Reply #9: I think I disagree with many. [View All]

[Igel]

It's not money; it's human nature. We tend towards arrogance and self-protection; if you have more than you need and you interact personally with those that are truly needy, you feel helpless, grateful for having more than you need, and torn between helping others and keeping what you have. A common consequence is either detachment or arrogance and superiority (so you don't actually bond).

I knew people that could interact with me perfectly well, as long as they could believe I wasn't truly needy; my gross annual income, under $10k/year, was many times less than the annual interest on the amount they were giving to my school. Yet they were ok with drinking pinot gris and playing golf with me. I'd go on retreats with donors where my room rate for each night far exceeded my rent for the month, and where dinner cost more than I would spend on food for the month. If I mentioned that I had the choice of beans (and bike for transportation, and a one-room apt.) and paying student fees, or hamburger (or a car, or a 1-bedroom apt.) and not paying student fees, a joke surely deflected the problem. I was decoration, and needed to act with proper decorum. The result would be money that might help my fellow students; acting badly would help nobody.

A pastor I knew was great with helping people. As long as (a) it was on his terms, (b) he didn't need to be emotionally involved; a sense of "I'm glad I'm not poor like her" would suffice to motivate a feeling of superiority, hence detachment. He prided himself on his love of people. His daughter would volunteer evenings in a NICU, and usually return home late, crying. The pastor loved people, not persons; she loved persons, and therefore people. I've read many stories, at least some true, of great activists for humanity (some politicians, some entertainers) that treated those next to themselves like crap, but pushed for helping the poor, the sick, the needy; they love people, but not persons. Unlike the pastor and the wealthy donors, they frequently don't even help people in order to feel good: they feel better by pressuring and cajoling others into helping people. Persons still don't rate.

Even going to "see the poor" doesn't help: you're a tourist. Been there, done that. The detachment is there; you feel bad, but when you sit in front of your steak that night, the detachment saves you--you're not helping a person, you're saving Humanity. You buy a poor person a cheeseburger and sit there, trying to help him learn to how to read well enough to keep his minimum wage job, and you can't eat the steak.

From personal experience, I'd rather write out a check for $200 than buy a hamburger for a poor person I was helping, even when I wasn't far above the poverty level. No thanks from the people the check helped; the thanks from the person I was sitting across from was painful. You can't claim to help thousands if you can't stand helping one; all you do is rinse your conscience, feel good about yourself, get a tax break, and some favorable PR. And it's not great gobs of money that produces this response.