Learning to act right (10)…. Doing little goods badly

Learning to act right (10)…. Doing little goods badly
Torrey Orton
June 1, 2010 - Cauterets, France


Little goods may be great for others, for a moment
A guy is sitting back against a building with a hat turned up next to a small, handwritten plea for our consideration…$10 for a ticket to Frankston, $50 for a return to grandma in Warrnambool, anything for a meal… He's roughly dressed and generally unkempt, with spare clothes and potential bedding behind him. The right action(s) in such situations are thoroughly clear, and have been since the beginning of recorded reflections on acting right. These have always commanded giving to those less fortunate. Only late in human history have we arrived at societies which discourage caring for those in various perils. I'm perhaps somewhat afflicted with such thinking. I don't know. I do things like this:


I was coming out of the DHS building in Lonsdale Street a few weeks ago when my eye caught that of a panhandler* standing by the entry. He moved slightly towards me, at once saying "have ya got a dollar" as I glided nervously beyond reach, though I had a hand in my change pocket reaching for a gift which in mid-fingering I decided against and continued down the street. Just describing this is very difficult. What really happened? What did I /he actually do if we had a three camera video of the event to discover it from?


We haven't got such a record, but I know I went on down the street as he said "I only need $4 to get a …." (something inaudible). I headed off, pursued by my shame at having turned away from our visual engagement, to check out a camera at a place recommended by a friend. And fifteen minutes later I was headed back the same way with new camera in backpack and hand in pocket searching out the four dollars to give to the guy who I'd walked away from… thinking as I went up the street to the train to find him and make good my failed first response...taking out the loose change and separating $4 into my right hand held ready for giving … and not finding him where last seen and so wandering back across the street towards the train station holding the change still in hand for giving…by that time willing to give to any likely needy person to make good my lack of doing good when and for whom it was first needed … and therefore the more deserving in some way, I agreed with myself… and along some 20 seconds later he came, another gifting candidate, as I approached the crossing meters away from the train entrance, stopping for the light to change and, as with his precursor, catching an eye and receiving a request to which I responded with the prepared hand held backwards towards him as I crossed refusing to acknowledge (so it felt) his thanks or his look, disappeared into the station.


Protecting my professional distance?
Is my problem how to assess need on sight: what global personal look means what need, and comparatively which look is more needy at any time? And what's the individual's and what's the social responsibility for their need, and what are the mixes between them? These are useful reflections but perhaps not the central ones underlying my initial disengaging moves.


Rather my avoidant moves above may arise out of my need to protect my professional distance. This goes naturally with the therapeutic territory for me, though requires constant monitoring to reach and sustain the right level(s) for each relationship. The maintenance is usually done more or less explicitly with each client, and we both understand that it has to be there. Levels below that lie my relatively distant relationship style, too. An unscripted and spontaneous encounter with a needy other torsions both my professional and private selves.


There are other aspects. These come into view in the following events.


On a street corner in Pau, France. We were on the way to a week in the Pyrenees and an immediate lunch which was expected to be and turned out to be worth the travel for. I saw the guy (a French instance of the beggar in the first paragraph above – almost a clochard) 10 meters ahead and reached in my change pocket to pull out a 1Euro coin by touch and got a 2 instead, which I handed over to profuse thanks in mildly religious language. On reflection about this event I realised that part of my halting approach to giving in public is being in public, being seen to give…an apprehension which I can't yet source itself. At least now I know it's there in the feeling of the act. A vulnerability driving my distance?


Who deserves a gift?
Maybe there's an element of doubt about who's most deserving, or how much deserving, which is brought prominently into my awareness by the publicity and variety of opportunity for a perceived misallocation, a kind of performance anxiety which might afflict me at anytime where the decision I'm making is relatively uncertain for me. Hence the importance of automatic ethical responses to our ethical effectiveness?? …to our making a decision rather than none (also a decision of course, but..)?


What good will it do anyway?
And there's the question of gift effectiveness. One friend handles this with the rule that when approached he will give whatever is claimed to be needed – e.g. $50 last week on the other's promise it was required to make a certain practical change which would liberate him from certain difficulties. There's no follow-up or follow through to validate the method. But, it is a method with more than madness since the problems of authentication of need and outcomes to giving are such as to require bringing the other into the family or a relationship of long term friend to support it... and then giving becomes an adoption! Perhaps that's a feared (while wholly unlikely!) effect for me, too.


Underneath this concern is an objective social one about what makes good lives and how can we increase the number of us leading them. The distance some of us are from any reasonable notion of good life is obvious – often for unavoidably visible reasons which invoke the notional danger of "othering" (see Lyn Bender's nice review of these challenges here). The visible reasons -liked poverty, disability… - are accompanied by less visible incapacities of all kinds (hidden injuries of class, family history, etc.) which are not going to be repaired or often even vaguely ameliorated by a little good giving.


Guaranteed continuous giving strategy
Another acquaintance adopted the strategy of guaranteed continuous giving to the same needy person she encountered daily on the way to work, and no giving to others in need on the same trip. This approach was a partial fiscal adoption. It went on at a rate of $15 a day for some years. My acquaintance noticed the person had not been around for a while and eventually ran into her looking a whole lot better. She asked what the other had done with the daily gift and heard that it had provided a foundation on which to build a new life and kept her child in school because she was settled enough to ensure daily attendance.


Counterpoint: the accordionist with recorded accompaniment on a Paris Metro. I felt trapped on his arrival, knowing that an unavoidable request for money was coming, so was ill-disposed towards him before he started. More commercial versions of this tactic are the wandering musicians or their candid photographer colleagues in certain types of restaurants.


Trapped and relieved
His play was actually notably good with a suitable selection of tunes for an enclosed space and an unintended audience. A few others were tapping to the beat, and I resisted with effort myself, knowing the movement would be a tell for a prize I wasn't offering at the moment. When he stopped and came around with a worn cup one of my co-riders noted that he was better than average and that all wandering players were actually field tested for quality by the authorities. This moved me to reconsider and I drew out a 2 Euro coin and offered it to warm thanks (the average offer seemed less than a Euro).


Shame and giving
Looking back, I imagine that some of the size of my offer was compensation (self-punishment?) for my initial recalcitrance / reluctance to engage. Only I knew this thinking at the time, so the negotiation was entirely internal, except as it was infected with the potential shame(s) of my public exposure for so thinking. This is perhaps the other within me, a companion and competitor ever present to my daily activities. My other is often most present when real others are present, eliciting one facet or another of my being in the world.


I'm guessing now that I will try to work on doing little goods less conflictedly. Then I might see more clearly what mixture of thought/feeling is really occurring and build thereon a more effective contribution to decreasing the numbers and varieties of challenging others for me and them. I have to clarify my otherness to get there. I know for sure there are some others I do not want to be (nor could I be) and for these the struggle is political. For example, there's a shift of view in OECD and US policy thinking (Krugman) towards making the unemployed responsible for their joblessness by cutting off benefits. This raises once again an underlying individualist mantra – you are responsible for your fate, even if you are not!! But the policy argument is fiscal.


For me the struggle is to engage personally, which could include policy struggle but cannot be achieved by that alone.




*Not really such; we don't have a word I can find for a reasonably presented, but slightly down, usually male person who's acting out of desperate need.