Anonymous Giving

The Torah says that the highest form of charity is when the giving is done anonymously. One gives for the opportunity to help someone else, without any expectation of social recompence. When we donate to charities via email or mail, we are practicing that.

When the donations are considerable, like millions, one is tempted to be repaid by some form of acknowledgment, such as a plaque on a wall. The great majority of such plaques record for prosperity the name of the donor. A tiny percentage may attribute the gift to “Anonymous.”

(There’s a great episode in Curb Your Enthusiasm about this. Click here.)

There’s another kind of charity – a common form – that is a bit more selfless than getting one’s name on a plaque. I’m thinking of donating one’s time and/or money to charitable causes that do not award donors with recognition. One performs this sort of charity because one wants the benefit of feeling good about contributing to a cause that is virtuous.

And then there is the sort of charity that is anonymous in the sense that neither the donor nor the donee knows one another – random acts of charity, such as helping a stranger change a tire or giving money to a panhandler.

If the random donation is significant, it has the capacity to brighten up someone’s day. And the recompense to the donor is seeing that moment in the eyes of the recipient. I’ve been doing this sort of giving ever since my personal income exceeded my spending, and I can avow from experience that there is a very substantial benefit to the donor, one that can equal or exceed the value of the gift.

I’m hardly alone in this sort of giving. Millions of people all over the world perform random acts of charity every day. Recently, in fact, videotaping such exchanges has become a trope on social media that is fun to watch. You can find at least a dozen new examples on YouTube every day.

Here are two examples:

Click here.

And here.

What I Believe: About People with Gender Dysphoria

And How the Woke Mob Is  Making a Mockery of Them 

In some ways, the transgender debate may be the most important cultural issue of this century. Certainly more important than ageism, xenophobia, and fat phobia. But it’s also more important than sexism, religious animosity, and even racism.

I say that because all the other debates are grounded in some level of shared reality. But transgenderism, as it is being promoted today, is based on an absolute and willful denial of reality. A denial that all rational defenders of the transgender agenda know to be false.

Let me step back for a moment to give you some perspective on my thinking…

I believe there is such a thing as gender dysphoria. I believe it is a real psychological condition that should be taken seriously. But before transgenderism became such a huge political issue, my only thoughts about it came from personal experience.

Longstanding acquaintances of mine had a daughter that began evincing symptoms of gender dysphoria at a young age. The parents struggled with not knowing how exactly to respond for many years. But they took it slowly, recognizing how common it is for young and pre-adolescent children to test out different socially recognized identities. Not just in gender, but in just about every other role, throughout their development. (As every parent knows, and as almost every study has shown, children’s personalities are not firmly established until after adolescence.)

Rather than nudge their daughter one way or the other, the parents took a neutral stance until she had finished high school. By the time she entered college, her transition was, for all intents and purposes, complete. He is today a happy, successful, and charming young man.

Much more recently, I was working on a project for a business I own that required weekly meetings with a team of four people. One of those people was a young man that looked every bit like a young man when we began the project. But gradually, as the weeks and months went by, he began to make small changes towards a more feminine appearance. At the beginning of his transition, I noticed that he was growing his hair, but that didn’t mean anything. And I was a little taken aback when I noticed that his fingernails were painted. But I knew an MMA fighter that painted his toes. By the time he began wearing a touch of makeup here and there, I suspected that something was going on. I wasn’t sure, but I was curious. I asked his manager, “What’s going on with Eric?” Being a younger person with younger person sensibilities, he looked at me like I was crazy.

By that time, we had finished the project and so I had no reason to be back in those offices until nearly a year later. When I did get back, I was introduced to Erica, an attractive and capable young woman. My confusion was gone. I looked forward to working with her in the future.

Those were two good experiences – positive for me and for the people who had transitioned. But I don’t think they are typical of most of what we are seeing today. A disturbingly large number of transgendered celebrities seem to identify more with drag queens than they do with women. And that is one of the things that perplexes me. If gender dysphoria is a real thing, it means that a transgendered woman wants to be a woman, not a man in drag.

These people are imposters. Attention seeking oddballs that are taking advantage of the transgender movement to claim their fifteen minutes of fame. And they are, in my view, an insult to the few people that have true gender dysphoria and deserve our respect and consideration.

A few examples:

* Here’s Dylan Mulvaney, the new icon of transgender woman and her view of what a woman should be.

* Here’s someone that has a psychological condition that needs a new name.

* Here’s a biological man doing what I suppose he thinks is a satire of transgenderism in front of a panel that doesn’t know if he’s serious.

I’ve got a lot more to say on the subject, but that’s enough for today. In future missives, I’ll:

* Give you the factual data on gender dysphoria over the years.

* Explain why the debate about pronouns is actually about free and forced speech.

* Talk about the insanity of allowing transwomen to compete against biological women in any sport, including chess.

* Argue that the transgender movement is not trivial and should not be dismissed… and why, in fact, it is a critical issue about the future of freedom in the “modern” world.

When You Know It’s Unjust

One of the challenges of charity is that there are all sorts of nebulous aspects to supporting worthy causes. Among the most common are the many ways they can have unintended consequences. There is also the question of fraud – from non-profit institutions that spend too much on themselves, to those that don’t do all of what they say they do, to those that donate money, intentionally or not, to liars and scamsters.

I have an abiding interest in charitable giving. Not because I think it is virtuous, but because I see it as a contributing factor to being a happy person. I also believe that it exists in everyone as a species survival instinct. It’s part of our DNA.

Of the various causes I contribute to, one that I feel strongly about is reversing wrongful convictions that result in incarceration or capital punishment. As a result, I’ve been interested in the Innocence Project since it was created about 30 years ago. I’ve also worked directly with incarcerated felons, which smartened me up in several ways. For example, it opened my eyes to the fact that for every unjustly convicted and imprisoned innocent person, there are probably ten that claim to be innocent but are not.  Twice, I’ve had the disappointment of spending considerable time and money trying to reverse a conviction that I eventually realized was just.

Which is to say that when you get into the business of charity, good intentions are not enough. You want to be doing the right thing for the right people.

The good news is that when DNA is involved, the chance of being wrong is reduced to nearly zero. And that’s why, however much I would prefer to work directly with individuals, I am giving to non-profits like the Innocence Project that have the resources to bring to court cases that have DNA evidence. (You’d be amazed at how many innocent people sit in jail today for whom there is DNA evidence that exculpates them, except that the DAs don’t want to reopen their cases.)

DNA plays a key role in the work of the Innocence Project. The founders, young lawyers at the time, realized that if DNA technology could be used to convict people guilty of crimes, it could also be used to prove that people that had been wrongfully convicted were innocent.

If you’d like to support the work of the Innocence Project’s DNA efforts, you can read more here.

“Poor Wreck That I Am”

Over the past 22 years, I’ve written a fair amount about my experiences with clinical level depression and anxiety, as well as the normal range of self-doubts and self-recriminations that any former altar boy is heir to. I’m proud to say that these pieces have been helpful to many, if I can extrapolate from the dozens of positive comments I’ve received.

I was talking to RT, a friend, teacher, and student, this morning. We were talking about how having a fundamentally negative view of oneself becomes a sort of emotional spring that is always trying to pull one back to negative thoughts and expectations of failure. Even years after one has achieved great success.

Later, this afternoon, I came across the journal entry below. It was written by John L’Heureux, an American novelist and poet that spent the first part of his career as a priest. Just days before his ordination, he writes about how unworthy he feels about the challenge before him. I thought it was a particularly good – and oddly comforting – articulation of that state of mind.

“Thinking about ordination as I do all the time, I find only one thing disturbs me and I don’t know how to formulate it so that it doesn’t sound like the old ‘I’m not worthy’ plea. (Of course you’re not worthy; it would be impertinent of you to wonder if you were.) I have no doubts that I want to be a priest, no uncertainty as to why. But it pains and embarrasses me more than I can say that what I will bring to that altar for ordination is this nauseating sack of guts: selfish, small, lecherous; a mind like a whorehouse; a tongue like a longshoreman’s; a soft mousy body that seeks always its own comforts, a will deluded by hyperactive desires. Poor wreck that I am. Can I give over to God’s service only so little, and that so badly damaged, so in and out of sin and desire? I shall have to let my grotesqueness testify to his mercy. God help me.”

 Aww, Isn’t That Cute!

I know what you are thinking… Ford is reading a bedtime story to his grandkids.

Not exactly. It was lunchtime. We are at a hotel in LA. The kids were acting up and the adults had not yet finished their food. So, I entertained them with one thing I was sure they would be interested in. I am commentating on an animated, made-for-children short movie on the many varieties and purposes of poop.

The Open-Carry Question

Yesterday, in downtown Pasadena, I saw a fight break out between two Hispanic “parking enforcement” officers and a young Asian man. The young man, someone said, had flicked a lit cigarette at one of them after he found that his car had been ticketed.

The fight was short-lived. Three rounds at 30 seconds each. At one point, the official-looking duo had wrestled the aggressor to the ground. But lacking any apparent martial arts skills, they allowed him to wrestle himself up to a standing position, which allowed him to continue fighting.

Passersby stopped to watch. Someone from across the street was shouting. I wasn’t sure what he was saying, but he seemed to be rooting for the Asian kid. Closer to the action, people stood and watched, mute, trying to figure out what was going on or, like me, just observing. Two more rounds ensued, and then the brawl came to an uneventful end. The ticket police brushed themselves off and the kid walked away.

This morning, I read that last week at a Burger King drive-through in Ellenwood, GA, a customer who received the wrong sauce with his order barged into the restaurant and started beating people. A 16-year-old employee gunned him down.

All of it got me thinking. If California was an open-carry state, would that fight over a parking ticket have turned into a gun battle? If Georgia had more gun controls, would that sauce-crazed bully have escaped with his life?

These questions come to mind because Florida is about to become an open-carry state. Will that result in fewer crimes, as the NRA says? Or will it mean more shootouts at our fast-food restaurants?

I believe the rationale behind open-carry laws is that the presence of guns on hips will reduce the likelihood of violent confrontations. Reasonable people, seeing a gun on the hip of someone they have a problem with, will tend to talk it out, rather than get into a scuffle. But is that a fact? What does the evidence say about it?

More on this on Friday, after I’ve done some research.