The Age of Man

I hate when people say how good it feels to give. I think that is utterly selfish and hypocritical behaviour. If you want to give, give for the cause, not for your own satisfaction or peace of mind.

I felt for the victims of the Haiti disaster but since I did not have the power, ability or compulsion to help them directly, like many others I thought it best to place my contribution in the hands of those who did have the compassion, capability and resolve required to render relief. I know it isn’t simple to empathize with someone caught in the aftermath of a catastrophe, to imagine the mental and physical trauma they are experiencing. But as a closet claustrophobic, I can only partially identify with the emotional distress of being trapped without hope. And this is before even trying to comprehend the heartache of loss suffered by the survivors. Grim.

While I was reading an article on the quake in an online newspaper, I came across a comment from another reader who swore not to donate a single penny. He couldn’t understand why whenever there was a crisis in some third world country, they always looked to the United States and the United Kingdom for help. Well Nathan from London, I’m sure you’re entitled to your own view, but all this comment did was it made me donate twice as much as I had planned to, just to even out the karma. I live in a country many people in ‘developed nations’ might prefer to refer to as third world, but I don’t want for much more than my country can offer. Nathan, you obviously never learned it in school but you need to be grateful every single day, that you were born into your family and not somewhere the sun didn’t shine so favourably.

I am not a proponent of religion. As for God, I believe in an entity that is omniscient and omnipresent (omnivorous too, maybe), a Creator and Destroyer; but I do not take God the Protector for granted. I believe in people. People have to look out for people and therein lies the root of all that is good. And by good I am referring to the most common understanding of what is right as opposed to what is wrong, not other definitions that may be twisted by religious observance, upbringing or social circumstance.

So fuck you, smiling pricks; be charitable, but stop telling us how warm and fuzzy it makes you feel. Giving doesn’t grant you the right to gloat.

And fuck you, Nathan from London. You are simply one of the bad ones.

Foreign types with the hookah pipes say: Is antidisestablishmentarianism = establishmentarianism? If yes, then whatever happened to brevity?

Travis – Sing

Hootie And The Blowfish – I Only Wanna Be With You