Saturday, August 26, 2006

Virtue, certainty and conscience.


Of all the Hobo signs, this is the one that stopped me in my tracks. Cowards. Will give to get rid of you.

What does the visual mean...the square, jagged at the bottom, sitting behind the unbroken square in front? Is the front shape meant to imply a coverup of the one with a flawed foundation? Obviously, a fake, a fraud is implied. The kindly, giving hand is not what it seems. Not dispensing compassion, but a bribe and an insult. A slap of rejection.

I used to cast around for some nice, smug moral or spiritual floatation device. This is the right thing to do... But paradox took a bite every time, and the deflation was rapid after that. I'd be left treading water in an ocean that kept providing sharks when I was looking for a rescue helicopter to take me to certainty.

Once I was in serious discussion with an astrology client who, I believed, was heading into some deep trouble if she didn't examine her basic paradigms about life and stop running from her own shadows. What, I asked her, is the most important thing in life?

"Kindness," she said.

"And if you knew that someone had to be told a hurtful feeling truth, something that might make them feel bad, and you knew that if you didn't tell them, they would be in a world of trouble...what would be kinder - to tell them, or to spare their feelings." She didn't hesitate.

"I wouldn't tell them because it would hurt their feelings."

Cowards. Will give to get rid of you.

Let she who is without sin cast the first stone.
Understand, I have a sack full of stones for myself. Stones for every occasion.

For years, I gave to an NGO - one of those organizations that put children with at least one perfectly good parent up for "adoption." I pledged the money during the famine in Ethiopia. The organization was running a program on a PBS station. I watched those gaunt children, all distended stomachs, stick legs and dead eyes for all of two minutes and I called. Then, I dived for the remote to shut the television off - as if it had suddenly begun to pump hunger, thirst and hopelessness into my living room like radioactive fallout.

Perhaps my small donations bought a school book or helped sink a pump into the ground to provide water for a village, but I hated the guilt I felt reading the letters I got from that beautiful, brown-eyed child. Letters so obviously dictated, so correct, so Christian, that they left me certain the child in the picture had nothing at all to do with them, past being made to sit and print them out laboriously in some rural classroom. Forced gratitude, I thought. Why should the child be made to express gratitude for what was, to me, skipping a restaurant lunch twice a month? For what should have been her right.

I hated the things I later found out about how many NGO's operate. That knowledge of waste and fraud and mismanagement, against the knowledge there was a chance that a village might drink clean water. Mostly, though, I hated the unclean feeling that the money I sent was hush-money for my conscience.

I do believe in many of the traditional virtues...charity, love, kindness... And I think people demonstrate them daily, all over the world. So maybe it isn't paradox that disturbs me, really - but falseness. What masquerades as virtue but hides something else.

Cowards. Will give to get rid of you.

I try to check myself, to ask myself hard questions now - when something needs to be said, when I pull out a dollar for someone on the street, when I claim to love people. What do I want here? What are the conditions I'm putting on this? What am I secretly wanting back?

I've come to think that none of the virtues exist at all without the virtue of self-honesty at their core.

I've come to think that now. We'll see whether the universe wants to send Jaws or the helicopter.

8 Comments:

At Saturday, August 26, 2006 , Blogger Zhoen said...

It takes a real strength and toughmindedness to be constantly kind to those we touch every day, to never do anything harmful.

 
At Saturday, August 26, 2006 , Blogger Cate said...

"Cowards. Will give to get rid of you."

What a wonderful post. It cut right to my bone.

I think of all the ways I have been a coward in my life and I have to stop counting because I don't know the name of this large number.

Giving in is not the only way to be a coward - there is hiding, freezing, lying, creating confusion, trying to sway the audience and sometimes attacking. But mostly it is taking the easy way out.

 
At Sunday, August 27, 2006 , Blogger LJ said...

And I'd think, Zheon, that in your profession, you have to keep finding that toughmindedness and strength...

KD. Uh-huh. You've named a few of the stones I've got in my own bag, too.

 
At Sunday, August 27, 2006 , Blogger chuck said...

The problem with my self-honesty is that sometimes I forget that before I became cynical (about myself), there used to be a sweetness about me...I see this sweetness in others, anyway- not that "sweetness" is the be-all and end-all.
When I can give, I give (I believe)...except when I feel I am being "snowed" or intimidated.
Day before yesterday two hitchikers I gave a ride to tried to verbally intimidate while I drove them up to Eureka on my way home...
When I dropped them off, they had the gall to ask for 'spare change'. Before I could think, I said NO.
To threaten me...and then ask me for money. No way.
Usually I lay a couple of bucks on hitchhikers, because 'I've been there'.
This time I said no.
ETHICS...tricky stuff.
Maybe, ETHICS is simply the after-the-fact rationalization!

 
At Sunday, August 27, 2006 , Blogger Mary said...

I've worked for a couple of NGOs. I've met a handful of almost-saints on the staffs (one of whom was killed in the tsunami) and many who weren't - some of whom did an efficient job though.

I'd not sure I've ever had a totally disinterested motive in my life, but in the area of charitable giving that doesn't mean my money won't be useful. The secret is to pick a good way of channelling it.

Honesty and self-honesty in relationships is very different imo. Impossible to lie or be a hypocrite for very long. Best to put the conditions on the table.

 
At Sunday, August 27, 2006 , Blogger herhimnbryn said...

I have often questioned why I chose the work I used to do? It gave a great deal back to me. I often needed to be needed.
There were days when thinking through my actions I realised I was not enabling but controlling or backing away because it was too hard.
I hope I now have more insight about how I interact people who require support with some of their most basic needs. But motive is s tricky companion and I am human with failings that I don't always recognise.
Thanks lj for this thought provoking piece. I have read it a couple of times and had to pause and think my way through and question myself....and that is good.

 
At Sunday, August 27, 2006 , Blogger LJ said...

Chuck...That's a truly crappy thing to have happen when you've offered help out of a sense of empathy. I'm sorry to hear it. In both cases, though, picking up the hitchhikers and saying "no," it sounds like you were self-honest. Sometimes, self-honesty does come after you've done a thing. Let's face it, life is bipping along and we don't always have time to examine every motive at the moment. I think, though, that self-honesty is made possible in the moment, not by pondering the philosophy of a thing, but by paying attention to your gut feelings.

Declining to give or receive love and friendship, favors, that feel laced with unspoken expectations and obligations. Not giving to make someone or something go away, or agreeing to things when we feel resentment underneath.

Ethics become hindsight, maybe,when we are paying more attention to our big complicated brains than our more trustworthy gut instincts in a situation.

And yeah. Sometimes I miss that sweetness I used to have too. That innocence. But more often, I feel like it's better when I have moments of knowing what's real - and being able to accept it without bitterness. Columnist, Richard Needham once said, "I used to hate the world for its corruption. Now I love it for the absolute magnificence of that corruption."
...and so we swim in the river, huh? Or read a poem that feels like we did. And some of the sweetness comes back.

Maybe. I'm saying. Everything I say has a tendency to assume all the pomp and confidence of the Hindenburg launch...while in reality, I'm just thinking out loud. (And the universe is likely to slap me upside the head any moment.)

Mary. I don't find it hard to believe that the majority of people who are drawn to NGO's are drawn because they truly want to help. What scared me off was a book written by a long-time field worker, called, "The Road to Hell: the ravaging effects of foreign aid and international charity." It was a pretty stunning account - and well researched, along with his years of personal experience. So the question for me is - where DOES my money help? Which organization?
Some of the NGO's named and damned in the book are huge, trusted... (This is a rhetorical question, by the way.)
I tend towards thinking Doctors without Borders may be a good one.
Possibly World Vision.

As to personal relationships, I agree completely. Even better - to know what your own conditions are... I find that's the harder thing to determine. Figuring out expectations beyond the obvious, or beyond what I'm telling myself.

KD...You had a good bag of stones there.

Everyone? I guess we're all working on it, huh? Doing the best we can with what we've got.

Thank you for your insights.

 
At Sunday, August 27, 2006 , Blogger LJ said...

I think the Hobos have paused all of us, H!

 

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