Eric Baldwin is an electrical engineering senior and Mustang Daily libertarian columnist.
Charity, according to Merriam-Webster’s, has two main definitions. No. 1: “benevolent good will toward humanity,” and No. 2: “generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering.” These two definitions are not necessarily complementary.
Good will toward humanity is a virtue, but how often can it be upheld without requiring action? What principles determine the proper action? In the abstract, true charity aids the recipient toward becoming a more complete person.
The full definition of a complete person is outside the scope of this article, but a few essential characteristics merit focus. The most complete person possesses a capacity to choose that does not infringe on any other person’s capacity to choose (to hash out the details, please solve all of politics, sociology and economics).
Slavery, explicit and implicit, reduces the slave’s capacity to choose. Starvation reduces the capacity to choose. Debt reduces the capacity to choose. A maximized, non-infringing capacity of choice necessarily results in equality between persons, in which no one can command action from another.
It sounds good, but the world’s not there yet. And so we come to charity.
People seek out and receive charity because they need something (actually or not), and charity appears as the best (or only) method of acquiring it. People around the world are trapped in situations where no good choices are accessible. People refuse (for whatever reason) to make good choices. People give charity because they derive value from addressing (or perceiving themselves as addressing) the needs of others. Some do so for good will, some for tax deductions and some for the joy of playing puppetmaster to starving orphans.
To receive charity is to admit dependence on the donor; it is to make your own security conditional on the generosity of another. While this is often a change for the better, it can never be a change for the best; the fact of dependence forbids equality.
To donate charity is to willingly accept the role of a superior, if not morally, at least physically. However kind-hearted and humanitarian the donor may be, the act of donation makes recipients beholden to the donor.
Acts of charity can be broken down into two categories: charity that increases the capacity to choose and charity that reduces that capacity. Many microloan programs increase choice by breaking dependence on loan sharks or providing capital that couldn’t be accessed. But many more charities increase dependency.
It’s a kind thing to build a hospital somewhere in the sticks, but who pays for its continued existence? Who teaches and pays for the staff? Who provides the electricity and how? Each of these things requires a continued influx of charity in order to sustain what the recipients cannot possibly pay for. By meeting needs without providing a method for the recipients to meet those needs themselves, such charity perpetuates an attitude of dependence and inability to turn away from the gift.
The act of charity, even at its best, creates inequalities of social power. To praise acts of charity indiscriminately is to risk presenting such inequalities as unimportant or even acceptable. It breeds the perception that wealth is not an earned, created thing, but largesse — that the physical needs of the individual are met from without, not from within. It creates an attitude not of level pride but of low gratitude (or worse, ingratitude) on the part of the receiver.
On the part of the donor, it nurtures an attitude of patrician generosity rather than eye-to-eye respect. It teaches that the receiver is a toy of external events — both bad and good — not an actor who creates events. While the capacity to fulfill needs is limited by time, knowledge and resources, the capacity of humans to create needs is unbounded. Indiscriminate charity artificially fulfills perceived needs the person cannot fulfill themselves, creating a contrived perception of “the good life” or the way things “ought to be.”
To broadly use charity in such a way, weakens a culture. It teaches people that solutions are derived normally, not from themselves but from an external entity, forming a casual assumption of dependence upon donors. This then gives power to the donors and provides a morally-admirable justification for acquiring that power. Those with many needs are easy to lead; those with no needs cannot be controlled. Throughout all of history, individual and collective power is advanced by inducing the conquered to need the conqueror.
Whether a person’s situation is good or bad, it exists for a reason. The situation is the product of past and present economic, social and political facts as well as the individual’s own nature and inclinations. To treat the symptoms of problems without addressing the problems themselves has only two results: non-resolution and increased dependence of the receiver upon the donor. To treat the root problems is to assume the role of a rescuer; even if the physical problems are resolved, the receiver still bears a heavy moral obligation.
In a sense the two definitions of charity are nearly in opposition — to relieve physical need is to impose moral debt. True brotherly-love revolts at the idea of obtaining power over others either by force or by obligation, but instead, pursues a policy of equality. The most healthy relationships between people are based on friendship and respect, which can only exist between equals. Charity can only be legitimate in terms of charity the attitude. A perfect world is one in which no acts of charity are made because none are needed.
Acts of charity are inherently unequalizing in character. Does that mean we should refrain from charity? No, but it does mean that we shouldn’t give it casually or be impressed with our own virtue. We need to recognize that not all problems are genuine needs, that not all needs can be appropriately addressed, and even the greatest charity is an inherently flawed attempt to restore the world to what it should be. We should tip-toe lightly and respectfully, working only toward a position of greater friendship and respect. Sometimes that means conscientiously doing nothing at all.
Go make the world a better place — but change begins at home.