astercontrol:

it’s damn lucky that for the kind of person who helps others a lot, the act of helping others is usually its own reward pretty much

because if helpful people expected to be recognized for their helpfulness, they’d be sorely disappointed

even among those of us who, in theory, WANT people to be charitable and helpful toward those less fortunate.

even people like that, when they gaze dismally around a world that’s going to shit and manage to take a moment to “look for the helpers,” their response isn’t ever “let’s hear it for this cool person helping others! a ray of sunshine in the midst of a really bad time!”

no, that gets said by some clickbait news article written by someone who doesn’t care one way or another.

and THEN, the people who actually kinda care? They reply, “shut UP shut up shut up! that is NOT heartwarming, they wouldn’t have to DO that if the people with POWER weren’t being ASSHOLES!”

which is 100% true, but really not that nice a thing to hear if you’re the person going out of your way to help people when no one else will? (at least, not if someone says it without even sparing one complete sentence to show gratitude for what you do?)

to be a helper is to realize that very few people will actually express sincere appreciation for you.

(Unless you help by Doing Violence against those who Deserve It. That’s the exception. That gets you very popular with people who Actually Care.)

(Unpopular with people who have the power to ruin your life, of course. But popular with the people who care.)

(Maybe that is the kind of help we need the most right now?)

(I dunno.)

Probably worth adding that the refusal to show actual appreciation in favor of just saying “they shouldn’t HAVE TO do that!” is most common when the person choosing to help others is a child.

You know, when they’re in the part of life where they form their entire understanding of how the world works and how people ought to treat each other.

Kids have minds of their own, and ethics, and compassion. They aren’t just tools being manipulated into doing things they shouldn’t have to– or at least, the societal manipulation is the same as it is for any of the rest of us who feel a need to provide help that is not coming from the sources it should be coming from.

We keep hearing about children being the ones who do stuff like sharing their own lunch money and working to raise more for their friends who can’t afford to buy lunch or whatever.

And for every inspiration-porn article that extols the kindness of these children without acknowledging that they shouldn’t have to… there’s a viral wave of organic response, hammering on the point that they shouldn’t have to, while completely ignoring their actual heroism in choosing to do a thing they didn’t have to (while all the people in power who should have to were completely dropping the ball.)

I don’t know how many of these kids are gonna grow up managing to keep that so-vital motivation to organize grassroots help when it’s needed.

And how many of them are just gonna internalize the part about “not my responsibility, so I’m gonna just leave it to the so-called leaders whose responsibility it should be, even though I know they aren’t doing shit to help anyone.”