On Helping

The Bike situation has clarified something else. Helping people is an extremely difficult and skilled job.

Someone is debt has got themselves into debt. If we simply relieve their debt they will get into debt again and so nothing has been achieved. All that happens this way is that the person giving help makes their life hard and limits their ability to help others. This is crazy wisdom. It is frightening to think that our very governments and economic system are in this situation! And all that has happened is that they have used crazy wisdom to fill the hole. This is a very stark observation that the end of our current economic system really is nigh! The mother of my tutee needs to realise this about her criminal boy-friend, she really is exhibiting the most crazy wisdom in helping him.

When we help people then it is not about filling the gap the what was there before because the gap will simply come back and might even be more reinforced.

Giving and generosity are traditionally key features of helping. I think that they are the essence of human contact. In a society where an account is kept and people are expected to meet that account we presuppose distrust of each other. This is not a state of friendship or human contact. Giving is the true state of human existence… indeed there is no such thing as “giving” in reality because sharing and not measuring the flow of resources is natural. Imposing controls is the unnatural. However there is no debt in this system and the arising of debt was what required “help” in the above example. Debt and helping presuppose distrust! I think more than worry about money the point behind helping and giving is to teach people trust and to reconnect them to the natural way of human relationship. If we can do this by whatever means (and filling the debt is probably not the best way) we have helped. If we have not done this then we have not helped.

I lend some one £5k once on the basis of a story that I was assured by someone else was true. It turns out we were both fooled by someone we had every reason to trust. My wisdom now says – if they are in debt they already have a problem with trust, the two are connected.

So by waiving the fees for my tuition to relieve the financial situation of my tutee’s mother with the intention of showing her my own carefree attitude to money I did a good and a bad thing. The bad thing was to take the financial pressure off her lending to her boyfriend who is the miscreant here (interesting karma – had the same thing with “my muse” and actually three or four times now) – she needs pressure to test that relationship. The good thing was my intention to divert her belief that money creates class (assuming she finds me a classy person which I know she does). With new wisdom now however I know she had a problem the moment she mentioned debt and should not have given my money so freely. Finally 10 years to learn a lesson :-)