take that, bono
Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is disgustingly condescending, and characterizes perfectly a somewhat bygone attitude of your average American or European, assuming they even give a thought to such things as charity, or the ubiquitous starving of Africa.
Today’s world thinker is more likely to say, put your money where your mouth is. No, more like, put your actions where your money is. Thus the rise of the “volunteer vacation,” where you take self-sponsored excursion to do a little labor for free someplace like South America or Africa or Eastern Europe, or even in the US.
So, we’ve got our two options. I’ve heard people complain that going to another country to “help” in the form of remaking it in our own Western image is a kind of condescension, but for the most part I think this is bullshit on the part of somebody who’s never been to a third-world country and is afraid to step outside their first-world comfort zone. Other critics (like the author of this article) raise concerns about the helpees not turning around to help their fellow countrymen, as the originators of the Peace Corps and other programs intended. Both arguments may be true, but as far as offering help goes, personally I think this new DIY attitude is commendable.
More so than donating money to charity, in my opinion. Now, I’m not dismissing the desire to help, nor do I mean to belittle the efforts of people who do. But I have a very strong feeling about the futility and resulting long-term damage of just throwing money at a situation.
Throwing money is what corporations do to cover up blunders and oopsies. It’s what politicians do to get themselves elected. It’s what rich parents do to have their fuck-up children fixed. It is what we do when we can’t be bothered with a problem–pay someone else to take care of it.
Anyway, this isn’t really a lecture, because a) it’s not like I have a solution, b) if putting your actions where your money is is the best solution, then I can’t say I’ve been doing that either, c) if putting your actions where your money is is NOT doing much good, as the above article seems to indicate, then I’ve been guilty of wanting to try Peace Corps anyway.
I suspect that the key to all of this is that the members of a nation learn to fix things at home. After all, as my compatriot Brett “dude, organic farming is sweet” P told the homeless guy on the corner, “change comes from within.” This goes both for the ailing countries in Africa and our own country.
Unfortunately home maintainance is precisely the area where the US as a nation, and incidentally I as a person, am not doing especially well.
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