Charitable Organizations Quotes

But depression wasn't the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game. Squirming babies and plodding, complacent, hormone-drugged moms. Oh, isn't he cute? Awww. Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells await them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital. Most people seemed satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent. People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were. But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it. It was rotten from top to bottom.

Many charitable organizations don’t need to exist, and their work would be done better by either a business or the church.

What better allies are there than those organized around their own needs and demands, a functional and not merely charitable alliance?

People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were. But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it. It was rotten top to bottom. Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born—never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything. And all this mental thrashing and tossing

We can combat existential anguish – the unbearable lightness of our being – in a variety of ways. We can choose to work, play, destroy, or create. We can allow a variety of cultural factors or other people to define who we are, or we can create a self-definition. We decide what to monitor in the environment. We regulate how much attention we pay to nature, other people, or the self. We can watch and comment upon current cultural events and worldly happenings or withdraw and ignore the external world. We can drink alcohol, dabble with recreational drugs, play videogames, or watch television, films, and sporting events. We can travel, go on nature walks, camp, fish, and hunt, climb mountains, or take whitewater-rafting trips. We can build, paint, sing, create music, write poetry, or read and write books. We can cook, barbeque, eat fine cuisine at restaurants or go on fasts. We can attend church services, worship and pray, or chose to embrace agnosticism or atheism. We can belong to charitable organizations or political parties. We can actively or passively support or oppose social and ecological causes. We can share time with family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances or live alone and eschew social intermixing.

What we need now is a very strong antidote, and the antidote to jealousy is the practice of rejoicing. Rejoicing is simply feeling happy when something fortunate or beneficial happens to someone other than ourselves. . . . When someone becomes a vegetarian or donates money to a charitable organization, we can rejoice. We can rejoice in the virtue of people who have put their life on the line to help others, the Good Samaritan we hear about on the news. We can rejoice in the spiritual accomplishments of others.

Using your wealth to purchase other people’s loyalty is a game as old as humanity itself. Rich men use their wealth to attract women, unscrupulous employers use material incentives and disincentives to manipulate their workers, and wealthy countries like the USA use their national wealth to keep their citizens loyal to the cause of aggressive and genocidal Imperialism. But historical longevity and common practice don’t make the manipulation or exploitation morally or ethically right. Organized religions are inherently POLITICAL organizations. There is a fundamental difference between the financial enterprise and political machinations of an organized religion versus a mass of independent unaffiliated believers, philosophers, and mystics who do not support any organized religion. Christianity and Islam are known as proselytizing religions because they make an organized and systemic effort to gain converts, and they often provide services, products, or employment to attract converts. Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism show far less zeal about gaining converts, which is why you almost never hear about Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist missionaries. Modern medical and nursing schools usually teach their students the moral principle that the provision of medical services should never be used as a means to proselytize or promote a religion, but that does not deter many Christian health care providers from doing exactly that. Most of the medical and charitable organizations based in Christian countries are fronts for Christian proselytizing activities.

The comprehensive organization of the church, with its solid roots and the manifold forms of charitable help to the many who were poor and in distress; • Christian monotheism, which commended itself as the progressive and enlightened position in the face of polytheism, with its wealth of myths; • The lofty ethic, which, tested by ascetics and martyrs to the point of death, showed itself to be superior to pagan morality;

Through their donations and work for voluntary organizations, the charitable rich exert enormous influence in society. As philanthropists, they acquire status within and outside of their class. Although private wealth is the basis of the hegemony of this group, philanthropy is essential to the maintenance and perpetuation of the upper class in the United States. In this sense, nonprofit activities are the nexus of a modern power elite.

People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were.

A great philosopher once said: 'We are what we Contemplate' And in these modern times when mankind is constantly confronted with images of conflict and world disasters, it seems very important to contemplate the Beautiful. It has become my personal crusade as an artist, to create images which uplift and nurture the human heart; to create that which serves as a reminder of what is Sacred and Beautiful within the drama of Life.... Ever since I can remember, my innermost nature has always been to do acts of kindness and to create, from saving lost animals, to organizing charitable events; from mothering my four children to now giving birth to the 'Art of Beauty'.

Most people seemed satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that, sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent. People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were.

Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital. Most people seemed satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that, sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent. People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were. But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it. It was rotten top to bottom. Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born—never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything.

People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly

Goodwill receives a billion pounds of clothing every year. Ultimately, they use less than half of the clothing they get. Clothing is cheap, and the cost of sorting, cleaning, storing, and transporting the clothes is higher than their value. If you wouldn’t give an article to a family member, it’s probably not good enough for charity. Sure, it’s great to get the tax deduction and it makes you feel like you didn’t waste money buying the clothes, but if you’re truly charitable, be sensitive to the needs of the organization. Charities aren’t dumping grounds for your trash.

The real catalyst for the Religious Right was a court decision, but it was not Roe v. Wade. It was a lower court ruling in the District Court for the District of Columbia in a case called Green v. Connally. On June 30, 1971, the court ruled that any organization that engaged in racial segregation or racial discrimination was not by definition a charitable institution, and therefore it had no claims on tax-exempt status. The Supreme Court’s Coit v. Green decision upheld the district court, and the Internal Revenue Service then began making inquiries about the racial policies of so-called segregation academies as well as the fundamentalist school Bob Jones University, in Greenville, South Carolina, which boasted a long history of racial exclusion.

In a 1840 letter to the The Lowell Offering, the publication of the Massachusetts mill town that employed thousands of young, single women and would become one of the birth places of the later labor movement, a correspondent named Betsey claiming to be “one of that unlucky, derided, and almost despised set of females, called spinsters, single sisters, lay-nuns . . . but who are more usually known by the appellation of Old Maids” argued that it was “a part of [God’s] wise design that there should be Old Maids,” in part because “they are the founders and pillars of anti-slavery, moral reform, and all sorts of religious and charitable societies.”28 Here was the idea of service and moral uplift brought into disruptive relief: What if women, in service to greater and moral good, did not submit themselves to a larger power structure, but instead organized to overturn it? Frederick

But depression wasn’t the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game. Squirming babies and plodding, complacent, hormone-drugged moms. Oh, isn’t he cute? Awww. Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital. Most people seemed satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that, sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent. People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were. But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it. It was rotten top to bottom. Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born—never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything.

It’s important to remember that most television is not just entertainment: it’s also narrative. And it’s so true it’s trite that human beings are narrative animals: every culture countenances itself as culture via a story, whether mythopoeic or politico-economic; every whole person understands his lifetime as an organized, recountable series of events and changes with at least a beginning and middle. We need narrative like we need space-time; it’s a built-in thing. In the C.Y. writers today, the narrative patterns to which literate Americans are most regularly exposed are televised. And, even on a charitable account, television is a pretty low type of narrative art. It’s a narrative art that strives not to change or enlighten or broaden or reorient — not necessarily even to “entertain”—but merely and always to engage, to appeal to. Its one end — openly acknowledged — is to ensure continued watching. And (I claim) the metastatic efficiency with which it’s done so has, as cost, inevitable and dire consequences for the level of people’s tastes in narrative art. For the very expectations of readers in virtue of which narrative art is art." - from"Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young

The charge of heartlessness, epitomized in the remark that William H. Vanderbilt, a railroad tycoon, is said to have made to an inquiring reporter, "The public be damned," is belied by the flowering of charitable activity in the United States in the nineteenth century. Privately financed schools and colleges multiplied; foreign missionary activity exploded; nonprofit private hospitals, orphanages, and numerous other institutions sprang up like weeds. Almost every charitable or public service organization, from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to the YMCA and YWCA, from the Indian Rights Association to the Salvation Army, dates from that period. Voluntary cooperation is no less effective in organizing charitable activity than in organizing production for profit. The charitable activity was matched by a burst of cultural activity—art museums, opera houses, symphonies, museums, public libraries arose in big cities and frontier towns alike. The size of government spending is one measure of government's role. Major wars aside, government spending from 1800 to 1929 did not exceed about 12 percent of the national income. Two-thirds of that was spent by state and local governments, mostly for schools and roads. As late as 1928, federal government spending amounted to about 3 percent of the national income.

But depression wasn’t the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game. Squirming babies and plodding, complacent, hormone-drugged moms. Oh, isn’t he cute? Awww. Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital. Most people seemed satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that, sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent. People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were. But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it. It was rotten top to bottom. Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born—never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything. And all this mental thrashing and tossing was mixed up with recurring images, or half-dreams, of Popchik lying weak and thin on one side with his ribs going up and down—I’d forgotten him somewhere, left him alone and forgotten to feed him, he was dying—over and over, even when he was in the room with me, head-snaps where I started up guiltily, where is Popchik; and this in turn was mixed up with head-snapping flashes of the bundled pillowcase, locked away in its steel coffin.

Hasan, the Begger: Believe it or not, they call this purgatory on earth “holy-suffering”. I am a leper stuck in limbo. Neither the dead nor the living want me among them. Mothers point me out on the streets to scare their misbehaving little ones, and children throw stones at me. Artisans chase me from their storefronts to ward off the bad luck that follows me everywhere, and pregnant women turn their faces away whenever they set eyes on me, fearing that their babies will be born defec-tive. None of these people seem to realize that as keen as they are to avoid me, I am far keener to avoid them and their pitiful stares. Friday is the best day of the week to beg except when it is Ramadan, in which case the whole month is quite lucrative. The last day of Ramadan is by far the best time to make money. That is when even the hopeless penny-pinchers race to give alms, keen to compensate for all their sins, past and present. Once a year, people don't turn away from beggars. To the contrary, they specifically look for one, the more miserable the better. So profound is their need to show off how generous and charitable they are, not only do they race to give us alms, but for that single day they almost love us. I’ve realized that the trees and I had something in common. A tree shedding its leaves in autumn resembled a man shedding his limbs in the final stages of leprosy. I am naked tree. My skin, my organs, my face are falling apart. Every day another part of my body abandons me. And for me, unlike the trees, there would be no spring in which I would blossom. What I lost, I lost forever. When people looks at me, they don’t see who I am but what I am missing. Whenever they places a coin in my bowl, they do so with amazing speed and avoid any eye contacts, as if my gaze is contagious. In their eyes I am worse than a thief or a murderer. As much as they disapproves of such outlaws, they don’t treat them as if they are invisible. When it comes to me, however, all they see is death staring them in the face. That's what scares them--to recognize that death could be this close and this ugly.

Wealthy people in the United States have created more charitable organizations and been more philanthropic than any other group in the world. We should celebrate their achievements rather than envy them.

Our tax dollars are spent on religious charitable organizations that refuse to employ us and even bar us from using their services.

Sir John Templeton, not only the world’s greatest investor but also one of the greatest human beings, shared something with me almost 30 years ago: he said that he’s never known anyone who tithed—meaning the person gave 8% or 10% of what he earned to religious or charitable organizations over a ten-year period—who didn’t massively grow his financial wealth.

The Rockefeller Foundation is known as a charitable organization that operates out of New York City. Officially it was established to “promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world”. In reality the Rockefeller Foundation is a decisive actor on the international stage. The many activities of the Rockefeller Foundation are not isolated items, each independent of the others. They all fall into a world-wide organization in the interests of the New World Order. Among the many international agencies is David Rockefeller’s private intelligence service, better known as INTERPOL. According to the U.S. Department of Justice 1988 manual, “INTERPOL conducts inter-governmental activities, but is not based on an international treaty, convention, or similar legal documents. It was founded upon a constitution drawn up and written by a group of police officers who did not submit it for diplomatic signatures, nor have they ever submitted it for ratification by governments.” INTERPOL is an illegal entity operating within the borders of the United States, without the sanction and approval of the people in flagrant violation of the Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of the fifty states.[23] INTERPOL is a private agency with a communications network stretching around the globe. In spite of the fact that INTERPOL is a private organization, it was granted “observer status” by the United Nations in 1975, a stature that enables it to sit at meetings and vote on resolutions, even though it is not a member country and has no governmental status. Since INTERPOL is not a state, the United Nations are violating their own charter.

The Church organizes charitable assistance to help the poor because she wants no one to be left behind.

In the 1980s, she joined the Swiss Benevolent Society and in 1989 became President of this charitable organization that was founded in 1872 after the great fire of Chicago. The Society continues to organize events for its members to ensure that Swiss culture in Chicago keeps the honored place it deserves.

In fact, Bopp’s law firm and the James Madison Center had the same office address and phone number, and although Bopp listed himself as an outside contractor to the center, virtually every dollar from donors went to his firm. By designating itself a nonprofit charitable group, though, the Madison Center enabled the DeVos Family Foundation and other supporters to take tax deductions for subsidizing long-shot lawsuits that might never have been attempted otherwise. “The relationship between this organization and Bopp’s law firm is such that there really is no charity,” observed Marcus Owens, a Washington lawyer who formerly oversaw tax-exempt groups for the Internal Revenue Service. “I’ve never heard of this sort of captive charity/foundation funding of a particular law firm before.

All that work: his generous patronage of the arts, the vast sums of money he had donated to worthy causes, setting up charitable organizations . . . for what? In the end, none of those good works had redeemed him in the eyes of others. People think that men like me give money away to buy forgiveness for a sin or out of vanity, when it's the winner's pathetic tribute to the loser. Look at me, we seem to be begging, I need you too. I need you to accept me, to admire me, to love me.

When Boston imported its first streetlights in 1774, Paul Revere was asked to serve on the committee that made the arrangement. When the Boston market required regulation, Paul Revere was appointed its clerk. After the Revolution, in a time of epidemics, he was chosen health officer of Boston, and coroner of Suffolk County. When a major fire ravaged the old wooden town, he helped to found the Massachusetts Mutual Fire Insurance Company, and his name was first to appear on its charter of incorporation. As poverty became a growing problem in the new republic, he called the meeting that organized the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, and was elected its first president. When the community of Boston was shattered by the most sensational murder trial of his generation, Paul Revere was chosen foreman of the jury.

There were other important reasons for the growth of American individualism at the expense of community in the second half of the twentieth century besides the nature of capitalism. The first arose as an unintended consequence of a number of liberal reforms of the 1960s and 1970s. Slum clearance uprooted and destroyed many of the social networks that existed in poor neighborhoods, replacing them with an anonymous and increasingly dangerous existence in high-rise public housing units. “Good government” drives eliminated the political machines that at one time governed most large American cities. The old, ethnically based machines were often highly corrupt, but they served as a source of local empowerment and community for their clients. In subsequent years, the most important political action would take place not in the local community but at higher and higher levels of state and federal government. A second factor had to do with the expansion of the welfare state from the New Deal on, which tended to make federal, state, and local governments responsible for many social welfare functions that had previously been under the purview of civil society. The original argument for the expansion of state responsibilities to include social security, welfare, unemployment insurance, training, and the like was that the organic communities of preindustrial society that had previously provided these services were no longer capable of doing so as a result of industrialization, urbanization, decline of extended families, and related phenomena. But it proved to be the case that the growth of the welfare state accelerated the decline of those very communal institutions that it was designed to supplement. Welfare dependency in the United States is only the most prominent example: Aid to Familles with Dependent Children, the depression-era legislation that was designed to help widows and single mothers over the transition as they reestablished their lives and families, became the mechanism that permitted entire inner-city populations to raise children without the benefit of fathers. The rise of the welfare state cannot be more than a partial explanation for the decline of community, however. Many European societies have much more extensive welfare states than the United States; while nuclear families have broken down there as well, there is a much lower level of extreme social pathology. A more serious threat to community has come, it would seem, from the vast expansion in the number and scope of rights to which Americans believe they are entitled, and the “rights culture” this produces. Rights-based individualism is deeply embedded in American political theory and constitutional law. One might argue, in fact, that the fundamental tendency of American institutions is to promote an ever-increasing degree of individualism. We have seen repeatedly that communities tend to be intolerant of outsiders in proportion to their internal cohesiveness, because the very strength of the principles that bind members together exclude those that do not share them. Many of the strong communal structures in the United States at midcentury discriminated in a variety of ways: country clubs that served as networking sites for business executives did not allow Jews, blacks, or women to join; church-run schools that taught strong moral values did not permit children of other denominations to enroll; charitable organizations provided services for only certain groups of people and tried to impose intrusive rules of behavior on their clients. The exclusiveness of these communities conflicted with the principle of equal rights, and the state increasingly took the side of those excluded against these communal organizations.

Charitable initiatives drive the future of our neighborhoods.

The increase in diversified organizations engaged in meeting various human needs is ultimately due to the fact that the command of love of neighbour is inscribed by the Creator in man's very nature. It is also a result of the presence of Christianity in the world, since Christianity constantly revives and acts out this imperative, so often profoundly obscured in the course of time. The reform of paganism attempted by the emperor Julian the Apostate is only an initial example of this effect; here we see how the power of Christianity spread well beyond the frontiers of the Christian faith. For this reason, it is very important that the Church's charitable activity maintains all of its splendor and does not become just another form of social assistance.

I think it’s a much more consistent and reasoned approach to distrust everything that comes from the government, and everything that comes from multi-national globalists, and everything that comes from the media and talk show hosts, and everything that comes from mega-charitable organizations. And why do I seem to have such a prejudice against the empire guys? Because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[Long Life] This famous writer has died at 92 And that legend journalist, The darling of authorities and mainstream media, Has died at 95. This pious religious man Has died at 96, And that billionaire, Known for his countless charities and charitable deeds Has died at 96 also… The veteran and shrewd politician, The former president of that country, Has died at 95 as well… And the same questions that dawned on me Ever since I understood the oppression & filthiness Of what the elites, authorities, and those in power are capable of, Begin ringing in my ears once again: Can anyone aware of the ugliness of what is going on live a long life? Is it a coincidence that most people, writers, and artists Who enriched my awareness and world died prematurely Or died, literally or metaphorically, by suicide, assassination, or in prison? Can a shred of awareness fell upon us without defeating the body and the soul Cell by cell and one organ after another causing a premature death? I also wonder have the writers, journalists, religious men, and politicians Who lived long lives enriched truth and justness, Or have they gotten rich at the expense of the above to live long lives up to 92, 93, 94, 95, & 96? And by biggest questions of all: Is there somewhere, in some world, in some place, a dagger of awareness that stabs without the killing the stabbed prematurely? [Original poem published in Arabic on December 31, 2022, at ahewar.org]

Page 32: The phenomenal commercial success of the Chinese in Thailand, and indeed throughout Southeast Asia, has no single or simple explanation. Certainly this success is partly attributable to such personal qualities as perseverance, capacity for hard work, and business acumen, but one of the most important factors has been the tight social and economic organization developed by overseas Chinese communities. Such communities in Southeast Asia appear remarkable self-sufficient and to many observers seem to form alien societies within the host society. They have proved unusually effective, on the one hand, for encouraging mutual aid and co-operation among heterogeneous linguistic and socio-economic groups and, on the other, for providing protection from hostile or competitive individuals and governments. Better than most people the Chinese have learned the dictum that ‘in unity there is strength’. Their organizational cohesion furnishes much of the answer not only to the economic well-being of the Chinese as a group but also to the persistence of their cultural patterns and values in an alien and sometimes unfriendly social environment. This is a community of interest as well, for the wealth accumulated by the successful business man is used in part to support a multiplicity of ethnic organizations: trade guilds, a powerful Chinese Chamber of Commerce, dialect associations, benevolent and charitable organizations, surname associations, religious groups for both men and women, sports associations and social clubs.

he then coined the term ‘desecularization’ (Entweltlichung). Indeed, a church becoming more like Christ necessarily had ‘to differ sharply from the world around it’, he quoted from Pope Paul VI. It had to ‘distance itself’, we could say ‘desecularize itself’. Jesus became human ‘not just to confirm the world in its worldliness and be its companion’ and then leave it as it was. No, a church that ‘settles in this world, is self-satisfied and conforms to the world’s standards’ contravened its founder’s mission, ‘to be an instrument of salvation, imbued with God’s word’ and thus ‘be not of the world’. The pope expressly made clear that necessary ‘desecularization’ also included the church’s charitable works and its ‘organization and institution’. For ‘a church freed from material and political burdens and privileges can devote itself to the whole world better and in a truly Christian way. […] It opens itself to the world, not in order to win people for an institution with its own claims to power, but to bring them to themselves.

A strategy—whether in companies or in life—is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about how you spend your time, energy, and money. With every moment of your time, every decision about how you spend your energy and your money, you are making a statement about what really matters to you. You can talk all you want about having a clear purpose and strategy for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it’s effectively implemented. How do you make sure that you’re implementing the strategy you truly want to implement? Watch where your resources flow—the resource allocation process. If it is not supporting the strategy you’ve decided upon, you run the risk of a serious problem. You might think you are a charitable person, but how often do you really give your time or money to a cause or an organization that you care about? If your family matters most to you, when you think about all the choices you’ve made with your time in a week, does your family seem to come out on top? Because if the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat, and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you’ll never become that person.

Lifestyle?” JP asks. “Do you ever cover charitable organizations? Because I have one that could really use some more people backing it.

*JESUS IN LONDON 'INASMUCH AS YE DID IT NOT—' If JESUS came to London, Came to London to-day, He would not go to the West End, He would come down our way; He'd talk with the children dancing To the organ out in the street, And say He was their big Brother And give them something to eat. He wouldn't go to the mansions Where the charitable live, He'd come to the tenement houses Where we ain't got nothing to give. He'd come so kind and so homely, And feed us with love and bread, And then He'd tell us how to behave, And then we'd mind what He said. In the warm, bright, West End churches They sing and preach and pray, They call us “Beloved brethren,” But they do not act that way; And when He come to the church door He'd call out loud and free, “You stop that preaching and praying And show what you've done for Me.” Then they'd say, “Oh, Lord, we have given To the poor both blankets and tracts, And we've tried to make them sober And we've tried to teach them facts. But they will sneak round to the drink shop And pawn the blankets for beer, And we find them very ungrateful— But still we persevere.” Then He would say, “I told you The time I was here before, That you were all of you brothers, All you that I suffered for. I won't go into your churches, I'll stop in the sun outside. You bring out the men, your brothers, The men for whom I died!” Out of our lousy lodgings, From arches and doorways about, They'd have to do as He told them, They'd have to call us out. Millions and millions and millions, Thick and crawling like flies, We should creep out to the sunshine And not be afraid of His eyes. He'd see what God's image looks like When men have dealt with the same— Wrinkled with work that is never done, Swollen and dirty with shame. He'd see on the children's foreheads The branded gutter-sign That marks the girls to be harlots, That dooms the boys to be swine. Then He'd say, “What's the good of churches When these have nowhere to sleep? And how can I hear you praying When they are cursing so deep? I gave My blood and My body That they might have bread and wine, And you have taken your share and theirs Of these good gifts of Mine!” Then some of the rich would be sorry, And all would be very scared; And they'd say, “But we never knew, Lord!” And He'd say, “You never cared!” And some would be sick and shameful Because they'd know that they knew, And the best would say, “We were wrong, Lord. Now tell us what to do!” I think He'd be sitting, likely, For someone 'ud bring Him a chair, With a common kid cuddled up on His knee And the common sun on His hair. And they'd be standing before Him, And He'd say, “You know that you knew. Why haven't you worked for your brothers The same as I worked for you? “For since you're all of you brothers, It's clear as God's blessed sun That each must work for the others, Not thousands work for one. And the ones that have lived bone-idle, If they want Me to hear them pray, Let them go and work for their livings— The only honest way! “I've got nothing new to tell you; You know what I always said. But you've built their bones into churches And stolen their wine and bread. You with My name on your foreheads, Liar, and traitor, and knave, You have lived by the death of your brothers, These whom I died to save.” I wish He would come and say it; Perhaps they'd believe it then, And work like men for their livings And let us work like men. Brothers? They don't believe it, The lie on their lips is red. They'll never believe till He comes again Or till we rise from the dead

A more coherent, if less charitable, explanation is that American Jewish elites remembered the Nazi holocaust before June 1967 only when it was politically expedient. Israel, their new patron, had capitalized on the Nazi holocaust during the Eichmann trial.43 Given its proven utility, organized American Jewry exploited the Nazi holocaust after the June war. Once ideologically recast, The Holocaust (capitalized as I have previously noted) proved to be the perfect weapon for deflecting criticism of Israel.

The problem is that people who are suffering do not get paid in thoughts and prayers. If you really want to effect actual change, you have to look into your arsenal of talents that you can sustain longer than a social media day. Can you sing? Can you write? Can you build a cabinet? Are you good at organizing networks of people? Are you charismatic and convincing enough to effectively phonebank for underfunded candidates? Are you a social recluse with deep pockets that can fund charitable organizations? Are you bad at everything?

Then the machine started to reel off infant-mortality rates and life-expectancy figures, sex ratios, types of diseases and their prevalence in the various strata of society, average incomes, the incidence of unemployment, per capita income as a ratio of total population in given areas, birth-tax and death-tax and the penalties for abortion and illegitimate birth; it talked about laws governing types of sexual congress, about charitable payments and religious organizations running soup kitchens and night shelters and firstaid clinics; about numbers and figures and statistics and ratios all the time, and Gurgeh didn’t think he picked up a word of it.

The fourth and final dimension of religious freedom in full is the right—both individually and as part of a larger religious community—to express religious beliefs freely in civil society and political life on a basis no less favorable than is accorded to non-religious expression. This aspect of religious freedom encompasses the right of religious individuals and groups to own and sell property, or to establish and run religious schools, charitable organizations, and other institutions of civil society. It includes the right to form political parties, or to make arguments in the public square, on the basis of religious teachings. This is the religious freedom of political and legal expression.

Karma works like this, you give to a charitable organization that helps 1,000 people live a better life with your gift, you get the good karma of the betterment of those 1,000 people. If your gift of $1,000 goes to a televangelist who may not want to help others, and he just buys a pair of alligator shoes, then there would be no karmic payment back. It is important to analyze the ACTUAL good an organization is doing, that you give money to.

Beneath the compulsion to over-give is the wound of undervaluing our own worth. When religion makes money the root of all evil, those of us who are spiritually inclined feel that it is greedy, selfish, or sinful to be prosperous. We may even feel like it is more spiritual or noble to shun material wealth completely. But as physical safety and stability are root chakra concerns (the first energy center at the base of your spine), when you don’t feel financially secure, you can’t cultivate the higher chakra gifts of creativity, joy, service, and self-actualization. Any “starving artist” or ascetic healer will tell you that worrying about their basic needs is far from conducive to their ability to work joyfully and effectively. Ironically, the world’s religious organizations are themselves profoundly wealthy. One only needs to look at their monuments to see that massive amounts of money are required to construct their institutions. The ordained leaders are either paid salaries or have their material needs completely met so that they can live lives of service. Their ability to be charitable also depends on their ability to amass funding. And yet, even while they require money to thrive, they often condemn their followers from desiring and acquiring it. Since Mother Earth as a Goddess represents living abundantly in Her physical paradise now, (rather than waiting to live in the spiritual paradise in the afterlife), condemning money is yet another way of minimizing and shaming all that is earthly and feminine. But Pachamama is here to remind you that it is rightful and holy for you to be wealthy, beloved, because the Divine itself is infinite creativity, expansion, and abundance. There is no shame in claiming your Divine inheritance, and there is no glory in denying yourself the Divine’s loving support in all ways—material and spiritual.

There are bubbles of agile in a sea of Gantt charts with predetermined solutions, dates, and spending predicted at the point of knowing the least, an annual, bottom-up financial planning process that takes six months of the year to plan and re-plan and focuses on output over outcomes. There are “drop dead dates” and “deadlines” (in most cases it’s not life or death); RAG (red, amber, green) statuses and change control processes; a change lifecycle with twenty mandatory artifacts, most with their own stage-gate governance committee; a traditional waterfall Project Management Office; sixty-page Steering Committee decks; project plans with the word “sprint” ten times in the middle; a lack of psychological safety; a performance appraisal model that incentivizes mediocrity (underpromise to overdeliver) and uses a Think Big, Start Big, Learn Slow approach. The good news, with a charitable intent, is that the organization wants to improve.

Then we have a program I’m very proud of and like very much. We’ll match any employee’s charitable contribution two to one. If you live in Santa Cruz, and you’re interested in a local group that works to keep the beaches clean, or to expand the city park along the seashore, and you give then $100, I’ll write a check for $200. At one point, we had it up to three or four to one. I said, ‘I’m going to keep raising the ratio until people start giving.’ We came back to two to one a few years ago. It’s like a benefit. I sign many checks along this line. “I just don’t know that companies know what to do in terms of ‘doing good,’ and frankly I’m averse to the guy whose picture is on the social pages with the cocktail in his hand at the opera because his company has given money to it. I think that’s somewhat tawdry. But I love the idea of backing our own employees. Occasionally I write a check to an organization that I wouldn’t dream of giving money to, but I have an employee who does, and who am I to say he’s wrong? Maybe he’s right. We have a deep relationship with our employees. In a small company, you have a real team. So if one of my employees decides to back something, we back it too.” It was all very personal, as was the role that Maytag saw the company playing in the community.

The Foundling Hospital was established in 1741 by a businessman and philanthropist named Thomas Coram as a children’s home for the “education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children.” He was moved to establish it by the sight of abandoned babies and young children starving and dying on the streets of London. Today, part of the site the Foundling Hospital stood on is a children’s playground near the world-famous Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. The Foundling Hospital itself has gone, but the charitable organization behind it still exists, now known as the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, or simply Coram.

One was the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group aimed at waging conservative fights in every state legislature in the country. From 1973 until 1983, the Scaife and Mellon family trusts donated half a million dollars to ALEC, constituting most of its budget. “ALEC is well on its way to fulfilling the dream of those who started the organization,” a Weyrich aide wrote to Scaife’s top adviser in 1976, “thanks wholly to your confidence and the tremendous generosity of the Scaife Family Charitable Trusts.

then, to present myself as just another immigrant, glad to be in the land where the pursuit of happiness was guaranteed in writing, which, when one comes to think about it, is not such a great deal. Now a guarantee of happiness—that’s a great deal. But a guarantee to be allowed to pursue the jackpot of happiness? Merely an opportunity to buy a lottery ticket. Someone would surely win millions, but millions would surely pay for it. It was in the name of happiness, I told my aunt, that I helped the General toward the next step in his plan, the creation of a nonprofit charitable organization that could receive tax-deductible donations, the Benevolent Fraternity of Former Soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

The Union of South Africa divided the functionality of government between Cape Town and Pretoria. Cape Town was the Administrative Capital and Pretoria served as the Legislative Capital. Consequently, many of the politicians divided their time between the two cities and there were always gala events in both cities. Lucia was the perfect hostess at home and the belle of the ball at Events of State and formal holiday parties. The dividing line between the “swells” and those of a lower standing was very apparent. The blacks were at the very bottom of the list and the privileged few were at the top. Apartheid was alive and well! The social structure was very much the same as it was in the American Deep South in Antebellum days and in both cases became accepted as normal. For Uncle Mannie and Aunty Lucia life was beyond good. They lived in a beautiful home and their every need was tended to by their servants, who were always treated well, but were never the less thought of as subservient to them. It was the established way of life and it was just the way it was. Written and unwritten rules regarding their interaction were strict but accepted and no one objected to them. Every day the commuter trains brought the black laborers into the city to work, mostly in the mines. The more privileged Caucasian men planed their ongoing business transactions and expansion in wealth at their exclusive clubs, while their wives socialized, organizing charitable events. Frequently to break the monotony of their daily lives they colluded clandestinely with lovers, thereby enhancing an otherwise affluent but shallow existence.

States were barred from financing their immigration systems with specific taxes on immigrants and transportation companies, leaving the continued existence of these state institutions to the general state fisc or the generosity of private charitable organizations interested in immigrant welfare and integration. The resource strain on states and charitable organizations placed enormous pressure on Congress to enact federal law.

The Knights of Columbus is an organization that comprises the Catholic men of faith. This group is highly respected among the Catholic fraternity and is highly known for its charitable actions.

An indication that greed reflects the perception rather than the reality of scarcity is that rich people tend to be less generous than poor people. In my experience, poor people quite often lend or give each other small sums that, proportionally speaking, would be the equivalent of half a rich person's net worth. Extensive research backs up this observation. A large 2002 survey by Independent Sector, a nonprofit research organization, found that Americans making less than $25,000 gave 4.2 percent of their income to charity, as opposed to 2.7 percent for people making over $100,000. More recently, Paul Piff, a social psychologist at University of California-Berkeley, found that "lower-income people were more generous, charitable, trusting and helpful to others than were those with more wealth." Piff found that when research subjects were given money to anonymously distribute between themselves and a partner (who would never know their identity), their generosity correlated inversely to the socioeconomic status. While it is tempting to conclude from this that greedy people become wealthy, an equally plausible interpretation is that wealth makes people greedy. Why would this be? In a context of abundance greed is silly; only in a context of scarcity is it rational. The wealthy perceive scarcity where there is none. They also worry more than anybody else about money. Could it be that money itself causes the perception of scarcity? Could it be that money, nearly synonymous with security, ironically brings the opposite? The answer to both these questions is yes. On the individual level, rich people have a lot more "invested" in their money and are less able to let go of it. (To let go easily reflects an attitude of abundance.) On the systemic level, as we shall see, scarcity is also built in to money, a direct result of the way it is created and circulated.

While I struggled with the menu, a handsome middle-aged guy from a nearby table came over to help. "You like sashimi? Cooked fish? Sushi?" he asked. His English was excellent. He was originally from Okinawa, he said, and a member of Rotary International. I know nothing about the Rotarians except that it's a service organization; helping befuddled foreigners order food in bars must fall within its definition of charitable service. Our service-oriented neighbor helped us order pressed sweetfish sushi, kisu fish tempura, and butter-sauteed scallops. Dredging up a vague Oishinbo memory, I also ordered broiled sweetfish, a seasonal delicacy said to taste vaguely of melon. While we started in on our sushi, our waitress- the kind of harried diner waitress who would call customers "hon" in an American restaurant- delivered a huge, beautiful steamed flounder with soy sauce, mirin, and chunks of creamy tofu. "From that guy," she said, indicating the Rotarian samaritan. We retaliated with a large bottle of beer for him and his friend (the friend came over to thank us, with much bowing). What would happen at your neighborhood bar if a couple of confused foreigners came in with a child and didn't even know how to order a drink? Would someone send them a free fish? I should add that it's not exactly common to bring children to an izakaya, but it's not frowned upon, either; also, not every izakaya is equally welcoming. Some, I have heard, are more clubby and are skeptical of nonregulars, whatever their nationality. But I didn't encounter any places like that. Oh, how was the food? So much of the seafood we eat in the U.S., even in Seattle, is previously frozen, slightly past its prime, or both. All of the seafood at our local izakaya was jump-up-and-bite-you fresh. This was most obvious in the flounder and the scallops. A mild fish, steamed, lightly seasoned, and served with tofu does not sound like a recipe for memorable eating, but it was. The butter-sauteed scallops, meanwhile, would have been at home at a New England seaside shack. They were served with a lettuce and tomato salad and a dollop of mayo. The shellfish were cooked and seasoned perfectly. I've never had a better scallop.

My Lord, It was very kind of you to send the lovely gift which is very useful now that the weather has turned. I am pleased to relate that the cashmere absorbed an application of black dye quite evenly so that it is now appropriate for mourning. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. Lady Trenear “You dyed it?” Devon asked aloud, setting the note on his desk with mixture of amusement and irritation. Reaching for a silver penholder, he inserted a fresh nib and pulled a sheet of writing paper from a nearby stack. That morning he had already written a half-dozen missives to lawyers, his banker, and contractors, and had hired an outside agent to analyze the estate’s finances. He grimaced at the sight of his ink-stained fingers. The lemon-and-salt paste his valet had given him wouldn’t entirely remove the smudges. He was tired of writing, and even more so of numbers, and Kathleen’s letter was a welcome distraction. The challenge could not go unanswered. Staring down at the letter with a faint smile, Deon pondered the best way to annoy her. Dipping the pen nib into the inkwell, he wrote, Madam, I am delighted to learn that you find the shawl useful in these cooler days of autumn. On that subject, I am writing to inform you of my recent decision to donate all the black curtains that currently shroud the windows at Eversby Priory to a London charitable organization. Although you will regrettably no longer have use of the cloth, it will be made into winter coats for the poor, which I am sure you will agree is a far nobler purpose. I am confident in your ability to find other ways of making the atmosphere at Eversby Priory appropriately grim and cheerless. If I do not receive the curtains promptly, I will take it to mean that you are eager for my assistance, in which case I will be delighted to oblige you by coming to Hampshire at once. Trenear Kathleen’s reply was delivered a week later, along with massive crates containing the black curtains.

Madam, I am delighted to learn that you find the shawl useful in these cooler days of autumn. On that subject, I am writing to inform you of my recent decision to donate all the black curtains that currently shroud the windows at Eversby Priory to a London charitable organization. Although you will regrettably no longer have use of the cloth, it will be made into winter coats for the poor, which I am sure you will agree is a far nobler purpose. I am confident in your ability to find other ways of making the atmosphere at Eversby Priory appropriately grim and cheerless. If I do not receive the curtains promptly, I will take it to mean that you are eager for my assistance, in which case I will be delighted to oblige you by coming to Hampshire at once. Trenear Kathleen’s reply was delivered a week later, along with massive crates containing the black curtains. My Lord, In your concern for the downtrodden masses, it appears to have escaped your mind to inform me that you had arranged for a battalion of workmen to invade Eversby Priory. Even as I write, plumbers and carpenters wander freely throughout the house, tearing apart walls and floors and claiming that it is all by your leave. The expense of plumbing is extravagant and unnecessary. The noise and lack of decorum is unwelcome, especially in a house of mourning. I insist that this work discontinue at once. Lady Trenear Madam, Every man has his limits. Mine happen to be drawn at outdoor privies. The plumbing will continue. Trenear

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. That is because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. I myself have experienced that intoxication. I was once a Corporal. By saying our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our men and women fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many of their bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas. But I will say this: No matter how corrupt and greedy our government and our corporations and our media and Wall Street and our religious and charitable organizations may become, the music will still be perfectly wonderful. If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC

Akshara Foundation is charity organization/ NGO in India. Our aim is to provide quality education for underprivileged children in Bangalore, India

Charitable organizations, by their very nature, provide an intangible, but quite powerful, incentive for donors to invest. It’s the opportunity for true self-fulfillment, a legacy and the experience of a lifetime—participation in something truly greater than themselves.