[extropy-chat] Charity

[Technotranscendence]

On Tuesday, January 20, 2004 9:14 PM Harvey Newstrom
mail at HarveyNewstrom.com wrote:
>>>> Hey, good for you.  However, it seems you're using your so called
>>>> charitable works to boast about your moral superiority, no?:)
>>>
>>> No.  Where did you get that idea.  I did not
>>> bring them up.  I answered a direct question.
>>
>> Just a hunch.  Sometimes they're wrong, you know?:)
>
> You accuse me of using of boasting about my
> moral superiority "on a hunch"???

I wrote "it seems..."  I feel you're overreacting.  Maybe "hunch" was
the wrong word.  It seemed to me that all the pieces fit.  You brought
up your doing charitable work in the context of bashing a libertarian
caricature.  Recall, you wrote:

"You are not mistaken.  We are very active in volunteer work and spend
huge amounts on various charities we support.  This attitude is only
possible because we believe in our community and in helping others.  If
I were a bitter old Libertarian clutching my gun and grumping about all
taxes being theft, I would be so busy wallowing in my self-pity and
victim mentality that I would not give back anything to anyone.  It is
this very fact that I have been blessed in my life that empowers me to
help others.  If I really felt that I had to claw and scratch out every
single penny with no help from anyone, seeing the government and social
institutions as enemies, I would bury all my money in the back yard and
never help anyone."

I don't know, but it sounds to me a lot like moral superiority.  You say
it isn't and I'll take your word for -- even if you didn't respond to
this scenario I offered:

"This implies that if there were two people, X and Y, who were both
morally identical and then X did charitable works -- say, spent time in
the local soup kitchen dishing out food -- while Y did not, X would be
morally superior to Y.  Do you agree with this?  Or are X and Y still
morally equal despite X's doing some charitable work?"

It looked a lot to me like you were claiming X is morally superior and
you're X -- while Y is morally inferior and is the libertarian
caricature.  (Yeah, you never answered me on this, so I don't know.)

Had you left your libertarian caricature out of the above and the
explicit claim that "seeing the government" as an enemy out -- in other
words, those who don't trust the government must, by your claim, be
uncharitable -- then I wouldn't have been led to the conclusion you were
trying to make libertarianism and distrust of government(s) something
morally inferior and that could never be compatible with "believ[ing] in
[y]our community and in helping others."  (It almost seems you're saying
community equals the government and that libertarians could never be
part of a community.  Some would go to the other extreme, claiming only
individualists can form true communities.  They argue force or
submerging individuality can never found true communities.  I believe
that simplifies things, but that's a much longer thread.:)

> Your (and others') rants seem to have more to
> do with some anti-charity libertarian worldview
> than anything I have actually done or said.

If so, prove it.  I would prefer to be enlightened than to sneer at
those I disagree with.

> I'm sorry that I wasted even this much time on
> this thread.

Had I realized you'd react in this way, I would not have posted to this
thread -- not so much because it's a waste of time*, but because I fear
you will wall yourself off from further discussion.  I hope you won't.

Cheers!

Dan
  See "The Hills of Rendome" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Rendome.html

*  Clarifying these issues is not a waste of time to me, though trying
to discuss them soberly with others is probably a lost cause.  People
get too emotional over them.  (This is not to say I don't.  I have hot
button issues too.)