The Paradox of Charity: Deconstructing the Divide Between "Moral Busybodies" and "Robber Barons"

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.  -C.S. Lewis

All charity is NOT good charity

In large part people give uncritically.  There is a general public belief that any and all charity must be good charity.  Any growth in money injected into development or increment toward more development agencies working toward the ‘end of poverty’ is generally accepted as a necessarily positive step for the future of mankind.  This is a difficult myth to disprove to the mass of people that, in whatever capacity, participate in charitable organizations.  There is a lot at stake for these participants.  People desperately want to believe in the good of Western nations.  Even more so they want to believe in the good in themselves.  And so it goes, people anxiously cling to a model self-image that they have been trained to aspire to, one that best serves their interest.

Charity and self-interest

There is a hegemonic narrative in our society that clearly defines for us the people we ought to be.  Charity is one of the most prominent characteristics of the good human within this narrative.   Because helping others has been structured into our society’s expectations of one another, the act of helping itself becomes an act to satisfy these expectations.  People undertake acts of charity, in other words, to illicit a specific response from their audience.  This audience could be made up of friends, family members, employers, etc.  Each charitable act is an investment.  It is a currency that can be traded in for a more positive image from an audience that grants the charitable an increment of upward mobility in a particular system.  This is most evident in the job market which looks very favourably on those that have committed themselves to charitable acts such as volunteer work. To help others is often the most surreptitious means of helping ourselves.

The mask of charity

Charity perpetuates a narrative where the privileged classes are the saviours of the hopelessly poor.  How many times in our lives have we been exposed to images of Westerners nobly grasping on to the child of some poverty stricken family in the global south?  Each image contains a message.  It reaffirms the superiority of the West.  It conceals the truth that we are the robber barons.  Our privilege is a direct result of the detriment of billions of people we will never see and thousands we see everyday but choose to ignore.  Most are out of sight and out of mind.  But when we do take notice, any guilt, embarrassment, or unease is quickly erased with an arrogant decision to give, to help, to be charitable toward those that we assess are in need.  We pat ourselves on the back so that we never  have to look at the deeper cause and effect relationship between our privilege and others' despair.

Charity will never solve poverty; it will only serve to mask the social structures responsible for its creation.  Charity does not address the root causes of the distribution of access to resources. It can only ever scratch the surface of the structures of inequality contained within global capitalism.  Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy once said of the ngo industry: “it doles out in aid what people ought to have by right”.  It waters down people’s anger at a system that does not work for their interest.  It prevents the mass revolutionary change required to restructure the system upon more equitable terms. Charity, aid, development, call it what you will but the truth is that it functions in order to maintain order in a system of mass inequality. And until we are able to see it for what it truly is, the charity of moral busybodies will keep the robber barons at the master’s post.

What to do with privilege?

To start a day without knowing what it will have in store, is a wonderful feeling.  I am immediately excited and intrigued to be breaking the heavy scheduled life i have found myself living.  There are endless possibilities where the day may go, and it may go no where which is fine as well! at least now it is.

I used to have a really hard time doing nothing.  (I should put a note this is completely not true when i am hungover, then nothing, is actually all i can achieve sometimes.)  But i always was filled with this need to keep myself occupied, I am not sure why, perhaps it is due to working crazy hours and trying to still go out and party on top of that, but to just sit and do nothing was really something only reserved for traveling.  Where doing nothing in a completely new surrounding is more then okay.

But that is not the point i wanted to try to explore in this.  What i was trying to get at, which perhaps what i wrote above illustrates quite well, is that I am so fucking privileged to wake up and have nothing to do, or on the flip side fill my day with things of my choosing.  I have always stood besides the idea that freedom was always is always about choice, if you have some options, then you have some freedom.  Discussing freedom in this piece seems ridiculous, so i will stick to privilege.  I see my privilege everyday, the fact that what i am doing, whatever it may be is a direct result of the family i was born into.  The sacrifices my parents made to give me and my siblings all we needed, were only afforded due to their privilege, and so on and so on!

So what now?   Now I or we find ourselves in a position of privilege, what are we to do?  This i do not have an answer to.  I stand by what i always end up concluding, that it is our duty to give some of our privilege back, to give others with less privilege more options and support.  Why should using my privilege only be about benefiting myself?  But its a tough argument, in our capitalistic society, our privilege is mainstreamed and measured monetarily.  So it then makes our privilege not about who we are as people, but how much money we have, or things we have bought with our money.  So because of this people see that the way to give their privilege is to give their money,  which I will have to say is not the worst thing.  While i will not make an argument for throwing money blindly at societies problems, I think sharing wealth is a important first step to sharing our privilege.  However to me the bigger thing that we in Canada are dragging our feet on for sure is giving our time, our energy, our intelligence. Opening our privilege to those who do not have as much or any of it.  It will not change the face of poverty, or mean that we will be solving all of our problems.  But it will build relationships, build a better understanding of other peoples living situations.  Without relationships its all of nothing!  I know I should be one biting my lip on this, I have fucked up way too many great relationships in my life.  But that will not mean that i will stop trying.  We need to identify our privilege and use it to build relationships with others who have less privilege.  Sometimes barriers can be removed in people's lives just by giving them someone to talk to weekly or daily, someone to share their struggle or issue with.  This is how small giving our privilege can be in order to share it.

I feel like i have just built up to some kind of an ask, this would be the part of the proposal where i would present what i am asking for, i think i have wrote too many proposals of late that my mind just reverts to this type of writing.  But that is not what this is about!  This is about recognizing our privilege and sharing it.  I think the best way to start doing that is to work on developing relationships with people outside of our privilege levels.  We are really just recreating the cast system here based not on tradition, or birth but by money (not that tradition and birth do not play the main roles in coming out on top)  And then we sit and judge other societies and call them primitive, where we are in fact becoming more primitive then ever they way we allow our lives to get controlled by so few.

But i digress, maybe this whole thing is just a digression!  but there it is!

Rapture advice from my mom!

The rapture was coming, but that kind of fizzled out, I truly enjoy speculation that the world is going to end.  I remember the first time i ever had a serious conversation about the world ending, sitting in a beach bar on the coast of Ecuador being told by this Chilean guy that 2012 was the end of the world.  I found it amusing.


To be honest, if the world is going to end it makes no difference to me, but its funny stuff.  The video below is footage from Mayan ruins in Guatemala with a phone message from my mom i received at 11:30 pm on Friday night  I am not sure if the video will work on here but you can see it on youtube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAf0VJKfVFc

enjoy!  and yes my mom was serious although today over breakfast she said because the rapture didn't happen it was a joke!

Beyond Good and Evil: Manufactured Enemy, Manufactured War

Every war in history has required the meticulous construction of an adversary.  As a nation at war, it is necessary to conjure up an enemy so fantastically wicked, that a critical mass of people of that nation are willing to, without question, either take the life of another human or die protecting their nation from the threat presented by this enemy.  It is an intensive process of dehumanization so extreme that it nullifies the conscience of the citizenry and converts them into fuel for the war machine (i.e. soldiers and wartime supporters or at minimum apathetic non-dissenters).

Bin Laden has been the poster child of evil, the visage of terrorism that has fueled America’s war on the Middle East.  With his death we are left with a plethora of imperative questions.  Had Bin Laden outlived his utility as an author of American hatred for Middle Eastern agitators?  Will someone rise to take his place? Or is American intolerance of Muslims so deep that this job has been rendered obsolete?  Will this mark the downsizing of the American-led military campaign for control of the Middle East? Is this merely a transition into a more insidious means of control through policy and puppet governments? 

Whatever the answers may be, in the post-Bin Laden political landscape one thing remains certain.  As long as America attempts to control this region, there will always be strong and violent opposition from the people.  If America wants to make the world safer for Americans, it might be time to think of how America might make the world safer from Americans.

The love you take

Writing has been, for years now, something I tell myself I love doing but never actually do. Loving it is likely part of the reason I don't do it. I'm certainly no stranger to self defeat. It's probably some sort of control issue. It's also a bit of laziness. A bit of disillusionment. Embarrassment. Intimidation. I'm not completely sure why I want to do this now. In a way it's been something new for me to bond with two of my best and oldest friends over. I assume that almost no one will read this blog, and I'm okay with that. It would be nice to have something I write spark a dialogue with others, or to simply hear that someone enjoyed something that I posted, but I'm comfortable with what I feel I can gain simply through the singular act of writing. It isn't passive, and that feels important to me. I've had a tendency to fall into a cycle of passivity, and there's rarely anything to be gained from that. Much can be learned by working through an idea in writing. There are an endless number of ways to articulate a concept and the depth of meaning that can be achieved with the right words can be enlightening. I find writing enjoyable in the same way I enjoy doing crossword puzzles. There are patterns and connections to be unlocked and revealed. I think it's one of the reasons I've found myself writing poetry even though I find a lot of poetry nauseating. I enjoy the act of trying to create dense layers of meaning and sound. It's like a game. Despite all of this, I still find it hard to convince myself to sit down and write most of the time. Sometimes it feels silly and pointless that we even started this blog. Sometimes I'm convinced there's some standard that my writing should be meeting, which I will inevitably fall short of. Sometimes I feel like I have nothing of any value to say. No energy to work through an idea. These are, I believe, the most important reasons for me to keep doing this. I could find a million excuses not to do it, and a million excuses not to try any of things that intimidate me. By forcing myself to sit down and write something I'm forcing myself to take a look at who I am, to recognize the ways in which I could improve my approach to life, to actively try to be a better person. As time moves on the need to participate in this world feels more urgent to me. I see how much the hunger for experience and knowledge that I had in my youth has been diluted by years of disappointment and I'm willing to acknowledge that it was often me disappointing myself and that the weight of disappointment is misleading. In truth my efforts have been frequently rewarded with heartening and gratifying results. I recognize this and feel the need to be engaged in how my time is spent, to tune in to my existence.

I spend most of my time alone these days, locked into a schedule, constantly missing my friends, my family, my cats and my girlfriend who inspires and excites me. My mind pours over memories and dreams. I struggle to connect them to my life. As I write this I'm just outside of Baltimore at an IKEA warehouse. As usual I'm essentially nowhere. There are baby geese flopping around in the grass outside my window. I see a lot of beautiful things. I drift through small towns and flickering landscapes like a ghost. It's all beyond my grasp. I pull into another neon lot, the air thick with the stench of piss, and slink past the corndog cowboys on my way to another trickle-dick shower. I attempt fruitlessly to wash the road from my brain to make space for gainful thoughts. I'm always aware of time. It digs its nails into my soul. Ignoring me, taunting me, it refuses to comply with my desires. I try to stay positive and engaged but my spirit is broken. In the brief hiccups that I get to be home I'm overcome by a dizzying desire to devour everyone and everything I love. I feel every kiss, every laugh, every dance deep in my bones. Then I tremble back into the manic waves of loneliness, where I will find the odd treasure. I will find ways to pass the time. I will learn to live with my brain. Ask me about all of this tomorrow.

Beyond Good and Evil: The Life and Times of Osama Bin Laden

Rarely has the death of one individual been the cause of so much celebration.  Thousands of people in the United States gathered in triumphant rejoice with the news that Osama Bin Laden has been killed.  President Obama has called it a “good day for America” while Prime Minister Harper has taken the opportunity to exploit Bin Laden’s death to justify his deployment of Canadian troops to Afghanistan.  But before we all jump up and down and pat our leaders on the back, let us first examine what such a reaction says about our worldview and about us more generally.

There were around 3,000 deaths on the tragic day of September 11, 2001.  Immediately, Americans passed through an emotional vortex from shock to sadness to anger to blame to war with an unfortunate promptness.  It was unfortunate because public policy should never be decided on while the logic of the collective masses was detained by their emotions.  This has always been a breeding ground for irrationalism and further allows for what Naomi Klein has termed ‘the shock doctrine’, policy that is passed while the public is in shock with the onset of a disastrous event.  The outcome, of course, has been a decade long war on terror.

Depending on what side you are aligned in the conflict, you are perceived to be either good or evil, freedom fighter or terrorist.  On the one side, the United States military personnel are awarded the highest of honours for their attacks on countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where tall buildings have been decimated, historical artifacts destroyed and pillaged, women raped, civilians kidnapped and imprisoned without evidence of their transgressions, and where upwards of a million have died as a result of the supposed war on terror.  The horrors and atrocities that come along with warfare are still inflicted on Iraqis and Afghans everyday.  Imagine for a moment that September 11 was just the beginning of a nearly decade, and counting, long campaign to exert foreign influence upon the United States.  This has been the reality of these countries as America is trying desperately to hold onto its rapidly declining global power.  And for these countries there is still no end in sight to the conflict.

On the other side of the conflict, al Qaeda has been demonized for conducting a military offensive against a perceived threat.  In fact, what was so shocking about this attack was not how al Qaeda attacked but who they attacked, a country that was once thought to be untouchable in its dominance.  The targets they chose were strategic military targets that any belligerent force would have attempted to target.  This is the nature of war.  Military, political, and economic targets are the most highly sought after targets.  For many, the White House, Pentagon, and World Trade Centre symbolize the imperialistic character of the United States.  These are three institutions that have, for better or worse, touched every corner of the globe with their influence.  When puppet governments are pacified in the Middle East, or elsewhere, by the influence of a foreign power, there will always be opposition amongst the people. Al Qaeda rose up to fill this role.  Sadly, they were guided by the same destructive dichotomous thinking as their opponents and sought out the death of a perceived evil.

In order to progress as a society, we have to look beyond simplistic dichotomies of good and evil, narratives that have indoctrinated us from birth lodged within fairytales, religious stories, political propaganda, etc.  This type of categorizing and partitioning of the world is false, misleading, and very dangerous.  Instead of seeking to understand one another, we are handed pre-packaged images in black and white coupled with the binary that if you’re not with us, you’re against us.

Osama Bin Laden was not on the side of good.  Nor was he on the side of evil.  He was a human being consumed by a false belief in these two dichotomies.  For Bin Laden, America was evil. America was corrupt, greedy, and power hungry.  And while these latter three characteristics may aptly apply to many Americans and much of America’s foreign policy, it does not define Americans as a people.  It does not justify the murder of American lives anymore than the American occupation and decimation of foreign nations could be justified by a diffusion of freedom.  And to celebrate the death of this man is ironically to accept, and ultimately perpetuate the ideology of good and evil that was the very foundation of Bin Laden’s actions (and for much of the world’s conflicts).  What would be cause for celebration is the death of this idea of good and evil.  Only then could we really seek to understand one another and begin our struggle towards a more peaceful world.

“What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Driving down a long dark road

Well Greg's blog is a tough act to follow, and combined with Chad's great poems this will pale in comparison, but its a blog and thats is what it is here for.  So here goes nothing!

Its dark, really dark, it feels like maybe my eyes are the only ones looking into this darkness, the road turns, and then headlights.  My arms are feeling sore, yet i haven't done anything.  I stretch, i sing, i snack, all in an attempt to keep my eyes staring into that darkness.  This has been my fear for so long, it just creeps up, will it creep up on my now???????  I am notorious for my ability to sleep, it first came to light in grade seven or eight when i fell asleep in the movie theater during one of the batman movies.  I managed to shrug that one off, but late nights of drinking would have pillows beckoning my name.

But its serious when it comes to driving, my dad fell asleep and crashed his car.  This shook me, but didn't stop me from having my own difficulty while driving.  When I was about 16 my family and best friend Ryan W drove out to clear lake for the day to check out their new little skate park up in riding mountain.  it was great day out there, i was the one driving home, same situation, late night, everyone asleep, quite, only me and the road.  Then scrape shake i wake up and pull the car back onto the road, i had hit the shoulder.  Fortunately enough i was able to pull back on the road before anything bad happened.  How lucky was I.  I awoke my parents, i told them something was on the road and i had to swerve.

Why would i do this???? take most of my families life and put it into harms way????

This happened one more time in my life.  Driving home from a fun weekend at the cabin, i had to drive home early in the morning.  I am driving about 130 making really good time, the next thing i know i am in the other lane facing on coming traffic, i swerve again and pull back into my lane.  my heart races, faster then ever before.  i pull over at the next gas station and park and sleep for a half hour, but more so i was trying to calm my beating heart.

So here i am a number of years later, driving, in the night, the start of a 4 day trip, driving through the night to have more time in Minneapolis.  Faced with the lights and the street lines.  Will the tiredness creep up on me again.  i have worked since 8 in the morning and its midnight, this is not usually a time i find myself awake, without the support of alcohol and dance that is. As i drive i have this intense feeling, i care so much for the people in this car, but yet my mind strikes fear into me.  Will i know if it creeps up on me, how will i know, will i see the signs, will this darkness take me and the car i am in.  My past is close in my memory, the times i had been jerked away out of sleep while driving, and its so dark...

but not this time, the detour is over, i know i have neared the end of my time able to drive, and there is the boarder so once we get through i can pull over and switch drivers.  I faced a fear, i challenged my ability to recognize my bodies signs and to not put those i love in danger!  It feels good to know that you have grown into your body and can read it better.  Maybe i am just more cautious, but i felt in control of something where i had not been in the past.  There is a strength in that, that holds you true and keeps you steady.


On another note everyone should watch this, its the entire new tv on the radio album in videos!

Tv on the radio "Nine types of light"