Same Kind Of Different As Me And Wisdom Of Generosity

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When looking around the world today there is a lot of events that have shown different types of philanthropy. In Paris, there has been help for the families of those killed by ISIS during the attack. There has been aid for those in Mexico who were hit by the hurricane. There has been help for those at the college in Kenya that were attacked or the college in Washington that was attacked. The point is that what philanthropy is depends on what a person perceives it to be. I have seen a lot of events change the way I thought about philanthropy. Due to the experiences of this semester, I have changed on a foundational level of how I thought about what philanthropy is. At the beginning of the semester, my definition for philanthropy was relatively …show more content…

The foundational passages that affected me come from Seneca, Carnegie, Winthrop, and from Ron in Same Kind of Different as Me. The word that philanthropy used to be defined as was charity. That colonial definition was defined specifically by John Winthrop. Winthrop’s definition was, “loving-kindness, not donating money to help the poor. Loving others involves treating them as we would wish to be treated” (Jackson, 23, 2008). Seneca a great Roman philosopher speaks of giving in this light, “The rule is, we are to give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers” (Jackson, 45, 2008). Andrew Carnegie one of the richest men of his time had a philosophy when it came to how to deal with wealth during and after life. According to Carnegie, the best way to administer wealth is to do it during one’s life or after one is dead to the public for their own good (Jackson, 231-232, 2008). In Same Kind of Different as Me, Ron works at the mission every Tuesday and starts to notice a change. “It took a couple of months before I noticed a real change in my heart, a heart that was feeling like it had been run through the short cycle in a microwave—warm on the outside but still a little cool in the middle” (Hall, Moore, and Vincent, 94, 2006). These bits and pieces of knowledge and insight created my definition of