descending from justice

I have long had an obsession with the idea that charity is primarily a legitimization of wealth.

Now this may come from being overly focused on money. On how someone could possibly deserve so much and others not. And how that is impossible to fit with the idea that a human life has so much inherent value.

My concern not so much the money itself, but the share of resources it represents, what some get to do and others don't. And perhaps my being so different and not realizing it, I don't understand some of the intangible balancing factors to this access, like community.

What I do see is this conflation of justice (particularly so called social justice) and charity. As if charity makes up for not having justice. Or that somehow charity makes the result just.

If it is a matter of justice it is a matter of what is right, what should be, correcting a wrong, repairing damage, making whole and how things should function. It is discernible, it is not based on who tells the best story and its parameters exist regardless of whether they are acknowledged or even if no one sees it.

Charity is about being seen, it is about story, it is voluntary, it means someone has more and someone has less. And by the one who has more giving, it legitimizes their position of having more.

For some, it is about making things better and trying to make up for the injustice. This is not really about them, but it is about has power over them too, once again through money.

For some, it lets them express that they are more and get to be good and thanked for giving, eventhough the only really defining feature of this group is that they have more. And what it comes down to, because they are the ones with the resources to give, they get to decide what and who counts.

Now, I assume what is just is what should be and I have been likely overly concerned with money and all it represents and what I see in charity is often not being helped, as is claimed, but being used.

Power and vulnerability distort, they create the space to tell people what the charity being given them is. It gives the power to say they are helping instead of using others to legitimize their position to make the decisions and have more.

In the name of charity I am told who I am, I am told who represents me and it is decided for me what I should see in them, I am told I am lucky that the less I have is not even less than it is. I am told the years of suffering and work I put in, the limits I pushed when I shouldn't have, to be good, to be decent, to make things better, to do the things that are required of me as a contributing human are unworthy. And that others should have the power to decide for me, and that it is right that I should be less.

This morning I was knitting the word “de-enlightment” as it feels like what this moment is.

And more epstein news and webs of influence gets released, this list, almost this ladder of descent from justice compiled in my head.

Justice

Charity

Helped

Used

Owned

Removed

And now one more thing to knit out of me.