THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

Nick, reviewing the characteristics of women who advertise for mates through Internet matchmaking enterprises, amusingly observes that, “The supreme goal of women my age appears to be to start an NGO in a Third World country.” Laura responds: “This romantic fantasy… is nothing but the feminine manifestation of the glorification of non-Western culture and non-whites.  It is not just youthful narcissism but one sign of cultural devolution.  I am sorry to sound so serious about something that seems on the face of it virtuous or, at the very least, not harmful.”  Meanwhile, there is an ongoing discussion, here and here, at The Thinking Housewife about Charles Dickens and Oliver Twist. 

I call attention to another Dickens novel, perhaps his masterpiece, Bleak House, where Caddy’s mother, Mrs. Jellyby, permits her own numerous children to starve in her own ramshackle house while she relentlessly pursues what Dickens brilliantly calls “telescopic philanthropy.”  Mrs. Jellyby also ignores her husband, who, being entirely untutored in housekeeping, in futility tries and largely fails to keep order in the house.  Mrs. Jellyby is obsessed by and devotes her own and any other money that she can cadge to some supposed tribal orphans in an African village, who might or might not exist.  Says one character of this formidable woman: “Mrs. Jellyby… is a lady of very remarkable strength of character who devotes herself entirely to the public.  She has devoted herself to an extensive variety of public subjects, at various times, and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the subject of Africa; with a view to the general cultivation of the coffee berry – and the natives – and the happy settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population.”  (Chapter IV) 

Says Mrs. Jellyby herself to Esther Summerhouse, the novel’s female protagonist: “You find me… very busy; but that you will excuse. The African project at present employs my whole time.  It involves me in correspondence with public bodies, and with private individuals anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country.  I am happy to say it is advancing.  We hope by this time next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger.” (Chapter IV) 

For Dickens, as for The Thinking Housewife, the topic is at once pathetic and irritating, but also unavoidably comic and laughable in its lack of awareness of its own perversity.

                                                                   — Comments —

Nick writes:

I think the phenomenon of NGO-ism among young women (men are seldom as interested in such pursuits these days) is in some ways merely a status symbol. You’d be surprised how many women I’ve met whose only interest in the subject was the idea of an “NGO” — they did not seem to have a specific cause in mind; forming the organization and living the backpacker lifestyle is what matters. The cause can be assumed and believed in later.

(You might enjoy this article on the gulf between the imagined romance of “independent travel” scene and its actual reality.)

However, I believe that NGO-ism is a single manifestation of a deeper crisis, namely a boredom and lack of affinity with one’s immediate surroundings, which leads to an increasingly abstract view of the world and everything in it.

I certainly sympathize. The modern urban world is ugly, unromantic, and has a level of convenience that could be considered oppressive. In these women’s lives, the “here and now” is uninteresting, and they are unable to devote themselves fully to it. In such a setting the mind tends to wander, and begins to feel imprisoned by the ease of one’s existence. PJ O’Rourke said it best: “Everyone wants to save the world, but nobody wants to help Mom with the dishes.” And as you once mentioned, nothing makes a woman snap out of this reverie than having a couple of children (although Mr. Bertonneau’s Bleak House example shows us that even mothers with stable homes are susceptible to wandering minds — it’s more like a fundamental human weakness).

The rural African suffering young women dream about relieving could not be any farther away culturally, ethnically, or geographically from their own lives. NGO-ism thus has more than a hint of revolt against one’s own culture, and it is undeniable that our own culture has failed to create and reinforce rootedness, instead promoting mobility, globetrotting and cosmopolitanism (in the sense of “culture” equalling “worldliness” rather than simply being one’s own cultural traditions) — fertile soil for grandiose idealism. As you point out, the suffering here in the West is every bit as real, and in some ways worse. It could be that we have simply forgotten how to recognize it.

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