Ad Week has the details on MTV’s new campaign to get people to care:
Every day, our global community faces an endless list of serious issues, from famine to poverty to global warming. Now, evidently as part of an MTV campaign, Twilight star Nikki Reed is asking people everywhere to “give a ****”—both figuratively and, ahem, literally.
“I may be famous, but I actually give a ****,” the actress says in the sort-of-mock PSA below. The Give a ****movement, she says, is based on the Dalai Lama’s theory (heavily paraphrased) that “If enough people take the time to simply give a ****about the world’s problems, even if they don’t actually do anything but just give a ****about them, the world’s problems will cease to exist.”…
You know, it could be that merely saying we care is not as important as acting as if we care. I know that being generous is difficult – it eats up time, money and resources which one can spend on the self. I, myself, am not nearly as generous as I can be…C. S. Lewis put it best when he judged that if charity doesn’t pinch a bit, then it isn’t enough. In other words, unless you are giving up something for yourself, then you’ve really given little (see Mark 12:41-44). While it is at least somewhat of an advance to actually take thought for the sufferings of the world, if there is no follow-through to action, the thoughts tend to moral sterility.
My worry here is that we are falling ever further in to a morality on the cheap. Sort of like the self-esteem nonsense in public schools where kids are taught to feel great about themselves even if they don’t accomplish anything. The world is filled with suffering…and no amount of thinking about it and wishing others well will do the trick. We actually have to get our hands dirty and help the less fortunate. I am concerned with the lack of challenge here – the stroking of the modern ego where everyone wants to feel that they are swell, even though all of us are sinners – not one of us having the right to feel we’ve ever done enough, loved enough or helped enough.
A better program might have been to show someone getting off the couch, setting aside the video game and going out to find someone who needs help. They are all around us…right now, probably not a thousand yards from where you sit reading this, there is someone who needs help. But to ask you to do that requires more than just some sort of nebulous, half-morality…it requires an appeal to conscience; an appeal to the fact that we are all of us creatures; contingent beings who owe every last thing we have to Another, and thus have a moral obligation to do what is right, not just think about what is wrong and feel good about ourselves for so doing.
Blogs For Victory 
Mark,
So what you you going to do? Personally? You talk the talk. Do you walk the walk?
I mentor kids (inside and outside of school) and donate to food and clothing drives.
the thought of you “mentoring” kids shows me why we have the POS in the white painted house and the RATS in the donk party.
You shouldn’t be allowed within 1000 feet of kids.
food and clothing “drives” BFD!
they have been taken to the waters edge and refused to drink, they want to be spoon fed instead.
I say let them die of thirst with their head in the water waiting for the spoon.
Casper,
Whatever I do, I don’t do near enough – but, also, whatever I do must not be announced. We are not to speak of our charitable actions. But my point here is not whether I don’t do enough or that you do, it is that there is a pointlessness here…it is is the flip side of that other part of modern morality which keeps defining deviancy down. We’re becoming a people of filth who think very highly of themselves. Not a good situation – and this little MTV program isn’t helping.
Words are cheap. You can write anything. But I do not belive Casper is lying. Any homeless shelter anywhere will take donations of these items. What most homeless shelters did though is money.
I’ll give you one example. Home Sweet Home is located in Bloomington, Illinois. They have a waiting list to get in. Think about it. A waiting list to get into a homeless shelter. They have as many people crammed into thier building as the law will allow. What they need is space and that takes money. Even one dollar would help.
Please donate what ever amout you have laying around in your penny jar. It does help.
This is one of the places I donate.
http://joshuasstorehouse.org/
what $.50 a year?
GMB
I gave at Applebees last night.
the Am Legion today
Nobody has to state what they have given to me. Somebody else already knows that information. 🙂
Have a nice sunday afternoon.
GMB,
I personally think that giving your time is as important or more important than giving money. It’s a lot easier to write a check than spend time mentoring kids or helping out at a homeless shelter.
Giving time? Hmmm.. sounds like some lefty in hollywierd. Giving time does not feed the hungry. To each thier own. Giving time does not buy the rent for the empty building accross the street that could put a roof over someones head. To each thier own.
Most charities do not need your time. I will leave it up to you do decide what they need most.
I give my time to my family,
I give my money to my family
I give an obscene amount of taxes to the government who then gives it to bums, thugs, deadbeats, looters, welfare queens, and losers who buy potato chips, cigarettes and beer with it.
let them riot and burn their own neighborhoods again.
PS
I have some vet buds I help personally………no cask
No A/C…I fix
broken refrigerator?…We buy them new
stove same
washer dryer same.
they have to be on their own though.
GMB,
But giving time to help mentor kids helps them make better choices. Teaching them a better work ethic makes them more employable. Showing them what opportunities they have can give them a leg up.
neo,
“I have some vet buds I help personally………no cask
No A/C…I fix
broken refrigerator?…We buy them new
stove same
washer dryer same.
they have to be on their own though.”
Good for you. I’m sure they appreciate it.
catspuke
But giving time to help mentor kids helps them make better choices. Teaching them a better work ethic makes them more employable. Showing them what opportunities they have can give them a leg up.
thats why they need TWO parents, and I dont mean barack and larry, or hillary and janet.
Casper. Sounds more like you are arguing with yourself than you are with me. By all means give your time.
By all means give your time.
but first lose the beard and pony tail, take off the Birkenstock’s, and dump the superior attitude.
Try scouting or LL baseball coaching, good kids who will not hate you anyway at the end of the day.
neo,
“but first lose the beard and pony tail, take off the Birkenstock’s, and dump the superior attitude.”
Is that how you think I look? I had to look up Birkenstock’s as I didn’t know what they were.
“Try scouting or LL baseball coaching, good kids who will not hate you anyway at the end of the day.”
Both great programs, but there are a lot of other programs and regardless most students aren’t going to hate you at eh end of he day, unless of course you act like a jerk around them.
GMB,
I’m not arguing with anyone. Just advocating for something I think is important. There are a lot of kids out there that could use adult mentoring.
catspuke
I have seen your picture denny
Casper I agree. Here is my question for you. Who is easier to mentor? Someone who is hungry or someone who is not?
neocon1 August 14, 2011 at 5:52 pm #
“catspuke
I have seen your picture denny”
Are you sure it was me. I’d hate to have you stalking the wrong person.
Green Mountain Boy August 14, 2011 at 6:40 pm #
“Casper I agree. Here is my question for you. Who is easier to mentor? Someone who is hungry or someone who is not?”
Someone who is not, which is why I’m ok with school lunch programs and why I contribute to food banks. It’s also why I keep snacks in my room.
Hope you are giving out coca cola or anything with sugar in them. Mooch will be mad.
PS. Please dont send any pictures to Neo. He has already committed enough crimes against humanity with mere pictures. I don’t want him to add to the list.
GMB,
Pop (or soda if you live back east) aren’t allowed in my classroom. Water only as far as liquids. Snacks I hand out are nutritional.
Lighten up Casper. I was just teasing you. Would not expect you tp be anything other than a paragon of virtue.
Green Mountain Boy August 14, 2011 at 7:36 pm #
“Lighten up Casper. I was just teasing you”
I use to pass out beer and chips so I guess I am making progress.
Casper. Again I was teasing you. My apologies. 🙂
catspuke
I use to pass out beer and chips
heck I’ll be your aide for that……
Well see here actually giving money is what taxes are for. It is the governments job to keep everyone fed and housed dispite the fact….the social welfare state is totally unsustainable. Every place it’s been tried, it’s failed.
Nice thought for the day. 🙂