Do you feel bad about "the starving kids in Africa" ?

[dragonswarrior]

The place is messed up, no question there.

But, anyone who wants to tug on my heartstrings with it, can go stick it where the sun don't shine. And airing "give us money" ads starring "the poor children of Africa" is no way to fix the place.

Maybe I would be more encouraged to donate to charities if they actually sent the money where it needs to go. It either goes to the government (bad) or goes toward building schools in an area that has no supply of clean water. I mean, what the fuck.

This. Exactly. Yea I feel bad, but any "aide" I try to give will end up doing fuck all if not outright harming the area, and I am also pretty concerned with keeping my own family from starving, because socio-economics suck.

In addition, I am pretty sure these African countries could all sort themselves out in three or four generations, if the countries who fucked them up in the first place would just stop trying to "help".

 

[CrazyGirl17]

...Well, yeah, but how do I know the money's not going to be used for something else!? Stupid human nature...

 

[kasperbbs]

I do, but theres nothing i can do about that so i just worry about my own life and people around me.

 

[Riki Darnell]

The people saying they don't care are funny...

Of course you care, as apathetic as you want to be... It's not always "super cool" to be apathetic, even if the internet makes it seem that way.

However, I don't donate shit.

If I was capable of living beyond comfortably, I would donate an appropriate amount... and anyone who says otherwise is a spoiled shithead, a liar, or a true asshole.

While it's true not everyone might be telling the truth, I think you are underestimating apathy. The way I see it (and most of my friends see it) is "is this effect my life in any way?". I find it very easy to not care about matters that are oceans away from me.

 

[Corporal Yakob]

Well I do both of those things in the OP, to much applause, so I must be scum!

The situation for starving African kids sucks-but then so does the situation for starving American/European/Russian/Asian kids and a million billion other things that are wrong with the world. I just honestly don't care.

 

[FamoFunk]

I feel bad for them, yes.

But I refuse to be made to feel guilty because I live in a 1st world country where I can live in a house and have very easy access to food, almost made to feel it's my fault for being born in the UK. Nope, not gonna work.

 

[Sparrow]

Yes, but the adverts are bloody ridiculous. Look, a child starving! Look, a mother crippled by illness! Look, crappy looking houses! I have no idea who makes the adverts, but they stir nothing in me. I know it's shitty over there and I donate my money monthly. I led myself to that conclusion, modern media did not.

 

[Dectomax]

This is a topic which actually irritates me for many of the reasons already stated. As someone here already said - "They need more local initiative". You see all these "Hipster" kids going on about doing 6 months in Africa to help the kids and what they don't realise is they actually do MORE harm than good.

What help is it if some jumped up 20/21 year old comes across for 6 months and joins a community, teaching kids English and helping about, if, at the end of it they're going home again. What they actually need is a permanent teacher. Train the teachers for 6 months, not the children.

It's the same with all the "Build a well" campaigns - What a load of bollocks. Build a well, a village will drink until it breaks or runs dry. TEACH a village HOW to build a well and extract clean water and they'll drink for aslong as that knowledge stays with them.

Now you have one village who know how to build wells, they can teach that to the rest of the village, infact, they can now travel to a neighbouring ( There IS a U there... ) village and in exchange for some food/livestock, they can build a well for them and teach them how. Now you have the possibility of trade and relations.

Simply put, going to a country and building a school, teaching for a little while or putting a well into a village is entirely un-fucking-helpful. Going to a country and TEACHING them HOW to build a school, HOW to teach English and HOW to build wells is entirely HELPFUL.

That's just my two pennies on the matter...even if it 'may' be slightly off-topic...

 

[Kermi]

*eats half a bucket of fried chicken and tosses unfinished pieces out the window*

*takes laxatives to keep weight down*

*drinks 3 gallons of soda a day even though clean water is readily available*

The who in the where now?

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Psychologically it's unfair to expect human beings to care about or maintain a relationship with anyone outside of about 150 people due to 'Dunbar's number' which was first proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar.

"this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size ... the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained." On the periphery, the number also includes past colleagues such as high school friends with whom a person would want to reacquaint oneself if they met again.

You simply can't care in great detail about every single person in the world. Some scientists have made the connection between Dunbar's work and the fact that 1 in 10 people have severe depression. As we are expected to care about issues that affect thousands of people like the economy, global warming and starvation in less developed countries and our minds, as they are now, can't possibly cope with it.

That's why Oxfam will show you a particular child or person because it's easier to care about one person than a thousand.

Don't get me wrong It's not a bad thing to be proactive about poverty or give money to charity and people should but scientifically you can't really expect yourself to really give a crap about thousands of people hundreds of miles away that you have never met.

 

[Kyr Knightbane]

Do i feel bad about it? Somewhat
Do i feel Guilty? No

I would donate money to help these starving kids in Africa, but that wouldn't be solving the problem, would it? I'm also getting more and more desensitized about it because of all these High Profile celebrities pushing the guilt down my throat with gold encrusted plungers. Africa would benefit from donations to help feed kids, but even better would be to actually organize a real humanitarian aid effort, and go down there with tools and show them how to dig wells, clean and purify the water, and help stabilize some of these less fortunate areas. Giving money for a helicopter to drop a box of pudding and bottled water is all well and good, but its reminiscent of the phrase, give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. My 2 cents anyways

It also irritates me that people focus on kids in Africa, when kids in other countries have it just as bad, if not worse. Think about here in the U.S. Kids are getting beaten, starved, run over by ignorant parents, starving to death, being sold into prostitution at extremely young ages, and dying for no good reason. Is Susan Sarandon standing in the middle of the ghetto with a camera, holding a latino, or a white child who has been beaten and hooked on drugs? Fuck no. Is anyone holding a camera on a kid sleeping in newspaper on a park bench? No. So yes, the plight in Africa is terrible, and should be rectified, but maybe we should focus on things nearby, or give them the same amount of coverage.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

I honestly feel worse for the starving kids in China, they're supposed to be the new big superpower within international politics.

even worse for the northern korean kids, though, they are not only not allowed to complain, they must also deny the fact there is anything to complain about.

and africa, well, africa never really changed, tribes and warlords still try to kill eachother for dominance or resources, only now they do it with high powered western killing tools.

shit happens, sadly, so yeah, I do feel bad about it, I guess.

 

[ElPatron]

It'd totally give my money to throw down governments and reshape African borders.

But it wouldn't be worth it, half a decade later war would come back because of natural resources and water.

It's not the children's fault they were born in Africa. After we donate money, we have no way to ensure those children will grow and live beyond 35 years. No matter how much money you pump into Africa, that continent is too damn profitable for corrupt governments and pharmaceutic corporations.

Hey.

We are all thinking about countries where people rarely get to be middle-aged.

Now think about the people in your city that are old and alone, and suffer every day. I rather donate money so that they can get wheelchairs and medical care.

 

[Callate]

I do feel bad about the starving kids in Africa. I feel worse about the starving kids in America, for which there is far less excuse.

 

[Secret world leader (shhh)]

Sucks to be them, nothing i can do about it.

Spoiler