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Someone on my friends list posted this link. These people have a dog with a painful degenerative hip condition. They can't afford to treat it, so they're soliciting donations on their site. They say they need $2000 (U.S.), and I expect that they'll get it.
But it makes me wonder about why our priorities are what they are. They will raise $2000 from strangers for their dog. But those same strangers could instead send their money to relief agencies that could use the money (for example) to buy about five hundred insecticide-treated mosquito nets, protecting hundreds of human children from life-threatening malaria.
Traditionally at this point, a poster talks about how fucked up this is and how terrible people are, but I'm not going to because I don't agree. The money you earn is yours, and you should do with it what makes you happiest. You don't have an obligation to sacrifice it for strangers, and if you do give it away, it should be in whatever way you find most satisfying.
I'm interested in a much more academic point. Why is helping the dog and his people feel better more satisfying or interesting than helping the children? Maybe it's that the dog has a web site (making it more personal), while little Ndugu's mother doesn't have a computer, digital camera, or a PayPal account. Maybe people people feel that millions of those those children are always going to be starving and dying of something no matter what you give, so they don't feel that it makes a difference. Maybe it's that we can see ourselves with a shit job and a sick dog, but we can't see ourselves living in a disease- and mosquito-ridden refugee camp with no health care and no food for our children. And there's the racial subtext, of course.
All of which suggests to me that the social and emotional patterns that we evolved over tens of thousands of years as nomadic hunter-gathers don't quite fit any more. But then again, did they ever?
But it makes me wonder about why our priorities are what they are. They will raise $2000 from strangers for their dog. But those same strangers could instead send their money to relief agencies that could use the money (for example) to buy about five hundred insecticide-treated mosquito nets, protecting hundreds of human children from life-threatening malaria.
Traditionally at this point, a poster talks about how fucked up this is and how terrible people are, but I'm not going to because I don't agree. The money you earn is yours, and you should do with it what makes you happiest. You don't have an obligation to sacrifice it for strangers, and if you do give it away, it should be in whatever way you find most satisfying.
I'm interested in a much more academic point. Why is helping the dog and his people feel better more satisfying or interesting than helping the children? Maybe it's that the dog has a web site (making it more personal), while little Ndugu's mother doesn't have a computer, digital camera, or a PayPal account. Maybe people people feel that millions of those those children are always going to be starving and dying of something no matter what you give, so they don't feel that it makes a difference. Maybe it's that we can see ourselves with a shit job and a sick dog, but we can't see ourselves living in a disease- and mosquito-ridden refugee camp with no health care and no food for our children. And there's the racial subtext, of course.
All of which suggests to me that the social and emotional patterns that we evolved over tens of thousands of years as nomadic hunter-gathers don't quite fit any more. But then again, did they ever?
