An Open Appeal to Your Hearts: Steemit Profits Give You the Power to Help!

So your articles are finally taking off! I'm happy for you. I was as salty as anyone back when my posts went uniformly unnoticed, but then suddenly I started making real money at it. Nobody was more surprised than me. Perhaps I'm a natural pessimist? Certainly life has given me many reasons to be.

Now you have this sudden influx of money you didn't have before. No doubt you have a list of things to spend it on. Necessities, like car repairs or paying off debts. Then some well deserved TLC for yourself, like some delicious meals and new clothing. But then what?

There's something you can buy with your Steem riches that will fulfill you in ways that gadgets, clothing, vehicles and vacations won't. Something that lasts, that can't be taken away and which you can walk away from shining just a bit brighter than you did before.

Perhaps you are thinking "But I don't have absolutely everything I need/want yet. I will wait to help others until I have done everything for myself that I want to." But where's the cutoff for that? Even before you found success on Steemit, weren't there plenty of people worse off than you? All that's changed is that now you have the means to help them without endangering yourself.

"But I am not one of the 1%. Those who have the most should be first to help". I tell you that in fact, compared to the average global citizen, simply by virtue of being an American you are the 1%. It's all relative. Most people in the world are proportionally as far below you in terms of their net worth as you are below the wealthiest few in this country.

This doesn't obligate you to anything. I am not here to pile on guilt or twist your arm. If you have other uses for that money in mind, don't let me stop you, it's not my business. This article is for people who feel an innate altruistic drive and may not have realized yet that their success on Steemit puts them in a better position to act on it.

I am also not suggesting you simply hand out wads of cash. Many homeless are homeless because they have meth or drinking problems. But that's no reason to be indifferent to their suffering. We should not peek into our neighbor's bowl, except to ensure that he has enough. Rather, let's seek out more efficient, sustainable ways to help.

You might consider carrying $5 bills with you, along with printed out cards bearing the Steemit url and instructions how to participate fruitfully. If you have a biligual friend, consider carrying cards in Spanish as well, or other languages you're likely to encounter, as instructions they cannot understand are not much use to them.

The $5 ensures that they come away with something useful even if they forget the card, and giving more than the minimum means better odds they'll pay attention to what's on the card in the first place.

In this way, you need not break the bank in order to help out a little bit and hopefully set up those who need it with a means of helping themselves. Someone was so kind as to introduce you to Steemit, why not pay it forward?

However, Steemit isn't realistically a permanent solution to poverty and homelessness. If we want to do more than just feel good about ourselves for a day, we've got to get political. I've covered Basic Income before so I won't go into that here.

Instead, a few years back in Utah the Mormon Church demonstrated the efficacy of a solution to chronic homelessness: Buy them apartments, flat out. As in, no rent. Just give them a place to live free and clear.

Because only 8% of homeless are "chronic homeless" (3 years or more) and most are only temporarily homeless, this is surprisingly feasible from a financial standpoint. The cost of housing winds up being less over the average homeless person's lifespan than the trips to the ER they would need due to the various deleterious health effects of sleeping outdoors and the court costs involved in arresting them constantly.

That solution is now spreading. Through political activism and raising awareness of the success this approach has already enjoyed (though detractors point out that temporary homeless are still numerous and a problem) we can propagate it to every state, creating a future in which nobody is disposable, nobody is ever left to die and our inborn urge to help can find expression which is fruitful on a much larger scale.

I cannot promise you will ever see any personal return on this. I don't believe in Karma, but I believe in human kindness. I believe in the beauty and wisdom of gentleness, and that if there is a supreme being, it is not impressed by feats of strength or speed. Nor by wealth, or military victories. No more than you or I are impressed by the greatest accomplishments of termites.

What may impress, however, are acts of kindness beyond or even contrary to our evolutionary programming. Acts which require us to go out of our way, to risk something or to give away wealth that we'll never get back.

If there is no such being, the equation does not meaningfully change; for then we are on our own in a vast, cold, dark universe. Each of us but a lone candle floating through the night, easily extinguished by an errant raindrop or breeze. Only by clustering together can be stay warm, and burn brightly enough to endure it.