Diamonds at Dogs

By Roger Colins 

____________________________________________________________ Who's a pretty boy? Should a charitable act be made in public or privacy? Publicly, it's the demonstration of bravery, kindness and compassion for others to do likewise. If made privately then the person cannot be accused of vanity. I find this remarkably similar to an old motto; 'Don't throw diamonds at dogs.'   Dogs can even be interchanged for pigs, depending on which you consider more arrogant. Motto being, to save your time and energy for something worthwhile. The argument can be made that sometime later, mister dog may come upon that diamond and snatch it up while no one's looking therefore it has been worthwhile, although the good Samaritan will never know. The other slant to the saying is ugly. The gesture of charity to encourage others happens to be a double edged sword. Praising the gesture for it's genuine benevolence and not the gesture's purpose, results in the opposite intended effect. This genuine applause means the public will clap the next one they see without ever considering to give themselves. This happens because the reception of the gesture is seen as showing off and, trying to make everyone feel guilty for being so mean. Some, may act upon that feeling and make a donation themselves but odds are they'll still feel weird. It wasn't their idea in the first place and there's no public backing them up with cameras and microphones. The clapping and cheering is there to spite such a display of atrocious vanity because the audience is quite well in their moral standpoint, happy to give the philanthropist his moment of glory in the hope to encourage him to do it again. Private donations do not seem to warrant investigation, until you use the dog analogy. The gesture is actually the same, showing off. The dog has no use for the diamond and made to feel perturbed by such arrogance that the thrower, with all his lofty superiority, can't even see the dog doesn't care. This is however, a private donation. The dog doesn't get to say no, no one is going to stop the thrower and no one likes taking charity. Crazy, no? Reality Check-Mate Next we have a beauty. Are any charity donations ever praisable? They are stop gap measures, the person that goes to a birthday party with a gift voucher to show he genuinely doesn't care. Instead of handing over a check, the donor could go and buy some bread and give it to the poor himself. Take along a camera crew, film the whole damn exercise in order to drive that gesture home. There is a chance that could be seen as force feeding the dog therefore we arrive at the final step, teaching the dog to grow his own diamonds. Did the analogies get too mixed? The dog never liked diamonds in the first place. 'Fair enough' says the philanthropist, the dog could sell them. He still doesn't like diamonds, besides, the pigs will come along and steal them. Security, the philanthropist will teach the dog kung-fu. The dog asks what this kung-fu is, and still isn't interested in diamonds. Philanthropist goes home and picks up some bread on his way. The dog licks his nuts in a pile of diamonds. There was another motto in there and in case you missed it's 'Give a man a fish, he can eat for a day. Teach him to fish, he can eat for a lifetime.' The dog still wasn't interested because he already knew, what's valuable to the philanthropist is out of kilter with what the dog wants. In none of these mottoes has the dog ever been asked what he wanted and if he were, he'd probably want to just be left alone, pigs and all.

charity vanity philosophy