Charity is a term which is often thrown around in modern society.  It is used as a rallying cry, as a basis for legislature, and, worse, as a form of blackmail.  Yet, despite the widespread use of the term, it is rarely defined.  Those who employ it seem content to let it retain a sort of amorphous, ephemeral quality.  So, to shed light on a kind of pervasive darkness, it is appropriate to begin here with a definition, and, more important, to use the definition which is in actual context to the topic.  The Webster’s New World Dictionary defines charity as follows: “A giving of help to those in need,” (73).  So there remains no confusion, it defines give, variously, in the following, contextually relevant, ways:  “1. to hand over as a present.  2. to hand over; deliver: as, he gave the boy his bag.  3. To pay, as money,” (184).   It might be of benefit to define present, but the relevant issue at hand has been established.  Charity can be defined as, handing over, as a present, help, in some form, to those in need. 

Having defined, specifically, neither amorphously, nor ephemerally, charity, it is now possible to discuss the nature of charity.  All of the above definitions have a single common factor of relevance.  Each of them rests on a principle of volition.  A present is never required, but merely a convention.  It is something which an individual chooses to offer another individual or institution.  To pay for something is a choice.  It implies some form of bill or legal obligation.  There are negative consequences to failing to pay for something; yet, the individual can make the choice to suffer those negative consequences.  One can choose not to hand a bag over to a porter, though utilizing the service of a porter can reduce one’s effort.  Having established the preceding, it is within reason to say that the nature of charity rests on a principle of volition.  A person is making a choice to offer something at their disposal to someone or some group in need.
Now comes the question of what is need?  The term, connotatively, is used in such subjective ways that it virtually ceases to have meaning.  There are those who believe that they need cable television, or that they need a plasma television the size of their living room wall, or that they need a Mercedes-Benz.  Clearly, a person’s survival does not rest on any such items or services, so it is probably appropriate to have a more restrictive meaning of need than simple desire for what can be referred to as the finer things in life.  For the purposes of this essay, “in need” will refer then to those who are lacking those items which ensure survival and, through no reasonable fault of their own, can not be expected to obtain such items. 

Such people will exist in any society.  A child, for example, due to the lack of physical development and the laws of our nation, cannot support him or herself.  Children do not have the option to get a job or opt out of public education.  A child therefore relies upon adults to supply those things which survival requires: food, clothing, and shelter.  Someone born with organic dysfunctions, such as degenerative diseases like Multiple Sclerosis or mental conditions, like severe autism, will often find themselves incapable to meet the requirements, be they physical or interpersonal, of self-support.  Or a more general example might be when an entire industry collapses, like the dotcom implosion in the nineties, or the major employer in a particular area closes its doors.  A last example would be those who are employed by a company that uses illegal or destructive policies which are not visible to the rank and file worker.  The Arthur-Anderson/Enron business disaster would be an appropriate example of such an instance.  Those who are employed cannot be expected to consistently foresee such events.  They do have an obligation to seek gainful employment after such an event, but finding another job, particularly when a significant number of other people in the same geographic area, with a similar skill set, are doing the same, can take time.  These would be examples of those who lack fault, be it in the long or short term, for being unable to obtain those requirements of survival. 

However, many of those to whom charity is bestowed on, at the expense of those who do perform the necessary acts to support themselves, do not fall into such categories.  Those who engage in irresponsible sexual behaviors when highly effective forms of birth control are readily available, volitionally leave otherwise gainful employment without financial planning for it or finding a new job ahead of time, or simple laziness are not fault free categories.  Irresponsibility is avoidable and sloth is not debilitative.   Such persons may be in need, in a sense, but they are not in need in the same way that a person who is struck down by leukemia is in need.  Such people make choices which bring about their situations.  When health is stolen by something completely outside of an individual’s power to avoid, or age precludes it, or employment is yanked out from beneath someone, such as when a corporation announces the closing a of plant two weeks before it does so or engages in illegal and destructive business practices, the individual has not made choices which directly led to their situations.  Those within what can be called the “fault-free” categories are required to rely on the charity of others.  They have no other choice. 

Such reliance, for some, is an unfortunate reality.  Reliance, though, does not imply any sort of right.  Receipt of charity does not imply any form of a reverse obligation for anyone to provide such charity.  The very definition of charity defies such an obligation.  Charity is a gift.  It is provided and exists only by and through the volitional benevolence of the givers.  It is that very volition which those who do not wish to define charity are hoping to avoid.  To openly acknowledge the actual nature of charity would undercut and expose the means by which most charities gather funds: philosophical misinformation and blackmail based on that misinformation. 

The present essay is not concerned with governmentally enforced charities such as welfare; that is an area which requires separate treatment.  Though the basic premises used to try to justify such programs are the same, their existence is maintained through different means and it therefore represents a fundamentally different category of investigation.  This essay is concerned only with the premises and tactics used by charities which cannot maintain themselves through the threat or use of actual physical force.
How can any charity which is not allowed to physically force participation obtain “support” from those who would otherwise be unwilling?  By encouraging and exploiting the belief in and enslavement to a self-annihilating system of thinking that places the individual in the position of beast of burden; specifically, the system of collectivist Kantian-Altruism. 
One of the frequently used pitches used by charities in trying to raise money is through the all encompassing phrase “helping people in need.”  This phrase, or some variation on it, is often a successful means to get someone to relinquish money.  The question is why?  The phrase itself is inexplicably vague.  Such vagueness is rarely successful in other areas.  After all, how many people would go buy a car from a “car dealership in need”?  The first question out of an even semi-rational person’s mouth would be, “What do you mean, a ‘car dealership in need’?”  Due the multitude of inappropriate ways in which the word need is used, the answer to that question could be virtually anything; which is part of the reason why someone would ask it.  Why would someone fail to ask that question to an equally vague phrase?  The answer to both why someone would not ask the question and why they would relinquish money, even though the category of people in need is virtually never defined and up to the arbitrary discretion of those who run the charity or distribute the funds, is multifold. 

Collectivism, in its fundamentals, holds that the individual is nothing but a cog meant to serve the needs of the group.  Kantian-Altruism demands that to be moral a person must not only give of themselves for the “need” of others, but they must gain absolutely nothing from it, not even so much a good feeling.  A last point, the acceptance of an interpretation of the Christian dogma of Original Sin that holds that man is born guilty.  Guilty of just what is a bit vague and probably vague through intention.  These three ideas taken together hold the key to why people will bend before arbitrary demands for money of which they will play no role in deciding the distribution.

In collectivist thinking, the needs of the group replace the individual as the central end of life.  Individual achievement and pursuit of individual ends is downplayed as irrelevant or destructive.  For such to be the case, individual judgment must be suspended in regards to the needs of the group in every instance.  The theory holds that this elevates everyone to an equal moral plane.  The reality is that it reduces everyone to the level of the least intelligent and least productive member of the group.  How a person who lacks the faculties to feed themselves is equivalent to an Aristotle, or a Galileo, or a Heisenberg is never explained.  What is offered, instead of a logical analysis, is the slogan that it’s “for the good of humanity.”  What is meant by good or humanity is left to the hearer’s imagination.  Yet, it is the appeal to this undefined “good” that offers the collectivist the wiggle room to avoid clear statements.  Everyone has some definition, correct or incorrect, of what good is supposed to mean.  Rather than demand a clear statement, the given individual makes an unfortunate but common mistake.  He or she assumes that the meaning of the term is the same for everyone involved.  (For those who doubt that this is the case, consider how often in the course of a conversation people assume that one thing is meant by a particular term.  For example, if a man makes a statement to the effect that he loves a woman and the relationship is not qualified by some other term such as sister, or mother, the automatic assumption is that the man is making a statement about a romantic sentiment.)  If they are assuming that the term “good” in play means the same thing, then not acting to do good places them in the position of being morally wrong. 

The vagueness of the term humanity is the other element that allows this form of thinking to avoid scrutiny.  The second mistake which is made is that because good has already been used humanity gets the benefit of its implications.  Humanity includes rapists, murderers, and tyrants who engage in genocidal acts to cite a few examples of those who would not be considered good.  What occurs is that, because the whole issue has taken on the tone of moral good, the individual wrongly thinks that humanity consists of those they consider good.  Through common errors of attribution the collectivist has been able to avoid defining what is actually being discussed and the individual has found themselves in the situation of being morally wrong by not agreeing to the collectivist position.  The individual can either bend beneath something which they may intuitively know isn’t what it seems but they can’t explain how, or they can refuse and believe themselves morally wrong. 
Most people will not consciously act in a way which they believe violates their own definition of good, no matter how they define it.  If there is a precedent of accepting such slogans as “for the good of humanity” as a substitute for actually reasoning, which there is in our society, any statement which claims good for some group, so long as the good and the group remain basically undefined, becomes difficult to deny.  Moreover, any demand made on the basis of the statement has the appearance of being right.  A charity uses this form of collectivist slogan when it tries to extort money.  “To help people in need” is a first cousin to “for the good of humanity.”  The people in question are not defined, but the term “people” implies a group of some kind, and the need for this group is also basically undefined. 

In the event that such an appeal to group need initially fails, either because the person doesn’t accept the collectivism argument or would but can’t afford it, a charity or its representative will fall back onto Kantian-Altruism.  They will do this through the time honored method known as loading the question.  They will pose the following question or something very similar to the reluctant individual: “Don’t you believe that we should help someone in need?”  By posing such a question, a number of things have happened.  First, the question has taken the demand out of the realm of some vague abstraction like a group and reduced it to an interpersonal level.  Second, the question itself implies the expected answer.  Third, the question has thrown the individual’s ethics into question.  There is no right way to ask that question.  Without specifying who the person is and what the need is, the most honest way to address the issue that question is supposed to get at would be as follows:  “Does someone in need deserve help?”  The use of the term need, without definition, makes the question (even rewritten as it is) a dubious one, but at least more on point.  Asking the question that way at least allows someone to think about what they actually believe about the topic.  That, however, is not what the charity is after. 
What they want is for you to become affronted at the notion that you don’t believe something that is obviously correct.  Again, they’ve avoiding defining just who the person is or just what particular need that person has and left it to the individual to fill it the blanks.  Virtually anyone can think of someone they know who, if they were in need as the individual thinks of it, would deserve help.  The person posing the question has gotten the individual to personalize in content and definition what is in reality an impersonal and undefined situation.  This is where Altruism makes its entrance.  While an individual may not believe they have an obligation to some vague thing like a group or “people,” there is a strong current of belief in our culture that we have an obligation to render service to specific others who have “need.”

 Return, for a moment, to the “in need car dealership.  Very few people would simply go to a so-called, “in need car dealership” and buy a car.  First of all, that dealership may not be selling a car that the person wants to buy, even if they are in the market for a car.  Second, maybe the person in question isn’t in the market to buy a car.  Lastly, maybe the person in question isn’t in a position to buy a car.  However, if the person is in the market for a car, the dealership is selling a car they want, and the price of the car is within their budget, they are getting a return on their investment.  For the money spent, the person receives a car.  In the case of a person who has accepted the altruistic doctrine that there is an obligation to render service to those in need, they might choose to go to the “in need car dealership” to purchase a car they wish to have.  In doing so, they fulfilled their obligation to render service and also purchased a car of their choosing.  Altruism, as far as it goes, does not specify the degree of service rendered nor what, if any, return on that assistance an individual should expect.  So, in the highly unlikely event that an “in need car dealership” should have the car that an individual wishes to purchase, the individual in purchasing the car has fulfilled all the moral obligations of altruism.  A charity provides little or no return on the investment, except perhaps an emotional one, and no return for the individual that has no desire to contribute.  This is where Kant comes in to rescue the charity.

According to Kant’s Altruism, which accepts that people have a moral obligation to others, it further demands that there is to be no return of any kind on an altruistic act or is has ceased to be a moral act.  By getting the individual to personalize the question of helping those in need, it gets the individual to think about it in terms of the person they placed in the position of need.  The question becomes, “You should help this person you know who is in need, as you define it, without expectation of a return shouldn’t you?”  That this question is completely and utterly unrelated to whether or not you should give to some organization that is going to, in turn, “help” some undefined group of people with some undefined “need” is the point.  It turns the individual away from the issue at hand to one in which the answer they will likely give is, “Yes, of course I should help.”  Altering the context allows for the introduction of irrelevant material in the decision making process.  That this Kantian-Altruism turns everyone into slaves, just as surely as collectivism does, is hidden behind the veil of “being moral.” 

If the individual is not swayed by either collectivism or Kantian-Altruism, the charity can resort to one last form of manipulation to get the individual to hand over money.  They can turn to the Original Sin card and use plain guilt.  “One should consider those who are less fortunate than themselves,” is a popular phrase which appeals to this basic guilt.  It implies that it is only luck, or providence, that has allowed the person to achieve or acquire what they have and that it is only luck or providence that has created the situation in which those “less fortunate” persons find themselves.  Moreover, it is a phrase which suggests that the individual does not deserve what they have and, since they don’t deserve what they have, they need to make amends for having what they do.  This is the very essence of Original Sin: you bear guilt by virtue of the fact that you exist. 

To utter such a statement as, “One should consider those who are less fortunate than themselves,” takes such a stunning degree of ignorance or arrogance it is dumbfounding that it ever happens. That an element of luck can play a role in success is no secret.  However, the assumption that success is only the product of luck is pure ignorance.  Success, in anything, takes effort.  The degree of effort is relative, both to the talent and perception of the people involved, but it never effort-free.  Such ignorance, while horrifying, might be explainable through some gap or error in the education of the person saying it.  If such is the case, some measure of forgiveness might be in order, though absolutely no bending to the demands accompanying the ignorance.  Wrong ideas can never be corrected through indulgence of them.

  What is not forgivable is when that statement is made in arrogance.  To say such a thing in arrogance means that the person saying it realizes that it takes work to achieve something, but that they consider the work done to be of no value, of less value than their own, or simply insignificant next to the “need” of whatever group with which they happen to be concerned.  To take such a stance requires a belief that one has the right to pass the kind of judgments that one finds unacceptable from the person toward which that attitude is directed.  Were the individual being asked for money to say that they find the efforts of people who make up the group in “need” to be of no value, less value than their own, or simply irrelevant, he or she would be denounced as lacking compassion.  Yet those who make such demands feel perfectly comfortable doing so and are also perfectly comfortable trying to create guilt in perfect strangers.  On top of which, they hold that their actions are perfectly moral. 

How do collectivism, Kantian-Altruism, and simple guilt relate to charity?  Stated simply, they don’t.  Charity, as defined, is volitional and all three of the means that charity organizations use to try to collect money work to defy volition.  Each and every one tries to force the suspension of individual volition and replace it with obligation.  When someone or some group tries to force an individual to give them money against the better judgment and desire of the individual it is not charity.  It is blackmail.  That the pressure exerted is psychological or emotional, rather than physical pressure or the threat of it, and the money gathered is theoretically for some needy group are the only things that separate charities from the Mafia or, for that matter, a government.