The dark side of help

If is a well established fact that life is full of uncontrollable factors, which can put us in situations that exceed our abilities or strength. A few weeks back, a friend of mine came to asking only for a friendly ear to hear the rant, and I gladly complied. However, not all help is born equal and there are even bad kinds of help, even if the original intention is good.

One example of ill-fated help is unsolicited help. In western societies, independence and self-sufficiency are desirable character traits, but they necessarily lead to a tension between pride and the need for help: in the presence of the "independence factor" one might endure on their own a little longer than advisable just in case a strike of good luck can help us out of an otherwise irreparable situation. This means that offering unsolicited help might insult the intended recipient, because it reveals the external perception that they might be in need of help even if they do not see it that way. Similarly, we are not equally ready to admit our vulnerability in front of everyone, so we probably prefer asking for help to our friends than to our parents. So even if a person we know is in need, it is better to let them ask for help first.

Photo: pxhere

Another kind of help which is not entirely altruistic is the one that is provided for the good feelings that it elicits in the provided, the so-called "warm glow". I always find it funny how the motives also come to play in this game: if you sign up for providing food and shelter for a girl in Darfur, it is clear that you are helping. But the moment you start flaunting it or even competing in your social circles to see who has provided the most help, it is still a net good, but it becomes tainted with self-interest.

Finally, a third type of ailment that can affect the help is parochialism: the tendency to help people in "our group" before we help people in "other groups". From my point of view, peopled deserve help the moment they need it and are asking for help. Setting additional barriers, like sharing nationality, faith, social status, or interests might be necessary from the administrative point of view, but it degrades the quality of the help to some extent. Just imaging a panhandler you see at the entrance of your place of faith: would you be more or less willing to help them depending on their sharing your faith?

And what about the strings that come attached to the help? Many underworld organizations started as means for reciprocal help, but you can get trapped in a chain of favors to a point that you wish you had never asked for it.

It can be argued that every help is ultimately self-interest: as a minimum, providing help gives you a feeling of importance and achievement, but it can also prevent other problems for yourself in the future. Social subsidies (a kind of help) are known to reduce street criminality; technology subsidies (another kind of help) speed up and reduce the final cost for the consumers of that technology.

Whatever circumstances your find yourself in when a request for help comes, honesty and caring are generally good directives to lead your path ahead. Enjoy the evening.