[bloomer]

> Many people think donating 3% of their income is a lot, let alone the 10%

Except of course for many mainstream religions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe “weirdness” is very relative to your local view.

[Fnoord]

Speaking in terms of donating percentages is at odds with reality.

1% of 300 USD is 3 USD, and probably a lot for that person. They're probably needing every penny they can get to maintain or increase their standard of living.

1% of 3000 USD is 30 USD, and probably not much for that person. They'd spend it on a friday night.

Never mind the very rich. For them, the difference between 1% and 10% is effectively nothing; it doesn't decrease their standards of living.

[loggedinuser]

That's why it's better to define the 'tithe' as a percentage of income over and above strictly required expenditures, i.e. money you otherwise theoretically could have saved.

[Psyladine]

>“weirdness” is very relative to your local view.

I suspect it is entirely cultural, and 'weirdness' is a disgust response to foreign culture - not literally foreigners, but ways which are divergent from the norm. For instance new world explorers thought it bizarre people walked around nude - the new worlders thought it bizarre you'd cover yourself in heavy cloth and metal in the extreme heat and humidity. What makes those contexts "work" is groups of course normalizing behavior.

It could be a pure signalling behavior, or perhaps cultural 'evolution' at work, now that we have intraconnection on a global scale, people with divergent or novel cultures can link up and form meta communities that make them not a weirdo but an amabassador from a different peoples, even if the definition of "peoples" is so domain specific it encompasses, say, only those who religiously watch my little pony...