If you won the lottery...

er...if you read up through the posts, the initial source of all this talk about guilt was relating to you saying:

You then went on to explain

Twisting words by any chance? This has nothing to do with seeing beggars on street corners or watching adverts about children starving in Africa and feeling sorrow/pity/guilt as a result and never has been. By checking the quoted posts I was quite clearly stating that I do not feel guilty about wasting my money on things that I obviously do not need - but probably should.

This is because as you quite clearly stated yourself it is "not their(so therefore our) fault" that we have been conditioned in this way. You told me that it was not my fault, and how can I be guilty if something is my fault?Especially considering I was the one who adressed the situation here.

The point that I've been arguing is that you can't grill someone for donating to animal charities if you waste the majority of what you earn on needless shite anyway. As you say, I've been "conditioned from birth to be a consumer".

Also, considering the dictionary states "A member of the genus Homo and especially of the species H. sapiens" I'd say I'd deffinitely still be human regardless, even though I didn't in anyway implie I agreed with any of that in the first paragraph.

According to you the reason people won't do so is because "People are conditioned to look down on those around them that are not consuming as much as they should".

Righto then! People should not give aid to the third world because they will be looked down upon? I think it's something to look upto myself. If I knew of someone that was giving a large proportion of their income to charity and not spending it on pointless valubles I'd look upto them myself.

Aren't you contradicting yourself there, because surely this applies to the rich aswell? The rich have to consume as much as they can, otherwise people will look down on them as they are conditioned to do so. YEAH! that's why the rich shouldn't give any of their money away!!! Not that I agree like.

I think that the rich should give a lot of their money away, but a lot of them are not doing so.

I'm not telling/advising anyone to give all their hard earned cash to charity I just think that for anyone who has bought a load of pointless shit over the course of their life, to gun someone for wanting to give to an animal charity is slightly hypocritical - and was just trying to make anyone who did think outside the box a bit.

I've rambled on a bit here like, but I love a bit of an argument/debate.

Aslong as Mike does.

Some quite interesting points brought up here.

I find it quite distasteful that governments and big businesses... and indeed the 'rich' find it so easy to wave a moral flag in times of crisis, and expect their already highly taxed citizens to foot the bill for real causes while they plunder the rest of the world for the benefit of a few.

If tony blair stood in front of you right now, handed you a pound coin which is money you earned and were TAXED on, and this pound represents your TAX and give you the option to either give that pound coin to the tsunami fund, .... or to pay for a bullet that will kill someone in iraq in order to secure our oil supply for the next 20 years .... what would you do?

Exactly. you would take the former option.

Unfortunately we live in a world where the government FIRST takes your tax money and kills innocent people and invades countries with it. Then when a real humanitarian crisis happens and it discovers it has no money... gives the people a call on the 'guilt trip hotline' and expects them to THEN pay for the real issues a second time.

Im fully behind charitable causes - but i think its quite sick that people at the poorer end of the scale : US, arent even allowed a few extra pounds in our back pockets without feeling guilty that we arent handing it back to someone else again.




And before anyone totally misinterprets what im saying - NO, im not begrudging anyone charity at all.

Dunno why everyone wants to stay in the north east or indeed the UK at all.

I'd be off to another country like a shot for sure ...... Or at least spend alot of time jetting around the world