It's amazing to me that you would accuse DFW of myopia and hypocrisy when your argument here is, well, hypocritically myopic (not to mention one might say that

It's amazing to me that you would accuse DFW of myopia and hypocrisy when your argument here is, well, hypocritically myopic (not to mention one might say that DFW's overarching thesis in all of his work was encouraging his readers to be less myopic e.g. [1][2]) To tackle a problem like world hunger and homelessness takes an incredible amount of effort across a huge number of domains by an enormous amount of people. DFW was obviously not someone best suited to go e.g. repair "pissing corners and walls", and we should not expect him to be. Instead, he did many things to inspire many people to lead more altruistic and less self-centered lives. This was his talent, and it's probably done more good for the world than any amount manual labor he could have done in his lifetime. Ignoring this aspect of helping the afflicted is the same strain of myopia that thinks charities should give 100% of their fundraising to researchers/etc, as if raising awareness and paying competitive salaries were not the lifeblood of said charities[3]. I'll leave your rant about how "power giants stealing money have never helped the poor" alone, as your rhetoric and ignorance of evidence to the contrary clearly imply you're not about to have a rational discussion about it. [1] http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf [2] http://observer.com/1997/10/john-updike-champion-literary-phallocrat-drops-one-is-this-finally-the-end-for-magnificent-narcissists/ http://observer.com/1997/10/john-updike-champion-literary-ph... [3] http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about...