Why There Should Be No Charity

The very idea of “charity” is at odds with the reality of loving our fellow humans.

Inherent in the practice of “charity” is helping those “in need” — as though those “in need” are over there, those other people, as though we don’t have our own needs, too. There is no sense of mutuality in charity. There is no sense of solidarity.

The oft-spoken tropes about “giving back” to the community, or helping the “less fortunate,” inherently create an “us” and a “them.”

But that’s an illusion.

When you look at what it is to be human on this blue boat home of ours, as we float amidst the Milky Way galaxy together, there is really no way to accurately understand relating to all of our fellow humans as anything but a part of “us.”

There is no “us” and “them” here.

There is only “us.”

Yet, in so many ways, in so many settings, even and especially within the “charitable” spaces aiming to do “good” for our fellow humans, we continue to create a sense of an “us” and a “them.”

If our “charity” comes from a place of helping those “less fortunate” than us, we are creating harm, even in the act of “helping,” by othering those we’re helping — as “needy” or “at-risk” or “low-income” or “under-served” or “marginalized,” or any of the other euphemisms we tend to use in this work.

When we other someone, we cut them off from the joy of being in community with us. We’ve created a reality where they are not one of us. They don’t belong “here,” where we are. They belong “there,” where we are not. We make them different than us. We act like we are the “helpers,” which in essence implies that we do not need help ourselves. Which is not actually true. For any of us.

Here’s the rub.

We all — all — need help.

None of us — none of us — could survive without other humans.

Yet.

If you look at the ways we’ve set up our Westernized, modern society, you sure wouldn’t know that. We’ve manufactured, and perpetuated, the illusion that some of us are the helpers, and others of us are the ones needing help, completely abandoning the truth that we all are both.

There is no “us” and “them.”

There is only “us.”

And when we live with that knowing, the way we see — and practice — philanthropy will look entirely different than it does today.

Let’s explore how different that could be.

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