The Shrine

I noticed that on the Internet, if you don't like some guy, but if he ever donated to charity. Heck, if he told other people to donate money to charity that automatically makes them way better a person than you because you obviously can't give as much.

Now I'm not saying giving to charity is a bad thing but sometimes I think it's almost like the religious indulgences (?) where if you pay enough to the Church you get a seat in Heaven. There was a book written by Gou Long where the main character see these two evil guys dying and those two bad guys say please donate all their money for the cause of the good, and the main character reminded those two guys that they're still going to Hell after they die even if they did, because otherwise that'd mean only poor people go to Hell.

Alfred Nobel invited the dynamite which is used to blow people up and he founded the Nobel Prize sort of as an atonement. If there's some all powerful God who decided that the intention of Nobel Prize doesn't outweigh the fact his invention was responsible for a lot of death and send him to Hell, you certainly wouldn't say this judgment is completely unreasonable.

In Hunter X Hunter, there was a part where Kurapika ask Hisoka what are the primary activites of the Illusion Brigade, and he answers "Murder, robbery, but we also donate to the charity" It's supposed to be a joke but it seems like a lot of people think the last part makes the first two parts totally okay.

LeBron donated the proceeds from The Decision to charity too, but nobody honestly thought he wasn't doing it as a publicity stunt. For a person with his wealth, losing a million for publicity isn't a bad deal, especially when it's not even his money but rather his sponsor's money. Now The Decision backfired but let's say he really stayed in Cleveland and became a hometown hero, even if he had to pay a few million dollars for that kind of publicity it's still a pretty darn good deal, and again that wasn't even his money. Sure, it'd be better than if he kept the money to himself, but honestly it'd be even better if he just never did The Decision to begin with, at least from a PR point of view.

Only in the hypocrisy-ladened society we live in now is the fact he created the TV even The Decision to raise money ($2M, ain't chump change) for charity just to announce where he was going to sign can that possibly be seen in a negative light. He could easily have just held a press conference and raised nothing and gone to Miami and he still would have gotten at least 70% of the backlash. But to use the stupid amount of interest in his decision to raise $2M to charity? YOU SELFISH FUCK!

Charity in this country is a fucking joke, anyway. Businesses always have to tie their charities to their profits. "Hey, buy $20 in Big Macs and we'll donate a penny to starving kids in Africa!" Just donate the fucking penny, anyway. Hell, donate $20M! You can afford it!

There was this week or two where McDonald's have their guy always ask you "Would you like to donate $1 to Ronald McDonald's children foundation", it's like seriously, why don't you donate the $1? Or how about you take $1 off the value meal and then I'll donate the $1 I save? Better yet just donate $1 from every value meal made?

I get that it's probably better than keeping all the money yourself but really if I ask you to give me a million dollar so I can donate it all to charity, I'm not exactly making a big sacrifice here even if I did everything I claim to do. And of course, I might not.

Though more importantly I think I want to touch on the fact that a lot of people view charity as some kind of indulgence, like you pay $1 million or whatever, and that absolves you of whatever sins you may have had in the past. For example say you hit Mega Millions and get $100 million, you donate $10 million to charity, this apparently makes you a saint even if you have some kind of dubious past, even though this money literally just fell out of the sky.

For example I see people bid for like say dinner with Warren Buffett for half a million, most possibly all of that money is supposed to go to a good cause. But seriously, people who bid on that kind of thing did it because they can say they had dinner with Warren Buffett. Nobody sure is going to pay me half a million dollars to have dinner with me even if I donate 100% of that money to charity, and as far as I can tell my (or rather, your) half a million to charity through me is just as good as the same amount through Warren Buffett.