Gratuitous Suffering

A recent post I read made me start thinking about the effectiveness of public protesting as a means to change society, and if society isn't better off by spending time solving their own problems instead of spending time publicly demanding that someone else do so.

Which lead me to thinking about wasted time and energy, and how readily we sacrifice human effort on the alter of virtue signaling. Just like people used to burn up perfectly good goats and bulls on alters to show how pious they were.

Which got me to thinking about fund raising for cancer.

Now -- don't get me wrong -- I love the idea of private fund raising for any good societal goal. That's humanity at its best. And we should applaud anyone willing to take their own time and effort to help raise money to help someone else.

What gets me is how wasteful we are with that precious effort. Every year, tens of thousands of people spend 3 days walking in a circle to raise money for breast cancer. It is wonderful that they raise a ton of money for breast cancer. But think how much good could have been done with that same effort while raising exactly the same amount of money?

How many parks could have been cleaned? How many potholes patched? How many abandoned buildings torn down? How many low income houses could have been painted and repaired? How many houses built? The list goes on and on.

I can't seem to find any firm numbers, but let's imagine that 100,000 people each spend 10 hours a day for 3 days to walk their 60 miles every year. That's 30 X 100,000 = 3 million hours. Not even counting how much time is spent with the organizing side of things. 3 million man hours is the equivalent of 1,437 man years of work (3 million / 2087 hours per average year of work.)

Think how much good could be accomplished across the country with 1,437 people working for an entire year on any public improvement project of their choice. With not an ounce of decreased funding for breast cancer. Instead of getting sponsors to walk in a circle, you could get sponsors for repairing pot holes. Or picking up trash. Or pulling weeds. Or mowing elderly lawns.

I suspect that somewhere, deep in our Protestant self hating distant social past, lurks a subconscious belief that suffering equals piety, and that public suffering equals especially worthy piety. Society would be better off if we got over this.