I’ve realized but struggle to accept that at this point, I literally need charity. As capable as I am, I'm in a place where my ability to overcome this is largely based on other’s ability and willingness to help me without any expectations, and beyond what pressure I might feel to prove that I’m worth helping.
As I contemplate how the heck I got into this situation and what the lessons learned are, I realize that a major issue is a dangerous amount of individualism and independence, and a warped sense of productivity and personal responsibility.
The narrative of the welfare queen that government officials popularized was never true. They created and promoted a fiction in order to rally racists and the bootlicking middle class around their oppressive and capitalistic agenda. Because of that, our social welfare & safety net programs are fucking awful. If you want speedy and sufficient help, you have to be a combat veteran with a deformity who died from cancer 2 weeks before applying for benefits. Everyone else has to engage in an agonizingly long process that only a wasteful bureaucracy could conceive in order to receive only 60-80% of what a person would actually need to really get back on their own two feet, which immediately gets taken away the moment it looks like you might be getting a 10 cent surplus of the services. (is that a runon sentence?)
Related to my experiences with all my identities and issues: cishet adult male, African American, cptsd, gifted kid full of potential, adhd, autsim... I have the hardest time asking for help. I have a hard time even accepting it. Even when I'm actually wishing for and wanting it, I dare not burden someone else with my stuff if I’m technically capable of managing it on my own. Even if I probably need help, I will endure going without. By the time I ask for the help I need, we’re likely way past the point when it would have been useful in order to prevent a disastrous situation. Why am I like this? Reread the first sentence. Add on to this a toxic dose of awful self help, productivity, motivational, entrepreneur, grindset content that I consumed throughout my 20s. I’ve dug myself into a deep pit in the middle of an uncharted island.
I know intellectually that we are social and communal beings. I know that seeking and securing family and tribe are core to the survival of our species. I know that shrinking our sense of community or tribe to just the nuclear family has been detrimental to our society. I know that many “white” Americans have thrived on generational wealth all while preaching the virtue of bootstrapping. I know that many “Black” Americans have embraced a dangerous philosophy where their newly 18 year old children need to leave the house and become completely self sufficient. I know that neither MLK Jr, Malcolm X, nor Huey Newton did it all by themselves. I even know that behind and below every billionaire there is outright exploitation if not at the very least, a willingness to turn a blind eye to it (i.e. the service provider company you have a contract with that underpays or abuses the people that do work for you but technically are not your employees). I know all that. I knew all that AND STILL I can’t break the compulsion of trying to make it on my own. I keep succumbing to ridiculous notions of hyper independence. And it only makes life harder. It makes recovering from mishaps harder. Though I’ve been trying to practice something different, I’m still coming up too little and too late. By the time I ask for help, it’s help I really need and the vulnerability of asking is disorienting. Then I perceive being denied and unresponsiveness as utter rejection. Rather than that maybe this person just doesn’t have the ability to help right now.
So, I've picked up some very dangerous habits & beliefs. But I don’t think I’m the only one. I’m not living in some niche corner of society where I’m getting some unusual, counter culture messages. I’m getting this message and lesson from regular, popular society, both religious and secular.
…venturing out into the wilderness everyday to barehand hunt and bring enough back for the nuclear family without flaw or fatigue is a man’s job. It’s in our DNA. It’s our divine calling and what we were put here to do. It’s what the real men of history had done for millennia. Somehow men got soft and less manly right after the advent of podcasts & social media, internet, computers, processed foods, liberal arts colleges, steam engines, the cotton gin, the printing press, black powder, the domestication of animals, iron weapons, fur clothing…
This is the message put out there to every man. Dare I say, especially straight Black men.
I say straight because in the eyes of patriarchy and toxic masculinity, queer men have already compromised their manliness. It is futile for them to try to preserve it through hyper individualism. Only very rich men can experiment with queerness and maintain an image of or claim to masculinity. If it’s giving broke, then it’s giving sassy.
I say Black because … nevermind, if you’re even reading this then I don’t need to spend time explaining it to you. You get it.
My point is, this is a very sick society. When a person falls or is suffering, it is their community’s duty to heal them and set them back up on their feet. Our preoccupation with being taken advantage of by freeloaders is a misplacement of our attention. My own preoccupation with not wanting to be perceived as one is crippling me. I haven’t thought much about it prior to typing this sentence but I am now wondering if the proliferation of a freeloader in a community might just be a symptom of some amount of disconnection. To be clear, I’m not talking about those who are malicious or scammers and are intentional with their abuse of kindness. I’m talking about those who somehow just never learned reciprocity or accountability. And I don’t think I’m a freeloader. I think I’m a rather caring guy with prosocial ambitions, even if I’m not always “pleasant” in every interaction.
In some of the Bible stories I read as a kid, God and/or alleged messengers of God instructed people to take in and joyfully care for visitors and travelers. You could be cursed by angels for denying kindness to a stranger in need. I’m not saying the Bible is the legal or moral authority on how we ought to live our lives but there are a LOT of people who say and believe it is. And yet there are Americans who recite the 2nd amendment while posting wanted flyers on Nextdoor if a stranger rings their doorbell. There are those who get indignant at the mere idea of a friend or family member showing up to their house unannounced. A week before I published this, the United Nations Security Council was just now calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and the USA ambassador abstained from the vote. Israel’s Prime Minister, of all places and people, was preparing to send ground troops into a city where Palestinians were instructed to flee to.
This is a sick and disordered society.
I’ve been reminding myself daily that I actually am putting in a lot of effort and that I’m not a bum. Even if my misfortune was just the consequence of my own folly, I still wouldn’t deserve suffering. A person has a right to burden their community because communities have a duty to lift up its fallen members. So much of life is outside my control. Sometimes things don’t turn out the way you want and it’s not your fault. As I write this, it’s hard for me to conceive of who, what, and where my community is. And though I have this idea to just go make one, I have to remind myself that there can be a difference between facilitating community and actually being part of one.