I did get a mailing from Save the Children this week,
asking if I would sponsor a specific (female) child, this time in Egypt (it
wasn’t Syria, Iraq, Libya or Afghanistan).
I had supported STC in the 1970s, sometimes looking at it as “conscience
money”. At the time, the charity did
assign specific children (usually in Africa) to sponsor, and the child would
change about once a year. I would get
occasional mailings from or about the child, but it was difficult to answer.
In circumstances right now, I do question the point of
this kind of a “relationship” with someone sponsored. It doesn’t seem very real. I still feel that I should “get my own work
done”, as I have outlined here before.
I’ve written a few posts on the International Issues
blog about the “personal” aspects of responding to the Syrian refugee
crisis. Essentially, the “spare rooms”
argument doesn’t mean a lot in practice.
But for the US to accept many more refugees than it has or has said it
is willing to (that is, in the hundreds of thousands), in the current political
climate with regard to immigration, ultimately personal involvement from a lot
of volunteers (not just money, and not just spare rooms in houses) would need to
happen. It would have to cross barriers
concerning religion and sometimes gender and sexuality. Essentially, volunteers would have to become
dedicated to responsibilities comparable to foster parenting, to say the least.
They would be supervised by new non-profit groups formed in various ways as
intermediaries. Some of this is happening in Canada now.
As I found out during my eldercare experience (from
2003-2010), substantive interaction with others in need is more difficult for
one who did not have his own children.
This does become a “chicken-and-egg” kind of problem.
As I’ve noted before, a major concern of mine is the
expected moral compass for someone who is “different” like me. I set my own expressive goals in life, and it
is important to follow my own inner direction.
(This is a property of the “unbalanced” personality in the language of
Rosenfels.) I don’t like to pimp the specific causes or needs of others unless
I have a genuine, longstanding connection with them. I don’t like to be
recruited. I don’t proselytize, or like
to listen to “missionaries”.
As a moral matter, it ultimately matters that one’s “expressive
purposes” or output ultimately connect to meeting the needs of others. To some extent, the free marketplace provides a measure of whether one
is doing that, and this makes the “free content” issue relevant (and my lack of
sales numbers disturbing to some people, behind the unwelcome phone
calls). One should care about the
customer.
In this regard, I find it isn’t that hard to get my “choir”
interested in my content. I do find
people on social media who can relate to it.
I probably leave the impression that I live in my own world, which fills
me and doesn’t leave time for people with “real needs”. One disturbing observation is that in my
fiction stories, the “powerful” do tend to self-select and come out on top, and
the “weak” are at best left behind in a wasteland – not a whole lot is done to
reach out and give them hands up. That’s
a bit like Ayn Rand, maybe. Maybe it sounds like Donald Trump harping about “The
Losers” or the “stupid people”.
Socially, that kind of attitude sounds at best insular, and at worst
arrogant and likely to incite expropriation. (Trump hasn’t gotten over
Omarosa.) One true thing I’ve
noticed: my own life has a lot more in
common with that of many heterosexuals in my own social and cultural “class”
than a lot of people realize, but it has almost nothing in common with the “masses”
in great need. I’ve noticed on a few
volunteer events recently (“Community Assistance”) that I have no idea how to
communicate with the “clients” at all. Then
I seem to be the “separate creation”.
Another moral matter is that of “belonging”. As I “argued” in the “Epilogue” of the
non-fiction part of DADT-III, any of us living in a relatively stable, free society
owe it the capacity to step up when there is sudden, unusual need – which may
help explain the impulse from some people to offer “spare rooms” even if the
idea isn’t quickly workable. It tends to argue for the need to become “socialized”.
There are some moral ideas that are clear-cut. If you procreate a child, you must support it
(hopefully in marriage, even if same-sex).
That isn’t controversial. Less clear-cut is the idea of being prepared
to step in and help raise someone else’s (like after a family tragedy). And eldercare is quickly growing as a
responsibility for the childless. There
are also things one could imagine saying as obligations that ought to come from
inherited wealth (which some on the Far Left want to eliminate), even when not
expressly stipulated in wills or trusts.
One could be to make a house available to others when there is enough
need. But that may not be practical if one
isn’t prepared for the personal interaction that goes with it – relationships that
were not expected or welcome in the past.
“Mind your own business” doesn’t always work.
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