So I was wondering whether I’m a bad person. I’m generally concerned with myself and my own needs and that’s not bad in itself but I take it a step further and resist trying to help people. Why? Because I’m jaundiced from past experience. Let me break down what happens when I try to help someone:
A: Hey, B do you want some help with that.
B: OK.
A: Alright, there you go. That was a lot of work. I hope you appreciate it.
B: Meh.
Let’s analyze this interaction from an evolutionary perspective. Man is a social creature and we evolved to cooperate. A great incentive to cooperate is reciprocity, so whenever you do something for someone you can expect a payment in kind at some point in the future when you need it. It’s like putting favors in a bank. The more you help others the more help you can count on when times are tough, for example after getting wounded or growing old. Not surprisingly we all have a deep desire to help others – our survival depended on it.
Where things go awry in the foregoing interaction is my expectation. I expected, as we are programmed to, that B would be appreciative or at least demonstrate his willingness to help me in the future (as an aside that is a great way to show gratitude). In this case B didn’t seem to value my contribution but the scenario could just have easily been one where B is actually hostile as a result of the contribution, e.g. I did something not to his liking. In the worst case B could have taken my help with no intention of helping me later, but that’s difficult to recognize until after the fact. None of these scenarios are beaming adverts for cooperation and with no expectation of reciprocity it’s hard to justify helping others.
But the problem wasn’t in B’s response. It was in my own expectation of his response. I was letting my ego get tied up in the process. I thought my contribution was more important than it was or at least I felt it merited my aggrandizement in the form of B’s adulation. Ego isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually pretty great, it’s the source of our individualism and our constant yearning to do things better and greater. The problem happens when we incorporate both ego and cooperation in the same interaction. It’s hard to fault someone if they can manage that successfully, after all it scratches two evolutionary itches: the desire to be worthy of praise and the desire to help others. But in practice ego gets in the way of cooperation by forming an admixture of condescension and unrealistic expectation.
For example, have you ever told someone they’re doing something wrong (or even insulted them about it) and then offered the right way to do it? The ego is trying to aggrandize itself at the expense of someone else. But at the same time the social part of your brain is trying to bank favors for the future. I’m sure you can guess what happens: the person gets offended, doesn’t accept your help and even tries to knock you down a peg. Your ego doesn’t get the boost it was craving and you don’t bank any favors for the future.
The better approach would be to separate ego from reciprocity. What I’m saying is that you should suspend your ego when you want to help someone, that way you’re neither offensive nor disappointed by the outcome. In practice this means, for a moment, forgetting about your needs and focusing on the other person, namely by navigating their ego. This is also a great way to get out of your head and become present to the moment. Now I’m not saying you should act on every urge to help someone, remain judicious and take care of yourself first, but if you have been reluctant to be a “giver” in the past maybe you will benefit from this change in approach.
My takeaway:
There’s no such thing as good or bad but thinking makes it so. I don’t know and I don’t really care if I’m a bad person, or at least I don’t care if society says I’m a bad person. What matters to me is achieving my goals. That’s what I want to be good at.
On helping others:
Generally you get the most return from helping people who with no expectation of kindness. So, for example, helping some girl in trouble has extremely low return while conversely helping a business associate or upset client might have a huge return.
-Augustine
autoanathema 