While sitting in my favorite public house over a pint and the Daily Herald, I overheard the noisy, excited discussion of some women who were planning to shave their heads.
Now that’s not a sentence you read every day.
You see, it appears they were planning a “Half-way to St. Patrick’s Day” party in support of St Baldrick’s Foundation. At said party, they were determined to shave their heads in solidarity with children suffering from the ravages of cancer.
One woman loudly proclaimed for all and sundry to hear, “I’ll shave my head anywhere, any time, if it helps one child with cancer!”
Well, that got me thinking.
We’ve all seen this kind of thing before. The recent ALS Ice Bucket Challenge comes immediately to mind, as do selfies of prominent celebrities holding signs saying “Bring back our girls!” to protest the kidnapping of 276 girls and young women by Boko Haram which were plastered all over the media in the wake of that event.
Obviously, the idea behind such—for want of a better word—stunts, is to raise awareness for the plight of others in need.
That’s fine.
Having worked for, as well as served on the board of some non-profit organizations (NPOs), I can tell you that NPO’s are increasingly under pressure to maintain their shrinking endowments in this dismal economy. Household incomes are down, and so are charitable contributions. Take a look at your favorite charity’s Form 990’s for the last few years and you’ll see for yourself. Compounding what is for many charities a truly existential problem, is an increase in apathy, cynicism, and crisis fatigue which make getting people’s attention difficult.
As a result of the Ice Bucket Challenge, the ALS Association made over $40 million in one month, a sum that dwarfs what they brought in the prior fiscal year. As for Bring Back Our Girls, nothing much has happened.
As usual, if you made it this far you’re wondering , “So, what’s your point?”
My point is that I fear our society’s penchant for be-ribboned, bumperstickered, selfie-posting activism in support of this or that cause is becoming just a fashionable thing to do. It has more to do with letting others know how concerned I am about my cause and less to do with actually helping in any material way.
Slapping a pink ribbon on my lapel does not equate to helping stamp out breast cancer if doing so is nothing more than a narcissistic exercise to show people I have the correct views and support the correct causes. Worse than that, it becomes a vehicle of guilt-manipulation which says to all who notice it, “Why aren’t you on-board with this? What’s wrong with you? Do you want more women to die?”
As with all things it comes down to the condition of our hearts. What a beautiful thing it is to see a mom and dad, or sister and brother shave their heads because their child or sibling is suffering from cancer treatments. It is a show of love and support that says, we are yours and you are ours, no matter what. We are in this together.
I have no idea if the woman in the pub has or knows a child suffering from cancer. I can’t say, and I do not judge her. I guess I just wonder what ever happened to:
Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
~Matthew 6:1-4 NIV
Amen brother!! I just went to the grocery store for eggs…yep! they all had flippin’ PINK RIBBONS on them! EGGS for crying out loud! This is beginning to have the opposite effect (at least on me), I wanted to put them back and buy different eggs that didn’t have pink ribbons, but every brand had some kind of SUPPORT THIS, or DON’T FORGET THAT, sticker on them. When I decide to support a charity, I do so with thought for how that money gets spent. Does it in fact, go to the charity, or, as in the case of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, to an enormous marketing campaign that deems a product better than another because it’s supporting breast cancer research. If all that money actually went to breast cancer research, we would have found a cure by now! I’m sorry if I’m a bit vehement about this subject, but just like in politics, the bulk of humanity has stopped thinking for itself and just follows the pink brick road. I’ll stop now.
I did not participate in the Ice Bucket Challenge, at least in part because I did not want to be manipulated. It’s like those Facebook posts which say, “It’s easy to SAY you love Jesus, but will you share this post?” (If not, you must not REALLY love Jesus.) This ‘Selfie Activism’ is much more about myself and my desire to LOOK LIKE I’m involved and making a difference than it is about ACTUALLY making a difference. Good points, Rob!