Friday, August 14, 2009

All for a few dollars

Suppose somebody makes me this offer: "If you give $100 to a poor person, I'll give you $200."

Would my action, then, be a moral action?

Yet that is exactly what western donors are urging us to do: to pretend to be altruistic, when we are being supremely egotistic.

A moral action must be performed by an agent who has no ulterior motive: otherwise, it is sheer corruption.

And that is what we are: massively corrupt, with the donors corrupting us daily.
Mind you, I'm not saying that the mere act of making money is corrupting: far from it. Trade and industry are dignified pursuits. The western donor corrupts us by making us seem altruistic, by making us lie to ourselves and to others.

The NGO-wallahs know, deep down, that they have been corrupted in the worst possible manner: the man who takes a bribe and does not pretend to be honest is far less corrupt than the donation-receiving NGO-wallah. Self-deception is the supreme corruption.

Then comes pride in your corruption: the command of so much wealth, the adulation of other members of society, the prizes received…all conspire to elevate you above the rest of humanity. We begin to take pride in our fallen nature, like Satan.

"Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth." But our 'philanthropy' consists precisely in letting everyone know what we are doing – noble deeds, generous acts, all for the most selfish and self-centred of reasons.

The Satanisation of our souls is complete. We have sold away our most precious possession – and for what? For a few moments of glory? For a few dollars? In a cost-benefit analysis we would appear supremely idiotic.

The worst cases are those that exhort us to go against our own civilization: for a few dollars, they denounce our culture and our traditions, our sacred and our profane heritage…all for a few dollars.

Take Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB). Do we need to be reminded that corruption is evil by Berliners? Doesn't the Muslim ethical code serve the purpose? Why do we need an alien civilization to instill in us what we can learn better from our own? And aren't those serving the TIB corrupt to the highest extreme? They have given away not only their conscience but their very own heritage.

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