Relay For Life

This weekend just gone, apart from being ridiculously busy with events (St Patrick’s Day and birthdays and weddings and EP launches and so forth) was also the weekend of the Relay For Life. This annual event is run by the Cancer Society of New Zealand. In Wellington, the waterfront Frank Kitts Park was taken over by a small tent city, around which sponsored teams ran and walked in relay from Saturday afternoon to midday Sunday.
The event fundraises for the Cancer Society and raises awareness of the costly presence of cancer. Participating cancer survivors (and their supporters) received enormous support; a key part of the event was a memorial ceremony for those who had not survived. It was all very festive, and abundant with goodwill and a moving generosity of spirit.
It was also, when considered, quite strange.
With my best outsider perspective, what we had was a large number of people literally walking in a circle without true purpose or any kind of destination, and engaging in this rather surreal activity in order to earn charitable activity on the part of other people. I exchange my pointless activity for your financial investment in a cause. That is a strange cultural equation. It is also a very familiar one, extending across a number of cultures in broadly similar form.
It doesn’t make terribly much sense on first glance. It is, in some ways, similar to a bet. In a bet, I claim that I can perform some task; you doubt me and accept the bet in order to force me to back up my claim; I attempt to perform the task to prove myself and gain the reward. However, sponsorship is the mirror image of betting. My ability to perform the task is never in doubt, so you pledge money not to force me to prove myself, but to support me in my support for a particular cause.
And that, of course, is where the logic can be found. Sponsorship operates out of personal connection. We are supporting a person, and the nature of their act and even their cause is of secondary importance. If we feel socially bound to the person, and the cause fits in the very broad category of ‘a good cause’, then we will likely sponsor that person. Additionally, this allows us to be ‘good people’ without the difficulty or challenge of actually aligning with a cause (or, less cynically, it allows us to reserve our full energies for our personal priorities while still supporting other causes with which we agree.)
When I was younger, and I first understood the concept of the then-frequent telethon televised appeal, I wondered why people had to wait for a telethon in order to be charitable. If there was money to be donated and a worthy cause, wasn’t that enough? It took a few telethons before I came to see that nothing is so simple. Human beings are not rational creatures. We do not easily look beyond ourselves. We are not capable, except in the most unusual cases, of comprehending a grand view of a large interconnected society. Furthermore, we are operating within a system that discourages such a perspective. Our concerns are almost entirely local and our judgments are emotive. This tendency, I suspect, is hardwired into us.
Sponsorship, then, is a way of tricking the human system. Our local and personal social responsibilities are leveraged.to trick us into giving financial support to a cause that is not local and not personal. And its just as well this works, because otherwise these worthy causes would not be receiving the support they so desperately need.
With Cal, I walked in circles around the tent village for an hour or so Sunday morning. It was a very pleasant experience, with people dancing and the sun coming up over the harbour. The activity’s ontological connection with cancer was tenuous; the practical connection was overt and powerful. We were performing an absurd act for the best possible reasons. If this is what it takes for us humans to choose action over inaction and support over apathy, then that is all the justification it needs.