The Question of Charity and Reality.

I just received a piece of junk mail in the post. It was a glossy leaflet produced by an animal charity which said Will you help ease a donkey’s pain today? It was accompanied by a picture of a donkey, collapsed and in distress. That sort of thing tugs at the heart strings; it’s meant to, and so it should.

But earlier I’d received an email from the campaign group Avaaz, claiming that their very existence is under threat and asking for donations to fund a stronger legal team. Two requests for money in a matter of hours, so now I need to ask questions:

Where do you start in deciding how much to give to charities and how much to keep for your own needs? And how can you know whether your money is going to fund what the organisation claims to fund? I’ve heard many stories over the years of corruption in charitable bodies, of donations going into the pockets of those not averse to theft by any means and from any source. But how do you know that some of those stories are not generated by Establishment propaganda? How do you know they’re not lies - or at least distortions of the truth - because you’d have to be pretty stupid not to realise that the Establishment is well prepared to engage in propaganda in order to protect the powerful and maintain the status quo?

How can you know? What do you do? Who do you choose to believe?

Ancient wisdoms and the cutting edge of science both tell us that the world in which we live is effectively a hologram. Nothing is real, they say; it’s all an illusion so none of it really matters. They say that the only true reality is consciousness.

Ah, but one of the many pots into which consciousness dips its receptive tentacles is suffering, and suffering is what it feels in consequence. So suffering is real, right? That means you can’t just switch off.

Back to the beginning, and a further drop in regard for the creature known as Man.