I've just donated some money to UNICEF. I'm not blogging about it because I think I should be considered a heroine. In many ways I am ashamed that I haven't done it before. I always drop money in various charity tins and throw money into busker's guitar cases no matter how bad they are, however I have allowed my mistrust of big organisations to stop me donating to African famine funds.
I usually flip TV channels when images of starving children are paraded on the screen. Not because I don't care, they upset me terribly, but that's partly the problem. I don't like being manipulated by the media - it often seems like a cheap shot, even exploitation. The other reason is that I feel helpless about contributing anything meaningful to the problem. This time, particularly in light of what is happening to the global economy, I just couldn't ignore it.
My donation is pathetic really, only a small fraction of my income that I won't even miss. But I do feel better for doing it. Sure, maybe I am driven by guilt - that has to be a part of it. My life is very modest by Western standards, technically I am on the poverty line! In reality my life in comparison, at the moment at least, is luxurious. I often reflect on how lucky I have been in being reincarnated into such a great country.
If you are not sleepwalking through your life, maybe even if you are, there is an innate human desire to ease the suffering of others. I will concede that it must be linked to a desire to relieve our own. But that doesn't really make it a bad thing.
2 comments:
Joan said:
Like you, I live lightly on the planet. I am better off than most pensioners and I feel very fortunate to be where I am in this country. It would be obscene if it was not so given that we have a land-mass the size of the USA and a population commensurate with Sweden...generally speaking.
I have long-standing charities that I support modestly but regularly such as Medecine Without Borders, RSPCA. and many other one-offs or annually mainly children's and/or handicap causes. Allan and I adopted the traditional; one-tenth tithe on earnings. I have never assessed the details of that or investigated deepest motivations. Probably a bit of a cop-out of not thinking about it or allowing the state of affairs to become too painful to contemplate. Probably a practical tactic as well so as not to render oneself too sad and depressed.
I think you are also just responding to the zeitgeist. 'Winds of change', and these are BIG winds by anyone's standards. It's archetypal, collective and I am expecting a lot of people to crumble and break completely under the pressure of it all when they finally see what is going on. Most are still living in denial, still politicians are making comments that indicate they have not accepted what is happpening, economically, globally, environmentally. The 'perfect (economic) storm' analysts are saying, and I don't doubt it - except they may not be factoring in those other elements.
I am still of the opinion that Australia cannot support a large population. I think Aboriginal people demonstrated that very clearly.
I am going into stage 2 of 'survival' mode. I have been waiting for this for a loooong time and although it won't happen overnight, there are some real changes coming, not all bad, but ones we can't really predict either - though I have my own thoughts about how this will go.
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