This is to reply to your characterization of me, and others who do the same, as "self serving" for disseminating information about hungersite.com, a virtually effort-free, cost-free option for helping hungry people.
I want to tell you the way in which I think that there is a philosophical validity in your statement, though I don't know what I, or you, when you try to do a good thing, can do about it.
When anyone does volunteer work, or contributes their hard-earned money to help others, or tries to assuage suffering and make the world a better place in any way at all, they do it because...
Well, here is what I want to say something about. I think we do it, all of us, because we believe it is the "right" thing to do; and because we wish the world were kinder; and because it hurts us to see suffering. Some do it because their religion instructs them to, some because their consciences do, some because both do.
And we have gotten into our heads (our parents and culture and maybe our genes put it there) that maybe we can, even though we are just puny individuals, do something about immense problems like hunger and disease. Even if we can do only a little bit, we have the idea in our heads and feeling in our hearts that that little bit is worth doing.
But the volunteer work I do, and I do quite a lot of it; and the financial contributions my husband and I make, and we make them to the point of discomfort, do make me feel better about myself, and because I meet others with the same goals, about the world.
We may be all silly. Certainly the same criticisms of the click-for-a-handful-of-rice-for-a-starving-child program can be made (and are) about all efforts to ameliorate suffering in the world. There is no "do-gooder" program that isn't subject to ridicule. I saw in the paper today that the program Smile, in which plastic surgeons repair birth defects in third world countries, has broken into warring factions. It will happen, eventually and inevitably, to Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of my favorite charities. (It won the Nobel Peace Prize this year.) I dare say there are critics of Medecins Sans Frontieres already. One could probably find them on the net.
So where I'm going is that in a way, you're right-- my trying to get people to make hungersite.com their opening page on their computers (I'll PM instruction for doing this to anyone who wants them!) and tell their friends about it is self serving, because it makes me feel better. I posted the information, two per night, and skipping some nights, always in the early hours of the morning, never during market hours, never on the same thread twice, and I can confess to you that the dozens and dozens of positive reactions, and promises to pass the word to others, who would pass the word to yet others, made me feel very good. It made me happy. And when I saw that yesterday, for the first time since I began clicking the site, the amount of food donated by the sponsors had risen to 2 3/4 cup, I was excited. In fact, I was thrilled at the thought that maybe SI had something to do with that. Probably it didn't, I know. But the idea that maybe it did, maybe the branching effect from the many, many SI people who are spreading the URL to their friends, pushed the hits on the site, and the numbers of sponsors, up by that 1/2 extra cup, made me happy.
And when on the 34th posting, "TraderAlan" decided to stop it, that made me feel very bad. I fully understand SI's policy, and why when the first person complained, SI had to stop me. Still, that there was an individual who personally really wanted to stop those few late night postings, that there was this group of guys who made jokes about hunger, and eating ice cream, and throwing rice at weddings... it made me feel so, so sad.
So this is a confession. Yes, it made me feel good to think that dozens, maybe, over time, hundreds, of people were going to get a meager daily bowl of rice or wheat or maize because I went to the smallest bit of trouble late at night, here, to tell as many people as I could how to make this happen for more hungry people-- and because so many people were so very happy to join this effortless effort!
I'll bet there isn't a person reading this that doesn't do "self-serving" things of exactly the same sort.
And that's not so bad, JLA. I don't think it deserves the contempt you and coug have shown for it. Even if it was pathetic. And inadequate. And easy to find fault with.
Something positive happened here, JLA. You may only see the negatives, but I will think of this every Thanksgiving, and I will remember the positives long after the name "TraderAlan," and your contempt for the effort, and cougs, have faded from my mind. |
