Christmas suggestion for the First World : Charity Gifts

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By Oliver (AKA the Admin) on 14 comments
in Categories: Just Talking

I’m recycling the contents of that post :)

Dear readers, here is a typical First World useful suggestion :
charity gifts !
(If “First World” isn’t familiar, open this and try not to laugh too hard)

Last time, for my birthday, and today, for christmas, I had a problem : I needed nothing. No clothes. No electronic stuff. No books or music (the only ones I like are the ones I find myself.) I was content that it was an opportunity to party, but I needed nothing. And as a liberal person with strong green convictions, painfully convinced our ever-more-consuming drive is leading to nothing but catastrophe (trees don’t grow as high as the sky, guys, and besides gas, petrol and uranium, even several all-uses minerals won’t last two or even one century), I hated the idea of receiving useless junk.

Then the charity gifts option became obvious – when we discovered its very existence !

The money your friends or relatives decide to spend on you is not used to buy useless junk for you, but, to the contrary, it is given to be spent on charity relief actions across the globe, and you are offered proof the money was used, in your name, for this, or that. That proof can take the form of a nice christmas card.

The vaccination of x people, digging a water pump in a village, funding enough to educate children for a whole year (cheaper than an ipad !), whatever.

Maybe for you it is no news, but for me and everyone around us, it was… genius ! No more waste, and, I tell you, you feel much happier your gifts are making a big difference. Between receiving a new jumper you didn’t need, and the idea a village finally had a water pump, that peasants were helped buying non-GMO crops, that children could receive education thanks to you, for the same frigging price, what would make you the proudest, the happiest ? :)
Maybe you too you could think about it, if you’re surrounded with useless junk already ?
Cf this, or that, or that, etcetera…

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Exe
Exe
12 years ago

charity does not make a big difference, in the worst cases, it enlarges the problem.
if you really want to help someone with your money you don't need, spend it on local high quality products, produced and manifactured by the local economy. that's where money is needed.

and if if mustn't be something physical, there are research fonds you can put your money in. scientific research helps lots of people, not just some africans who just can't understand that the environment they live in cannot support their increasing birthrate.

just my two euro-cents.

iceacolyte
iceacolyte
12 years ago
Reply to  Exe

That birthrate issue is an old argument – the mortality rate cancels it out o.o
Less mortality rate, over time, would encourage lower birth rate.

Exe
Exe
12 years ago
Reply to  iceacolyte

population growth rates of 2-4.5% in africa invalidate your argument. from 1990 to 2008, africas population grew by more than 50%.

iceacolyte
iceacolyte
12 years ago
Reply to  Exe

Actually it doesn't invalidate argument. That's another issue in itself.
Lower birth rates does not mean less population growth.
Population growth = birth – mortality rate. So if lower mortality rate leads to lower birth rate, population growth will stay constant. And birth rate lags behind mortality rate, so when mortality rate reduces, population growth may actually be higher, but over time it will level out :)

Andate
Andate
12 years ago
Reply to  Exe

The words of someone who has lived their entire life in the first world. Charity may not make as big a difference to you who thinks that with a million euros given, a country should be on the level of Europe in a year, but to every child that learns to read or every teen who can finish school, it's a hell of a big difference.

SiR
SiR
12 years ago
Reply to  Andate

It depends on the charity. A lot of charities absorb a majority of the money donated, and only a small minority of the funds actually go towards helping people. I would suggest donating to the Wounded Warrior Project, or a good no-kill animal shelter in your area.

Andate
Andate
12 years ago
Reply to  SiR

Agreed, But denouncing all charity, or calling for a GENOCIDE (no one ever expects it to be their people being killed) is just pure jackassery.

Korasen
Korasen
12 years ago

Or you also can… COMMISSION new stuff!

Hartswar
Hartswar
12 years ago

I honestly don't care about world suffering. I don't care about those suffering in my own nation.World population is too large anyways, we need a good genocide.

lex
lex
12 years ago

interesting, maybe i'll look into it.

thanks oliver.

Andate
Andate
12 years ago

Glad to see there are so many douchebags commenting. As someone whose family comes from a third world country, thanks for helping out. We may not have been the starving in the gutter types, but we know how far a little charity goes.

Kyon12
Kyon12
12 years ago

Leaving aside the birthday problem, it´s fine if people do charity work but even and more important is that people become aware that the important is the other and that other people are suffering like one or more then on so important thing is to realize that to be a better person. remember this paragraph Impersonal love does not need.

Kyon12
Kyon12
12 years ago

Sorry had a little miss spelling the on first comment xD

Leaving aside the birthday problem, it´s fine if people do charity work but even and more important is that people become aware that the important is the other and that other people are suffering like one or more then one, so the important thing is to realize that to become a better person. remember this paragraph Impersonal love does not need.

Tomas de Torquemada
Tomas de Torquemada
12 years ago

Oh you, you're a godless atheist, you truly cannot justify charity and acts of goodness- you have no objective foundation for making claims that something is right and another thing is wrong; I mean, people getting wiped out by a famine or tsunami is perfectly natural; if anything, it encourages people to adapt when others don't help them, right? If you think that charity and altruism is the effect of biological evolution, then you must've missed the point of helping people being logically and scientifically divorced from the situations they face in nature. People die, they get sick, they starve, all the time. So there's no connection as to why. Without God, of course, you are left with science to determine not the morality of helping people, but the scientific objectivity. Scientifically speaking, it's perfectly justifiable to commit genocide and to let people in need die off. If you -feel- that's wrong, and you think you don't need God or some sort of moral code based on an objective truth, then you have nothing to support any statements of "right" or "wrong" or "ought to do".