. These days however, we fall over backwards - craning our necks - to see person X’s good sides, seemingly blind to their overwhelming faults and lackings, perhaps for fear, in these hero-less and unheroic times, of being judged in turn.

Perhaps some see the bloated bellied child in the stick-like arms of its mother and feel some urge to tap their credit card number into a page on the internet - but I see a woman who will birth another child as soon as that one is weaned, to another father, despite the arriddity of the land and the flies and the politics. And then the child - this malnourished bone-bag on the edge of death - should it be saved - to what end…? Are we talking a TOE in the making…? A new Picasso…?

“Well you never know.”

“Yeah. Sure. Like to bet…?”

Nope, we are talking just another cog in the Wasp-factory of reproduction. Life for life’s sake.

Same goes for everywhere. For any colour.

Indonesia…? China…? Their biggest export is new strains of virus. Their biggest crime…? Supressing the facts.

The greatest luxury this century of feckless consumption has bought us is the freedom to refuse to judge.

Who said anything about ‘compassion’…? If you care at all for something or someone, you do not let it die, especially if they don’t want to, especially if they go on international TV and beg for help. The future, if indeed there is any, will require the kind of ‘compassion’ that allows a women in the bush to leave her baby to die in a shallow grave when she cannot feed it, a parent to strangle an unwanted girl. I think as an intellectual class we are more terrified about finding out exactly how easy it will be for us to become ‘compassionate’ in this way than of the acts being so will entail.

Think of the number of things we have already done in the name of the ‘greater good’, or even simply under the blanket statement of “it’s for your/their own good.” Works for both Lil’ Sammy or a country with a Saddam.

It doesn’t matter. What survives, survives. I find nothing preferable about sentient life, perhaps as a whole, throughout all worlds, doomed to cycles of rise and fall. And the mass-death/pain/anguish and cruelty this entails.

Are we cowards…? Unable to get past the mewling cries of the diseased and hopeless toward salvation and balance…? Because… Because… We just might feel a bit bad about ourselves…?

:frowning:

And to the tithers, those with what they feel is more than enough, or at least enough for the excess to be worth less in its having than in the hand of some needy other… Are you so indoctrinated by this climate of life at all costs and the refusal to judge one above another that it never crosses your mind that maybe, just maybe, you deserve through your actions and achievements, this more-than-enoughness…? And that the guy with the flappy shoes and the piss-streaked shorts fucked it up…?

Some people work, and some people don’t.

Some cultures work, and some cultures don’t.

If we were discussing any other form of life but our own, the choice to cut numbers would not even be a choice.