This. So much This.
Illustration by Tara Jacoby
Every now and then I get reminded of the importance of story telling; or we can call them illustrative examples. This story reminded me of that, mainly because it clearly represents two of the things I have been thinking about recently: the things I find so wrong and so disheartening about charity work (and poverty alleviation in particular) as well as the exactly thing I fear most about the Effective Altruism movement.
Things that are fucked up and wrong: victim blaming, nonsense goals and mission statements, strong leadership that is wrong leadership, silencing of relevant leaders, over emphasis on acquiring more funding (mainly because there never feels like enough to go around) and on and on the list goes
Things I fear for EA: becoming the crazy white dudes in a conference room proposing an exciting new study on people we don't know and don't understand. Because surely a study will solve this problem; never mind that the study itself is irrelevant and dehumanizing.