Donations charity why?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

This article is the result of my long reflections on what alms and other forms of donation are for, how to understand when it is possible and when not to provide such assistance. I give a complete answer for today for me personally to all these questions. Will it be useful to you? I don’t know, see for yourself, but you may not like the answer. And that also depends on you. The only thing that you should take into account: I devoted a lot of time to this topic, for several years I asked these questions, I still could not decide. Now I see that I can put a point, although it does not necessarily end up as the end of a paragraph.

The subject of the conversation

How is charity different from giving? Everyone can answer this question himself as he likes, because for our story it is absolutely not important. It is important that in both cases you take away some benefit from yourself and donate it to another person for his needs. If you do it not for free, or at least you have an ulterior motive like this: “I helped him, and then he will help me,” then this is no longer alms or donation. Call it what you want, but this article does not apply to such situations. Crowdfunding is also usually not charity or donation, because it is assumed that people pay in advance for what they themselves want to receive, that is, they throw off on a certain idea, and then receive a certain result of the work of the person who implemented this idea. Although in some cases, in the context of crowdfunding, an act of donation can be committed if a person threw money simply because he wanted to help, and not because he later wanted to receive the declared thing. You should also not confuse charity or donation with investment, in which the investor gives money, but with the expectation of their return in a multiply increased amount. And even more so, these concepts should not be confused with the concept of lending money, especially at interest. Further, instead of two words - alms and donation - we will use only the latter, because, I repeat, for our purposes there is no need to make a difference here.

The reader may also have questions about self-sacrifice. Yes, this also applies to the topic of conversation, but here, keep in mind that there may be situations when self-sacrifice is imitated for selfish motives. For example, a young man says to a girl: “I am not worthy of you, you are a bright, educated girl, and I am a simple guy, we cannot be together, now I’ll go out this door, or maybe immediately through this window … and you don’t me anymore you will never see, I do not want to ruin your life, goodbye and be happy! " A girl, imbued with this romantic nonsense, can say: “No, stop! Wait, that's not true, you're good. " This is a simplified example, real dialogues are always longer and start from afar, but they are thought out by the young men in such a way that, by moving away, on the contrary, they can achieve the girl through their ostentatious sacrifice. In this case, the girl's correct answer may be: “No, stop! Wait, take your trash with you, please,”or maybe even more cruel, but this article will not cover it. Yes, self-sacrifice is also a donation, but only if it is done in the same way free of charge and unselfishly. For example, a mother can sacrifice her life interests in order to raise children, and really brings them up, and does not look for opportunities at every opportunity to dump somewhere and does not whine about the fact that children have ruined her whole life. Later, she can return to her interests, fulfilling the assumed duty.

Everything, we will assume that we figured out the concepts.

So, we have before us an act of gratuitous and disinterested transfer of some benefit to another person, motivated by the desire to sincerely help him cope with his problem or help him carry out any project. Let's talk about this act and answer the main question: when it is possible and when not to do it, and to another, also important question: why is it necessary at all and who needs it in the first place - you or him?

Many people think of the following story: you gave a person money, and he went and bought himself some booze, which ultimately hurt both himself and other people (he set an example for the children, made a drunken brawl, paid the enemy's expenses for the destruction of his nation, simultaneously strengthening it military power, brought the limit of the Allowance closer for all mankind, etc.). Thus, you are an accomplice in a crime. Yes or no?

Yes, if you knew that the person would buy booze or do some other action with your money that would lead to bad consequences. Not if you were sure that he would not do it, or, at least, he definitely didn’t want to do it (that is, if he did, then certainly not on purpose). In a number of cases, such a decision helps: instead of money, you give what he seems to want to buy with them, say, bread or a metro ticket (although even here he can sell or exchange it for booze). But what about the case when you cannot decide: it seems that it does not look like an alcoholic, but it seems that it is similar … it seems to be asking for the case, or maybe it pretends … how to figure it out?

The answer to this question will be given towards the end of the article, because it is tied to you, and to show this, you will need to bring several important considerations.

For what?

Now let's discuss the following thought that a donor might have. He may think: “this is how good I am, here I am.” This proud narcissism is one of the vices that can be eliminated through donations. In addition to this flaw, there are others that can also be worked out and eliminated through prolonged training, giving donations to people and taking good care of yourself. Here are some of them.

- The feeling that after a good deed you can do something bad, and then make excuses, they say, yes, I am a brute, but only thanks to me hundreds of people received help that no one else could provide them.

- The feeling that past sins were forgiven, they say, yes, I sinned a lot, but now that I gave this beggar for bread, I am justified.

- The feeling that he was involved in some important business. In fact, donating does not make a person participatory in the form in which he usually imagines it. Just giving money is not work, the energy of which could promote someone else's project, it is help, thanks to which other people can contribute more work. Do not confuse these concepts. Yes, help is a useful thing and a good thing, but one should not exaggerate it and take its consequences for oneself.

- Other thoughts about the fact that once you donated something, now you have some kind of power over a person and the right to influence his actions. If you have such thoughts, then you have NOT made a donation, but paid for the service, expressed in the fact that you were given the opportunity to participate in the project and influence it. This may have nothing to do with helping a person at all, and often it even hurts, because usually you do not know what to do in reality the way that person knows it.

So, any self-centered thoughts, even those that I have not mentioned in this list, are a manifestation of some kind of flaws in your psyche, which are revealed in the course of a donation. The donor can reflect on these vicious thoughts and understand their causes, or even eliminate them. This is the first benefit of donation for the donor. Let's take a deeper look.

Sometimes a person has to leave his own comfort zone, which can lead to degradation. To solve any problem or problem, you have to make efforts, think, perform actions that you do not want to perform. In other words, SACRIFICE your own (emotional) comfort. A person deprives himself of some kind of pleasure in favor of a good deed (even if for himself). This very sacrifice is absolutely analogous to material donation, when a person deprives himself of material wealth in favor of something useful, which he personally could not do, or could not do well. Since these processes are similar, then an ordinary material donation can greatly advance the human psyche in solving personal problems associated with the need to sacrifice one's comfort. A covetous person who does not consider donation to be a noble deed has less chances of learning to overcome internal difficulties caused by the vices of his psyche than a person who has his own strategy of material assistance to people. Even if this miser is scattering billions to the right and to the left, flattering his vanity and pride, that is, for his own benefit.

This is the second benefit to the donor. But that's not all.

Life may not turn out the way the person himself would like it. He could have become a poet or a plumber, but the war broke out - and he was drafted into the army. Instead of realizing what he wanted, he was forced to reorient his creative potential to defend the Motherland. What did he do? SACREDED his dream, and maybe life (in its biological sense) for the sake of other people, to protect whom he threw all his strength. Not everyone can make such a sacrifice. And such a person will certainly easily part with material wealth, if necessary, since he has agreed to part with life or at least an important part of it. Material donations, although they look monstrously modest in comparison with the sacrifice in O ina, but still have the same nature: a person alienates something from himself AGAINST his self-centrism and FOR THE FAVOR of other people. That is, towards God-centrism. Since the nature of these processes is the same, simple material donations teach a person and more complex sacrifices for the benefit of people and in the Name of God. This is the third benefit of donations. And even that is not all.

The person was born in a world in which "something goes wrong." He grew up and realized this, wanted to make the world a better place, although he dreamed of becoming an astronaut and flying to a meeting with representatives of the Great Ring. Did not work out. A consumer society with all its numerous problems, generated by the people themselves, quite consciously and voluntarily, will not give it such an opportunity. Science cannot develop separately from morality, for which reason, under the conditions of consumer slave capitalism, a way will never be invented to overcome vast spaces that would allow a person to fly a little further than the limits of the Solar System. Our hero understands this, and instead of realizing his dream of distant wanderings and discoveries, he begins to look for ways to convey to people the wrong way of life. Yes, I know that often such a person invents a false concept and, remaining within the framework of self-centrism, preaches NOT what would help people become better, but what would allow this person to remain in conditions of personal emotional comfort, in which there is no places where they see other people's stupidity. He forces people to do not what they SHOULD do, but what, in HIS OPINION, they should do, and this can be nothing better than stupid consumerism. But let's talk about another hero who understands what has been said and tries to sincerely help people become better, more righteous, grow up to realize the perniciousness of the existing system of values and the relationship between them, and learn a God-centered model of behavior. What is our hero actually doing? He sacrifices his life and gives it not to his own pleasure in conditions in which with such a powerful mind he could achieve EVERYTHING IN GENERAL, but gives this life to people and the service of God. He gradually learns to live without excesses, to give more than he receives, to do good deeds for free, to teach others and help them in other ways, without demanding anything in return. This, in my opinion, is the most powerful sacrifice that a person can be capable of. And this is the fourth benefit of donations on my list, from which the understanding of these rather deep connections begins.

He walked from house to house, Strangers knocked on the door.

Under the old oak panduri

An uncomplicated motive sounded.

In his melody and in his song, As the sunbeam is pure

There lived a great truth -

Divine dream.

Hearts turned to stone

A lonely tune woke up.

Dormant flame in the dark

Soared up above the trees.

But people who have forgotten God

Keeping darkness in the heart

Instead of wine, poison

They poured it into his bowl.

They said to him: “Be damned!

Drink a cup to the bottom!..

And your song is alien to us, And your truth is not needed!"

(I. V. Stalin)

The same fourth point about the benefits of donation can be attributed to a very, very special case of such a change in your psyche, which usually occurs through forgiveness. Before you is an enemy who not only treated you disgustingly, but also continues to do it or smugly reminds of it with all his appearance and behavior. Can you forgive and wish him well? Try it, make sure that almost no one can do this sincerely, wish him, for example, long life and such good moments, thanks to which during this life he will understand his mistakes and try to somehow correct them (even if not in relation to you, but other good, many times greater than the evil done). To perform this act of forgiveness, and even more so to commit it every day, you need to sacrifice many pleasant mental habits, get rid of some comfort and overcome some vices. This is the same sacrifice as the sacrifice of life for the good of society and in the Name of God, only the scale is smaller. And nature is identical.

It is also appropriate to quote Andrey Tarkovsky's quote, in which I see approximately the same thing as I wrote above:

I am most interested in a person who is able to sacrifice himself, his way of life - no matter what this sacrifice is made for: for the sake of spiritual values, or for the sake of another person, or for the sake of his own salvation, or for the sake of everything together.

Such behavior, by its very nature, excludes all those selfish impulses that are usually considered to be the basis of "normal" actions; it refutes the laws of the materialistic worldview. It is often absurd and impractical. Despite this - or precisely for this reason - a person who acts in this way is able to globally change people's lives and the course of history. The space of his life becomes the only defining point that contrasts with our daily experience, becomes the area where reality is most present.

Okay, we talked about the benefits for the donor. And what is the benefit for the person to whom the donation is made? Yes, in fact, in the appearance in him of the good that he needed, and in the excitement of a feeling of gratitude, which more motivates him to do right deeds and to a higher quality and speed of the work itself, for the sake of which he needed funds (including and food without which he could not work). And more, it seems, nothing.

So now you see for yourself, WHO needs donations in the first place? To you, my dears, who makes these donations.

It follows from the above that it DOES NOT matter whether your sacrifice was in vain or brought the expected benefit to the person. You could give a large sum for the treatment of a person, but he took it, and he died. It is NOT YOU to decide, it is God who decides, and by your actions you can influence which of the possible variants of predetermined events will take place. In this case, the nature of your influence may not be at all obvious to you. Let's say the person for whose treatment you gave money has died. But with this act of yours, you not only benefited yourself (in the above four senses), but also, for example, hope for that person and his relatives, benefit for those who took money for the operation, benefit for medicine in general, which was negative, albeit but nevertheless it is experience, and there is still a lot of all kinds of benefits, the nature of which is generally difficult to imagine, because a person cannot in any way grasp all the consequences of his action. One thing is certain: if you act according to your conscience, sincerely and your psyche is set in a God-centered way, any of your actions CANNOT give a negative side effect from the point of view of the development of the Universe (although it can make people emotionally bad, generally speaking, if, for example, these people have lost some kind of parasitic pleasure because of you). And this knowledge is enough not only not to regret the “unsuccessful” (as it seems to you) sacrifice, but also to understand the answer to the main question: what to do in case of uncertainty as to whether you are really in need or is it a fraud.

I promised to answer this question, but again I ask the reader to wait a little, because we did not discuss another important point. And anyway, what's the point just to formally know the correct answer, because this is not a magic button, clicking on which immediately appears in front of you a neon sign like "give" or "not give". Here you have to think, and in order to think correctly, you need to know something else.

Is that all the good?.

We have considered the benefits for the donor, for the receiver … and that's it? If the reader thought that there shouldn't be anything else, then he was seriously mistaken and is hardly ready to make the right donations now. And the whole point is that there must necessarily be a benefit to the Universe, to our World itself, or at least to a separate world on Earth so far. Generally speaking, I am convinced that somewhere at the limits of a person's development, his every action should lead to the improvement of the world, and donations are one of such actions related to exchange. And the nature of this act is as follows. Let's consider just two examples from a great variety of them.

The first situation. You have a thing that you own, but this power is unproductive or useless, the other person does not have this thing, and without it he cannot exercise some control that would bring much more benefit than you can bring by owning this thing. You give him a thing and do two useful things at once: you get rid of what you don't need anyway (for the constructive and fruitful development of yourself and / or the world around you) and give the other person the opportunity to do something useful. What did you end up doing? You have not only improved life circumstances for yourself and for him, but also made the world a better place.

Second situation. You have a thing that you own quite correctly and productively, but you understand that this power is coming to an end (for example, you know in advance that you will soon switch to another task where this item is not needed, or maybe it’s just time to take off your skates). There is another person who is interested in continuing your business or something similar, but he needs that thing for this. You give it to him and do two useful things at once: you help yourself and him, and you also make the world a better place, because you have found a receiver for your useful activity and immediately provided him with those, without which he would waste time on acquiring it in another way.

There are many such situations, when the transfer of an object makes the situation in the world better, but all of them, upon superficial examination, will be similar to this artificial example: a ship is sailing, but it is tilted on one side. She swims hard, draws water with her side and is generally difficult to control. The captain scratched his turnip and said: let's put all the cargo that we have in the hold, not on one side, but distribute it evenly, or at least shift half to the other side? Surprised by such an ingenious decision, the crew follows the order - and, lo and behold, the ship starts to sail smoothly, the list goes away, and the captain gets more stable control. Why is humanity still limping on one side when the seeming solution to problems is so obvious? The answer is simple, but it is beyond the scope of this article and deserves a separate consideration. In short, an attempt to allocate resources “honestly” (as ordinary people imagine, whose life revolves around survival, not creativity) will result in the greatest increase in dependence and parasitism among the general population in history, which will lead to the degradation of culture as a whole. So the protection from the fool works here, as a result of which the parasites themselves generate such a system of relations in which it is difficult for them to parasitize … but there is an opportunity to think. Again, we will discuss this point separately in another article.

But we are talking about situations where the allocation of resources leads to development, not degradation, and, therefore, it is carried out meaningfully and according to more complex principles than simply “select and divide”. This desire to more correctly allocate resources can be related to the so-called "potential difference" that you feel when determining the need for a donation. You sense something wrong in this difference between you and the one asking of you, and you think it is fairer to commit this act of donation. However, this sense of proportion itself is not well developed in every person. Let's take a simple example right off the bat.

Before you is a beggar man who begs for alms. In a vulgar way, one might think the following: “This beggar needs money for food, but what will he do for the world? I'd rather donate this money to someone who really does something, say, my favorite blogger on the Internet. This is some kind of horror, is not it?

Let's begin to disassemble this vulgar nonsense from afar. Before you is a person who asked a question on the "site of questions and answers", and you just turned out to be an expert in this area, for which reason you gave a detailed answer. And it's free (usually on such sites they don't pay for answers, they just raise a certain rating). What have you done? Sacrificed time to help a person. But you don't reason in the same way as in the case of the beggar? Do you really think something like: "This slacker needs my answer only to solve his elementary problem, which he could solve himself, just by scratching the back of his head, I'd rather spend this time on my favorite blogger"?

Do you feel the analogy? You have benefited the person by teaching them something new (if it was not a dependent question like solving homework), and you have helped someone else who has the same question and will search the Internet for an answer. Hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of people may read your answer and discover something new for themselves.

That is why in the case of a beggar, there may be a similar situation: it may be a dependent, or maybe a really needy one, who, after the opportunity to have lunch from you, will do something important in life, which is much more important than if your favorite blogger on the Internet enriches himself for 100 rubles, when he receives several times more of this money due to his popularity every day.

You can go to the other extreme, even more pernicious: you can consider yourself better than a beggar and therefore keep the money for yourself. How it will turn out for you - I do not presume to judge.

A beggar in the material plane does not mean a beggar in everything else, he may be richer than you spiritually. Think for yourself: you have a comfortable life, but he does not. Can you imagine what serious life problem this person must solve and what is the magnitude of his courage if he continues to fight for what he lives for? A person got a difficult life task, even if he made some mistakes, having come to this task (in this or a past life), but he fulfills his task as best he can, just as you do yours. Surely there are people who will look at you the same way you look at the beggar and think that you are not worthy of the best, because you yourself are to blame. For example, you can be greedy for various temptations of this life, and the beggar is not up to them. Now, in all honesty, try to say that your vices and sins are "higher" than the material situation of a beggar. Try, say: “I have every right to live and shit on this planet, littering it, parasitizing on other people through renting real estate or other items, through loans, investments, deposits in banks, fill the reservoirs of the Earth with tons of plastic every year, destroy our own nation through alcohol and tobacco, etc. ", then add:" but a beggar does not have this right."

It's funny, isn't it? Do you still want to say that your vices are of a different nature and therefore do not harm? Try to substantiate this, before you, no one has succeeded yet.

Thus, we come to the problem: it is useless to engage in comparative analysis to determine this "potential difference". There is always a great risk to make a big mistake and thereby worsen not only him, but also your position, as well as bring a little evil into this world (as a lack of good).

Does this mean that every beggar should be given alms? No, because here, too, you need to feel the measure in order to understand whether you are making the world a better place with this act or not. But how do you learn this instinct?

To give or not to give?

I have already spoken about the complexity of such questions and the understanding of the correct answers to them. And he even gave examples: I can tell you what truth or freedom is, but this does not mean that you will know the truth or become free, moreover, your life is unlikely to somehow change with the presence of this knowledge, because knowledge alone few.

A clearer example was given in the article on parasitism, where I talked about prescribing drivers for pedestrian crossings. It says (p. 14.1 of the SDA) in which cases a pedestrian should be allowed through. However, knowing this rule does NOT answer the question of HOW to understand the pedestrian's intentions and make the right decision. If you don't know, it's your own fault, but the rules clearly explain what needs to be done.

Also here, I will give you the correct answer to the question of when you can make a donation and when you should abstain. Here it is:

A donation SHOULD be made in cases where this act benefits the receiving party, the giving party and the Universe as a whole in the mainstream of Universal Expediency. If the act of donation does not benefit the Universe, that is, it does not fall into the mainstream of Universal Expediency, then it should be REFUSED

Do you see how simple it is?

But how do you learn to feel this measure of benefit? After all, except God, no one knows what the consequences will be with your donation. As usual, the right question already contains the answer: listen to God and follow his opinion in this matter of choice. And in order to hear God correctly, and not silence or other essence, you need to be, at least, in tune with your psyche and have the experience of communicating with God, which is purely individual. For this reason, there can be no advice on how to achieve this state. I will only give you the path that I am currently walking and which is yielding some results, but it is clear to me personally that I have not advanced very far yet. This is how I personally think (this does not have to suit you).

It is necessary that the psyche at the time of making a decision was free from self-centered moods. If you start to talk about personal gain, fall into narcissism, philosophize about whether the person in front of you is worthy of your help, or whether he himself is to blame and let him get out of it himself, you think about the fact that after this donation you will not have enough for pivasik (substitute ANY degradation attribute here), try to catch those suspicious elements of human behavior by external signs that would betray a fraudster, start just thinking that it would be right to just give alms for prevention from time to time, approach the matter purely formally, etc. then all these thoughts will distort your measure of perception, and you are likely to be mistaken. Because the channel of communication with God at this moment will not be clean enough, or even completely closed.

Yes, you can analyze the situation, but from a position that does NOT start with your “I”. Therefore, in order to make the right choice, look at the Providence of God in relation to you and this person at the same time: do you have a feeling that you can simultaneously help yourself (in the sense indicated above) and him (in the sense, give him something, what he wants) and is there a desire to really do it? Do you see in the intended act of donation a sincere desire to serve God in the person of this person, or do you see a self-serving thought and ANY self-centered desire in your head? If, as a result of your diligent striving to hear the answer from God, you get this very distinction that you both - the giver and the needy - need each other now, then you can completely calmly provide your help and it is even highly desirable to do this. If such a feeling of "potential difference" between you is not found, then it is better not to provide help, there is a risk of making a mistake.

In order to master this technique, you need to train. In the process of training, if you do them diligently and sincerely, you will come across different people, but mistakes in relation to them will NOT be too dangerous for you and other people. As you go through these trainings, you yourself will see how the skill of obtaining discrimination grows, when the psyche at the moment of choice is not clouded by any self-centered nonsense. Also, during these trainings, you need to identify and eliminate those mental defects that come out in the course of making donation decisions.

It also follows from what has been said that a donation to the same person from you, for example, may be correct, but from me - erroneous. This is due to the reciprocal nature of the donation, because not only he receives, but you also. If between you there is a certain "potential difference" that needs to be leveled, it does not mean that it is between me and that person. Keep in mind this thought, which I, however, have already mentioned above: you BOTH should need each other. You to him - as an assistant, he to you - as a person who accepted your help, who accepted what you should have given in favor of those four positive consequences for you, what you personally do not need for anything else, what after the act of donation makes the world a little better. To understand this, you need to be free from hedonistic sentiments dictated by the modern consumer society, where everything seems necessary that can be devoured or otherwise used for personal satisfaction beyond the demographically determined measure.

But I repeat that these last four paragraphs are my projection of the exact rule described above onto me personally, that is, how I personally think about it.

Summary

I will briefly repeat the main points. The donation is first of all necessary for the donor himself, because with the correct performance of this act, he discovers and eliminates some personal flaws and mental defects, learns to leave the usual zone of degradation-parasitic comfort, learns to act correctly in spite of what is pleasant for himself, thereby bringing himself closer to realization of their meaning in life, which without these skills can hardly be realized. He also contributes to the improvement of the world as a whole, because he gives to another what he needs more and is more useful, which means that the other person will do better with this thing (or money).

The main thing, remember, donation is only correct when it is in line with the General Purpose. When, after the act of donation, the "potential difference" between you is smoothed out, and you understand that thanks to this the world will become a better place: you have become better, it has become better, and resources will bring more benefits than before equalizing this difference. If there is no usefulness Expediency, then the donation will be harmful.

I repeat that this is a COMPLETE answer for me personally to the problem posed, there is simply nothing more to say, everything is extremely clear and all that remains is to learn. So I wish you the best of luck with your training.