Greedy and stingy
Aug 22nd
The following text is an excerpt from an article in the New York Times magazine. The illustration inserted in the middle of the excerpt is mine, so don’t blame the NYT!
The Way We Live Now
The Charitable-Giving DivideFor decades, surveys have shown that upper-income Americans don’t give away as much of their money as they might and are particularly undistinguished as givers when compared with the poor, who are strikingly generous. A number of other studies have shown that lower-income Americans give proportionally more of their incomes to charity than do upper-income Americans. In 2001, Independent Sector, a nonprofit organization focused on charitable giving, found that households earning less than $25,000 a year gave away an average of 4.2 percent of their incomes; those with earnings of more than $75,000 gave away 2.7 percent.
…
But in the larger context of “the psychological culture of wealth versus poverty,” says Paul K. Piff, a Ph.D. candidate in social psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, the paradox makes sense. Piff has made a specialty of studying those cultures in his lab at the Institute of Personality and Social Research, most recently in a series of experiments that tested “lower class” and “upper class” subjects (with earnings ranging from around $15,000 to more than $150,000 a year) to see what kind of psychological factors motivated the well-known differences in their giving behaviors. His study, written with Michael W. Kraus and published online last month by The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that lower-income people were more generous, charitable, trusting and helpful to others than were those with more wealth. They were more attuned to the needs of others and more committed generally to the values of egalitarianism.
“Upper class” people, on the other hand, clung to values that “prioritized their own need.” And, he told me this week, “wealth seems to buffer people from attending to the needs of others.” Empathy and compassion appeared to be the key ingredients in the greater generosity of those with lower incomes. And these two traits proved to be in increasingly short supply as people moved up the income spectrum.
Dick Cavett is spot on!
Aug 21st
From the blog of the NYT:
August 20, 2010, 9:00 pm
Real Americans, Please Stand Up
By DICK CAVETT…I’m genuinely ashamed of us [Americans]. How sad this whole mosque [sic! Let’s never forget that no mosque is involved] business is. It doesn’t take much, it seems, to lift the lid and let our home-grown racism and bigotry overflow. We have collectively taken a pratfall on a moral whoopee cushion.
Surely, few of the opponents of the Islamic cultural center would feel comfortable at the “International Burn a Koran Day” planned by a southern church-supported group (on a newscast, I think I might have even glimpsed a banner reading, “Bring the Whole Family,” but maybe I was hallucinating). This all must have gone over big on Al Jazeera news. [Not to mention every other news publisher or broadcaster in the world, apart from Rupert Murdoch.]
…
A heyday is being had by a posse of the cheesiest Republican politicos (Lazio [candidate for governor of NY], Palin, quick-change artist John McCain and, of course, the self-anointed St. Joan of 9/11, R. Giuliani). Balanced, of course by plenty of cheesy Democrats. And of course Rush L. dependably pollutes the atmosphere with his particular brand of airborne sludge.
Sad to see Mr. Reid’s venerable knees buckle upon seeing the vilification heaped on Obama, and the resulting polls. (Not to suggest that this alone would cause the sudden 180-degree turn of a man of integrity facing re-election fears.)
I got invigorating jolts from the president’s splendid speech — almost as good as Mayor Bloomberg’s — but I was dismayed, after the worst had poured out their passionate intensity, to see him shed a few vertebrae the next day and step back.
What other churches might be objectionable because of the horrific acts of some of [their] members?…
Strange serendipity
Aug 14th
We’re driving to Atlanta tomorrow to visit our daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter. The following photo was taken at a birthday party for that daughter, when she was about three years old. I don’t remember the boy, but he probably was a pre-school classmate of our daughter’s.
But here’s the major serendipity. First, the child’s “zombie” looking eyes. All I did was scan a close to 40 year old slide. Granted, it was back-lit and consequently the main subject was underexposed. I did compensate for that, I admit, which may have combined with “red-eye” to create the gray effect. Point is, that I didn’t deliberately create it.
Second, the ceramic Buddha behind the child’s head. Having retired, I’m in process of cleaning up the parts of our house that my boss allows me to mess with. While working on that today, I barely saved that Buddha from falling and being shattered.
My grandmother painted that plaster-of-paris ceramic and had it glazed at a craft shop when I was a little boy. Is it great art? Not by the usual standards. But I have very few mementos of my grandmother (who at times was a surrogate mother), and that ceramic means a great deal to me. Strange then, to have saved it this morning and then seen it this afternoon in sharp color and focus … the head of the innocent boy with zombie-looking eyes.
Hold on, though, as the late Ron Popeil or Billy Mays would say, “Wait! There’s more.”
While working with graphics or routine housekeeping on my computer, I often listen to documentaries on the television or to audiobooks. This morning, before saving that ceramic Buddha, I had listened carefully and for a third time to a lecture comparing the ethics of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism. (Random order by choice.)
