Politics of charity

[Andiferous]

I've used this word before but lately I've questioned the word as a political concept and it tends to make me cringe, now. Let me explain.

To offer 'charity' seems inherently patronising to me. It is like saying 'I have no responsibility to help you but am doing it out of the goodness of my heart.' In a way, it seems to me that in some cases, to believe one is giving charity, is to perceive a separation between what one ought to do by course of responsibility, and what one knowingly does above and beyond what is generally required. But I know I'm completely biased too.

The meaning of 'charity' tends to depend on a person's feeling of responsibility for the community and everyone elses' well-being. On one extreme it could mean to give away everything to someone, and on another it could mean to give someone a dime on a street corner whilst refusing to pay for their anti-starvation government program. So really, given my personal political bias, others with political leanings to the right seem to offer 'charity' for what they ought to do anyway and the word seems empty.

What do you think? (If this makes sense?)

 

[ArthurWilborn]

I've used this word before but lately I've questioned the word as a political concept and it tends to make me cringe, now. Let me explain.

To offer 'charity' seems inherently patronising to me. It is like saying 'I have no responsibility to help you but am doing it out of the goodness of my heart.' In a way, it seems to me that in some cases, to believe one is giving charity, is to perceive a separation between what one ought to do by course of responsibility, and what one knowingly does above and beyond what is generally required. But I know I'm completely biased too.

The meaning of 'charity' tends to depend on a person's feeling of responsibility for the community and everyone elses' well-being. On one extreme it could mean to give away everything to someone, and on another it could mean to give someone a dime on a street corner whilst refusing to pay for their anti-starvation government program. So really, given my personal political bias, others with political leanings to the right seem to offer 'charity' for what they ought to do anyway and the word seems empty.

What do you think? (If this makes sense?)

The word charity is meaningless if it refers to something you are forced to do instead of something you willingly choose to do.

 

[Andiferous]

The word charity is meaningless if it refers to something you are forced to do instead of something you willingly choose to do.

I completely agree.

Although, consider the practice of 'tipping' for service. It is in a way, a measure of charity, or certainly of generosity. Where service is under-rewarded by wage there is a greater 'obligation' to tip, but shockingly, in some places in the world, service is properly paid and tips not required, but accepted on occasion. But tipping has become standardised, weirdly. Why not just pay people more and charge more for the service?

 

[ArthurWilborn]

The word charity is meaningless if it refers to something you are forced to do instead of something you willingly choose to do.

I completely agree.

Although, consider the practice of 'tipping' for service. It is in a way, a measure of charity, or certainly of generosity. Where service is under-rewarded by wage there is a greater 'obligation' to tip, but shockingly, in some places in the world, service is properly paid and tips not required, but accepted on occasion. But tipping has become standardised, weirdly. Why not just pay people more and charge more for the service?

Can't really give you a better answer then that it's considered traditional. Really it's probably good for the servers since they probably end up getting paid more then if they just got a wage from the restaurant.

To elaborate on my prior thought, forcing people to pay taxes to pay for social programs, or advocating that this be done, would not be considered "charitable" in any common usage on the word.

 

[Andiferous]

I think that's my point.

I've got to admit, I've got a secret like for "Upstairs Downstairs" and find the class hierarchy within the series very interesting. That said, and probably slightly tangential, I wonder if 'tipping' and the like is a reinvention of the old system.

In the proper 'class' hierarchy, the lower class served the upper class, but to be a proper upper-class person you would follow upper-class etiquette. You had the money, your servants depended on you. Your unwritten rules of privilege demanded show of 'generosity' and a sort of patronage of your servants. You bore responsibility for them, occasionally going as far as guiding their moral development as you were better educated, and sometimes represented by positive reinforcement and tipping for good service (which showed generosity and compassion for their well-being).

So maybe the service industry is like a capitalist class system (rewarding your servants) from the same kinda idea? Tipping started with servants, after all.

I guess that would make that function of capitalism a bit classist...

Anyway, they all seem like a flavour of 'charity.'

 

[AdmiralPeacock]

Fundamentally there is a difference between social obligation and charity:

Social obligation stems from the semi-official contract you engage upon entering a given society (via birth or immigration) to which there is a level of give and take from the individual and the society. You utilize resources, services and facilities provided by the society and in turn you contribute to the means for the society to provide the resources, services and facilities. The only way to avoid any variation of this relationship is to live as a hermit in a remote corner of some wilderness and live a completely self sufficient lifestyle with no interactions with the outside human world. What a society can do is alter the ratio of the interaction.

Empirically speaking, the societies with the highest Social obligatory interactions - e.i. social services tend to have the best standards of living: The Human Development Index (HDI) found in the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Reports, formulates the HDI using a statistic composed from data on life expectancy, education and per-capita GNI. Consistently the highest ranking countries always offer social services to some high degree - and while some nations that do offer social services, almost all the lowest ranking nations do not. Now I'm not saying collation necessarily equals causation but it is interesting.

http://hdr.undp.org

It's interesting that nations that provide for the poorest members of their society generally and consistently produce more overall wealth than nations that do not. There are many explanations for this; such as the in a capitalistic model, there are always power differences and the poor always constitute the majority - thus in a democratic (using the colloquial definition) type society, the majority loses trust in a negligent government and destabilization is inevitable. Hungry, cold and sick people are dangerous - and who can blame them? You're starving, your children are starving and your next door neighbour is having Steak... A countries success in the world is directly proportionate to the population's general education, before the introduction of public education the vast majority of the USA were illiterate and the nation in general was not exactly a world power at the time.

There's heaps more, but you (well some of you) will get what I'm talking about.


Charity on the other hand is things we do beyond our social obligations - out of sympathy, pity, tax purposes, or simply to feel good. I.e. not obligatory.

 

[Andiferous]

Fundamentally there is a difference between social obligation and charity:

Social obligation stems from the semi-official contract you engage upon entering a given society (via birth or immigration) to which there is a level of give and take from the individual and the society. You utilize resources, services and facilities provided by the society and in turn you contribute to the means for the society to provide the resources, services and facilities. The only way to avoid any variation of this relationship is to live as a hermit in a remote corner of some wilderness and live a completely self sufficient lifestyle with no interactions with the outside human world. What a society can do is alter the ratio of the interaction.

Empirically speaking, the societies with the highest Social obligatory interactions - e.i. social services tend to have the best standards of living: The Human Development Index (HDI) found in the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Reports, formulates the HDI using a statistic composed from data on life expectancy, education and per-capita GNI. Consistently the highest ranking countries always offer social services to some high degree - and while some nations that do offer social services, almost all the lowest ranking nations do not. Now I'm not saying collation necessarily equals causation but it is interesting.

http://hdr.undp.org

It's interesting that nations that provide for the poorest members of their society generally and consistently produce more overall wealth than nations that do not. There are many explanations for this; such as the in a capitalistic model, there are always power differences and the poor always constitute the majority - thus in a democratic (using the colloquial definition) type society, the majority loses trust in a negligent government and destabilization is inevitable. Hungry, cold and sick people are dangerous - and who can blame them? You're starving, your children are starving and your next door neighbour is having Steak... A countries success in the world is directly proportionate to the population's general education, before the introduction of public education the vast majority of the USA were illiterate and the nation in general was not exactly a world power at the time.

There's heaps more, but you (well some of you) will get what I'm talking about.


Charity on the other hand is things we do beyond our social obligations - out of sympathy, pity, tax purposes, or simply to feel good. I.e. not obligatory.

You say it so well. Although, would you say that charity and social obligation are dependant on each other, as to have one is necessarily to lack the other? A sort of tug-of-war of responsibility and generosity.

I do wonder if there is less "charity" in governments with more social intervention.

 

[AdmiralPeacock]

Fundamentally there is a difference between social obligation and charity:

Social obligation stems from the semi-official contract you engage upon entering a given society (via birth or immigration) to which there is a level of give and take from the individual and the society. You utilize resources, services and facilities provided by the society and in turn you contribute to the means for the society to provide the resources, services and facilities. The only way to avoid any variation of this relationship is to live as a hermit in a remote corner of some wilderness and live a completely self sufficient lifestyle with no interactions with the outside human world. What a society can do is alter the ratio of the interaction.

Empirically speaking, the societies with the highest Social obligatory interactions - e.i. social services tend to have the best standards of living: The Human Development Index (HDI) found in the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Reports, formulates the HDI using a statistic composed from data on life expectancy, education and per-capita GNI. Consistently the highest ranking countries always offer social services to some high degree - and while some nations that do offer social services, almost all the lowest ranking nations do not. Now I'm not saying collation necessarily equals causation but it is interesting.

http://hdr.undp.org

It's interesting that nations that provide for the poorest members of their society generally and consistently produce more overall wealth than nations that do not. There are many explanations for this; such as the in a capitalistic model, there are always power differences and the poor always constitute the majority - thus in a democratic (using the colloquial definition) type society, the majority loses trust in a negligent government and destabilization is inevitable. Hungry, cold and sick people are dangerous - and who can blame them? You're starving, your children are starving and your next door neighbour is having Steak... A countries success in the world is directly proportionate to the population's general education, before the introduction of public education the vast majority of the USA were illiterate and the nation in general was not exactly a world power at the time.

There's heaps more, but you (well some of you) will get what I'm talking about.


Charity on the other hand is things we do beyond our social obligations - out of sympathy, pity, tax purposes, or simply to feel good. I.e. not obligatory.

You say it so well. Although, would you say that charity and social obligation are dependant on each other, as to have one is necessarily to lack the other? A sort of tug-of-war of responsibility and generosity.

I do wonder if there is less "charity" in governments with more social intervention.

Not necessarily. Social Obligation is ultimately self serving, an educated, healthy and stable society benefits the individual. Your chances of contracting infectious diseases are proportional to the number of sick people you encounter - healthy people living in hygienic situations are less likely to be sick. Educated people are more likely to live in healthy and hygienic environments. While you may be able to pay an uneducated individual less and have them work in substandard environments, an educated person is statically more effective. Educated and healthy populations are statically less prone to crime, and so on. So charity hasn't even began to come into it yet, nor is it needed.

And that's the thing about Charity, it is a choice one makes.

 

[Andiferous]

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.

- Jack London

 

[AdmiralPeacock]

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.

- Jack London

Indeedy

 

[Andiferous]

Not to be pedantic. I just really liked that quote for some reason and it seemed topical.