 |
| Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
I have something of a
confession to make. After spending an evening draining pints and loading up on
carcinogens, a breast cancer charity collector came up to our table, shaking a
bucket and muttering something about canvassing for donations.
Around the table, my friends dutifully looked down and fumbled through their
pockets, either preparing to contribute or feigning being out of change. Without
thinking, I looked up to her and said (sarcastically, I might add), “I haven’t
been personally affected by breast cancer, so I don’t really care.”
She left without
collecting a single donation.
The fact that I said that out loud rather than thinking
something more reasonable is obviously down to my rank intoxication at the
time, but I do stand by the point I was attempting to make. Nobody likes being guilted
into donating money to a serious cause when they’re trying to have a good time,
but the thing that really annoyed me was her. She was imposing this guilt on
us, and I assumed that she cared enough to do so because she knows or knew somebody
with breast cancer.
I know that it wasn’t
necessarily the case (and obviously people can and do campaign for issues that
have never affected them), but the fact that she haughtily retreated rather than
arguing with me seems like something of a confirmation. To me, giving money to
or working for a charity because somebody you know has been affected by the
issue is more self-interested than altruistic. Breast cancer didn’t
spontaneously pop up in half a million people like a mutant jack in the box at the moment your aunt was
diagnosed,
but somehow it wasn’t important enough to do anything about until then.
Had I been sober (and
armed with statistics) I’d have asked her why she wasn’t raising donations for
the 33.4 million people living with HIV around the world, or for coronary heart
disease (which tops all other diseases for deaths in the UK). Numbers don’t
lie, and since 2000 it’s taken considerably more people than breast cancer. In
2010, just over 129 people died from coronary heart disease per 100,000 population
compared to just under 37 per 100,000 women
for breast cancer. Likewise, lung cancer, cerebrovascular disease and even
pneumonia kill more people every year than breast cancer.
University of Kent researcher Beth Breeze’s study on the reasons people give to charity supports the idea that charitable
donations are not based on the level of need, “but rather [people] support causes that mean
something to them.” Although this should balance out (bigger problems affect
more people and therefore receive more donations), the moral superiority people
feel for donating to a cause is completely misplaced if they’ve been personally
affected by it. In that moment, the woman thought I was one of the most despicable
people on the face of the planet, but she was being blinded by her own hypocrisy.
It’s
selfish giving because what they’re doing is trying to lessen their own
suffering. If you have an infection, you can take a course of antibiotics and you’ll start
to feel better. But if you get a condition that can’t be cured or comfortably managed,
there isn't much action you can realistically take. As primitive survival
instincts kick in, you go into “fight” mode, but the predator you’re dealing
with doesn’t have a body to brutalise or a secret military compound to bomb
into oblivion. Research is the way we fight these predators, and that means the
only thing a regular person can do to lessen their own suffering is to canvas
for donations. If there was a pill for it, they’d take it and blissfully ignore
all the people in poverty-stricken countries dying from the same problem.
The
reason I come off looking like a drunken prick in that situation is because
charity is “good,” in essence. She’s doing a good thing by raising money for
breast cancer, and only an abhorrent, inhuman ogre would point out that she’s
just dressing selfishness up to look like altruism.
I think what you're trying to argue against is the human condition, and that's just as flawed as backing it without realising.
ReplyDeleteLets look at the two alternatives to the situation you describe as 'selfish giving'. Firstly you have a world where no-one has any emotional connection to anything whatsoever. A world without context, some might say an autistic world. Perhaps nothing would have been achieved, people still hanging around like naked apes. One of the main areas we've developed over primates is our grasp of highly complex emotions and to understand our place within them, we have bigger social groups, much of that is because we can put situations into a personal context. We show greif and strong emotions are as much of a behavioural modifier as treats and rewards. What I'm trying to argue is we need that emotional context.
You mention the facts and figures and why you assailant was not fighting these causes. Isn't that just another aspect of the human condition? We feel things, but we can't adapt to feel everything because if we did, we'd be total wrecks. We have the capacity to focus down our grief and pain onto something we feel we can try and change.
Personally, it sounds like your sense of outrage more stems from the fact this person came along and expected you to feel what she felt about a charity. You've focused your article on what she felt and why, as opposed to why you didn't empathise.
Is that not worth considering as well?
I am arguing against the human condition in a way, yes, but that doesn't mean that the things I'm saying are wrong. The human condition is flawed, and I think it's better to acknowledge (and try to improve upon) our flaws rather than accept them just because they're related to the things that separate us from other primates.
DeleteI agree that our capacity for emotions is beneficial to us as a species, and that placing things in a personal context facilitates our ever-expanding social groups. But we've succeeded as a species because we have both reason and emotion, so we shouldn't allow ourselves to be driven entirely by either. Having a personal connection with an issue helps you empathise with other people in that situation, but you shouldn't bypass rationality altogether.
If someone's aunt has breast cancer, they can either use that as a reason to help other people in the same situation or use it as one to help people in need (even if it isn't in exactly the same way). The emotional catalyst is valuable, like you say, but surely it isn't too difficult to then take a step back and think about the bigger picture?
I'm neither arguing for a rationalist "autistic world" (awesome description, by the way) nor one overcome with emotion (because that would make us all wrecks), I'm saying that we should combine the two. Our emotions are obviously important to our survival, but our logical mind must be more so. Emotion without rationality is flaccid and hopeless.
My outrage probably does stem from the fact that she expected me to care as much as she did, you're right. I don't want people to die of breast cancer, but I struggle to empathise and dip into my pocket because I can't help but wonder whether it's really the most pressing issue I could be helping with. I can't help everybody - so I don't think it's right to just support an issue because someone near to me happens to have been affected. If you want to do good, you should think about how best you can do good.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI personally find it very difficult to give any money to charity. That's not because I am tightfisted; it's because I feel that I would prefer that my government use the money that I pay in taxes and national insurance to fund research into how we cure these awful illnesses.
ReplyDeleteInstead of that they take my tax money and spend it on finding bigger and better ways of killing each other. They spend it on funding wars in other countries, and telling them how to live their lives in their never-ending quest of western globalisation.
Then we have the overpaid celebrities who like to tell us how to live. If the likes of Bono, Madona, Geldof and Sting said 'okay, I can live comfortably on £5 million, so I'll give the rest of money to charity' then world hunger, illness etc would probably be wiped out in five years!
I too do not want to be made to feel bad or like I'm sub-human because of some over enthusiastic 'chugger' shoving a 'bucket' in my face when I'm having a pint or eating my rice and peas!
I want us to start respecting each other, and in particular I want those who think they are better than us because they went to Eton, or had a few hits in the 80's to stop telling me what to care about, but to start caring themselves!!
Yeah, I think there are actually a lot of problems with charities themselves which makes donating much more difficult. You not only have the choice of causes to contend with, you also could be giving your money to a group of morons. Unless you sat hunched over your phone making sure there aren't any black holes in the company's finances and they have a workable strategy, how can you be sure it isn't wasted?
DeleteTh government should ideally do it, but I think democracy is inherently short-sighted. Any government who spent that much money on medical research would probably be voted out within a few years because of the "precious" economy. But yeah, there's probably ample money available if they forgot about stock-piling nuclear weapons and playing world police.
There's a lot of terrible stuff about Live Aid, speaking of Geldof - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/02/bob-geldof-anti-poverty-campaigners-starsuckers
I think we should establish a law that no one should be confronted with existential conundrums when they're trying to enjoy beer or rice and peas. It's man time.