All Rileyed Up

Back in the college waitress days, I worked with a guy whose name for the purposes of this blog shall be Lucky, in honor of the belt buckle he always wore. Lucky used to come into work every day where I would ridicule his belt buckle and then we would go about our business of waiting on tables. Maybe we would have a beer (or four) at the end of the night. More than anything else, Lucky loved to say “There is no such thing as true altruism” with a close second of “Do you want to have sex?” These remarks were not reserved for me alone but all the lovely ladies of the restaurant, except for one who was not-so-lovely, who we later found out was in the process of becoming a woman but still had man parts, which actually explained a lot, but that’s whole other story…

ANYWAY, Lucky said that no one ever really did something to benefit someone else out of the kindness of their heart but for some form of selfish reward, even if the reward was simply to feel better about themselves for doing something nice. No matter what you said, he always fell back to that “emotional benefit” that made the act of “true” altruism null and void. Since I was in college at the time, I was surrounded by people who wanted make changes in the world, people who believed in their individual capabilities and power. And I resented Lucky’s insinuation that humans are inherently selfish. After college, of course, I did get a taste of just how selfish some people can be and I had to wonder if Lucky had been associating with them back in the day.

As the season of Thanksgiving and Christmas is upon is, this is always a time of year where even the most selfish people do something good for their fellow man, even if it is just to get a tax write-off. And to those selfish people (none of whom I’m sure read my blog), I have a wonderful website to share with you. The click to give website, which has nifty little buttons that you click on once a day to donate goods to various charitable causes—feed the hungry, give mammograms, give child care, give books, protect the rainforests, or support animal rescue.

Who knows, maybe—just maybe—you could even buy something from these sites to make their sponsors feel it’s worthwhile. Christmas is around the corner, after all. (oh, and high five to Flying Mum who introduced me to this site)

There’s also Greenle, http://greenle.info/, a search engine that donates a portion of its profits to green causes. Kinda like the web version of Credo, the new name of the phone & mobile business of the company Working Assets. (Note to Working Assets: I dislike your new name. It sounds too much like Greedo)

BTW: A couple days ago, I mentioned Blackle as a search engine that uses less power, but that only applies to you if you use a CRT monitor (no school like the old school). If you use an LCD less than 24 inches, Blackle uses more power. Now you know.