Drowning in cold water

Right, so. I don't quite know why this is bugging me so much -- wait, scratch that, I do, and I will address it below.

Let me get a couple things out of the way up front:

I am fully aware of how devastatingly horrible ALS is
I know how the challenge works
I'm glad that so much money has been raised to fund the science necessary to a cure and the ALS Association is, apparently, very good about the way it uses money
Perhaps most importantly, I am not against doing the challenge

These things being said, however, I'm really rather disgusted by the way it's become a mini-polarization machine. When it comes to this issue, pretty much the entirety of the Internet has become "don't read the comments" territory.  On the one hand, if you point out what you might see as an issue with it, you're wrong and you don't care about/hate people with ALS and their families (and probably puppies, kittens, and babies, you evil bastard). On the other, if you embrace the challenge, you don't care about the environment, you're seeking attention, you're caught up in a trend and you're doing something that's basically the next step up from "slacktivism," and you'd apparently suffer dumping water over your head to give less money to a worthy cause.

I should hope obviously, neither of these is the case.  I believe the people who are doing the challenge have big hearts and open wallets (in the charitable-contribution sense).  I think they want to do the right thing and make people aware that this is an area of research that could use more financial support, and it's a creative and fun way to do it.  I love the people who are doing it, because they're caring folks (the ones I know, anyway, and barring celebrities because they are by definition attention seekers).

That does not mean that there aren't problems with this, and I only offer them up in the spirit of examining our motives individually and as a society.

One of the problems I see comes from the "calling-out" aspect.  Once you take the challenge, you're supposed to "call out" or "nominate" three other people to do it, too.  Here's the thing with that: whether you see it or not, it's a subtle social pressure.  People see that you've been called on to either dump-and-donate or just straight up donate a significantly higher sum of money.  Let's suppose that a "nominee" is living paycheck-to-paycheck, barely making ends meet.  That $10 s/he spends to dump water over their head might severely impact their budget (and don't you dare point out that it's only a nominal amount of money; I've been in that place and, let me tell you, it's an enormous stressor when you don't have the cash to put gas in your tank to get to work).  At the same time, s/he doesn't want to look like a jerk in front of people if they don't do the challenge.  The thing of it is, you may not know just how strapped for cash someone is when you "call them out."  You could be putting someone in a miserable position.

I also have to wonder how many people did this precisely because they were called out -- would they have done it on their own otherwise?  Sure, it's fun to make yourself look ridiculous in public (I do it all the time), but would you, of your own accord, choose to do it if someone hadn't "challenged" you to?  I suspect the answer is "no" for a lot of people.  So, you're sort of pushing someone into doing something, maybe.  Maybe the cash is nominal to them, and they don't mind taping themselves being silly, and that's great if that's the case.  And sure, a lot of people simply aren't going to give money of their own accord, and that's sad in and of itself, because we're here to help each other.  I'd like to think that more folks are more charitable than I realize, though, because despite the fact I'm not Christian I have always remembered this:

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:1-4)

In this case, yes, I know people are intentionally doing silly things in the spirit of encouraging other people to do the same silly things in a spirit of good faith, fun and kind-heartedness.  This is not how I choose to practice charity (publicly, that is), but that's me and not you out there in the 'tubes necessarily. I'm not the person for public, or even semi-public, spotlight when it comes to how I feed my heart. I'm also not the one who's going to force someone to be "altruistic." I can encourage, I can speak, but my personal morality has an issue with out-and-out saying to someone publicly "Hey, do this for a good cause! And don't forget to show us!"

And speaking of "minimal," I've read a lot of reactionary complaints about how the amount of water being wasted on this is "minimal."  Well, just like the cash thing, that's a relative statement, isn't it? What's "minimal" to me or to you might be a real gift to someone in a different position. In the case of basic environmental justice, each bucket that is dumped (and ohgod yes I know some people use pool water, etc.) is water that could have been used to water vegetables (and yes I'm sure some people have found a way to do this) to feed people, or given as drink to people who are suffering a lack of potable water. There's a drought on in parts of this nation, if you weren't aware; and even if it weren't here, there are a whole heck of a lot of folks in the world who don't have it nearly as good in terms of water, let alone money, as we have it in the States. "Minimal" amounts of things add up pretty quickly, as we've seen by the enormous slew of money raised by this fundraiser. Part of the problem, though, is that the "minimal" amounts of water add up, too, and could do a hell of a lot more immediate good in other ways. We've become very wasteful in our collective relative comfort.

This speaks to a broader issue for me: considering the very roots of problems and focusing on fixing them, rather than band-aiding the problems themselves, and shaking ourselves out of the complacency that that collective comfort has lulled so many of us into.  Some things, like genetic disorders, there's nothing else you can do but raise funds and apply them properly to the advancement of science, and I get that. But what about all these fundraisers for different kinds of cancer and for other diseases that have been proven to have at least partial environmental causes? I found it rather funny (not ha-ha funny, but funny peculiar, as my fifth-grade teacher used to say) that at the same time I was rolling all this around in my head, I read an article about how DuPont wants the standards of toxic material cleanup eased so that it doesn't have to spend as much money removing hazardous (and proven carcinogenic) pollutants from sites in New Jersey. Why don't we have a fundraiser to, I don't know, hire a bevy of lawyers to force change in environmental law? Why aren't we having public conversations about that? (In this case, at least for now, the DEP/EPA are sticking to their rigorous standards, but the cynic in me feels that it's only a matter of time before they back down in the face of stupid-large sums of money.) Why not a fun-run where the cost of entry is at least one old piece of e-waste, which is something the DEP is raising its focus on because of the hazardous materials contained in electronics equipment? Why not an event to raise awareness about the evils of styrofoam (not kidding)?

It seems like I'm traveling a little afield, but not only is that par for the course around here but it's also a natural consideration for me when I see the way we're attacking each other over the "Ice Bucket Challenge".  It has proven itself to be a ridiculously effective vector for both awareness and fundraising (I, personally, am still a little stumped over the "awareness" issue, but again, that's me). How aware are we of ourselves and of each other, though, if we cannot think about or publicly discuss a simple thing like this without immediately resulting to "You're heartless if you think this is stupid" or "You're just seeking attention and trying to avoid giving more money"? If we automatically polarize over an issue this small, I cannot imagine how the larger problems -- the roots -- are going to be repaired, because it's going to take the vast majority of us working in concert to effectively tackle things like proper environmental maintenance and peace among nations. 

Then again, maybe that's why the small things are placed into the center of public consciousness: to keep us divided. If we're not thoughtfully debating and coming to some sort of common ground on the small things, we're never going to do so when it comes to the big ones. That's the "awareness" I hope to see most of all.