THE AMBIGUITY OF BENEVOLENCE

Tarragon Theatre's production of Benevolence is classic Morris Panych

When people try to raise money for some ghastly situation that has never been properly addressed by anyone, the people who are asked to give often react strangely, demanding to know exactly who will be benefited, the details of what is done, the small facts of the personal (private) lives of the managers, sponsors and founders -- even the persons potentially being helped -- and what the evidence for improvement is.  In short, they appear to think they know -- better than the persons actually involved -- what should be done, how to judge what happens, and the moral issues.  On the one hand it seems they can’t trust anyone short of some multimillionaire whose bankroll is his main credential.  On the other hand people who have a lot of money often acquired it by taking chances, disregarding advice and precedents, and trusting their judgment of the individuals they had to grant power.  Why does it stop when it comes to charity?

Why is this?  Certainly journalists have poisoned the well by “revealing” scandals, inflating matters that were conventional in their context, even inventing their own factoids and examples, which contributes further to the paranoia.  They personalize, demonize, their attacks.  Much of this can be played politically for various kinds of advantages.  The culture itself has shifted away from the days when no one questioned Carnegie’s libraries or Rockefeller’s foundations.   Now big bequests just seem like bribes from wicked old men.   Anyway, the real money is in corporations -- whose fav charity is sports arenas.

Princess Diana with fans

But I think there is another factor, which is a kind of co-dependence.  First of all, philanthropists love watching themselves doing good -- not trying to understand what their help will mean to the receivers.  This means that if you don’t have an adorable blameless child for a mascot, you can’t expect that the do-gooder will think they “deserve” help.  Everyone is shocked, SHOCKED, by shifty behavior on reservations because they imagine “natural” nobility and don’t want to look at what real abuse will do to human character.  Movie stars are so valuable when dealing with AIDS or ghastly trauma because it makes it so easy to imagine oneself walking among the little children, patting their nappy heads, pretending to be Princess Diana.

Doing “good” can be a form of co-dependence, in which the partner of an addicted, self-destructive and dangerous person SEEMS to be helping but is in fact enabling.  Like the family that criticizes one of its members for being fat, but then puts cake on the person’s plate because they don’t want them to be left out.  The UUA used to encourage donations by saying that “giving feels so good.”  It does.  A person can be addicted simply because they are their own enabler, but if they get too committed, invested in a kind of ownership, they can turn vicious.  Fearing this shuts down giving.

On the rez do-gooders are met with suspicion and testing.  The tests can become so drastic that renegades will destroy playgrounds or computer workshops, just to show that the freely funded projects are as fragile as the good will of the benefactors.  They are usually right.

In the case of people aiding sex workers, the mental and emotional image of the people involved is so dangerously seductive that interceders and protectors can never be sure that they aren’t being tricked into the role of pimp.  This is even more marked when dealing with adolescent children, who are ambiguous participants.  We speak of pedophiles according to the legally enforced categories which vary by culture.  Most people think of pedophilia as pre-adolescents, under 12 or 13 and down to infancy.  Seducing and misusing older adolescent children is technically pederasty.  QUITE different.

Our controlling culture assumes the position that children are sacred and asexual -- unless the child is in a stigmatized category or is a “bad kid.”  It’s complex because our culture is also pedophobic.  We don’t really like the disorder, noise, mess, stink, defiance, masturbation, secrecy, ignorance, theft and so on that are natural to childhood.  We have still not resolved the conviction that children, like women and dogs, are possessions.  The passion of ownership -- near to sexual passion because it is near to one’s self image -- can lead to deadly violence, specifically targeted at one person, which is why a safe house must be secret.  Reporters don’t get that -- they become distracted by the drama of it all.  They think they won’t tell -- even drunk -- and forget not to show anyone the photos with location indicators intact.

The next big problem with our culture is the obsession with redemption and our unreasonable belief that punishment will make it happen.  The idea is mixed with breaking horses, converting savages, taming tigers, and other strange preoccupations.  Sometimes the SM dynamic comes into it.  Even in the home one man said that his father would smack him in more-or-less justified punishment, then get a strange look in his eye, go crazy and not stop the attack until he was exhausted.  It was physiological.  Sex workers know.

The Life of Pi

But I think the REAL reason that all these entities demand the specifics of actual people is that they are hungry for life, emotion, participation, and hope to buy their way in to something that from the outside looks quite seductive. They think they can go through the television screen to the “realer” side.  It's like everyone wants to take all the puppies home from the dog pound.  They don’t know what to DO with them and the first time they bite, bark, poop on the rug -- aaaiiieeee!  Tear up the check.

Boys are not puppies.  Boys who have learned the hard way how to “read” people and their motives so they are able to con stupid and indiscreet do-gooders.  Therefore, the presumed leaders of programs must protect the benefactors as much as the receivers.

19th century street boys

I personally have learned to tolerate ambiguity in my own benevolences.  That is, if I give some guy on the street a ten dollar bill, I resist second thoughts.  If I see him later with a bottle in a paper bag, I laugh and shrug.  If I have reason to believe that some society for good is self-serving, I just don’t give them anything.  I’m not BUYING, I’m GIVING.  Trust or don’t trust -- don’t tie a string onto every bill.  Don’t insist on tucking in the winos at night at the Salvation Army, but you could serve soup or sit down with them to eat and visit.  Know where the smart boundaries are.  That means one’s own emotional boundaries.  Not even professional religious are good at it these days.  Some of them, faced with a resistant person, will fly into a rage.  (They come to my front door!)  Today I read the blog of a man in ICU complaining about how oppressive the caregivers are.  It’s their job.

This photo is from a website telling people NOT to give.

At animal control, one of the best ways to get people to cooperate and understand what we were doing was to take them on ridealongs.  These days shelters involve volunteers as much as they can.  But not everyone can face the necessity of euthanasia day after day after day, dog after dog after dog; not everyone can even face a truly nasty soul-less dog.  Unless these gentle folks are guaranteed that they are helping blameless, grateful, and reformed dogs, they don’t want to give either time or money.  Frustrated, some people will flip over into being the most intolerant and unreasonable of critics.  It’s always taking a chance to include them, to take them backstage.  

The answer to stigma is not just to remove truly reprehensible conditions and behavior, but also to somehow teach us to respond self-protectively without resorting to hatred.  We must solve the dilemma of the interface person who must deal with both the privileged and the suffering.  They get bitten on both sides.