As last year(!) drew to a close, I found myself making like a BC Liberal flack and wearing out the <delete> key in my inbox. Both my wife and I, in our retirement, have taken it upon ourselves to be active in the community and beyond, in aid of creating a social and economic system that works on the principle of inclusion and that works toward a model of ecological regeneration, she from the standpoint of Christian obligation (as well as a generous nature), and I from the standpoint of a morality evolved through secular readings and observations. Our main focus is on our local community, which, it’s plain, is in need of an awakening to current circumstances and to a rebuild foundation for economic activity and reward, but she has ventured as far as Kenya with a women’s missions group, and we both maintain links to both national and international groups seeking to redress the worst (at first) of the world’s ills.

The sad parts that, once one has established a link to an organization, it seems that the relationship becomes one of lifetime support. My inbox has offered me more opportunities to donate in the last couple of weeks than I could ever hope to match, and there are many serial “offenders”, people who remind me several times daily about upcoming deadlines for tax receipts, or opportunities to meet matching donation quotas. The language has gotten progressively more florid as the deadlines approach, tugging ever harder at the heartstrings and guilt pangs to ensure the survival of each and every progressive social and ecologically-focused organization ready to vanish into the ether without my paltry donation.

I guess I can be a hard-hearted bastard when I need to: long ago, I learned to say a firm “No, thank you” based on the principle of being an active reader, seeker and link-follower. I can find the people with whom I need to connect to lend support and don’t need to be solicited with cold calls of one kind or another to prompt me, lest I forget to feed the machine: we do, of course, also get solicitations through Canada Post and via the phone, and my constant refrain when called upon, boils down to “don’t call me, I’ll call you: the best way to get left off the donations list is to ask.”

None of us can do it all, and it is precisely because we don’t seem to act in concert a good part of the time that concentrations of money an power find so ready a lever in the mechanisms of our current society, but I rue the day when we have a superstructure on the scale of the United Way for apportioning money donated to social, political and economic causes. Organizations of that nature seem to become self-focused and look after the organization itself before tending to the needs of the component causes. There is also a multiplicity of approaches that exist to deal with the inequity and iniquity of our current circumstances, some focused in the political realm, some purely ecological, some social initiatives, some squarely aimed at economic levers. I’m good at deciding where to put my time, money and words, and I don’t want people tugging at my sleeve at every corner, upsetting my internal harmony. I also know how fortunate I am in the circumstances of my birth, upbringing, career, cultural and social life, and to sense that my fortune should be everybody’s fortune, but please, a little decorum.