Being a reasonable and semi-adjusted human being I was able to rationalise the motivation and intention behind this. But still, I felt a little irritated. Of course, I am fortunate and lucky relative to those suffering in Nepal, but where does one draw the line? If I felt compelled to act every time I heard or saw something about suffering in the world, I would be a penniless, emotional wreck, unable to move under the sheer weight of collective suffering. The better angels of our nature are necessarily constrained because yielding to each impulse is impossible. It would render us impotent like Canute trying to drive back the sea. Indeed, such demands can have a profound impact on the vulnerable as seemed to be the case with the apparent suicide of a 92-year-old woman in Bristol who received an “overwhelming” number of letters and calls asking for donations. A charity watchdog has recently launched an investigation into the fundraising strategies of charities in Britain in the wake of this incident. Now, there may well have been other factors at play, but I can see how persistent emotive appeals for help might engender feelings of powerlessness and guilt.
So what is the answer? Honestly, I don’t know. It’s difficult for charities like Kids Company to become self-sufficient as they don’t provide a service for which they can charge or produce tangible objects to sell. Likewise, government resources are invariably ear marked for other projects. So what is left? They must inevitably solicit donations and try and make their voices heard amongst the thousands of other charities jostling for a slice of our disposable incomes. And this spawns a question for us. How do we decide where to donate our pound? Do we do it based on personal experience such as cancer charity following a love one’s affliction or do we make some utilitarian calculation based on the effectiveness of each penny spent in reducing overall suffering and promoting happiness. But then how does one measure the emotional plight of an inner city London kid against a mother’s agony of losing a child to malaria in Malawi? The truth is such calculations are by their nature impossible and sometimes it is simply a case of tossing a coin into the darkness. This situation makes me ponder the words of Dom Helder Camara who writes in his book Essential Writings, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” Maybe this is the point. Charities emerge to tackle the world’s problems but maybe we need to find a way to eradicate them altogether.