Quote: (04-06-2016 02:53 PM)RandomGuy1 Wrote:
Quote: (04-03-2016 10:16 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:
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and I'm talking Xer and boomer dullards who get lucky with some app and then give their minds and their lives over to the terrible VICE of CHARITY -- not realizing that charity, for a rich man, is one of the worst and most worthless of all vices, a banality so profound that it can turn your mind and your character to mush faster than you can say "Gates foundation".
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Appreciate your comment Lizard. I try to figure out if you really mean what you have written there. The idea you are addressing regarding charity aims towards the unnecessity of the same, right?
If so, in your opinion, which facts do you think do not support the idea of spending time/money into a charity if one is wealthy enough so he can afford that? Why will it turn his mind and character into mush?
I ask because one of my aims of life is to create someday a charity which will aim towards influencing positively the society. The popular give-something-back mentality you surely know. I wonder if I'm not at the right track with such opinion?
RandomGuy1, that's a great question. I always hope someone would ask me a question like that:
do you really mean what you say -- and why? But it almost never happens.
There is nothing wrong with charity as such -- it's fine to share some of your wealth to improve other people's lives, and there is no problem as far as that goes.
The problem happens when people who become quite wealthy use an excessive concentration on charity as an excuse to keep their lives and minds dull. To have great wealth is to have great possibility -- an entrance to a thousand worlds, worlds of pleasure, interest, variety and entertainment not available to almost any human being -- whether it be any who lives now, or any that has ever lived.
A man should have the brain -- and the balls -- to embrace these possibilities. Just as a king should relish wearing his crown and letting all its jewels sparkle in turn, a wealthy man -- who, if he has his health and is not damaged by vices is like a king in the world -- should relish taking what he is so privileged to have; he should let his mind and his body
eat the world. Again, this does not imply dissolution or idiotic excesses of gluttony, but a wealthy man should take a
heaping measure, both of the physical goods and pleasures that are his for the taking, and of the incomparable riches of experience and apprehension and curiosity that go beyond the physical. And it can be added that work -- work done to accomplish one's most coveted ends and ambitions -- is another one of those goods that a wealthy man is free to abandon himself to in heaping measure; it is one of the strong pleasures that differs from the burden of work done for mere sustenance.
To do otherwise is to betray life. The wealthy who devote their entire time to the rote pursuits of charity are widely admired but in fact they do so because they fear life and fear the world. Because of this fear, rather than take what is rightfully theirs -- rather than drink from the thick cup of life -- they confine their best years to these
thin transactions; as if the utter banality of such generic "good works" could replace the variety and interest of a great life. In doing so, they diminish their lives and their minds and, at worst, turn them to mush. A mind that occupies itself too long with the contemplation of banalities and commonplaces when the entire world is at its feet is a mind that fears and rejects life, that will not consume its real juices; and life will in turn, soon enough, have no use for it.
For a man of wealth and means, the best giving is the giving that comes not from a dull devotion to charity but from the desire to turn his happy energies outward, to distribute the life that it's been his privilege to drink of so deeply and to bring others into it; to share not just of his wealth but of himself and of what he's become. When a great and happy king walks among his people, the gifts he bestows upon them are more than mere donations, they are dazzling and they have within them the
warmth of what is given from the overflowing of great energy. They can change a whole life and they can uplift the spirit of those who may be less fortunate; because they see that a deeper, fuller, richer life is not a mere fiction, it can be a reality; they receive a sense of fullness and possibilities that no alms can provide. That is what can be given by a man who has used great wealth to live a great life full of energies and
in league with the world; and it can be given by no one else. To that, no charity comes close.