Uncharitable Thoughts

There are a lot of good causes out there. If you sold your car, you could send about a cent to every not-for-profit in Australia. Big ones, small ones, national ones, local ones, ones for cute children, ones for old people who built Australia, long shots, hard cases, new ideas - if we don’t pull ourselves together, we’ll find ourselves like A.A. Milne’s sailor (and remember, breeks are pants) ;

He was shipwrecked, and lived on an island for weeks,
And he wanted a hat, and he wanted some breeks ;
And he wanted some nets, or a line and some hooks
For the turtles and things which you read of in books.

….
He began on the fishhooks, and when he'd begun
He decided he couldn't because of the sun.
So he knew what he ought to begin with, and that
Was to find, or to make, a large sun-stopping hat.

…

So he thought of his hut ... and he thought of his boat,
And his hat and his breeks , and his chickens and goat,
And the hooks (for his food) and the spring (for his thirst) ...
But he never could think which he ought to do first.

And so in the end he did nothing at all,
But basked on the shingle wrapped up in a shawl….

To be sure, few of us actually even try to take the exalted and impersonal approach of judiciously considering the merits of every possible method of improving the world.

In the end, most of us plump for the good cause that has actually intersected our lives most, or most recently. Someone asks us, or a friend or a family member is involved, or we’re feeling particularly pleased with the world at that moment and want to share.

There have been philosophers over the ages who have told us to ignore all such personal bias and to devote our resources to the most needy, and thus most logical, object. The most recent of these has been Peter Singer, who writes : "It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbo u r's child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away. “ Yes, that’s true, and yet, and yet…

I have immense admiration for Peter Singer, but I have to confess that when he was caring for his dying mother a few years ago – spending money on attendant care, despite the obvious fact that there were Bang l adeshi peasants who needed that money more – I did note an inconsistency. I also have to confess, though, that I didn’t hold his inconsistency against him. A little inconsistency in these matters is human, part of the same humanity that moves us to give in the first place. If we didn’t stray from the direct path to the greater good we’d never have the accidental satisfactions that keep us wandering on day after day, keeping our goal at least partly in mind.