How Charities Cause More Problems than they solve
“Is the Initiate cold, unfeeling, careless of the starving millions? No. He feels as much as the next person – except that his feelings are genuine because they do not spring from a need for approval, or guilt, or worry, or fear. In fact it might be worth, at this point, stating the Initiate’s feelings on a particular issue, e.g. the ‘starving millions’ in (let’s say) Sudan.
His thoughts are likely to be as follows:
1. There are hundreds of thousands of causes’ clamoring for his attention. Everything from wheelchairs for the disabled Ping-Pong team, to the Maori legal fighting fund. The list is almost endless. If he were to start naming these charities at top speed, it would take over two months just to get through the list of names – by which time a hundred new ones will have been formed. Note I am saying nothing whatsoever about the worthiness of these charities.
2. His time and funds are limited. If he gave one hundredth of one penny to each of them he would be bankrupt.
3. It therefore follows that he must strictly limit any charitable giving – preferably to zero!
4. He is not able to be manipulated by the latest media story, or the church making him feel guilty, or any of the con-artists using any of the eight weapons.
5. He is totally guilt-free, and would not feel guilty even if he never gave a penny to any of them – which he rarely does.
6. He recognizes that most charities are limitless sinks of funds and effort. Almost regardless of how many billions are poured in, the problems remain. In fact aid very often causes far more problems than it solves. This is an unpleasant truth to those who seek to absolve their guilt by limited charity.
7. Finally and vitally: if an Initiate decides that he will focus his considerable personal power on a (usually very local) charity, then he moves into the task with tremendous power, and things really start to happen. I’m not talking about a $75 conscience check.
However, let me remind you that the Initiate’s policy of non-interference in the lives of others means that he rarely becomes involved in conventional charitable works. The reason is, as I have said before, that one can rarely predict the consequences of a so-called ‘good’ act, and ‘good intentions’ are simply not enough of an excuse for wholesale interference into the lives of others.”
- Inner Circle Philosophy (Stuart Goldsmith)
Harmful Charity
“Let me give you an example of pointless charity – of which there are many thousands.
Recently there was a massive crop failure for the third year running in Sudan, and the people faced starvation again. The reason that they are starving is because they are struggling to survive on unworkable, worn-out land. A situation which will not improve, only deteriorate.
Massive aid was flown into the desert. Millions of gallons of drinking water were trucked in. The whole thing was being paid for by millions of little $75 conscience checks from nice, affluent, middle-class people buying themselves some smug satisfaction. Of course, lives were saved in the short-term, but these aid centers act like magnets to hundreds of thousands of people living in outlying districts.
These people from other districts are not actually starving, but they are not having too good a time either. So these people from the outlying districts (not the starvation zone) see these aid centers as really great places for a free handout to make life a little easier. Unfortunately, this has had the effect of displacing over one million people from their homes in outlying regions, and attracting them in to an already hopelessly overpopulated and worn-out region.
This ensures that the death-rate multiplies horribly in successive years when the fuss dies down and the aid workers (and camera crews) leave for the next ‘hot’ story.
This is an oversimplified example, but the basic message is beware meddling in things about which you know nothing. It is arrogant and dangerous. The motivation is simply one of salving your conscience and justifying the retention of the bulk of your wealth.”
- Inner Circle Philosophy (Stuart Goldsmith)
“My friend started a charity, a pet food pantry. It was for people who were affected by the economy who lost their jobs. A lot of people had to bring their pets to the shelters because they couldn’t even afford to feed them so she’d get places like Wal-Mart to donate food & supplies & she would give people 2 weeks worth of food, & they would have to get the rest themselves. She realized after a while that she was getting people in who were using her (saying they had more pets than they actually did because she’d give them more food so they wouldn’t have to buy any themselves, etc), but she knew that she was also helping people who really needed it. So she left it up to the people to do the right thing or not. Use the honor system. Eventually she couldn’t do it anymore because too many people from other towns were coming, she would have new people coming in every month & places stopped donating but she still will go out & buy pet food for a few really needy people. She is a remarkable woman. I admire generosity & compassion. There isn’t enough of it.”
- Annie Strickland (Facebook Comment) (12 September 2013)
“The Apostle Paul uses his commercial business to finance his own ministry for spiritual work. Everyone should focus on giving to the area of life changing work that they are directly involved themselves. This is how they can have maximum control, efficiency, awareness and responsibility in the good that they intend to do.”
- Enoch Mind Reality
“FCC will try and use guilt to manipulate you into handing over your hard-earned cash. They will point to the young homeless, they will photograph pitiful scenes of cardboard city and make them into posters and they will do everything in their power to ensure that you give your money through guilt. Guilt that you have a home whilst the people they ‘represent’ (unasked, of course) do not. And in case you have forgotten, their pay-off is the smug feelings of self-satisfaction they obtain through giving your money away.
The Initiate makes quite a big distinction between voluntary problems and truly accidental problems. For example, if a neighbor’s roof blows off in a hurricane, then it would be reasonable to invite your neighbor in to share your house until the storm blew over and he was able to repair his roof. It would not be reasonable to put your neighbor up in a hotel at your expense, for a year or two whilst he sat around and lamented the destruction of his roof!
Similarly it is not reasonable to hand out money to people who decided to leave home and turn up in a strange town with nowhere to stay.
The Initiate has a strong drive towards non-interference.”
- Inner Circle Philosophy (Stuart Goldsmith)
“The Initiate hardly ever gives money away to ‘charities’ or similar. He realizes that there are thousands upon thousands of ‘good causes’ all trying to use guilt to manipulate him into parting with his money. He knows that if he gave every penny away, he would not achieve anything worthwhile in terms of the relief of human suffering. His total lack of knowledge concerning any particular ‘good cause’ means that there is at least a fifty-fifty chance that his money will actually cause more harm than good. Blundering incompetence which causes serious damage is a very common feature of charity.
The Initiate is not ashamed of being rich. Wealth gives him freedom to be whatever it is he desires to be. He becomes a happy, joyous, self-fulfilled person. He or she knows that people very rarely benefit from handouts, but that people always benefit from struggling back up the ladder through their own efforts.
People are fundamentally lazy (this includes Initiates) and so if money can be had by merely stretching out your palm, there is little incentive to rebuild your life the hard way. And yet only through struggle – using your own resources – do you grow as a human being. Charity is ultimately demeaning and life-destructive, although very temporary, carefully targeted, and time-limited charity can be lifesaving. This type of charity accounts for a fraction of one percent of the total amount of money given away.
Of the billions given every year to charity, most of it is squandered, stolen, thrown down the drain, wasted on crackpot projects or otherwise frittered away. Only a tiny fraction of one percent of charity actually does any real ‘good’, understood in the Initiate sense.
The Initiate is not the slightest bit guilty about his current wealth level, and he certainly feels no inclination at all to give it away to someone else – he considers this rather a strange concept!”
- Inner Circle Philosophy (Stuart Goldsmith)
“Charities and religions are the biggest users of the weapon of guilt to extract money from you; but there are others:
Spongers, for example. These are people who have opted for an easier life (note I do not say easy, just easier) by getting you to provide money for them. These people often get you to hand over the loot by the use of guilt.
Thus a wife might say something like: “If you were a real husband, then you would be able to buy such and such”. Often, of course, the guilt is much more subtly applied than this. Many wives apply continuous and subtle guilt-pressure throughout an entire marriage in an effort to get their husbands to work harder, get a better job, bring in more money.
Children are expert at using guilt-tactics on their parents. You will often hear them saying things like: “Mum, all my friends have got a super whizzo computer, I’m the only one who hasn’t!”
Beggars. The best beggars have discovered that guilt is a great way of getting people to cough-up. If you don’t have a glass-eye or wooden leg, then a screaming infant will do nicely!
Blackmailers. These are people who play directly on your guilt over some real or imagined crime. If you don’t pay them the money, then they will tell the world what a naughty boy you’ve been.”
- Inner Circle Philosophy (Stuart Goldsmith)
