Imane Kurdi There is a wonderful story in the papers this week coming from Boston in the US. It describes how a homeless man named Glen James found a backpack in a shopping mall. The bag was full of cash and travelers' checks worth a total of $42,000. Mr. James handed the bag over to the police. As the bag also contained a Chinese passport and other papers, the police were able to return it to its rightful owner. When news of this great act of honesty broke out, a stranger in Virginia, who knows neither Mr. James, nor the Chinese citizen whose bag it was, and who has never even been to Boston, was so moved by this story that he decided to set up a fundraising page on the crowdsourcing website gofundme.com to raise money to help Mr. James find a home. He aimed to raise $50,000, but more than $100,000 has already been raised, and so he has set a new target of $250,000. What gets me about this story is the fact that it was newsworthy in the first place. Why is someone not stealing a bag so newsworthy? Why are there such sighs of disbelief and surprise, shock even, at the idea that someone did the honest thing? Is honesty so rare nowadays that it surprises us to find that it still exists? What I find most appalling is the tone of some of the comments, the despite being homeless he did not keep the money comments, as if people who are homeless should somehow be more dishonest than people who have roofs over their heads, as if the poor are less honest than the rich! Now don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful that all this money has been raised for this man, but I think it is telling us how people think today. It reminds me of a very similar story last February, when another homeless man, Billy Ray Harris, returned a diamond ring that a woman had accidentally dropped into his cup. In this case the woman and her husband set up a similar fundraising page on giveforward.com to raise money to reward Billy Ray Harris for his honesty. They hoped to raise $1,000, but they raised $190,000. Mr. Harris now has a car, he has put down a deposit on a house and he is hoping to set up his own business. His life has been turned around because his honesty marked him out as different. What is it that makes people so generous when faced with a story such as this and yet walk on regardless in front of the same homeless man when he has not been in the papers? Is it that we need to know that the homeless are deserving before we decide to help them? Or is it that we like to be part of a feel-good story? These stories show that people are willing to donate generously to help people who have found themselves out in the street, but rather than donate to homeless shelters, or to give money to anonymous needy people, they crave the feel-good factor of wanting to give someone a Hollywood ending. Or to put it even more simply, people are willing to help someone with a face and a story, to feel that their money is going toward a specific goal of changing someone's life. They also like the feeling of community, or of being part of an exciting event, much like the way people will donate heaps of money to charities during telethons; there is that excitement, that thrill, of reaching that big target, that does not exist when you make a direct debit to a worthy charity. And yet, they could, we each could, change the life of the first homeless person or person in need who crosses our path today, or tomorrow, but we won't. And there is too that surprise, or is it guilt, at someone returning a bag full of money or a diamond ring. Is it really exceptional behavior? Does that not mean that the normal thing to do, the expected thing to do, what any ordinary Joe would have done, is to keep the money? The police even gave Mr. James a special citation award and a ceremony to mark the event. For being an honest citizen? Admittedly finding bags full of cash is not an everyday occurrence – and perhaps the real question here is what was the owner of the bag thinking by walking around with a bag full of so much cash! - but surely most of us would have done what Glen James did. Or perhaps I am a bit naïve. But if that is what it takes for people who are down on their luck to get a break, then why not, and how wonderful that the Internet makes such crowdsourcing possible. — Imane Kurdi is a Saudi writer on European affairs. She can be reached at [email protected]
