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You know what de problem is? There are too many aid organisations trying to appeal to our compassion. That’s why traditional appeals for help no longer work!
So I went out and had a look.
The first place I turned to was the internet, and I searched NGO. The amount of results was staggering, and when I tried to find a list of all the world’s aid organisations, I got stuck because of the sheer number of organisations.
Then I started looking at the way they appeal to our compassion for money, and the vast majority feature images of poor, starving, or otherwise miserable looking examples of God’s creatures, and only then I realised that we’re constantly being bombarded with such images. And they seem to be getting more shocking as time progresses; possibly because my daddy has a point. Anything but shocking won’t get us moving any more. We can now see an emaciated child, with a swollen belly for lack of nutrients, play in the dirt, begging to be held, and completely ignore it emotionless; seen it before; get in line. Especially when those images come over the tube, they’re easily ignored.
So was my daddy right?
I don’t think so. You can’t blame a Praying Mantis for eating it’s mate after the deed! You can’t blame the fox for taking the crow’s cheese! It’s not the large number of NGO’s, nor the over exposure to sad images that makes us insensitive. It’s the fact that compassion is not truly natural. It’s together with socialism one of the things furthest away from nature that man can accomplish; the most extreme thing that separates us from the animals. However, we’re still close enough to the animal kingdom, to tend to ignore our separation from it.
As obvious appeals to our sense of compassion need increasingly more power to make us give money, those appeals are pointless. Instead the delight in giving should be exploited. Because, be honest: giving is a fantastic feeling. It makes you look important, and feel powerful. Some poor dimwit way below your station will be indebted to you for all time to come. And all that by a small donation…
This new way of raising funds will most likely increase the total donated amount; for most there’s no more powerful attraction than the promise of power. For some, like myself, the promise of keeping R-Rated ads featuring poor bleeding fly covered wretches off the tube would be enough to donate our life-savings.
Previously posted on My.Opera, when they still had a blogging service. I’m rerunning the Daddy Said series here; when I feel like, I’ll write a new episode. This one I wrote in 2009, and posted it unchanged.
Daddy said... 