I have a weird affinity for those people who catch you in the mall and try to get you to sign up for charities. I know lots of people find them intrusive, sly, annoying, whatever, but they give me flashbacks of what was a golden era for me – my days being a desperate, single, nice guy in first-year university. Nothing seemed to repel the opposite sex more than a person who telecasted “Look! I’m quirky! And I’ll treat you really respectfully!”. Nice is always a tough sell.

So I like chatting with the charity salespeople. I admire their pluck. But I confess there is a point that often happens in their spiel that I really don’t enjoy. It is the inevitable part in their spiel where they compare the cost of my support to the number of coffees per day or week that it equates to.

For one thing, this bugs me because I’m addicted to coffee. I’d give up hot showers, my job, the internet, and at least a few good friends before forgoing my daily brew. I’m not proud of it, it’s just the way it is.

But what I really oppose is this notion of simple achievability that underpins the coffee-cup comparison. A couple of coffees a week is an incredibly small cost to change the world, isn’t it? I wonder, ought I really be congratulating myself for heroic social responsibility because I’ve pledged my schrapnel to Oxfam? Moreover, if all the world needs is a few less coffees in it, then perhaps I, the average consumer, might be forgiven for not caring that much about it’s plight.

I’m not suggesting that it’s the charity spruiker’s fault for making it all sound so simple. I wouldn’t even blame the marketing folk up at charity headquarters’ for that piece of spin – if telling people that giving to charity is easy helps them raise funds, then good on them for figuring it out. All that said, I think there is cause to be concerned about this constant bombardment of messages telling us that being good involves only the tiniest, most insignificant changes to our lifestyle. I’m sure you know exactly the messages I’m talking about.

• If we can just shave 1 minute off our shower, we’ll save a bucket of water
• If we can just turn off our tv at the powerpoint, we’ll save a few hundred kgs of greenhouse gas every year
• If we can just switch to fair trade teabags
• If we looked out for the such and such label and said no to plastic bags
• If we just gave 5 minutes.. 2 dollars.. one less.. half a percent of our.. every day

…then the world will be on its way to getting better.

We’re hearing this over and over. Now I must stress that from the perspective of these causes and organisations, this represents perfectly sound philosophy. Most societal changes do begin with incremental, barely noticeable changes. It does make sense to lobby the government for just a tiny change to this or that – from little things, big things grow! But my question is, what do these messages of tiny, unnoticeable change, say to us, the consumers of all these charities and causes?

I think bathing ourselves in the language of simple achievability makes us susceptible to at least two significant ethical mistakes

1. We set our benchmarks for change based on what what we won’t miss, instead of on what we can afford

If we are constantly asked to change our lives in ways that will have only the most minimal ramifications upon our lifestyles, might we begin to get the impression that giving something tiny, even tokenistic, is enough? Imagine if our spruiker for Oxfam asked us, quite seriously, for an amount of money that equalled “just the cost of a jetski a month”? Is that not an equally valid question for her to be asking? Why should I, with my comfortable lifestyle and large discretionary income, not be challenged to give up 30 percent, 50 percent, or even 80 percent of it to others? It would arguably help make the world a more equitable place.

Let’s not replace the question “what can I give or change?” with “what can i give/change without noticing too much?”

What can you give or change in hope of a better world?

2. We think of participation as a consumer option, not an ethical requirement

The problem with being treated as a potential customer by a charity or cause, is that we begin to treat our participation in these causes with the same mindset that we have for all the other things we buy – we start saying “no thanks, I already give somewhere else”, or “what’s the best, most unique, most original cause I can buy into”, or “I’ve already got one of those”. This neglects the reality that we live in an incredibly complex world with a lot of big ethical issues floating around. Our world has a vulnerable environment, vulnerable people, and vulnerable systems of law. We might “choose” a charity that focuses on only one of these, but our daily lives and choices contribute to the state of all three. Simply setting up a direct debit, or switching off at the power point, can lull us into believing that we do enough, and no longer need to pay attention to the consequences of the rest of our actions.

I think when it comes to being good, we wrangle deals with ourselves all the time. I gave money to the red cross once, because I was too squeamish to give them blood. I’ve heard a person say “I give to Anglicare, so I ignore it when people ask me for change on the street – I let the experts deal with it” (more on the ‘outsourcing of kindness’ another time). I think a fair response to that statement might be “aren’t you an expert at kindness?”.

Let’s not use our favourite causes as excuses for not tackling the complex ethical challenges of life.

What deals do you make with yourself? What big challenges do you deflect by taking comfort in the small things you already do?

tk