The Hubris of Helpers

By Carl Nelson

            A part of working at anything is when others decide you need some help.

Among the worst are people who’ve seldom tried to fix anything. Their take is often that if you were capable it would just take you a minute or two for the fix. Whereas the nature of something which doesn’t work, is that it can’t speak. It won’t tell you why. You must tease this information out of the still device. This can often take some time, some quiet, and some thought. And say, you should take a few trial stabs, try one thing or another… Well, this can look very bad to the uninitiated. To the novice this can look for all the world like you are stumped because of inexperience and don’t know what to do. If it’s your wife, and you’re bent over the car’s engine compartment, she’ll often try to help by asking the first man she sees to assist. This could be a fellow standing by, who was just about to ask you for a handout or to bum a smoke.

If ever you do need help, the worst thing to do is to act like it. This would be displaying a soft underbelly and out you as an easy mark for whatever know-it-all that passeth. No. If you need help, the first thing to do is to explore the problem well enough to realize just what kind of help you need – while sniffing those carefully who would want to stick their nose into it. In this way, you retain your agency. You figure who it would be best to ask. And then you estimate whether the help they suggest is anything you might use and the cost is justified. Don’t just set your possessions adrift like some derelict vessel the first passerby might make claim upon. Have some poise. Use your wits.

But let’s imagine that you haven’t used your wits.

If a woman barges in to assist, she’ll likely treat you as if you are a baby or a child and begin directing you as such. She’ll insist you do such things as “wipe the grease off your nose”, or “you need to change that shirt”, or “just give me a minute, while I find someone who would know about this.” So that instead of you being stumped, you are now waiting upon some woman who is stumped. If, finally, you think you may have figured out the problem… you best be quick about it, or it’s no longer yours to solve. She’s decided and has taken action. (“We need to hire someone.”) “Strong people will admit when they need help.” And, of course, people who charge money, know what they are doing. The more they charge, the more they know. It’s only logical. Allowing you to work on it would be foolhardy.

If a man barges in to assist, he may take control, and begin giving orders. He might know what he is doing, and he may not. The chances are he doesn’t wholly know. But he probably knows something. And he is probably trying to remember what that was. And it might fix the problem or not. Chances are it won’t. He might give up halfway, saying that it is not possible to go any further without the acquisition of a special part, piece of equipment, or tool. He might be called away and leave the project scattered all about. He might suggest you buy him a beer “just over there”, while you wait for the wrecker. Your wife, meanwhile, will adopt the same posture as the stranger (who knows more), and treat you likewise.

The upshot of all this is to be very leery of needing help. There is an African maxim: “The hand above rules the hand below,” (or something like that). Whatever. Be very chary of giving your agency away. Sometimes it’s better to suffer a bit. Give it time. It’s incredible, actually, how many problems will actually heal themselves… given time. Electronic glitches are an example of this. “We’ll just turn it off and give it time to rest… and heal,” I tell the wife, expanding my hands confidently.

When I turn it back on, sometime later, it reboots. Fix achieved.

Personal difficulties often heal even better with this method. Go to bed. Cool off. Give it time for the silt (personal sh*t) to settle out. Most interesting thoughts may occur whose pursuit leaves the past evening’s difficulties in the dust.

Suffering a bit, while exploring the problem, is being thoughtful of others. Men are often beat over the head by women with the complaint that we are loathe to ask for help or directions. How pigheaded and self-defeating can we be? But isn’t it thoughtful not to be pestering everybody?

Have you ever tried to share a task with a woman? You’ll have barely picked up your tools, before they need something. And while you’re trying to work, they will continue these distractions. Until you want to scream, “Just figure it out!”

But instead, you walk around to the other side of the house in order to accomplish something there.

(When you return, you’ll find she’s quit and gone inside.)

Often, just letting things slide, giving them some time, will allow a solution to occur – either without my input, or by a successful fix occurring to me. Fixing requires as much patience as it does resolve. And, okay, I shouldn’t be lazy. (“There’s a concept,” notes the wife.)

One of the harder parts of living our lives is when the government decides you need some help. Remember Reagan’s maxim about “the nine most terrifying words in the English language…”?

All of which brings me around to right now, as we are in times when everybody’s business is ours – and they return the favor. We’re not responsible for our own lives necessarily – but we are for other’s lives, absolutely! At least this is the stance the Karen culture keeps pushing for. So that when people demand help, it is necessary to be provided, from surgical sex changes to reparations.

I’ve often thought that it is probably easier to make a million dollars, than to use that million dollars to help others. You wouldn’t initially think so. But when you try to make a million dollars the positive incentives are all lined up. You want to be rich? Get to work. But when you give out a million, the incentives work against you. You want to get some of it? You need a problem – and a more pressing and larger one than the fellow next to you. And if, like the government and your solution fertilizes the problem – that’s all to the better! Also, the ‘unfortunate’ can be quite competitive. You won’t believe how inscrutable problems can become until you begin providing seed money.

Giving away money is sowing problems.

Who thinks giving away money is a good idea?

The poor and the entitled.

And who thinks giving away money is a bad idea?

Those who earned it.

(Also struggling third world industry, struggling to survive in a first world, free-stuff, philanthropic avalanche of dumped products.)

Anyone who’s raised children know that they can think up an infinite number of reasons which should allow them to do anything they want. Luckily, they grow up a bit before they vote. Or, at least some of them do. The others who grow older find that claiming to ‘help’ others, is an automatic get out of consequences card. Anything is allowed if “your heart is in the right place”. And if it turns out poorly, or even does damage, this was okay also, as “your heart was in the right place”. These judgments don’t seem to give a damn where you left your brain, or if you have one.

Children take it for granted, that since they have just arrived on the scene, all of the problems that abound are our doing. And they take us to task for normalizing them – among other sins.

People who claim they are caring or helping others also seem blind to boundaries – or limits of all kinds, even common sense – when out to do whatever seems to grab their fancy. They believe they are following a Higher Authority. (One that, obviously, hasn’t spoken to us who follow the Great Satan.) They all fancy themselves Robin Hoods. Their emotions seem to override all distinctions. And dousing them with reason is like water off a duck. And if they are quite sharp, they have the ability to swan in the waters of your puddled reasonings like a happy mallard. “No one quotes the Bible like the Devil” as they say.

But I doubt I’m telling those reading this much that they don’t already know. I’m just juggling words. So, traditionally, this is the part in the show, where we all take a break, while I hawk the magical elixir curative for all of these aforementioned qualms.

Alas! Here is where I trot you out a poem. (But it’s free!)

Several Wagers

I’d wager things would get better for everyone faster,
if we all did as we said,
than if we helped the old lady across the street,
or carried her groceries,
though both would be an improvement.

I’d wager things would get better for everyone faster,
if we all determined to pull our own weight,
rather than shoveling the neighbor’s walk,
or carry in their mail.
But neither one would set us back.

I’ve always held that it is easier to make money
than to give it away, usefully.
Though not being good at the former,
I’ve little practice at the latter.

Nevertheless, I’d rather the ability
to make money as to give it.
After all, when people buy from you
isn’t that a return for both on your efforts?