1/3: Because of long-running situations and lately developments, I am reminded of a time back around 2007 or so when I was attending an old, well-to-do Episcopal Church in a fairly bustling, growing college town. I was in a discussion group class thing with upper middle-class professionals, including college professors and two NGO execs, and the topic often came up that centered on the concept of "Think globally, act locally". Very chic, hip bumper sticker, that was/is. Anyway, they knew I...
2/3: ...was one of the poors, and the one thing the group, to a one, never brought up was how they as a group or individually help locally. Even more/less, they balked at the idea of their having to pay for anything to help, because it always wound up in discussion that others, i.e., "the rich" or "the government", should do it, and that was because they all but one thought of themselves as "struggling". Maybe they did internally mentally but none of them were struggling financially. One day...
3/3: ...for kicks I floated the math that if each of them contributed to me $25/month for 12mos., I could pay my average Medicare coinsurance every year (Back then it was just at about $3K.) and not run up debt that ate into rent, car/gas, groceries, kids' school supplies and medical copays, etc. There were 10 of them. For the cost of one night of cheap dining out per month, they could help one person out and make a real difference.
The nopes were 9 and all of them were nervous-defensive.
4/3: My direct #life #experience and #observation is that most folks, old or young or inbetween, at least in the US, a) desperately prefer the needy to be non-local to them, b) handled conveniently and quietly by someone else, and c) are "armchair quarterbacks" when it comes to the proverbial rubber meeting the road and really only get motivated with they feel the pressure of communal zeitgeist "forcing" them to help.