As a new blogger and an experienced philanthropist, I would like to first introduce myself and share my
background in fundraising. My name is Sherri Moradian and I am in my final year at the University of Southern California studying psychology. My passion for fundraising developed thirteen years ago with the birth of my cousin with cerebral palsy. After observing the difficulties, both financially and emotionally, for families with children with disabilities my family established a non-profit organization to raise money for various children's hospitals and organizations that help individuals with special needs. For the past ten years the organization has been flourishing with its annual events hosted by notable speakers and celebrities such as Stevie Wonder, Deepak Chopra (pictured left at the 2005 Looking Beyond Gala), and Team Hoyt. Since then I have been driven to be involved in a variety of other charitable organizations and have gained first hand experience volunteering and organizing events in the non-profit world.Thus as the topic of non-profit organizations is close to my heart, I scoured the web to find recent and relevant information using various search tools such as Google Directory, BlogScholar, Cuil, and Metacrawler in order to generate the linkroll to the right that boasts blogs and websites of the utmost depth and quality. By applying the standards of the Webby Awards and IMSA I was able to discern between the information I encountered on the web and selected over twenty sources of the highest caliber for my linkroll. I was surprised and delighted when I discovered a plethora of resources on my topic ranging from religious organizations such as the World Relief Fund and the American Jewish World Service Fund, to foundations safeguarding wildlife and the environment such as the World Wildlife Fund and organizations for children such as the Ronald McDonald Foundation.
The best website that I came across is Charity Navigator. This site upholds the requirements set forth by the Webby Awards as it presents a wealth of information, it is easy to navigate and it is aesthetically pleasing to viewers. Additionally, the best blog that that I encountered is PhilanTopic, as it too fulfills the IMSA standards and presents authorship, sophistication and depth on the topic.
I am excited to be a part of the blogosphere community, and hope that the work I present will be of value to the readers as well as help me establish a position as an influential and informed member of the blogosphere in the field of philanthropy.
Why is it moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you? If the sensation of eating a cake is a value, why is it an immoral indulgence in your stomach, but a moral goal for you to achieve in the stomach of others? Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? Does virtue consist of serving vice? Is the moral purpose of those who are good, self-immolation for the sake of those who are evil?
ReplyDeleteThe answer you evade, the monstrous answer is: No, the takers are not evil, provided they did not earn the value you gave them. It is not immoral for them to accept it, provided they are unable to produce it, unable to deserve it, unable to give you any value in return. It is not immoral for them to enjoy it, provided they do not obtain it by right.
Such is the secret core of your creed, the other half of your double standard: it is immoral to live by your own effort, but moral to live by the effort of others—it is immoral to consume your own product, but moral to consume the products of others—it is immoral to earn, but moral to mooch—it is the parasites who are the moral justification for the existence of the producers, but the existence of the parasites is an end in itself—it is evil to profit by achievement, but good to profit by sacrifice—it is evil to create your own happiness, but good to enjoy it at the price of the blood of others.
Your code divides mankind into two castes and commands them to live by opposite rules: those who may desire anything and those who may desire nothing, the chosen and the damned, the riders and the carriers, the eaters and the eaten. What standard determines your caste? What passkey admits you to the moral elite? The passkey is lack of value.
Whatever the value involved, it is your lack of it that gives you a claim upon those who don’t lack it. It is your need that gives you a claim to rewards. If you are able to satisfy your need, your ability annuls your right to satisfy it. But a need you are unable to satisfy gives you first right to the lives of mankind.
If you succeed, any man who fails is your master; if you fail, any man who succeeds is your serf. Whether your failure is just or not, whether your wishes are rational or not, whether your misfortune is undeserved or the result of your vices, it is misfortune that gives you a right to rewards. It is pain, regardless of its nature or cause, pain as a primary absolute, that gives you a mortgage on all of existence.
If you heal your pain by your own effort, you receive no moral credit: your code regards it scornfully as an act of self-interest. Whatever value you seek to acquire, be it wealth or food or love or rights, if you acquire it by means of your virtue, your code does not regard it as a moral acquisition: you occasion no loss to anyone, it is a trade, not alms; a payment, not a sacrifice. The deserved belongs in the selfish, commercial realm of mutual profit; it is only the undeserved that calls for that moral transaction which consists of profit to one at the price of disaster to the other. To demand rewards for your virtue is selfish and immoral; it is your lack of virtue that transforms your demand into a moral right.
A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness—non-existence—as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defect: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw—the zero.