On Being "The Good Sort of Person"
I like the good things and dislike the bad things! Isn't that enough?
I want to talk about a moral failing I've noticed in myself, where you get to tell yourself you're a good person without actually doing anything.
(The sequel to yesterday's post is still coming, but this isn't it.)
Two years ago, I was walking to a movie and I met a homeless man who asked me for change. I wasn't carrying any, and so he walked away some combination of disappointed and angry, muttering something about selfish rich kids.
I thought that wasn't very fair.
After all, I care a lot about homelessness! I read books and blogs about it. I vote for progressive candidates. (Well, I hadn't yet, but I planned to vote for Bernie.) It makes me sad and angry that we don't do more about it. I bring it up in bible study. I have tough conversations about it.
I never saw him again. I don't know what happened to him.
Maybe he really needed the money. Maybe he didn't. Maybe it turned out okay. Maybe it didn't.
It's alright. There's no reason to feel guilty. Because I'm the sort of person who cares about homelessness.
I'm the good sort of person.
Hooray for me.
Moral duty fulfilled.
This was kind of an extreme case, but I think the problem applies more generally. Let's say X is something important: poverty, racism, malaria, human trafficking, inequality, and so on.
If you feel that X is wrong, you get to award yourself moral points:
"I care about poverty. The real problem is Republicans." "I own up to my privilege. The real problem is other white people." "I'm personally opposed to malaria. The real problem is mosquitos."
And if you feel strongly that X is wrong, and you read books about it and start conversations about it and write blog posts about it and sometimes it's just too much and you sit down and cry about it------
Then you start to feel really good about yourself.
Because you're the sort of person who really cares.
Everyone else just goes on with their life ignoring X and all the suffering it's caused, but you don't. Not anymore. Now you care. You're the good sort of person.
You're part of the solution.
Of course, it doesn't matter if you're actually part of the solution. It doesn't matter if you've actually helped anybody, or solved anything, or done anything at all. In all likelihood some of the people you look down on for not caring have done more to help than you have.
Because it's not about helping people.
Not really.
It's about feeling good.
And of course one way to do this is to help people, but helping people is really hard. Most "big issues" in the world are really complicated. I have no idea how I could personally make a difference in something like human trafficking. I don't know how to fight for world peace. And I'm not sure doing big, flashy interventions that don't actually help is any better than doing nothing.
On the other hand, caring about something is pretty easy. It's not that there's any deception involved. When things are legitimately evil, it's not hard to really, truly, sincerely care about them. And once you've done that, you can categorize yourself as "the right sort of person" and feel good about yourself and. . .
Of course, this is exactly what I'm doing right now.
I found a problem: I've noticed it's very easy for me to feel good just for caring about something rather than doing anything about it, and I assume this isn't limited to just me.
And I care about this problem, so I'm telling people about it on my blog so I can feel good about myself.
But I haven't offered any ideas on how to actually stop it.
Because honestly? I don't really know.
I think part of the solution is to stop assigning moral value to feelings. This way, at least the theory in my head goes, to feel good about ourselves we'll have to earn "moral points" (for lack of a better word) other ways, by actually doing things. But it's easier to say we should change our values than to actually change them.
I think another part of the solution is to make more of an effort to say "here are specific things you can do right now" when we talk about problems. Make a homeless friend. Donate to AMF. And we need to convince ourselves that caring about issues doesn't just make actions a good idea: we need to make them mandatory for ourselves.
(Seriously: go donate five bucks to AMF right now, and buy a month of life for somebody.)
(There's a similar situation that can arise from this idea, if we take small actions we can do and use them as a moral license not to do big actions. I'd guess this is preferable to the current state of affairs, but I have even fewer ideas on how to improve on this one.)
Beyond that? I don't know.
I realize this isn't a satisfying ending. I want more, too. I want to know the "one weird trick" to help people, too. I want to have all my questions answered, too. I want to be better, too.
I dunno.
Maybe someday.