Another Guilty Viewpoint; shiver me timbers and get off your ice

*re-titled to better reflect my long history of class, taste, and something which eludes me at the moment

Many diseases are seriously annoying conditions.  Many can be debilitating, very painful, fatal, and otherwise life altering.  No feeling person wants others to experience these things.

I have great disdain for seeing others in pain.  Even when they have it coming.  I just don't like it.  But, I do not think walking for miles and miles, or dumping ice water on my head and making sure everyone sees me do these things will take the pain and disease away from others.

I think if I became a science and math ace, learned all I could about biology and organic chemistry, and set myself up to do hard core research on the cause and characteristics of a disease, I'd have a far better chance at finding a way to prevent it than by any tricks and speeches.

I understand the arguments.  Big charity has a monopoly on the market.

If I had the resources to pay someone I considered really sharp and a great trouble shooter and problem solver for a year, and enough to supply this scientist all the lab resources needed during that time,  I'd stand a good chance of helping to speed up the finding of a cure for the chosen disease.

Also, doing it on my own without permission would mean that, for tax purposes, I probably would not get credit.  Yet if I pour ice on my head and give some cash to a charity with big PR and IRS approval, I get credit.   But that outfit is no more likely, probably less likely, to find a real cure or preventative than my hypothetical independent researcher.

Just another of the flaws of our tax system, and how it serves to control; punishing some, rewarding others.  Big charity has little incentive to actually eradicate their disease.  Though they are painted as altruistic, they are big business.  It is an industry.  Fundraising for any purpose in the non-profit jungle is an industry.  Imagining that there is not corruption and that government is the best judge of who deserves charitable dollars, and who deserves a tax break based on those dollars, is as crazy as imagining that ice water being poured over your head will do anyone any good.

I feel guilty.  I'm sorry.  I have always found most charity and fund raising for them to be offensive, intrusive, nonsensical venues for people to draw attention to themselves under a shroud of altruism which puts them off limits to critique, and lands them the status of wonderful, caring person.  Look at me, I'm so good and wonderful.  I have ice water dumped on me and look at me.
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Boy the guilt is working on me here.  I'm sorry.  I knew a guy who did some research on his own.  Hospitals ended up buying his equipment for studying the blood.  He thought current practices at the time were primitive and not what they should be so he developed his own methods and equipment.   He was livid about the way these charities run and the way cures are avoided.

I'm sure he never gave another dime to the cancer outfit.  Don't believe this man, WW, would have ever been involved in any look at me stunt that had nothing to do with actually finding a cure or directly helping those in the throes of the disease.

Edit: I neglected to mention that he lost his wife to cancer and then became obsessed with learning all he could about it.  The man was truly a genius and a very rare sort of individual.  His research lead him to discover that the cancer society and the like were big bureaucracies which he felt retarded the progress toward a cure.  People point to what they see as progress, and "the good" done by many such outfits.  Walter could show how this is like being thrown a crumb as the real advancements are stonewalled.

He was far enough advanced in his studies and such that he actually personally worked with people in the grips of terminal cancer, and had some cooperation with University of Miami research.

I go to a gas station and step into the convenience store for a coffee.  Then I'm asked if I want to give more money to whatever Big Charity outfit they are pushing this week.  No.  It is rude to charge me $4 a gallon for gas then hit me up for money you are allegedly giving to a charity who is allegedly on the cutting edge and going to cure some kind of cancer right away.  Do I look like I trust you or the charity you rode in on?  No.\

Ever since my friends (or acquaintances--very few in Miami were honestly friends to anyone. Very fickle and self serving bunch)  in elementary school went around on Halloween collecting money for UNICEF and then threw away the official looking containers and kept the cash for themselves, I've been skeptical of fund raisers.

It's like this situation in Missouri.  There are many people who have a vested interest in dragging out the chaos as long as possible.  You think Jesse or Al actually want a nation where one is treated according to the content of his character and not color of his skin, or his gender, or sexual whatever?
That's why they jump in and spout made up stories before the facts are out and certainly before they know any details.  They only want to know the convenient details which serve their ends.  Truth is a bother.

Perpetual problems must be cultivated and preserved. That is what we have here.  And if they can convince people that to be compassionate you have to do the stuff they dream up, well they are in for a lucrative future.

I'm sorry I can't get excited about these things.  If only I could watch and exclaim, "You go, Girl!!!" You do that ice head challenge and look at you!  What a saint you are.  By the way, you look great in a wet T shirt, especially when the water poured over you was from the ice bucket challenge.  Double barreled fun, if you ask me.

I'm going to lose all my friends.  The You Go Girls are going to you go away.  And everyone will say, "That heartless bastard won't do the ice water dump or walk around the track, or wear ribbons,  and would only shave his head if someone was going to immediately and directly use his hair for a good reason.  Bastard doesn't like 'you go, girl'. So what's with that?"  Solidarity is kind of not there in this anti-solidrinosc mind.  I'll solidarinosc with only a trusted few, not the legions of parrots and look at me saint cluelessnesses.

All these things do something for someone.  Are they the only way to improved life?  Are they the most effective path to curing sadism or totalitarianism or shingles?  Evidence weighs toward the contrary.