Charity, according to St. Paul, is the greatest of three virtues (faith and hope are the other two). Charity, caritas in Latin, is love. But as we all know, there are two kinds of charity, one driven by an internal desire to help, an altruism welling up from the depths of an individual being, and another driven by governments of any kind, from small to large, from private to public. The former appears to be a characteristic that extends beyond the self-proclaimed hierarchical importance of humans: Some videos apparently show predatory animals in the wild occasionally caring for those they would normally consume.* Mixed in with the latter is the notion that a group is responsible for its members or for “those less fortunate.” Thus, governments impose by law or rule taxes that they redistribute to help people in need. Seems that there is a collective charitable consciousness.
Redistribution is not new; even the Romans did it. There is a political motivation: Unhappy people don’t support a government under which they suffer. The Romans had to keep a large population happy; emperors bought peace through “charity.” The irony of such charity is that it took from those who had to give to those who had not, lessening the status of producers, leveling the society. The conquered unwillingly supported their conquerors.
As one interested in places, especially in places I never visited, I was drawn to Rick Steves’ Europe: The Best of Slovenia.** Once part of Tito’s Yugoslavia, Slovenia is now an independent member of the European Union. In the episode, Rick Steves visits a Slovenian family and at supper asks the head of the household what is different in Slovenia now that it is no longer a communist/socialist country. He responds by saying that under Tito young people could get housing and did have jobs, but that the system was also “good for bad workers.” The current Slovenian economy is “good for good workers.” That is, people who outwork others profit from their efforts. The society no longer “levels” to the extent it did under Tito’s control.
So, here we are, two thousand years after the Romans and St. Paul are long gone, still facing a problem: How do we take care of the less fortunate while still allowing individuals to succeed on their own? OR, how do we level a society while we respect merit? OR maybe, should “charitably helping” be the goal instead of “leveling”? Reality is we haven’t solved the problem. If there is a deep-seated charity in individuals, does its manifestation lie in legislation, regulation, and peer pressure? Is there a “true” charity that manifests itself only in an individual’s willingness to part with part of what he or she has garnered through hard or persistent work?
Are you a good worker? Are you charitable? Are you charitable on your own or through the dictates of others to whom you have given authority? And, if you are a charitable person who happens to be a good worker, is your society good for you?
*Of course, as I report in a previous blog, according to Peter Godfrey-Smith we have no scale on which to measure the intelligence of other beings, and by extrapolation, the emotions of other beings, though we seem to know when animals are either happy or sad, nonthreatening or angry. Anyway, see for your own interpretation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugi4x8kZJzk
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8DlXa_933Y at 15:30 in the program
Redistribution is not new; even the Romans did it. There is a political motivation: Unhappy people don’t support a government under which they suffer. The Romans had to keep a large population happy; emperors bought peace through “charity.” The irony of such charity is that it took from those who had to give to those who had not, lessening the status of producers, leveling the society. The conquered unwillingly supported their conquerors.
As one interested in places, especially in places I never visited, I was drawn to Rick Steves’ Europe: The Best of Slovenia.** Once part of Tito’s Yugoslavia, Slovenia is now an independent member of the European Union. In the episode, Rick Steves visits a Slovenian family and at supper asks the head of the household what is different in Slovenia now that it is no longer a communist/socialist country. He responds by saying that under Tito young people could get housing and did have jobs, but that the system was also “good for bad workers.” The current Slovenian economy is “good for good workers.” That is, people who outwork others profit from their efforts. The society no longer “levels” to the extent it did under Tito’s control.
So, here we are, two thousand years after the Romans and St. Paul are long gone, still facing a problem: How do we take care of the less fortunate while still allowing individuals to succeed on their own? OR, how do we level a society while we respect merit? OR maybe, should “charitably helping” be the goal instead of “leveling”? Reality is we haven’t solved the problem. If there is a deep-seated charity in individuals, does its manifestation lie in legislation, regulation, and peer pressure? Is there a “true” charity that manifests itself only in an individual’s willingness to part with part of what he or she has garnered through hard or persistent work?
Are you a good worker? Are you charitable? Are you charitable on your own or through the dictates of others to whom you have given authority? And, if you are a charitable person who happens to be a good worker, is your society good for you?
*Of course, as I report in a previous blog, according to Peter Godfrey-Smith we have no scale on which to measure the intelligence of other beings, and by extrapolation, the emotions of other beings, though we seem to know when animals are either happy or sad, nonthreatening or angry. Anyway, see for your own interpretation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugi4x8kZJzk
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8DlXa_933Y at 15:30 in the program
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