You know, I always appreciate the effort when a corporation tries to solve a problem by involving its customers or other individuals. It's not like that company is already making pretty good money off of their customers, and it's not like executives could easily put $20,000+ each to a good-deeds project (not with most of their $140,000+ salaries in mortgages, leases, and other sundry investments). Shit: why not appeal to the conscience of the guy making barely $30,000/year and take the charitable donations out of him, and others like him? I mean, there's more of him than there are executives, right? It's economies of scale, not entitlement or greed, and nothing more... I've already talked about the pure wretchedness of asking people for charity money in a check-out line, but I'd like to rephrase some of my ideas about modern charity in general:
1. No Money? No Deal.
If I wanted to give money to a charity I would walk around a city until a charity salesperson cornered me and asked me if I had 'a couple minutes' to stand around and learn why what they do is important and worthy of my money. I'd listen, they'd pitch me a donation/month level, then they'd get angry while I tried to extricate myself from paying them money, trying to offer my time or effort (which nobody accepts because, evidently, I'm a useless piece of shit best employed as a wallet for special interests) in lieu of the money I need to live the barest simulacrum of an adult life. They wouldn't even treasure the fact that I stopped to give a sympathetic ear to their cause. To crown the experience, if I stayed strong and refused to pledge $5-50 a month (because I'm underemployed and all) they would get angry at me, the guy who promised only to hear them out patiently, uncomfortable on a downtown street. All because I don't want to pledge $25 a month when I don't really have $300 a year to pay to the Duck Saviors or the Eco-watch or the Gay Angel division of Premature Heroes dot com.
That's all completely painful bullshit. Seeing a young idealist go from thinking I'm an easy mark and a way to fill the day's quota to thinking I'm just a heartless waste of time hurts me, especially when they're so earnest and clearly involved, and I really don't have the money to spare, but the whole gambit is up. I don't want to sign up to pay a certain amount of money a month and be locked into that, when I could be back to being unemployed in a month's time. Compare their attitude when I'm walking away to their positive sales pitch and smile at the start. Yikes, all about a charity. That to me is one of the ugliest scenes imaginable, it's hard for me to say no to people my age who have to stand in the street and sling these good causes, but years of grinding near-poverty have made my heart very hard about charity. I only toss a bum a dime (or a dollar) on a few special occasions a year. I give monthly to the Red Cross already, because one time I just couldn't shake the charity salesperson, no matter how evasively I talked of good deeds and dollar-to-aid ratios. More than that I will not give until society gives me five figures wrapped up in a cushy salaried position.
That's nothing compared to being asked by a cashier, with a lineup behind me at least 15 people strong, if I want to give money to the ALS warriors, emphysema battlers, or the cancer crusaders. I've found the only way to do it properly is to cheerfully quip, 'Nope!' and watch the taken-aback cashier's face for what often resolves as outright puzzlement. How could anyone, especially a 'young adult' (more on this goddamned phrase in a later post) with a sense of social consciousness, refuse to help? Here's how:
I don't make any money. I have more of an outcome than an income and a dollar here/dollar there way with money can leave me hungry or homeless and I won't accept those outcomes while I am conscious and living. While it's hilarious to think I could bankrupt myself giving to charity (easily, those fuckers will take all your money in small, sensible, monthly amounts until you're dry and then they'll move onto the next empathetic prey), and I mean short-story worthy hilarious, but I am not going down that road to prove my point. If you write this short story (Bankrupt for Charity), please attribute the inspiration to Publicato, because I was there for you, and still am, and never asked for money or tried even to make any off my neglected wreck of a 'blog'.
They won't accept my time? What they're so big and mighty and special a normal man with a university education AND real-life experience cannot work for them? Then kindly fuck off and bother someone else. If you won't accept actual volunteers I have to question the integrity of your organization. I'm not asking to be a paid volunteer. I'm just asking because I already stated I don't want to give money, since earning minimum wage has taught me the value of the goddamned dollar so well, but underemployment has taught me that I do have time to do other things, which is nice, and physically helping with something seems like a good deal for both parties. No time? No problem.
Lots of these problems stem from being a faceless shit in the eyes of these charities. You're just a wallet, nobody will vouch for your character, and it's too big a risk getting you anywhere near the inner workings of the charity. Could be you're an undercover reporter/auditor waiting to get inside to show the public the kind of money/cocaine parties most charities hold every Wednesday. That wouldn't look good on them, so money only, please. Meanwhile, food banks and soup kitchens are almost always looking, and better opportunities exist as well for those with the goal of working away their guilt at being fiscally solvent with a roof over their head while others rot on the curb.
2. Corporate Partnerships and Online Campaigns
In the future, charity fundraising will be part blood-sport, part PR campaign, and part Game of Sponsors. Tweet your Alliance Industries charity codephrase and AI and other corporate partners will donate ten-fifths of a cent to a mental illness cause. That's right, the painless act of social media can help save lives! (Thanks to promotional consideration by... and sponsored by...)
So the corporates already create and manage basically all of the wealth of society, and to be fair they are sometimes philanthropic with it (cue Will Smith parody - Gettin Philanthropic Wid It), but with all the cards in their hands they are not above dragging the public into the fray, with aims of making the public feel like they've done good deeds. Never mind the stigma of mental illness (some of the ignorant and stupid shit said after Sandy Hook would make even the mildest neuro-atypical worried about a lynching or straight-up incarceration) and the people suffering silently with depression, who keep well quiet because they know better than to raise red flags or doubt in anyone around them, even family, who might rat them out to the Psychiatry Police or the Therapy All-Stars or the People Fixer Committee or the Drug Testing Champions. Shit.
I think that mental illness is becoming the cause celebre of this era because people realized that what really mattered was getting borderline-psychotics help before they start behaving criminally or antisocially. It's a rudimentary fact of self-interest, but it doesn't get people off the streets who have stopped giving a shit about society at large. Yupster versus Wino, retiree versus junkie, politics of gentrification, et cetera. Everything is very heartwarming until you consider the rather callous 'cleaning up the streets' side of the equation, which must even out stochiometrically, involving either incarcerated drug addicts or reformed, minimum-wage workers in subsidized housing, dreaming of the slight meaning and drama which illicit drug use and a hard, unforgiving lifestyle provided them.
3. Social Media Campaigns
It sounds much better in the boardroom, but a lot of people will still engage it. Is the internet going to solve anything, or is it going to sicken humanity further? Here's what you get with an internet campaign: the hyper-connected geeks, the meme-reposters, jingoists, one-dimensional issue nerds, all these and more – people who exist primarily online, tangentially helping solve a primarily real-life problem. Why, it's almost effortless – and helping people without breaking a sweat is so cool, so 2014, so yupster, so hip, so literally cooler than actually seeing how fucked up people can get in the fun, exciting world you love so much.
I have to allow that I could be completely wrong. We could really be living in the dawn of a new era, in which the sins of the past will look like a horrendous nightmare. The world could be moving towards a better, caring, inclusive, post-national, post-sexist, post-superstition, post-inequality, post-partisan state. Or, more realistically, the hopeful are selling you that story (so they can meet rent) while the business of business as usual goes on (so 'they' can accrue billions), as ever, exploiting the planet and its doomed denizens while covering their tracks with social responsibility targets like charity drives and NGO sponsorships. It would be interesting to see the ethical calculus a company like Shell uses so that its remaining conscience-afflicted affiliates can sleep at night.
But, you know, help the poor by keeping them disenfranchised via your own corporate overlords – whatever helps you feel better.
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