Charity, volunteering, service
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Does anyone know of any particularly compelling charities or service organizations which you consider to be genuinely beneficial to those it seeks to help?
Curious to hear thoughts of yours on most effective way to help real strangers, as opposed to what seems to me to be the more commonly discussed aim of helping those in one's family or circle of friends. Where is the best "return" on investment for genuine charity to be found?
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@Wily Catholic Church
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If you have the time, will, and ability, then your local fire department probably needs volunteers. Local animal shelters are often needy for volunteers. I tutor math and science sometimes at the request of local high school teachers. If you are someone with faith, then your local religious center would be happy to take a few hours of your time.
Where is the best "return" on investment for genuine charity to be found?
Don't expect a "return" on investment outside of a job well done and maybe some public cred. At least in the US, people rarely care about volunteers or volunteering. Most often, people take it as a wholesome oddity that someone does- "Oh, that's so good that you do that. That's really important work, I wish you the best with that." Don't expect people to give you things, say thank you, and don't expect a "return" in any monetary way.
A regular volunteering practice is very beneficial to the mind and can be a gateway towards relationships with other altruistic socially-minded people. This is the return that you'll get.
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Without knowing your interests
It makes it more vagueBut one of the most favorite things I have done- with my kids- was go into assisted living or long term care homes
Do puzzles
Board games
Let them teach you Bridge et al
Ask questions about past historical events
Hear about their profession or family
Take in a pet to greet them
Pass out ice cream if allowed
Just listen to them
Paint their nails
Take them outside!!!
It’s funOne act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.
-DB
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By 'return on investment' I mean most good done per unit time, or maybe per unit energy. For example, I could spend an hour every day picking up garbage off a highway, or I could work an extra hour at my job and donate the money made during that hour to a charity. Presumably there would be an hourly wage in that scenario which is high enough to justify working the extra hour as opposed to picking up litter, (assuming the charity the money is donated to is some hypothetical perfect chairty) if the goal is to do as much 'good' in the world as possible with that hour. Similarly, there would be a wage low enough that it would be more worthwhile and beneficial to just pick up litter. Or maybe the true best option is to spend that hour studying or learning some skill which would lead to making more money in the future so that the same hour investment would be worth far more... but then again maybe money or is actually 'worth' more now, as in it will do more good now, than it will in the future, and that's a strong enough effect to offset the increase in earning potential down the road. For example giving $50 to a homeless person who's one day away from starving to death may be more 'valuable' than spending that money on a say a textbook for college so that in 5 years you're making $70k/yr and give $2000 to the Catholic church or whatever. Maybe poor example. That's the sort of mental calculation I'm thinking of though, if it makes any sense.
Essentially investment can represent time or moneh or energy, and return represents some tangible 'positive' impact (defining what constitutes positive impact is a whole other thing too). The idea is to maximize that ratio to the best of one's intelligence, because doing anything other than that would be negligence or 'bad faith' (you COULDVE done more... think 'I held the door open for someone so my good deed for the day is done')Excessive wordiness.. high estrogen
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That's the sort of mental calculation I'm thinking of though, if it makes any sense.
I understand your considerations. I have made similar calculations myself. You can justify planning out a wargame for a seven-figure income and an "optimized" annual givings, running utilitarian calculus on whether to give a nearby homeless guy $50 or donate $50 to a water charity in Indonesia, but quite frankly, people who do this kind of mental math rarely do it right and they end up either with decision paralysis leading to them just selecting whatever is easiest or they end up talking themselves into some weird scheme which ends up being less effective than they hoped for.
This is because this optimization approach is, more often than not, an analytical approach to the problem, rather than an insight problem. It represents a cognitive bias towards persistence and fails to utilize the brain to its fullest of creative problem solving. Analytical problem solving can be highly accurate but it is often less accurate than insight problem solving based on domain expertise and time spent doing something.
Understanding oneself and one's surrounding are essential to understanding one's Being in the world and what one can do, based off of that knowledge.
May I suggest that you should grow your awareness of the present state of your community? Not to make any negative assumptions, of course, but I find that many people asking about "what can I do?"- in the analytical fashion that you are- are often not fully aware of what's going on outside their front door. Learning more about the people and things around you will be invaluable in providing hints and information as to what you might be able to do, now and in the future, to help things, near and far.
Anything you care about on a "big picture" scale is happening right now in your community. Often times, the conditions of your communities issues and the solutions thereto are the same in issues and solutions very far away and of a much bigger scale. Master the ability to learn about and address local issues and convert that domain knowledge into insight solutions to novel and larger problems.
If you're running this sort of calculation on whether to spend some small amount of your week doing something small but useful or talking to neighbors for a few minutes when you see them, then I question how much you actually want to do it vs how much you're trying to talk yourself into wanting to do it. This is the analytical mindset at work, high serotonin and high estrogen.
The idea is to maximize that ratio to the best of one's intelligence, because doing anything other than that would be negligence or 'bad faith' (you COULDVE done more... think 'I held the door open for someone so my good deed for the day is done')
I understand but I will stop you here and say that placing your engagement with charitable acts under the criteria of "could I have done more?" is going to be something which will end up torturing you because the answer is always yes. Analytical solutions needs ten minutes to arrive to something that insight quickly determines as "yes." You will have to learn to live with that if you want to do anything. To do more is why we do things, at all. Life exists in order to do more things. Humans have hundreds of unique differentiated cells in order to do more things. To do more things is fundamental to the universe.
A truly "charitable" existence is not wherein you've carefully designated certain hours of the week to being in a specific place or a meticulous accounting for charitable giving. A charitable existence is something wherein you will be influencing people and things around you, for the better, nearly 100% of the day by seeking and living a high metabolism life. Think about charity as a life process, not a singular or recurrent action or thought pattern. It is something which, ideally, is embedded into your existence at fundamental levels.
You could take a college class in algebraic topology but insight will grant you a vision of how you can use that knowledge to help others. You could use your insight to write a short and thoughtful ebook to boost your resume and secure your job position so you can reliably donate an amount of money while setting up for future actions. Regardless of what you are doing, if you are of good metabolism then you will not be complacent in your life, you will want to do more and the question of "could I have done more?" will not be a looming shadow but something else entirely.
Do you like animals?
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For the record, I'm not a fan of donating to charities. I only donate to organizations who I've had personal contact with and can personally vouch for the quality of their charity. I understand that this may be less "optimized" and I could be, in theory, giving my money to an übercharity that's hyper-effective but I know of no such charities existing.
I prefer to do my charity and service work with my own hands, my own mind, and my own time, rather than outsourcing good works to others.
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I bet the residents love that time spent with you and your family. I've spent many long days in nursing homes and the like and residents could talk about a visitor who came and played blackjack with them for weeks afterwards. I remember a woman who spoke about a young violin player who came six years prior, only once, and she remembered everything about that young woman, her music, what the rest of that day was like. It's a big deal, especially when some assisted living places are, unfortunately, where people are sent to be forgotten and made ignorable by their families.
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@JulofEnoch said in Charity, volunteering, service:
I bet the residents love that time spent with you and your family. I've spent many long days in nursing homes and the like and residents could talk about a visitor who came and played blackjack with them for weeks afterwards. I remember a woman who spoke about a young violin player who came six years prior, only once, and she remembered everything about that young woman, her music, what the rest of that day was like. It's a big deal, especially when some assisted living places are, unfortunately, where people are sent to be forgotten and made ignorable by their families.
This is touching
And demonstrates the power of just showing up
Thank you for sharing
