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Conspicuous CharityMar 26 '05 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Before you buy another colored wristband, consider this: wouldn't testicular cancer/breast cancer/autism/world hunger/ or whatever it is benefit more from having the whole two bucks?
"Beware of practicing your piety before men, in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do...that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. "(Matthew 6:1-4) Not just Christianity, but all religions teach that charity should be done in secret and that if you give alms and advertise it to the general population, you're not only guilty of tasteless showing off, but you lose all your brownie points for it. That doesn't deter our contemporaries, however. It seems to be the height of fashion to advertise your charity on everything from medical centers right down to the $2 it costs to buy a yellow rubber band sporting the words "LIVE STRONG!" or any of the multi-colored variations that have started to spring up all over the place ostensibly in support of breast cancer/testicular cancer/autism or a rainbow of other causes. Half of this money supposedly goes to support research on the subject disease and the other half goes to pay for the advertisement of your generosity that you wear on your arm. If we really wanted to support the research or end world hunger (white rubber bands!) wouldn't it make more sense to give the whole two bucks to the effort? But that's not really what it's about--it's about conspicuous charity. Thorstein Veblen coined the expression "conspicuous consumption" in his Theory of the Leisure Class over 100 years ago. We've pretty much mastered that one with our love of gas-guzzling SUV's, products bearing designer names on the outside, and our rapt admiration of a sit-com character's collection of pricey Manolo Blahnik shoes (remember when Imelda Marcos was scorned for her shoe collection?) It's become such a way of life that we barely notice conspicuous consumption any more; now we've moved on to conspicuous charity. Universities and civic organizations actually sell naming opportunities to buy the charity of the conspicuously rich. That's why the underpaid and overworked who've labored pretty much anonymously all of their lives caring for the sick and unlovely at the UCLA Medical Center now go to work each day at the DAVID GEFFEN MEDICAL CENTER. If you're wealthy enough, you can get your name just about anywhere. Plunk down a few spare million and get your name plastered on one building or another so that people can see it every day and wonder who the heck Gonda Goldschmied is to have her name in ten-foot slabs around the top of an otherwise beautiful research building. (Gonda and Goldschmied are actually two surnames given to a foundation that hands out money to do good works all over the globe--but never, it seems, anonymously!) But hey! You don't have to be rich to advertise your good works. Can't afford a medical center? Bumper stickers not mobile enough? -- Buy a rubber band in any one of a number of colors and everyone will be able to identify you as a Person Who Gave. The color doesn't really matter because it doesn't so much say "I support AIDS research or God" as "LOOK AT ME--I'M GENEROUS!!! There's a whole conversation going on over in ePinion's Writer's Corner: Humor/Fiction with Kris Kochanski's "Americans for the Fight Against Idiocy" pointing out the nonsense of this whole fad. And it's not hard to see the funny side of it. But I submit that it goes beyond funny and has become just another sick symptom of our need to conspicuously flaunt the evidence of how wonderful we think we are. Real charity doesn't advertise. And it shows. People who think nothing of stiffing a hard-working coffee shop waitress with a 5% tip, reach out to drop their spare change on the table with an arm sporting a neon-colored wristband advertising their beneficence--Someone cuts you off in traffic, then flips you an interesting hand gesture waving their yellow-rubber-band-clad left wrist out the driver's window-- Someone with a pink rubber band around her wrist slaps her child silly in the super market--and you know that something's screwed up here. I suspect the real reason for the warning in the Book of Matthew about not showing off your charitable acts was not so much so that you could tote up those points on the heavenly scoreboard as it was a reminder that pride precedes embarrassing behavior and hypocrisy is not an attribute of the truly righteous. Wouldn't testicular cancer/breast cancer/autism/world hunger/whatever benefit more from having the whole two bucks? And we'd all benefit even more from learning to shut up about our charity and just do it.  |
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