I've been thinking about the human attitude to doing good stuff, and I've had a thought. To (hopefully) explain it, I'm going to thrust a fictional scenario in your direction.
A man has put on an event to help send money out to starving African children. The event is one of those where there isn't a ticket price, but a lovely big donation bucket to add to as you walk in. A woman walks up to the entrance and puts 50p in the bucket. The man, who is standing behind the bucket for some reason, asks her why she put so little in the bucket, and does she really think that's enough. She responds by explaining she is a recently-single mother with three kids to look after struggling to keep her job, and can't afford to donate a great deal more. The man's reply is something along the lines of "the Africans are suffering too! Think about them!"
The thing I want to get across is that the man isn't interested in the woman's problems, even though he has met her and she would be much easier for him to help than the random African kids. He's more concerned about the people he's never met in a land far far away.
As a song from Evita claims, "distance lends enchantment". It's so much more romantic to try and help those far away in situations we can barely even imagine.
There's no logical reason for wanting to help the far-away as opposed to the close. The single unemployed mother down the road is going to make much better use of your ten pounds than Unicef is, since the money is more concentrated. You're not sharing your donation out between hundreds of millions.
But maybe that's just it. Maybe it's the sheer scope of poverty in the third world which makes it such an attractive cause to throw money at. I think it's perhaps down to that fundamental human drive to want to be a part of, and contribute to, something bigger than ourselves. Often, we interpret that as "the bigger the cause, the better!" Forgetting that every big problem is made of lots of small ones. The devil is in the detail. (Or some similar expression.)
Humans are often accused of "making mountains out of molehills". I think a just as common attitude is to overlook the molehills and run straight for the tallest and most exciting mountains, and probably tripping up in the process.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that we are more attracted to what we see as bigger problems. And I obviously I think trying to improve lives in the third world is good. It just interests me.
A man has put on an event to help send money out to starving African children. The event is one of those where there isn't a ticket price, but a lovely big donation bucket to add to as you walk in. A woman walks up to the entrance and puts 50p in the bucket. The man, who is standing behind the bucket for some reason, asks her why she put so little in the bucket, and does she really think that's enough. She responds by explaining she is a recently-single mother with three kids to look after struggling to keep her job, and can't afford to donate a great deal more. The man's reply is something along the lines of "the Africans are suffering too! Think about them!"
The thing I want to get across is that the man isn't interested in the woman's problems, even though he has met her and she would be much easier for him to help than the random African kids. He's more concerned about the people he's never met in a land far far away.
As a song from Evita claims, "distance lends enchantment". It's so much more romantic to try and help those far away in situations we can barely even imagine.
There's no logical reason for wanting to help the far-away as opposed to the close. The single unemployed mother down the road is going to make much better use of your ten pounds than Unicef is, since the money is more concentrated. You're not sharing your donation out between hundreds of millions.
But maybe that's just it. Maybe it's the sheer scope of poverty in the third world which makes it such an attractive cause to throw money at. I think it's perhaps down to that fundamental human drive to want to be a part of, and contribute to, something bigger than ourselves. Often, we interpret that as "the bigger the cause, the better!" Forgetting that every big problem is made of lots of small ones. The devil is in the detail. (Or some similar expression.)
Humans are often accused of "making mountains out of molehills". I think a just as common attitude is to overlook the molehills and run straight for the tallest and most exciting mountains, and probably tripping up in the process.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that we are more attracted to what we see as bigger problems. And I obviously I think trying to improve lives in the third world is good. It just interests me.
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