Is Charity Immoral?

[Dragline]

I come at this from a completely different perspective. I view empathy as a normal human condition for over 95% of the population. And by empathy, I mean that most humans observing or even imagining other humans involved in some tragedy or triumph have a natural "mimicking" emotional response. Recent research suggests that this is a product of the way so-called mirror neurons work in most people's brains. Empathy, broadly speaking, is why humans enjoy rooting for sports teams, watching dramas, reading fiction and every other spectator activity you can think of. And parenting. Without it, most of what people do in their spare time would not exists, including pretty much all non-participatory entertainment.

Charity is just a commone expression of empathy. It's a normal, ordinary thing to do that invokes good feelings in most people who do some of it. It's no more unusual than eating, having sex or taking a shit.

Political or other philosophies that suggest that there is something "wrong" with participating in charity, including many or most of those discussed above, are essentially arguing that humans should deny a basic component of their humanity, and need to be dehumanized for their own good -- generally to create some kind of utopia in the mind of the proponent. All such philosophies are potentially dangerous, which often makes them very attractive to some of that other 4% who lack the capacity for empathy and often become fixated by domination as a substitute.

Who are those remaining 4%? They are generally classified as psychopaths, narcissists, borderlines and those unfortunates suffering from autism. (See Baron-Cohen, The Science of Evil). Many are harmless or pathetic, some are annoying (the ones you work with) and some are quite dangerous, especially if they are also charming. Those range from pedophiles to fraudsters to religious/cult leaders to dictators.

A philosophy that claims that kindness is immoral is a psychopath's best friend. It can justify any form of human suffering and death in the name of "progress" or utopian "morality" creating what is known as a paramoralism. A paramoralism is bastardized substitute for morality that usually involves denigration or destruction or something or somebodies. On a political level, doing it in the name of "security" or "emergency" is often the justification. Soon the paramoralism takes on a life of its own -- i.e., people start believing in it for its own sake, especially if it can be expressed in a slogan. "Charity is immoral" would make a good paramoralism slogan.

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On the individual charity front, since someone asked for a good one, we sponsor a kid and an old man in Latin America through this organization: http://www.cfcausa.org/ It has an A+ rating and 93.6% of the money goes to the individual. It's also nice to get letters and pictures from them. It warms my mirror neurons.

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One more comment -- the idea that our individual choices in this regard are going to somehow change society as a whole or justify other's laziness doesn't withstand much scrutiny. It's like the argument that "if everyone did ERE, the economy would collapse, so I have to spend to preserve society." To the extent you believe such things, you must be quite powerful in your own minds. And vain.

[Felix]

Once again Dragline hits the ball out of the park.

[Ego]

Political or other philosophies that suggest that there is something "wrong" with participating in charity, including many or most of those discussed above, are essentially arguing that humans should deny a basic component of their humanity, and need to be dehumanized for their own good -- generally to create some kind of utopia in the mind of the proponent.

For most of human history human beings bashed the shit out of one another for petty infractions. Remnants of that survive in us today and we must restrain those desires when someone cuts us off on the road. By exercising that restraint are we denying a basic component of our humanity?

You say, "be dehumanized for their own good." There is a difference between actively dehumanizing someone and refraining from saving them from their self-induced dehumanization.

All such philosophies are potentially dangerous, which often makes them very attractive to some of that other 4% who lack the capacity for empathy and often become fixated by domination as a substitute.

I agree with that and with much of what you say about psychopaths, narcissists, etc. You must acknowledge though that it is often the case that helping someone today has the potential to cause much greater suffering down the road. Continuously providing me immediate help by giving me food for my family will likely induce learned-helplessness in me and I'll lose the ability to do it myself.

At the heart of this discussion is the fact that there is compassion and empathy to an individual, and compassion and empathy to society. Often the two are at odds. Learned helplessness is but one example. To deny that is at minimum lazy thinking. At worst it is intentional delusion at service to the warm mirror-neurons we love so well. We are pre-programmed to automatically want to help. It is one of the beauties of the human being, in stark contrast to the innate ugliness I mentioned above. This bias causes us to err on the side of the immediate need, the short-term, at the expense of compassion to society.

Also let me point out that on several occasions we've veered perilously close to Godwin's Law. Before that happens I'll tap out.

[Dragline]

You must acknowledge though that it is often the case that helping someone today has the potential to cause much greater suffering down the road. Continuously providing me immediate help by giving me food for my family will likely induce learned-helplessness in me and I'll lose the ability to do it myself.

"Often the case?" As is more often than not? I don't think this is a very robust assumption to make at all, but is a frequent shibboleth (another word for paramoralism) used to justify all sorts of behavior. I would certainly agree it is sometimes the case, but I also think that each situation is likely to be dominated by many other factors/variables. Certainly, the woman from Guatemala mentioned above did not suffer or cause greater suffering down the road. And I don't think the long-term effects of a particular act can be predicted with any accuracy, despite the vanity of thinking we can. But we could certainly both come up with long lists to support or refute this assertion.

At the heart of this discussion is the fact that there is compassion and empathy to an individual, and compassion and empathy to society. Often the two are at odds.

I am not sure how you would define "empathy to society". While I would agree that humans can transfer empathic thoughts to animals, pieces of land and buildings or automobiles, "empathy to society" would imply that you are able to predict the future with sufficient certainty that you "know what's good" for everyone - i.e., a teleological philosophy that leads to a utopia (or away from a dystopia) if the prescription is followed. I think "empathy to society" is more of a rationalization for following a particular ideology. The stronger empathic bonds would be made with the like-thinkers who would all be on the same team.

Godwin's law notwithstanding, the thrust of what I was saying is intended at a much broader spectrum of human activities and organizations. McKay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" (1841) provides a wealth of examples (thankfully with little analysis -- just extensive descriptions) of how societies become plagued by irrational and destructive behavior that generally starts with an idea of a higher purpose for society and ends with psychopathic individuals justifying depravity with paramoralisms about the good of society they were allegedly supporting. Witch-hunting and dueling were two interesting examples. With dueling in particular, some notorious individuals just liked to kill people and would find any reason at all to pick fights so that they could quench their lust for blood on the paramoralism of "honor".

Modern examples abound everywhere from Islamic militants to the Church of Scientology to economic dogmatists to radical environmentalists to the NRA. Anywhere you see people getting together and arguing about ideological "purity", issuing "scores" and/or deciding who should be on the island (i.e., acceptable society in their view), you are likely to find them. Incidentally, Marxists and fascists are actually pretty passe -- I saw a story yesterday that the government of Vietnam is offering scholarships to students to major in Marxism because it can't get enough voluntary takers. To everything there is a season, I suppose.

[secretwealth]

Dragline, I aspire to be as eloquent as you. A question: do you think utopian thinking is on the rise and, if so, why?

[Ego]

A few times in the past I've mentioned that I had a long conversation with a woman who ran a guesthouse for aid-workers in Malawi. She changed the way I see charity and aid. She somehow kept the business going despite corruption, shortages, electricity cuts, and many other challenges that would be unimaginable to the typical entrepreneur in the developed world. Yet the quote that stuck in my mind, one that she said over and over again was, "We black people can't do it by ourselves. We need you white people to come and help us." I was amazed that she of all people got to the point that she believed such a thing about herself and her people. How did she get there?

On the individual charity front, since someone asked for a good one, we sponsor a kid and an old man in Latin America through this organization: http://www.cfcausa.org/ It has an A+ rating and 93.6% of the money goes to the individual. It's also nice to get letters and pictures from them. It warms my mirror neurons.

I've been thinking about that kid. What does the act of being forced to sit down and write that letter do to his neurons?

A large part of the problem for me is that I do not have faith. Religious people can write the check and pray to God that it is all part of his plan. Granted not all religious people do this, but many do. Those of us without faith have no such luck. Without a belief that God is steering my intentions in the right direction, I have to look in that direction for myself. When I do, I don't like what I see.

That is not about ideological purity. It is about questioning whether we've gone too far. It is about questioning whether the pink brigade is actually good for breast cancer and whether the Starbucks fair-trade beans and smile train are good for anyone in the long run. It is about questioning whether those with good intentions are willing to knowingly do more harm than good because of the warm-neurons phenomenon. It is about questioning whether our charity system is more immoral than moral.

Dragline, you seem to be sure that you know the answer to those questions. You are firm and definite. I know for a fact that I am not firm in my opinions. I don't know for sure. I have opinions but I could be wrong. I do know that your answers don't fit for me and my life experience.

I can imagine that a fear of a possible "Madness of Crowds" may make it hard to be anything but sure that charity is overall a good thing and that the default setting should be to give if you can. I suspect that if others where not so far removed from the recipients of their good intentions, they might not be so sure.

[Felix]

There is a strong argument against "charities" and that argument is precisely that they devalue the charity of people by turning it into yet another business decision - under the rule of psychopathic (cold and unemotional, artificially rational) business transactions. The peta sports car. That, I can understand. It would be yet another way for business to exploit people's emotional states for monetary gain, just like the rest of the business world for which charity is supposed to be the saving grace, the human side. As such, it is pathetically underperforming.

I don't think there is a case against charity in the human sense. What is the disadvantage of a simple raw act of kindness and charity? I don't see it. You have a guy in the street, he has no food, it is cold. You bring him inside and give him a piece of bread and a cup of soup and a blanket. Financially, it means nothing to you and everything for him. Your own body tells you it is the right thing to do through hard-wired empathy. Worrying that I am now enabling a life of dependence or that I am dehumanizing that person seems out of place in such a scenario. It is not the charity that dehumanized him. If you want to worry about systematizing dependence on charity, don't look at charities, look at the rest of the system which creates people requiring charity in the first place.

On a larger scale, it's exploiting foreign countries for their cheap labor and resources (the west sucks up 80%) and then sending a few boxes of leftovers into the ruins as charity that's problematic. But what's immoral in this scenario is not the charity. Focusing on the charity as the culprit in this scenario, again, seems out of place.

You have a system in place that spits out poor people by design and then you have the act of charitable giving as a remedy, feeling proud of helping out in the process. It's like this Helder Camara quote "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."

Claiming in this context that the remedy is to keep people to their own devices in a system that is stacked against them because I would harm their self-reliance and entrepreneurial spirit otherwise seems very theory-driven to me.

[Chad]

I must admit that I fall more on the "psychopath" side of the charity argument. I do think a lot of charity is immoral and ineffective.

Take the Gates Foundation. Two of their big initiatives are mosquito nets and vaccines. While, both of these are feel good and great for the individuals, one could argue they hurt these societies and future generations. This pain would stem from helping the most prolific and utterly helpless child creators on the planet to live longer and create more children. This population weight destroys these countries and makes prime folder for rich countries.

Now, it is possible these efforts could reduce the number of children by convincing the parents that they don't have to have 6 kids for 2-3 of them to survive. However, I don't think this has been demonstrated yet. And, it's really a secondary topic.

[Felix]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographi ... ic_paradox

[henrik]

I've been thinking about that kid. What does the act of being forced to sit down and write that letter do to his neurons?

I've been that kid, in the USSR in the eighties. Had to write the letters too. I was young enough and can't pretend to know whether the help was absolutely necessary for our family's economic survival at the time. I doubt it, but I don't know.

What I do know is that receiving it felt embarrassing and wrong, and it created a lot of bad tension between my parents. There was also tension between neighbours and families who got some assistance and those who didn't. I distinctly remember feeling, then, that we would be better off without clueless foreigners pretending to know what we need and trying to feel good by providing it. (I don't know the word for when you receive a shipment that includes coffee machine filters when you've never seen a coffee machine. Ironic? Stupid?:))

I am now on the "other side" of international development and charity, both professionally and personally/financially. I just try to keep those childhood experiences in mind. And I feel very bad and out of place when a kid in Africa is made to dance and sing for me because I participated in a charity sports event that supports his school.

If I were to make a broad philosophical statement about this topic (and I know this is way too simple), I'd say the moral and useful kind of charity deals with stability, connections, and opportunities. The other kind that gives you a more efficient neuron-to-time-investment ratio, the kind where cash and stuff is transferred, is controversial at best.

[secretwealth]

I think you bring up an important point, henrik: Giving charity while consolidating power for yourself is the most dangerous and destructive. This is why champagne socialists, not greedy capitalists, are the greatest enemy of the poor. (It might surprise many on this forum that I'd say Noam Chomsky is a much more evil and dangerous "thinker" than Ayn Rand.)

I think my Guatemala example might even confirm henrik's experience, because her sponsor did a bit more than just send money: this woman's sponsor actually went further and paid for her to come live with him and his family for a year in Alaska and get an education. That was the real payoff, more than the monthly allowances; she was able to learn English, first-world business and science methods, and some critical thinking. She's in turn used that to help the local co-operative. Perhaps if he hadn't sent money and still brought her to America to study for a year, she'd turn out the same way.

BTW, you can use coffee filters without a coffee machine.

[prosaic]

Giving *anonymously* is key to me. If you're giving out of a sense of empathy, you shouldn't need to look the givee in the eyes, or need public acknowledgement.

I was "that kid" in a different sense. When I was 15 some well-meaning teacher must have put our family's name into some social service agency list for a holiday basket. My mother was mentally ill and an alcoholic. We made about $8K/year in the mid 1980s for a family of 4. I was an academic high achiever and spent my days worrying someone would figure out how fucked up my family really was, as I worked on generating a facade of normalcy at school.

One night before Christmas the doorbell rang and "Santa" was there, along with a classmate's father. It was the local fire/rescue doing a charity drive and WE were the charity recipients.

I was mortified. Our house looked like something out of the show Hoarders (try cleaning with a schizophrenic in the house who beat you for touching her "important things"). They walked right in with two huge boxes -- one filled with food, one filled with wrapped presents.

Had they delivered those and left, I would have been embarrassed but OK. It's what they did next that made my heart turn to steel and that infurates me to this day, 28 years later.

They insisted we each open our presents right then and there, and that we let them take a picture of us with our presents, to post at the station house. My mom was enough of a faker to force us to do it, as I died inside knowing at least 5 classmates had parents who worked for the town fire/rescue and who would see this.

It killed something in me, to be the object of "charity" with such enormous strings attached, and to have people in my community need to parade us around as proof of their "benevolence."

[Tyler9000]

Giving *anonymously* is key to me. If you're giving out of a sense of empathy, you shouldn't need to look the givee in the eyes, or need public acknowledgement.

One who requires (even non-monetary) payment for their "charity" is simply buying something. That's why douchebag celebrities who bring camera crews with them to document their "selflessness" drive me nuts.

Giving in person and "looking the givee in the eyes" is fine to me. I appreciate the humanity of life, and need is about much more than money. But anything that serves yourself is missing the point.

[Ego]

Henrick and Prosaic, thank you posting those replies.

I'd say the moral and useful kind of charity deals with stability, connections, and opportunities.

and

Giving *anonymously* is key to me. If you're giving out of a sense of empathy, you shouldn't need to look the givee in the eyes, or need public acknowledgement.

You are both willing to consider giving even after your experiences. That says a lot.

[prosaic]

Giving *anonymously* is key to me. If you're giving out of a sense of empathy, you shouldn't need to look the givee in the eyes, or need public acknowledgement.

One who requires (even non-monetary) payment for their "charity" is simply buying something. That's why douchebag celebrities who bring camera crews with them to document their "selflessness" drive me nuts.

Giving in person and "looking the givee in the eyes" is fine to me. I appreciate the humanity of life, and need is about much more than money. But anything that serves yourself is missing the point.

Right -- it's the *need* to look the givee in the eye or for public acknowledgment that separates giving for the sake of helping from giving for the sake of a pat on the back. I've helped people face-to-face, but I didn't need their thanks or for it to be documented.

[Felix]

More fun with Zizek:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80X0pbCV_t4

[jacob]

It truly is a horrible optimization problem. What to favor?
1) Emotions or statistics?
2) The local or the global?
3) The here or the there?
4) Now or the future?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions ...

[Felix]

I guess the reasonable thing to do would be statistics, global, future. But in reality it is done by emotion anyway...

[Ego]

Stealing this from another thread.....

On a similar note:

This is a very old story about a farmer who was very zen.

There once was a zen farmer who lived in the coun­try­side near a small village.

One day his horse ran away and when his neigh­bours found out they came call­ing ‘Zen farmer, zen farmer isn’t it ter­ri­ble your horse ran away?’

And the zen farmer replied ‘Maybe yes and maybe no,’ to which his neigh­bours only shook their heads as they walked away.

The very next the farmer’s horse returned and he had a beau­ti­ful filly with him and all his neigh­bours came run­ning once again.’

Zen farmer, zen farmer, isn’t it won­der­ful your horse came back and brought with it such a beau­ti­ful filly?’

And again the zen farmer replied, ‘Maybe yes, maybe no.’

And again his neigh­bours went away per­plexed at the zen farmer’s atti­tude for what was clearly such great luck.

The next day, when the zen farmer’s son tried to ride the filly, he fell off break­ing both his legs.

And sure enough, his neigh­bours all came run­ning and cry­ing, ’ Oh zen farmer, such ter­ri­ble news, your son has bro­ken his legs while try­ing to ride­the beau­ti­ful filly!’

Once more the zen farmer sim­ply replied, ‘Maybe yes, maybe no.’

Thor­oughly frus­trated by the zen farmer, his neigh­bours left in dis­gust, for surely this was the worst of all disasters.

The next day, the Emperor came through the vil­lage where the zen farmer lived, look­ing for young men to con­script into ser­vice but,because he had two bro­ken legs, the zen farmer’s son was not taken when all the other vil­lagers sons were made to go.

When the Emperor had left the vil­lage with his army, the vil­lagers all came to the zen farmer and said, ‘Oh zen farmer, you are so lucky your son broke his legs so he does not have to go off to war.’

And once more the zen farmer replied, ‘Maybe yes, maybe no.’

We can never be cer­tain what lies ahead and whether we are blessed or we are cursed.

We are entering the charitable season. How do forum members reconcile the lesson of the zen farmer with their own charitable urges?

[Felix]

Most people are not zen masters. As it is in line with - or better: central to - buddhist thought, where this story comes from, one should help others in removing their suffering. This is the whole point of it.