When you realize that denying people life’s necessities for being poor is a form of killing… Then pretty much every job starts to feel like working in a death camp “just following orders.”
(since every job that’s actually necessary involves requiring money in exchange for necessities. even if the job is for a nonprofit or tax-funded, you have to make decisions about who the money goes to help, and if there is any limit on your resources, your decisions will deny necessities to someone).
So unless you can make a living off totally unnecessary work, the only way to cope with that is to use your position as ethically as you can.
Find ways to let someone get what they need, whenever possible. Even if sometimes it means not doing things the way you’re officially supposed to.
And depending on how far you take that, it might mean your good deeds have to be kept completely secret, forever.
Which may mean that, depending on how history is written, you may be remembered as…. one of the monsters who were “just following orders.”
And that’s probably even the best way for history to be written.
Because it’ll mean that “monsters just following orders” are considered a bad thing– bad enough to be worth teaching about in history.
Which will mean the monsters giving the orders didn’t win.
But it doesn’t mean anyone will ever recognize you for being good.
I think a lot about this lately. About this theme of the conflict between “being good in my own eyes” and “being seen as good by others.”
Sometimes in a work context, like above. But also pretty often in the context of strangers on the Internet judging me as a whole person based on one thing they saw me say…. and how to not feel like total crap about that.
Being good in your own eyes is not always what matters most in terms of real goodness. But it usually matters more than the judgment of strangers who know almost nothing about what you’ve actually done.
But at the same time, it also pretty much never determines any of the real-world rewards for being good. All of that is determined by how other people perceive what you’ve done.
So actually doing the most good you can… will often come with no recognition, and maybe outright punishment, from a world that makes its own conclusions about how good you are.
Which is a hard thing to live with. But I’m trying.
I’m not sure exactly what this post is about on a personal level.
But individually being a good person or a bad person is kind of irrelevant. You aren’t going to individual action your way out of a systemic problem. I think most people who know me would say I’m a terrible person. I’m deeply self-interested, easily frustrated, have a low tolerance for bullshit, which leads to a venomous tongue. Needless to say, “Minnesota nice” is a bit of a frustrating culture shock for everyone involved.
But I’m also a public school teacher and have helped raise thousands of kids, mostly while barely scraping by in the local cost of living. I donate and volunteer over the summer for charitable causes.
Every person is drowning in contradictions.
What matters is the system and what kinds of behaviour it encourages or permits. In your metaphor, the solution isn’t being generous at the death camp, it’s abolishing death camps!
There was a study about online toxicity. They found that hostility and toxicity occured at about the same rate all the way from usenet to today. The system of online communication rewards people for being a loud asshole, which discourages others from bothering with it.
I’m an asocial jerk, if I end up homeless and die on the street, that’s fine, as long as I’m on my own. But the ‘reward’ or 'recognition’ you’re looking for, I think, comes from a system of direct mutual interreliance. A very tight-knit group that you rely on and who relies on you. Emotionally, sure, but also materially. That’s a pain in the ass to build tbh.
The systems we live in aren’t going to reward you on their own unless the good you do in the world is amassing capital.
Yeah, I relate to a lot of what you say here.
More detailed answers under the cut, since you expressed some curiosity about my thought process… though it gets very heavy at times.
My own biggest goals are about increasing overall well-being and happiness for as many people as possible– even if they don’t appreciate it– even if they blame me for their meds being late, despite me being the reason they got their meds at all. If I believe I increased the good in the world by any amount, I feel whatever I did was worth it, thanks or no thanks.
I don’t know exactly why that’s my goal, except that I can’t exactly think of a better one to have in this life.
But I also very deeply do also want to build that sort of interconnected community you mentioned. Even if it’s a pain in the ass.
Because not only is having that community sometimes the only way to survive, it’s also sometimes the only way to help others survive. It feels like the only path to both my desire to have a good life myself and to increase good in other lives.
And I think my desire to build that community is the biggest reason I care at all whether others consider me good. Because community doesn’t happen without building goodwill.
And in my own experience (YMMV of course) I think there’s not so very much difference in how groups of people handle building good or bad will, between the internet and in-person life. If there’s a difference, it’s in how openly the assholes are assholes.
Which, yes, I guess does make a lot of difference in the way communities end up looking. But it’s a difference affected only by where the vitriol is directed. In my experience, people “IRL” have just as much anger towards each other, just as many batshit opinions, and just as much nonsensical beef over petty issues as people online– it’s just more likely to be dealt behind each other’s backs.
(But then, I do live in Minnesota. For whatever that’s worth.)
And yes I feel like individual actions are very very limited in what they can accomplish. We live in a system where no individual person can abolish the death camps– they’re the only place to work, so the options are working in them as a callous asshole, working in them as someone trying for harm reduction, or having no place to work and just dying.
Of course the analogy is somewhat hyperbolic. Being unable to provide everyone with necessities really isn’t exactly the same as killing, at least from the viewpoint of intentions, even if it often has the same effect.
But it’s a feeling that comes up when dealing with those transactions of necessities. Whether the necessity you’re selling is medicine, groceries, transportation, housing or whatever.
Some necessities are more hazy in that framework– teachers probably have to make some hard decisions about where to focus their resources and their attention, but it rarely leads directly to a death. Medicine is probably one of the most clearly life-and-death fields to work in, and probably why my mind keeps going there.
If a patient comes to me at the pharmacy and tries to fill a prescription that isn’t covered by insurance– and it’s a med where missing a few doses could be life-threatening, but there’s literally no way I can get them the doses on time without breaking laws and workplace regulations– and if I ever did break those rules I might be able to get one or two doses to a patient, reduce their risk of death– but only so much before I’d lose my job for it. In that moment it really feels like I’m being asked to choose between my job and someone else’s life.
The death-camp analogy comes up a lot in my mind then. Especially since all the recent rhetoric about insurance CEOs and how their denying payment for care is equivalent to murder.
But if that’s true, then I am to them what death-camp officers were to Hitler. And to some degree, so is anyone who sells medicine or food or anything needed for life.
And all that keeps me going is that 1. I have no other job options that aren’t similarly fraught, and 2. If I can keep this job then I do have some options for harm-reduction (or help-maximization, depending on whether you view this sort of life-death choice as a negative or positive action).
I think a lot about Asimov’s First Law of Robotics, and how it’s more restrictive than the “first, do no harm” rule that many in medical professions try to live by. Asimov’s fictional robots considered harm through action and harm through inaction to be the same thing– failing to save a life as equal to killing.
Which even makes some sense– there are cases where humans make the same judgement, for example if parents cause their child’s death by neglect. If action is considered to be your responsibility, inaction is an act of harm in itself.
But “responsibility” is a hard thing to define in words clear enough for a robot to understand.
And by that sort of definition we all commit murder every day, when we don’t donate money to charity, don’t donate organs or blood, don’t ask a stranger if they need help, don’t check in on a depressed friend. And in real life, Asimovean robots would be stuck in a permanent trolley-problem crash unable to do anything.
I don’t know.