In extension of the
church concept of allowing
sinners to pay
penance (i.e. be
absolved from his or her
sin commited by donating money or doing some form of work), this term also has
sociological meaning, in that the modern world tends to allow its
citizens to pay their way out of
guilt towards the worlds problems.
A heavily
debated topic, it states that many modern
causes, including
environmentalism and
human rights issues can be hampered by allowing people to rid themselves of any sense of
responsibility toward the cause by simply
donating a sum of
money to one or more
organizations. Aside from the debate of whether that organization spends its money properly, one
argument states that the sudden absolution felt by donators kills the ongoing struggle for the cause. In other words, if people make their donations, they think the problem has been sufficiently dealt with. Any further
call to arms against
atrocities against environment or human rights (or any other cause) risks being met with the argument that "we donated, so shut up already!". The frightening
prospect is, that the easy
path to
moral absolution for
modern man means, that problems are allowed to continue.
The most common argument against acting upon this is, that if no one is allowed to pay their way out of further feelings of guilt, the organizations dealing with the problem will suffer a significant lack of
funding.