Reply #33: that queasy feeling ... [View All]

[shireen]

I get emotionally confused. Charitable acts are supposed to make us feel good. But I've never felt good about it, and i detest the word "charity". Your words help me untangle some of those conflicting feelings.

The dynamic range of human living conditions is incomprehensible. I cannot wrap my head around it. Thom Hartmann recently spoke of an old man he met near Darfur who had been a slave for most of his adult life; he spoke about how red hair in the refugee children was a sign of malnutrition. At the other extreme are human beings living a life of outrageous excess, like the Paris Hiltons. Like the Donald Trumps. Most of us lie somewhere between those two extremes. And even in our own little local worlds, the extremes we see in human conditions are overwhelming and incomprehensible.

Last December, i organized a food drive at work. People paid me compliments for being so "kind." Many felt good about giving away stuff they didn't want in their pantries to people "in need". But so many missed the point. I didn't organize the food drive to feel good and to fish for compliments. Actually, it made me feel orders of magnitude worse because, as I was organizing and coordinating, there was a constant awareness of human suffering. That food drive was a band aid on a long deep gash. My real goal was to create a more fundamental awareness of the injustices and inequalities in our society, to motivate people to harness the power of democracy for social and economic fairness. Altho' we collected 14 boxes of food in 2 weeks, I still consider the event a failure. Out of the 400+ people at work, only one person showed a glint of awareness by offering to help during future food drives. No one said anything to me about the need for fundamental changes at a social and political level that's needed to eradicate poverty, and create a better quality of life for all people. If they felt it, I would have liked to have heard their thoughts because THAT would have made me feel good. It seemed like folks just went on with life as usual, unfazed by this stark truth about hunger in America, reluctant to step out of their comfort zones.

People don't want to acknowledge how vulnerable they are. They protect themselves by being in denial, creating a narrow field-of-view, one that allows them to cope with everyday life, even to be happy. Just outside that narrow field-of-view is the unthinkable: poverty, homelessness, illness. But there's a fundamental streak of compassion in most people, and they want to do something to help the "less fortunate" (perhaps to feel less guilty about their good fortune?).

But good intentions often go astray because those in a position to help, myself included, don't quite know how to do it. Often, we come up with ways to help that relate to our sense of accomplishment, not what's needed by the recipients of that help. That's how we end up with food drives, and running shoes for the homeless. On the surface, it seems like a good thing to do. At some level, perhaps it is a good thing simply because it's better than nothing. But when we analyze the driving force behind these acts of charity, you see that it's actually about power: those with the power to make the choice, on their own terms, to help those with less power. Those of us living comfortably choose how we render assistance; we choose to buy running shoes for the homeless. We choose to donate unwanted pantry items to a food bank. We have the power to choose what they get. So, what's it like to be on the receiving end? To receive things you may not need or want? To be forced to eat whatever's in the food bank grocery bag handed to you, or starve? What's it like to feel powerless, to not be afforded the respect and dignity you deserve as a human being? I cannot imagine it, it's overwhelming.

I don't have the right to tell people living in poverty how to live their lives. What I'd like to do is help empower them to make their own choices, tho' I have to confess that I don't know how to go about it the right way. We need to ask them what they need, not tell them what we think they need. It's not easy because we all have unique world views that form our opinions. I'm often at a loss over how to do something helpful without insulting or angering people who need the help. One thing I'm trying to do is listen, really listen, to clear-headed people like Two Americas, and figure out how I can work within my mental, intellectual, physical, and monetary constraints to contribute without going insane over the horrible injustices of the human condition.