Lance & Trixie, please take up jogging, and give Shannon a break! Too much pent up frustrations!!

LOL! ;)Smart ass grin….

No, not mutually exclusive… but 2 completely different things. I’m only saying that you shouldn’t invoke one when you mean the other. Altruism is not simply believing charity is helpful. As discussed in moral philosophy it is the hypothesis that morality involves acting for the sake of others… that people have no right to exist for their own sakes… that self-sacrifice is the highest moral duty, virtue, and value… and that self-interest is evil. This is how altruists who do consider philosophy define it. And their philosophies have dominated thinking in this culture, among both those who think about philosophy and those who don’t. I submit that it is this very influence that led you to write “Obviously, we need to help others” without much consideration as to word choice. I believe that it seemed insignificant to you as you wrote, but I think that goes to show just how pervasive and insidious this philosophy is. I think that if you’re honest, you’ll have to admit that your phrasing does suggest that helping others is (if not an obligation) at the very least expected and morally meaningful. This is a very common moral judgment, but one that is not consistent with your beliefs. Ambition, greed, and success are generally considered evil in our society. And just think about what acts are upheld as noble and moral in today’s world… I’m quite certain you’ll be unable to find an act of self-interest (no matter how wealth-producing or human-race-saving) among them.

Of course, a person has the right to donate his own resources (any, all, or none) to helping others. Lance and I gave generously following the tsunami… it was a reflection of how highly we value life to contribute to a fund for helping victims of tragedy, and to us it was worth the cost. We were contributing toward something we valued. In this case, we weren’t “sacrificial lambs” because we would not have accepted any obligation to donate… and we accepted no moral superiority for having done so. We weighed cost/benefit and made what we decided was the choice most consistent with our values. But we would most certainly have been branded immoral by an altruist philosophy had we chosen to invest the money in the stock market instead (even, btw, if doing so would have improved or saved more lives than our donation).

It may seem I’m nit-picking words here, but having studied philosophy a bit and having witnessed the havoc a bad philosophy can wreak, I really do think these distinctions are important. Words aren’t just words… they convey concepts that have the power to create good or cause harm. So I’m not just giving you a hard time; I’m trying to give you an alternate (and consistent) moral foundation for the beliefs you’re expressing… beliefs that for the most part, I share.

Whaddya think? I think my impression of you was dead-on !

I do feel it’s my right to spend my money as I see fit because I worked for it, but that is just one reason. It’s my right because it’s my money.

As for Trixie’s most recent comment - this is what should have been said to begin with. I *don’t* think much about philosophy, so it baffles me when someone picks up on a seemingly insignificant word or phrase and blows it up in my face. It wasn’t my intention to criticize charity, but to criticize the way charity is put to use. I am not an altruist, but I do believe charity is helpful… and you seem to be saying those two things are muturally exclusive. Why? Can’t a person donate some of their resources to helping others without being a “sacrifical lamb?” (I have seen you do just that…)

“Padawan, you need to clean your room.”

to something more like:

“Padawan, if you choose to clean your room, I think it would be a nice idea for you to organize your shelves alphabetically.”

I hope you see a difference. I do. And I’m a bit puzzled that you think it’s invalid for me to interpret the first statement as voicing a requirement. That’s precisely how I’d expect my kids to interpret it. And that’s where I got the idea of “obligation” from your post.

You may not have wanted to use such a transparent term as “obligation” (and I believe you when you say you don’t think there is an obligation), but I DO think that it was an underlying acceptance of some tenet of altruism (or perhaps simply a default to the predominant social moral trend) that led you to choose the word “need”… perhaps to make your criticism of charity seem more compassionate and morally acceptable. Of course, since I find altruism to be morally reprehensible, it had the opposite effect on me.

I know you well enough to know that you’re NOT and altruist. I was just challenging you to stop giving lip-service to an altruist philosophy and say what you really mean. Your very valid position is not supported by altruist ideas… defend it on its own terms!

Imagine the following exchange:

ME: “Baja Fresh is my favorite Mexican food chain because they make excellent quesadillas.”
YOU: “Would it be your favorite if they didn’t?”
ME: “I didn’t say they wouldn’t be! Of course they would still be my favorite!!”

You’d think I was very confused. How could I be saying “of course”? You specifically negated the one condition that I said justified my love of Baja Fresh, and I’m saying “of course” they’d still be my favorite? Why? And why did I ever say the part about the quesadillas if there’s obviously some other more important reason that’s making it my favorite?

So how is this different than:

YOU: “That’s my family’s right because we have worked hard to get our money.”
ME: “Do you really think it _wouldn’t_ be your right if you didn’t work hard for your money…?”
YOU: “I didn’t say it wouldn’t be my right if I didn’t work hard for my money. Of course it would still be my right.”

(except for the exclamation points I added in my example )?

The fun thing is that I have a theory as to why you put it that way in the first place, but it would blow your mind this early in the morning, and I’m sure you (and everyone else reading this) are ready to slit my throat at this point, so I’ll just leave it at this for now.

Trixie: Whoa! Where did I use the term “obligation” or “duty”? Geez, I guess I’m not as good a writer as I had hoped with all the ideas you are inferring from my posts! For ME PERSONALLY, I think it’s nice to give of myself when I can. I feel no moral obligation or duty.

How have I watered down my statement? I admit the “we need to help” phrase was poorly chosen (and over-analyzed!), but I thought my post very clearly stated that people need to take care of themselves. Those who are in a position to help those less fortunate should do so in a way that fosters self-responsibility. And when I say *should*, I don’t mean they have a duty to do it. I mean if THEY CHOOSE TO HELP, it would be nice if it could be something more than a handout.

Damn, I’m going on over to the Star Wars blogs now…

Shannon, I see you’ve watered down your original statement a bit… but I also see that you claim that you still “mean it”. “Obviously we need to help others” sounds very much like a moral imperative to me. I think most people would gloss over a common statement such as this one (I’ve heard sentiments like this many, many times), but I think by now you know that Lance and I are not “most people”! Note that you didn’t say something like “I like to help others” or “I sometimes see a benefit in helping others”, and I think your choice of words is meaningful in understanding your thinking. Changing your statement to “it’s important to offer assistance…” is a bit better, but it seems that you’re unwilling to toss the language of an altruistic morality even when you don’t seem to believe it 100%.

And so your choice of words offers me a window into the moral philosophy that seems to be underlying your thinking whether you know it or not. Though you may not be willing to sacrifice a nice car to feed a village (and any altruist worth his salt would do that!), you seem to accept that it’s the moral duty of those who are self-responsible and self-reliant to somehow help others to become the same. To you, the distinction seems large — you see no obligation to give hand-outs or redistribute wealth, but you do see an obligation (or a moral imperative) to help them help themselves. To me, however, it’s not much of a distinction at all… the key word to me is obligation. I see no moral obligation of any sort; hand-outs (such as your example of giving clothes to a friend) or programs aimed to get the unemployed working and self-sufficient can be a good and moral use of one’s resources or not. Depends on one’s own cost/benefit analysis and the values one is working to attain.

In your original post you said that you think “what is wrong with the world” is that “no one takes responsibility for themselves.” I see an irony here because I think that the moral code of altruism (the very one that seems to be permeating your argument) is what is chipping away at self-responsibility more than anything. If we teach our children that it is a moral obligation (or a superior moral judgment) to help others in need, we’re teaching them far more than benevolence and compassion. We’re in essence saying that the “have-nots” have a moral claim on the “haves”. And so why shouldn’t they expect others to save them when they fail, pay for their mistakes, and take responsibility for them when they can’t or won’t? You simply can’t send one message without the other. Altruism demands that one either be a sacrificial lamb or a beneficiary of unearned values. I want my children to be neither. And I want them to know it’s their moral right to be neither.

MoC’sHS: Nice! The last thing we want to teach our kids is that ideals are nice to talk about, but impractical. We need to show that our beliefs matter in the way we live; if we don’t, who’s fault will it be if they grow up cynical and disillusioned?

And it feels really good. Yes, a Tiffany bracelet would have been lovely, but this choice is doing my soul good. It’s a wonderful program that TEACHES self-reliance (big difference than a hand-out).

I won’t do it always, but I try to do it in little ways all year long. If we all did that occasionally, I wonder where the world would be!

I do not want to help people by simply giving handouts, but by teaching people how to make things better for themselves and how to take responsibility for themselves. Does that happen now? No. That is my point. I don’t know that I can personally make it happen, but it’s what I would like to see change in the world and what I would like my elected officials to do with the portion of my tax money that may go to “aid” others.

To answer your scenario above, I would not be willing to sacrifice the comfort of my vehicle to feed a small community (if, in fact, that equation is correct). That’s my call. My money. We donate our resources on our terms. That’s my family’s right because we have worked hard to get our money.

Yes, I could enroll my children in school and potentially make things better for everyone, but the level to which I could raise the bar would still not be acceptable to me. I could make a difference for others, but not at the expense of my own children. My first priority is my family.

And if I’m following your line of thinking, your next comment may be something like “How can you use your resources to help others in any way without resulting in an “expense” for you and your family?” True, I cannot. So I evaluate the cost of the “expense” vs. the potential benefit. Passing on used clothing to a friend carries the cost of lost money that I could get by selling the clothing, while the benefit is personal and direct (as opposed to donating to a large organization where you never really know where your cash is going). In this example, the benefit wins.

While admitting our many differences, I also know we share the goal of fostering self-responsibility in our respective children.

Actually, I think there’s an even tighter parallel between this news item and homeschooling — and perhaps a less comfortable one for many. One of the criticisms leveled at homeschoolers is that parents who are obviously so involved with and interested in their children’s education should not be withdrawing them from school, but should be trying to make their schools as successful as possible, so the benefits of their energies can flow beyond the confines of just one family.

As uncomfortable as it may make some to admit it, the educational experience for those left behind is undoubtedly drearier when the most engaged parents and students bail out. But we homeschoolers, each for our own reasons, have bailed out nonetheless, and it would be disingenous to say we did it for the prime purpose of helping the public schools.

I think you know I’m tweaking you with this, but I am curious to know how you’d answer someone who asked “Don’t you care what happens in the public schools? Schools cannot succeed without involved parents. Not everyone can afford to homeschool their children. How do you propose to help them when you hoard your time and resources for your own family?”

G8 leaders and other prominent voices are calling for a doubling of aid to Africa. What if they are right, that this time, increasing aid will finally help that continent turn the corner to self-sufficiency? Would that oblige the more prosperous locales of the world to give? What if re-enrolling your children and doubling your personal effort could make your local school system the best it could be for those for whom homeschooling is not a practical option?