Tue, 2007 Aug 07
A little help...
NB: The following article is purely desk-chair philosophy. It has no other basis than the beautiful (?) randomness of my thoughts. There is no research, no call to ancient works, no reliance on political stump speeches (except insofar as what I may have internalized over time). I’m not altogether sure I believe it.
A lot of people I know have a deep desire to help those who are (in some way or another) “less fortunate”. In such desire (calling, if you will), there’s often the complementary question of what is the best way to do so. And, probably, there is no anywhere-near-universal answer to that question. Which is okay.
NB-sub-2: By weak and strong, throughout the rest of this post, I meaning something very general which I’ve yet to define well. It could be more or less wealthy, more or less intelligent, more or less technologically advanced (your pick which is the strong), etc.
But I have noticed a tendency on the part of some people to try focus their help on the weakest. Meanwhile, I find myself wanting more to focus my efforts to help on those only slightly weaker in a given area. It occurs to me that this could actually be a pretty good system, that is that most people focus their help on those slightly weaker, while a few–those with a calling, if you will–focus on those much weaker than themselves. It’s not a system one might institute formally, but I think it could benefit people who feel guilted into helping in a way which is wrong for them. So, let me dig a bit deeper here.
Here’s what I’m seeing: The majority of people would focus on helping those “slightly weaker” in a given area. For example, I might help someone who knows a little about Subversion Ruby bindings but not a lot, or someone who is looking at buying their first rental property (although with an understanding that I may not be a lot of help); rather than someone who has never used a computer, or, for a more extreme example, a child with cancer on a different continent. The main point here is that I know about the former things–I can actually provide real help. I don’t know how best to introduce someone to computers for the first time, and I certainly don’t know what a child with cancer on another continent needs.
However, there is a very real danger of simply ignoring those more extreme problems. I might occasionally do something along the lines of traveling to [wherever] and giving a child [what do you give a child with cancer?], in order to raise my awareness and understanding, but, for me, it should be for that purpose, rather than imagining that I somehow making a definitive difference. Because, frankly, I know that I’m not going to save this kid’s life. Pretending that I can, in my opinion, serves only to foolishly boost my pride. How I am actually going to help this kid is by helping those who will more directly help the child.
That is, some people are both skilled and called to help those much weaker than themselves in some area. This is wonderful and I admire such people, but I think they’re in the minority. To do so requires an exceptional dedication to studying and addressing the deepest problems of the weakness. It probably should be a full-time occupation or risk causing hurt rather than help. The beauty (and maybe part of God’s plan, if I’m not just talking out of my rear here) is that these people need help from “the rest of us” in areas in which we are slightly stronger.
So, then, a secondary benefit of occasionally participating in helping the much weaker is being better prepared to help those who help them. And, again, I don’t mean weaker in all it’s negative connotations, just more in need in a particular area. So, yeah, a bunch of thoughts. Probably in need of greater clarification.
