In practice, “to be, or not to be,” isn’t as much an ethical question as the famous Shakespearean soliloquy made it out to be. In books, ethics may be about always doing the right thing, but in real life it’s never that simple. There’s always a caveat - is doing the right thing convenient? If doing the right thing isn’t convenient at all, we train our conscience to take the middle ground of either justification or escapism or just looking the other way. “To beg or not to beg”is as much an escapist dilemma as “to give or not to give” is, and the winner is always escapism.
There’s another story worth telling as a sequel to my “to beg or not to beg” story, particularly for those who perceive my tryst with a homeless child as “one experience with one person” and not “umpteen repetitions of my compassionate offerings”. It’s also one of the early and most trivial ones that seeded my philosophy on giving, or rather, as I would now like to call “sharing”.
Source
I must have been in my teens, early teens I would say. Growing up in a typical third world lower middle class family, I was by no means privileged. Life was quite tough fiscally and otherwise. Far removed from the socioeconomic concepts of the west, extreme poverty didn’t mean inability to afford diapers for a newborn, or pair of socks for the homeless, or a blanket to spend the night in. It meant the only thing one had access to was infested water to drink and polluted air to breath. Everything else was a privilege beyond affordability. It meant searching the public dumpsters for the leftovers. It meant feeling blessed if something edible and wearable was discovered in one of those dumpsters. It meant barely being able to wrap one’s shame in street-picked pieces of rags. It meant sustaining life itself.
I was living with my siblings away from my parents. Fortunately, I had my uncle’s family as our neighbor. As I would always do, one day after school, I dropped in to visit my cousins, five of them with a paraplegic parent.
As I entered their home, I could smell gloom in the air. The mood was one of absolute despair. They were all hungry. Having already missed one meal they had no idea where the next one would come from. Disturbed by their tribulation, I quietly stepped out to figure out if I can do something about it. After a couple of hours of running around I managed to borrow 50 bucks (about $8 at the time) from a friend. I rushed back to rescue the hungry only to find out that they were all getting ready for a night of entertainment after a sumptuous meal donated by a relative of theirs. OMG would I waste a single penny on entertainment when I had no clue if I will have anything to eat when I wake up the next morning?
With the hard-sought cash in my hand, and my hand in my pocket, I turned back and walked away, ashamed of myself for having over-estimated the hunger of the hungry. On that day my quest for solving the - “to give or not to give” - puzzle began.
This is an interesting post. Having gone back and read your earlier to beg or not to beg post I am not sure I agree with some of your base assumptions, but on the other hand I am very intrigued with AlgoShare.
Am I reading you correctly in the previous post as saying that homelessness / begging is a choice, that those who are begging on the streets are there because they choose to be there? If that is indeed what you are saying I have to say I pretty strongly disagree, but will wait to make sure that is actually what you are saying before I spill out hundreds of words on this topic :)
RE AlgoShare / Prosperism - first I assume you are officially affiliated with the AlgoShare project in some capacity? I see you link to sharonomics.com in your blog header, which site seems to be affiliated with AlgoShare although there does not appear to be any direct links from sharonomics.com to algoshare.net. I guess I am kind of wondering why there was no "introduceyourself" post on this account verifying your affiliation with what appears to be a pretty large and well run project. But assuming yes, you are affiliated with AlgoShare, what I don't seem to see explained anywhere is how the poor are going to be helped. I understand the best performing algorithms will be made available to others if they are willing to share a portion of their returns (I think I have that right) - so is some portion of that $ going to be distributed through some kind of charity?
I am also curious about these images you are sharing here and on the sharonomics website - they appear to be images of homeless people that are not actually owned by you (reverse image searching the "prosperisms" on the website, it has been pretty easy to determine that they are images of homeless people that were gathered from various online sources) and have been turned into these sort of advertising memes - this seems like it kind of borders on the unethical, to use images of homeless people that you do not own as advertising. And you are paying people Steem to spread these images around? Am I misunderstanding what is going on here?
Finally I am kind of confused by the resteeming and upvotes for resteeming that is going on in the comments of these posts. I noted when I first visited the post that @cheetah had flagged/downvoted many of the comments here from people saying they had resteemed the post. Checking out the profiles and wallets of the accounts that had been flagged they seem to be spammers/scammers. Are you unwittingly giving large upvote payouts to spammers/scammers, or are you doing this knowingly?
Sorry for the long comment. I am confused as to what I have stumbled onto here and I am hoping to get some clarity.
Cheers - Carl
Note to @r-bot vote trailers - this comment by @carlgnash has been upvoted to push it to the top of a long list of $1+ upvoted comments here -@carlgnash upvoted the parent post with @r-bot and now may be having some second thoughts, and @carlgnash would like future visitors to this post who arrive because of the @r-bot vote trail to see the above comment.
@carlgnash: Thank you for visiting my post and sparing so much time to write. I am honored Sir. And, thank you for not coming to an adverse conclusion without giving your perceived radicality in my thinking a chance to explain it’s rationality. I’ll surely respond to all your curiosities in detail. But a short answer for now is: yes I am the inventor of the AlgoShare technology, and yes AlgoShare is one of the techs that evolved from my work on Sharonomics, and yes my blockain-integrated fiscal thinking could not fit in any of the classical definitions of any of those “isms” (capitalism, socialism, communism), so I had to invent a new non-partisan “ism” Prosperism. Why no “introduceyourself”? It took me sometime to understand how the platform works (I am still learning), and then some of the memes that I created made me realize the conuncrum that Thomas Becket found himself when his best friend put him into a “to be or not be” situation. As I write this response, I am looking at this image and can’t help crying.
Until my long answer comes across, you may want to find out what AlgoShare is, and if you like it please support the cause by simply “Sharing Your Influence” here, nothing more Sir.
i have been in the market today while i was eating 2 child came to me
and asked me if i invite them to eat something and of course i sed yes
and they order a tuna salad .. they where so happy that i thought about your post and i made a picture to them its my first SBD spend on child food homeless ❤
maybe this original picture can help for the cause and you can make a nice post !!
Your wish is granted my dear @valblomqvist. Check it out here
Yes I already researched AlgoShare last night and am definitely interested in it. Hence my long winded reply here :) I just also have observed that you are, intentionally or not, handing out $1+ upvotes to accounts that are clearly shell accounts that funnel income back to known blockchain spammers/scammers, and this is not activity that I want to support. What is going on with all the resteems - is there some kind of website somewhere that you sign up for that is like a resteem ring or something, where everyone agrees to resteem each others posts?
Incidentally, it is never too late for an "introduceyourself" post. Just because you have been on platform for a while without making one doesn't mean you can't make one now. I would HIGHLY recommend that you do exactly that, and in this post try to clearly prove your affiliation with AlgoShare / Sharonomics. If there is an AlgoShare twitter account, for example, retweet the link to your introduceyourself post. Or any other way that you can think of to make it clear that you really are associated with AlgoShare. I think it would make people much more likely to support your endeavors here on Steem if they knew for sure you were affiliated with the project.
And yes, I will be happy to "share my influence" to promote AlgoShare if you can explain exactly HOW this project actually is going to help the poor. I understand the basic concept of sharing the most effective trading algorithms in return for a portion of the profit, but it is not clear to me at all on how this is going to translate into doing anything for homelessness and poverty. I have visited all the websites associated with this project and have done a fair amount of research and I have not been able to answer this question.
As much as you may believe you have a right to judge my actions, I don’t think I should be judging your integrity as a top curator even if you think the content quality of my recent posts are not undervalued at $2.14 and $0.76 respectively. I respect your judgment Sir, because….
Having said that I will address your “resteem ring” thing in a separate post that I will shortly write after I am done clearing my tears of joy for @valblomqvist’s humane gesture inspired by my writings. Yeah she might be one of your suspect “scammers”, but it doesn’t matter to me for reasons you’ll find in Tears Of Joy.
Meanwhile why don’t you just DM me on @sharonomist twitter handle and I will ask my CEO to give you a call so you’ll know why I am so ignorant of the so called “shell accounts”, “spammers/scammers” and “resteem ring”.
Hey hope you didn't take offense - I was asking honest questions and this sounds like an honest reply. If you don't know what I am talking about RE scammers/spammers, you don't know. That isn't your fault (necessarily). If you want to you can look at the commenters below and click on the votes that each comment received - look for the ones flagged by @cheetah (flags show up as a "-" symbol instead of a "+") and check out the wallet/transaction history for those accounts - they funnel money to low REP spammer/scammer accounts. I have no idea how all these folks showed up here but presumably you have at least some idea if you are going to write a post about what I referred to as "resteem ring".
I was just trying to get to the bottom of what seemed like some strange/shady things going on here. It could very well just be people taking advantage of your good nature and knowing they can get a big upvote by showing up at your posts and resteeming. I would personally advise against giving big upvotes to people that are funneling money to the spammers/scammers that choke the blockchain with crap - but ultimately it is up to you to police your own actions and act according to your own moral compass.
To be clear, I did think this post was well written and undervalued and upvoted it because of that. I do not have a twitter account but if you want to talk in private would be happy to chat on steemit.chat (@carlgnash there as well) or Discord (@gnashster there).
I tried to make clear the entire time that I wasn't judging you - I didn't even know what was going on! I was just trying to figure out what was happening here. From the responses I got from you and @bitbulls I believe you are not intentionally supporting spammers here. I just wasn't sure. I am still not sure about the ethicality of taking pictures that you do not own, of homeless people, from various internet sources, and using them as advertising without the consent of the original photographers nor the subject matter. But that is kind of unrelated to the rest of this all. Anyway sorry to choke your post's comments with this. Would be happy to chat privately at the channels above. Good luck - Carl
No offense at all Sir. Here are the honest answers, perhaps as honest as honesty can get. And please never think that your comments will ever choke my post. You are most welcome to write whatever you feel like.
Cheers :)
Hello Steemians,
I am sorry I was away on some important assignment so could not respond to your comments. Now I am doing one by one. Thanks for visiting, commenting, upvoting and resteeming the post. :)
Thanks for comment, upvote & resteem. :)
i have been traveling around many homeless people and you can find something in there eyes that you wont find any where else
some of them even have more light than any rich man !!
OMG such a unique take on Shakespeare and outstanding piece of writing and not much response? I am sorry I saw it so late. Upvoting and restreeming and more if I can.
hi mate thx but not need we are all a family here zD
just giving my little support back !!
nice to see you around always !
hello @bitbulls nice to see you
I read your post, commented, and upvote resteem is of course obvious.
wow this is terrible
its a true history ? iam really curious about where its all this info coming
@sharonomics when can we share the new pics ?
or we must share and post a different one from the old post from last week ?
hello @valblomqvist i had post a new pic from the old post this week
if its that what you mean
@sharonomics say one pic a week so i guess until he dont release new pics we must use old ones for now
but i am curious about your question too ..
lets see what @sharonomics say ...
ok thx so much i saw your post very beautiful
i will see what @sharonomics say thx : )
@valblomqvist, @ormus: Sorry for being late here. Too many things going on. I think one picture a week is good and the SP transfer can be on Sundays. This way everything remains manageable. So out of the 5 images in that post 3 were posted last week and 2 can be posted this week. The payout for this week's images will be on Sunday. I will post more posts with poverty memes and details in my next post. Thanks :)
ok so i will think about next pic post soon
Yes dear, everything is true. The story is true. The beggar on left is a leper whose fingers are disintegrating and falling off because of leprosy. He has no choice but to beg. The beggar on the right is a healthy man who chooses to beg.
o my god i hope we can really help
i have seen in Mexico people really bad but not like that
very nice article and good post my friend
keep it up
I RESTEEM YOUR POST
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Please help the poor man
Upvote and restreemed
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wow really mind touch blog..
upvote & re-steem
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amazing post really nice.i like it
re-steem
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thanks for sharing your thought @sharonomics
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Everytime I wait for your post.Good post once again sharon,you are doing a great job.Keep it up, I always support you.Upvoted your post and now I am going to resteem it.
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Your post is Upped and restmd bro.
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Your most welcome. Image posting for this week is complete...
amazing blog like it..
re-steem
really mind touch blog..tnx for share..upvoted
re-steem
nice post on whom to give n whom not to give upvoted@sharonomics.
Well writing, we should help them and good to see your post really a quality full post.
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Buen post. Aca esta mi voto. Saludos desde venezuela
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Great post. I am a comment and upvote your post.please do same.
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STOPmind touh blog..i like it..Resteem
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nice post on begging upvoted n resteem@sharonomics.
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