[ExI] Charity vs. Entitlements

[Lee Corbin]

Alex writes

> [Lee wrote]
> 
> > Rafal responds to Stathis:
> > 
> > > Stathis wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Charity is fickle and degrading; when
> > > > I'm given something I want it to be
> > > > because I'm entitled to it.
> > > 
> > Exactly!!!   I myself probably just suffered a family
> > reverse because I had been too generous to a .sibling.
> > The poor resent the rich anyway, and generosity
> > only makes it worse, at least for all too many.
> 
> I am on the fence with this.

Thanks for the testimony. I really do want to understand
how people think. It would be almost as helpful as if I
understood how I think.

> As someone who has come from less than nothing to
> considerably more, I have been recipient of charity and 
> given it to others. I have always had that dirty and indebted
> feeling on the few occasions when someone has bailed m
> out of a situation when I had neither the means or ability to
> help myself.

Is it perhaps an assault on your pride? This just occurs to me.
Hmm. How obvious. Maybe I've just lost all mine. I'm not
even annoyed anymore when a passenger gives me unneeded
instructions where to turn next.

If I've got it here, then the sort of pride you're talking about is
quite illogical, no?  After all, *you* already knew that your
situation left a lot to be desired, probably due to a 
shortcoming or two on your own part. So do you think
that it was the *public* (or semi-public) acknowledgment
of the fact that hurt?

> Because of this I have had a few periods of unemployment
> when I refused to take state handouts.

But that could be sheer principle on your part. But again, I don't
find it at all logical. It wasn't *you* who passed the legislation.
BTW, I *am* not sending back the "entitlement" check that
the U.S. government has decided to send me. Why should I be
triply punished for not getting my way about policy *and* taxed
*and* being too principled to take the money?

> Which perversely prevented me from receiving any practical help...

sheer insanity (sorry---but that help could have been *important*!)

> Despite that, I have always felt that you learn nothing and only
> lose self-respect when you take charity.

I wax intolerant. ISN'T THE SELF-RESPECT <calmness>, isn't
the self-respect already lost? Well---sorry, I'm asking you to 
account for feelings, and since I can't account for very many of mine,
perhaps that's best not answered.

> Now the shoe is on the other well healed foot, I only give to
> those who cannot help themselves.

So if Mr. Gates died, and mysteriously and quietly left all his
billions to Alex Blainey, you wouldn't pass any of it around
to your old pals? (Just asking.) What about delightful email
correspondents?

Lee