Saturday, November 03, 2007
India and Charity
George Alexander thinks that the reason I blog on charity is for publicity, he may actually be right...
I am savage in the belief that the best form of charity is to not outsource one's individual responsibility to make the world a better place by simply giving money to charities but that we should invest more of what is most precious, and that is time.
The best way to make poverty history is to simply start talking about it. In the blogosphere, there have been a variety of memes such as 2000 Bloggers and others. What would happen if making poverty history were discussed with the same level of passion and frequency as Linux or Outsourcing, the problem would simply go away.
You may be familiar with the theory that if a butterfly flaps its wings that somewhere in the world it would cause a Tsunami? What would happen if one sole individual traveled to India and bought ten bags of groceries for those in need, could it be felt in America?
Of course this is silly and would be futile to think that one individual could make a difference. Examples such as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Gandhi and others have proved this theory wrong. Now, if you think for a moment what it would take to get the message amplified, you would realize that it takes a nation of millions to hold people back and that the best way to overcome this problem is to find an even larger nation to talk about it.
Simply, India is the most populous country on the planet. Imagine what would happen if just 1/10 of 1% of all employees of Wipro, TCS, Cognizant, Infosys, etc decided to trackback to my blog. Sure, I would gain from it in terms of getting a higher technorati rank, but more importantly millions of others may step up and decide to contribute groceries along with me. Minimally, they may even talk about it in their own blogs which are read by millions more.
For the record George, I do not contribute to charity in order to reduce my taxes. If you must know, I do not itemize my taxes and instead take the standard deduction. The issue at hand is unlike other American's, I haven't bought a home that I can't afford nor have tons of credit card debt. In fact, my modest home was paid in full five years ago. The car I drive is a 1996 Ford Explorer which I paid cash for. Sure, you can throw daggers at me for driving an SUV but in all reality, I drive less than 10K miles a year, so I am more environmentally friendly that most.
In terms of racism, that is humorous at many levels. If you think about diversity, I can truly say I am living it above and beyond anyone that attempts to throw daggers at me. Before commenting, it would be intriguing to understand how diverse one's family is when looked at through the lens of race, nationality, religion, etc. If you were to check the chromosomes of my two sons, you would see that they have both types of Indian blood in them (Choctaw and India). Likewise, you would also discover they could check the White, Black and Hispanic EEOC boxes as well. I bet most can't claim the same for their family.
May I ask George to instead of posting responses as to why folks from India aren't participating, instead provide suggestions on how to get more folks from India to step up and have the conversation in the blogosphere...
| | View blog reactionsI am savage in the belief that the best form of charity is to not outsource one's individual responsibility to make the world a better place by simply giving money to charities but that we should invest more of what is most precious, and that is time.
The best way to make poverty history is to simply start talking about it. In the blogosphere, there have been a variety of memes such as 2000 Bloggers and others. What would happen if making poverty history were discussed with the same level of passion and frequency as Linux or Outsourcing, the problem would simply go away.
You may be familiar with the theory that if a butterfly flaps its wings that somewhere in the world it would cause a Tsunami? What would happen if one sole individual traveled to India and bought ten bags of groceries for those in need, could it be felt in America?
Of course this is silly and would be futile to think that one individual could make a difference. Examples such as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Gandhi and others have proved this theory wrong. Now, if you think for a moment what it would take to get the message amplified, you would realize that it takes a nation of millions to hold people back and that the best way to overcome this problem is to find an even larger nation to talk about it.
Simply, India is the most populous country on the planet. Imagine what would happen if just 1/10 of 1% of all employees of Wipro, TCS, Cognizant, Infosys, etc decided to trackback to my blog. Sure, I would gain from it in terms of getting a higher technorati rank, but more importantly millions of others may step up and decide to contribute groceries along with me. Minimally, they may even talk about it in their own blogs which are read by millions more.
For the record George, I do not contribute to charity in order to reduce my taxes. If you must know, I do not itemize my taxes and instead take the standard deduction. The issue at hand is unlike other American's, I haven't bought a home that I can't afford nor have tons of credit card debt. In fact, my modest home was paid in full five years ago. The car I drive is a 1996 Ford Explorer which I paid cash for. Sure, you can throw daggers at me for driving an SUV but in all reality, I drive less than 10K miles a year, so I am more environmentally friendly that most.
In terms of racism, that is humorous at many levels. If you think about diversity, I can truly say I am living it above and beyond anyone that attempts to throw daggers at me. Before commenting, it would be intriguing to understand how diverse one's family is when looked at through the lens of race, nationality, religion, etc. If you were to check the chromosomes of my two sons, you would see that they have both types of Indian blood in them (Choctaw and India). Likewise, you would also discover they could check the White, Black and Hispanic EEOC boxes as well. I bet most can't claim the same for their family.
May I ask George to instead of posting responses as to why folks from India aren't participating, instead provide suggestions on how to get more folks from India to step up and have the conversation in the blogosphere...
