charity

""There is no box. That is the mind-set we need if civilization is to survive."
Lester Brown

In “Ishmael”, Daniel Quinn used the character of a gorilla to get outside of our politically correct, green-left box of humanitarianism, as conditioned by a heritage of agrarian-born “Sky-God” religions, socialism and feminism. Seen from a gorilla’s point of view, our social and environmental problems could seem open to solutions that our Judeo-Marxist inhibitions will not allow on the table.

"It is definitely the view of humanity from a non-human point of view, so that our perceived virtues are not necessarily virtues when they're perceived from the outside," Quinn explained. "The food race is a good example, the race between growing more food and birthing more people. We perceive generally that this race can be won by agriculture, so we cheer when we hear that agriculture has made some advance to support a growing population ¬ whereas in fact the race is unwinnable. It's like the arms race of the '70s and the '80s. ... There's no winning of the arms race. There's no winning of the food race either."

Madeline Weld wrote,

"The population was 60 M when I was there in the 1960s (my dad was a diplomat), 180 M now and headed for 335 M by 2050. Two-thirds of the country is less than 30 years old, fewer than 30 million of 70 million kids between 5 and 19 in school, and a female illiteracy rate of 60% (male 32%), desired family size 4.1, 22% of married women use birth control and only half of the non-users would like to use it in the future."

Would you give money to a drunken panhandler or a drug addict? Would you continue to feed a man who has sired 6 kids despite having no means to support them? Is open-ended charity a virtue---or a vice?

One of our CanDoBetter commenters, 'RichB', has highlighted the site Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. This is a visionary site! The movement seems to have gone to some considered endeavour to explore the issues. I like the question toward the bottom of the site:

'What will the world be like when our population starts getting smaller?'

As more globally-aware people begin to question the 20th Century 'growth-only' tenet, alternative ideals such a 'Low Population Planet', deserve to be considered and debated. But where to start?

One practical moral campaign that would immediately start curbing the out-of-control human birth explosion would be to lobby against the funding requests of charities supporting countries that have high birth rates. Now before readers jump to questionning the morality of this, this is not to stop funding emergency life support needs, but to make non-life-support funding conditional on recipient self-change.

These are some dominant charities in this field.

Animal advocate Suzanne Cass claims that RSPCA Tasmania has lost the plot.

‘When I became involved with the RSPCA Board after the last AGM, we made a number of promises, including that we would cut the costs of an expensive bureaucracy, and differentiate from that model followed in other states and territories, and that we would spend any available funds on Tasmanian animals and their welfare’, Ms Cass said. ‘We also promised that it would no longer be a ‘secret society’, yet this Board has re-introduced confidentiality agreements’.

Top-heavy, unnecessarily secretive, and expensive with little improvement in animals' lives

‘Far from carrying out these promises, it is my understanding that the Tasmanian branch, through the current Board, has advertised no less than five administration positions, in addition to the two long-standing staff, making seven in total.

Moreover, the Society has been, or is, paying, the CEO of the ACT branch, Michael Linke, thousands of dollars to run the Society while the newly appointed CEO is on very extended sick leave and will be for a lengthy period. This Board has spent far, far more on administration than the previous Board, and that was the main reason for it being deposed. I have seen little or no real improvements in the lives of the animals.