Humanitarianism

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 487.

The Protestant idea of self-improvement includes more than achieving material gain through hard work and self-discipline. It includes the idea of improving oneself by helping others. Individuals, in other words, make themselves into better persons by contributing some of their time or money to charitable, educational, or religious causes which are designed to help others. This philosophy is sometimes called “humanitarianism”.

Andrew Carnegie, a famous American businessman, expressed this idea when he said that wealthy men “have it in their power during their lives to busy themselves in organizing benefactions from which the masses of their fellows will derive lasting advantage …” Carnegie himself gave away more than 300 million dollars to help support schools and universities and to build public libraries in thousands of communities in the United States. John D. Rockefeller, another famous businessman, in explaining why he gave a large sum from his private fortune to establish a university, said: “The good Lord gave me my money, so how could I withhold it from the University of Chicago?” The motive for humanitarianism is strong: many Americans believe that they must devote part of their time and wealth to religious or humanitarian causes in order to be acceptable in the eyes of God and in the eye of other Americans.