There is a character in the works of Charles Dickens who is increasingly coming to symbolize the spirit of the age in which we now live.
Readers of Dickens will recall the figure of Mrs. Jellyby in "Bleak House," a lady who was full of good intentions and advice about the welfare and standards of distant peoples in Africa and elsewhere, but unfortunately overlooked and neglected the conditions in her own family and her own home. Dickens depicts her as a "telescopic philanthropist," fixated on distant causes at the expense of her own family and home values.
Are today's campaigning do-gooders in the richer countries, who fill the air with demands for more help to the poorer world (which we now call development aid) and deliver more lectures on standards of governance (which we now call human rights), pushing too far in their zeal to do good and make the world a better place, to the neglect of their own societies?