Charity and Service Announcement

I was going to post today to say that I’ll be posting little or nothing for the next while as I’m beginning a novel, but I have an easy post to turn in today as I wrote a long comment on another blog which I thought was maybe worth preserving.

I previously posted on Toby Ord’s Giving What We Can foundation. They believe that everyone is morally obliged to make the maximal charitable use possible with their disposable income. The minimal pledge for members is 10% of annual income. Toby Ord is a philosophy professor and seems to have a utilitarian, humanist perspective on this. He’s hardcore about it. He gives up all his income beyond that which he needs to live the lifestyle of a student (about 21,000 pounds). He reflected that he was happy as a student, and studies indicate that no one really gets any happier by becoming richer than this – sometimes the reverse.

When I wrote about this guy before, I was mostly approving but I wanted to throw it open as well rather than come right out with my own opinion. I got a bit of a rise out of some commenters who were either for or against him; I myself was a bit ambivalent and undecided even if I approve of the earnestness of reaching a moral conclusion and following it through like that.

Anyway, commenting on a post about charity, I mentioned Ord and Giving What We Can, and in the process I thrashed out what I really think about it – here’s an edited version:

This guy took the logic of charity to its conclusion:

http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/

There’s a fallacy somewhere in this line of thinking.  Logically, a faraway or unknown person may benefit more from $5 than you, your skint friend or the person rattling a jar for cancer research.  So it makes a kind of dry, utilitarian sense to seek out and give to the cause with the maximal benefit per $.

Does this logic apply to a dog?  Should a fat dog seek out the hungriest dog in town to offer half its food to?  We have no such expectations of a dog because we acknowledge that a dog behaves like a dog.  A human behaves like a human.  It is not an entirely rational creature.  Trying to force it to be entirely rational is like trying to make nature grow in an orderly grid pattern when it naturally wants to be fractal.  Generosity naturally flows along the vectors of relationship; logic is an important but secondary consideration.  Organised charity thrives in an atomised society as the fraught affirmation of a half-impotent kindness.  Our ancient ancestors worshipped animals and now we stare at them in zoos – this is a similar degrading effect of civilisation on our natural awe and virtue.  No amount of organisation, propaganda or logical argument can restore true generosity to people any more than it can restore our awe of nature.

Relationships can be a part of organised charity.  The best charity however is neither organised nor sporadic: it is the charitable society, or as a Christian might put it, The Kingdom of God.  A society of selfless people who all look after their neighbours so that there is no far-off needy person who can be cured by a tenner.

But then, everyone still must ‘take up his cross’ and eventually die, no matter how nurturing society becomes.  And any utopia could collapse.  So the spirit comes first and is the only thing left when all the cherished conditions fall away.  We should aim towards social justice while acknowledging that it can never be perfect, easy or eternal.

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I’m a new convert to Interpol; was listening to them as I wrote this – they are supercool. Never been much of one for Indie music cos I associate it with people who listen to it primarily to seem intelligent and sophisticated. I think that’s a common type of mistake.

I don’t really want to talk about the novel I’m starting – that could jinx it – if it’s worth talking about it it’ll be on bookshelves eventually anyway.

Tags: charity, Christianity, economics, ethics, Giving What We Can, human nature, justice, nature, psychology, Toby Ord, writing