edmantes

Bugger.

First a brief thank you. I've been meat free for close to two years now and I feel mentally a lot better for it and your writing and recordings of your lectures were definitely an influence on my decision.

I was wondering if you have any views on a situation that I've encountered a few times when it comes to charity in the work place.

People seem happy, at least in anywhere I've worked, to donate money to say someone in the office who is running a marathon in support of a breast cancer charity and seem to be fairly positive about the person who is asking them to donate.

However, when socialising with these same people the subject of charity has come up and inevitably when I raise the prospect of my colleagues donating a sum of say 1% of their salary to charity there's an accusation of "being preachy" when ultimately it seems to be the same request but minus the random nature of the charities that benefit and the unnecessary act of one of us running 26 miles.

Do you think there might be an effective way to rally people around the idea of being more consistent and effective with their altruism in the way that they seem to rally around sponsored activities for seemingly random charities? Is this a problem of getting an idea into peoples' imaginations? Does the marathon or long distance cycle etc. act as some kind of empathy catalyst that I'm going to need to replicate if I want to get the idea of effective altruism across to my colleagues?

Sometimes I worry about my writing and feel a little low when I hear of other young writers already publishing. Then I read that sort of thing and remember why I'm taking my time.

What essentially happened - "I walked out of the dark saloon into the daylight. I slipped my watch into my jacket pocket."

Sometimes simplicity is the way to go.