Do you give to charity? What are your opinions on it?
Anything goes, from small change in the hands of a homeless person to some campaign to fund cancer therapy for some kid to, I dunno, some foundation supporting kids in Africa to refugees of war in Syria and so on.
Me, to set the discussion in the right direction and reason I started this thread at all: I give regularly to a person in need. Don't ask me how I got in contact with said person, that's easy, they are everywhere.
And once you do like I do, that is, give, you quickly realize a few things, some on the philosophical realm but most of them just reality checks:
First and foremost we're hardwired by 100s of thousands of years of evolution if not millions to care for members of your tribe. That's because until not very far back and a glimpse on the geological scale, "your tribe" meant 100 members at best. You'd depend on them as much as they'd depend on you so if one was in trouble, you had a hefty 1% chance less of making it yourself. Therefore it was both practically required by you to help he or she and at the same time not much of a nuisance since it was just one.
But in today's world, your city has 1 million members at least. Of which a lot require help. And then there's your enlarged tribe, country, which has 100s of millions of which a hefty percent require help. And then there's the whole fucking world with all it's neverending misery and conflicts which continuously creates a lot of persons needing help.
So your capacity to help as a single person is quickly overran if you don't limit it to the original idea: some 100-ish members of your tribe of which at most one or two need significant help hopefully not for very long.
So this is the practical reality check of charity. You're physically limited to how much you give which means some limitation on who you give also. Next I'll delve into some philosophical considerations of charity.
Anything goes, from small change in the hands of a homeless person to some campaign to fund cancer therapy for some kid to, I dunno, some foundation supporting kids in Africa to refugees of war in Syria and so on.
Me, to set the discussion in the right direction and reason I started this thread at all: I give regularly to a person in need. Don't ask me how I got in contact with said person, that's easy, they are everywhere.
And once you do like I do, that is, give, you quickly realize a few things, some on the philosophical realm but most of them just reality checks:
First and foremost we're hardwired by 100s of thousands of years of evolution if not millions to care for members of your tribe. That's because until not very far back and a glimpse on the geological scale, "your tribe" meant 100 members at best. You'd depend on them as much as they'd depend on you so if one was in trouble, you had a hefty 1% chance less of making it yourself. Therefore it was both practically required by you to help he or she and at the same time not much of a nuisance since it was just one.
But in today's world, your city has 1 million members at least. Of which a lot require help. And then there's your enlarged tribe, country, which has 100s of millions of which a hefty percent require help. And then there's the whole fucking world with all it's neverending misery and conflicts which continuously creates a lot of persons needing help.
So your capacity to help as a single person is quickly overran if you don't limit it to the original idea: some 100-ish members of your tribe of which at most one or two need significant help hopefully not for very long.
So this is the practical reality check of charity. You're physically limited to how much you give which means some limitation on who you give also. Next I'll delve into some philosophical considerations of charity.
