December Days 2022 #30: Helpful
Dec. 30th, 2022 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[What's December Days this year? Taking a crowdsourced list of adjectives and seeing if I can turn them into saying good things about myself. Or at least good things to talk about.]
Ah. Something that again strikes at the core of my being, at one of the ways that I try to relate to the world. It is a way of constructing worth to other people, since I haven't yet manufactured a core belief that I am worthy just as I am, without conditions or outside approval. Being helpful is one of the techniques you deploy to possibly make friends and build a group of people. Some people will see it as a nice trait and ask for help when they need it, others will see it as a thing to be exploited for their own purposes, without caring about wanting other than what they've gotten someone to do for them. One of the designs of the capitalist system is that it lionizes the people who exploit others and tells those who are exploited that they should have negotiated better or been willing to do without if they couldn't get anything with their negotiations. Knowing the game is rigged against you doesn't stop the people doing the rigging from insisting everything is fair and equal and making sure the officials are sufficiently bribed so that they will also say that everyone is fair and equal.
Helping others is a regular part of the commands given in many major belief systems, secular or religious. And help can be given in several different ways, so that people who have a paucity of some resources can instead use the ones they have an overabundance of and still help some people. Not all of those belief systems have a healthy attitude toward seeing binaries or taking care of the self before others. The system I grew up in talked about the difference between those who "have contributed out of their abundance" and "she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." (Mark 12:44) with the clear intent that we were supposed to be more like the widow who gave well past what she could afford to give, trusting and having faith that the Deity would provide what was needed when it was needed. More recently, the exposure I have had to self-advocacy communities and those interested in greater social change refute the idea that someone should give more than they are able. Instead, they often quote part of an airline safety video and say "Secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others." To avoid burning out of overcommitment, because there will always be one more fight, one more cause, one more person to help, and it is easy to say "just one more" without understanding that you are already at five too many.
My profession is characterized as a helping profession, intentionally built and structured sai that it would be compared primarily of people who want to be helpful, who would believe it a calling, a vocation, spreading knowledge and information to the ignorant masses in a paternalistic, "civilizing" way through the use of while women. Because it was a calling, those women could be paid significantly less for their work, and because white women were intended to take up this burden of "civilization", they could be paid less on the assumption that the man in their life would be the one providing the primary wage. While the field has more than white women in it now, the underlying attitudes about librarianship have not changed significantly, so it is still primarily a field of white women. Who all are supposed to want to be helpful, including to the people who want to show them graphic (porno or otherwise) imagery, the people who always try to flirt with them, regardless of their availability or interest, and, increasingly, the people who believe that a library that isn't in complete agreement with the most authoritarian and theocratic elements of their community deserves vitriol, threats, harassment, violence, and a litany of materials challenges and demands that any staff who don't agree with them should be immediately dismissed. The demand that staff still be helpful, even to people who demonstrate their contempt, or who are specifically trying to get a reaction out of someone's for their own gratification, creates incentives and conditions to perpetuate the contempt and the shock imagery. The presumption is that the person has a right to be there and use services unless you have it on well-documented authority that this person needs to go, and probably needed to go yesterday, because of this commitment to being helpful and "neutral" to everyone. The results are that we regularly carry materials injurious to the vulnerable for "balance" and that employees who are at the intersections of minoritization are expected to shelve their experiences or their whole selves to present as someone acceptable to the hegemon and willing to help them with things that will be injurious to them. It's all been weaponized, and it is a delicate dance that libraries do every day between ensuring their funding and fulfilling their commitments to principles like equity, accessibility, and justice in their communities. "Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others" is something the profession needs to take more seriously, and so do the national organizations that wring their hands at the difficulties happening and then use them to enrich their own fundraising efforts and kick back relatively little to those places suffering. Or don't throw their power behind convincing the communities there of the errors they commit by demanding the libraries reify their biases and apologize for stepping out of line and having a thought of their own. Abuse is the fault of the abuser, but it can seem like the national organization isn't as interested in doing the abuse as much as they are about making money off of it.
I digress, sort of. I do want to be helpful, so I chose wisely, I suppose, in professions. But the dictates of giving and trusting that there will be something to catch me and taking care of my own needs first complete with each other and produce brainweasels. People who look like me, who had my upbringing, and who make the kind of money I do are playing on an easier difficulty, comparatively speaking. Not so easy as some, but definitely easier than many others. The brainweasels of privilege and many a social media post say there's a lot more I could be doing to help, whether as support or as reparations for the benefits that I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy in the current system. With significant amounts of "what you think would be helpful isn't, because you are giving from your abundances. To give anything useful, you would have to give until it hurts to give those things, and then give some more, because until you give up power and wealth to that point, you're not actually helping." With the accompanying "your other identities should not be used as an excuse to not do the work on this," and "all of these issues are all equally priority one, so you don't get to choose some of them to focus on and let others slide." This is a recipe for burnout, overwork, and ineffectiveness at being helpful before retreating in despair and not coming back.
That, and I also have people I am helping, and pets as well. Maintaining a household takes up significant amounts of resources, as does paying back the bank the cost of getting my ex out of my life. Because of the traumas involving my ex, I'm trying to build up some reserves, but it's slow going and unexpected expenses are not great for my mental health. My own oxygen mask says to get those abundances first, and then see what is possible to do from there. And so we wobble back and forth from "it's okay to think about yourself and your household" and "you are trying to disguise selfishness, laziness, and lack of caring about the Cause, using your household as the excuse." Quantifying things (some practices do that with the idea of the tithe) would provide something to grasp and wield as a defense against the weasels, but they are the kinds of weasels that wouldn't be satisfied, no matter the amount of the quantification, because if there wasn't enough suffering for it to be painful, it clearly wasn't enough. Or that all the requests left undone or un-contributed-to are more important and more damning than whatever did get done or whatever help I may have been able to provide to others that I could spare. There is no satisfying or appeasing the weasels when they are like this. They can be distracted, or a barrier built to keep them out, but they are infinitely ravenous.
I suspect this would be less of a problem to it me if it weren't for some of the other adjectives that have already gone before on this list. Things like conscientious, self-aware, kind, sympathetic. All of those things help me avoid a hardened heart, as it were, and with literate, erudite, and analytical means I get input and understanding as to what may be causes and solutions to the problems of the world. If I were more provincial, more conservative, more able to narrow my focus down to a small group of people I cared about as "me and mine," I would have a sufficiently narrow scope that many of those questions wouldn't come up as important. If I decided to adopt someone else's universal morality as my own and follow their practices about what constitutes helping, regardless of whether it is helpful, I would have answers to the questions. If I ever unlock the secrets to a self-image that doesn't check with everyone else about whether I'm worthy of self-care and self-love and doesn't listen with at least one ear to others' disapproval while doing something enjoyable, it will likely improve my ability to be helpful and make it easier to contain the brainweasels. There's a lot I could do for myself if I stopped caring and stopped trying to be helpful any more than necessary.
I think it's a bad idea to do things this way, and not just because I've played so many games where the bigger your pool of allies is, the easier the final confrontation goes. Mutual aid seems like the way things move toward sustainable and anti-exploitation modes of society. Additionally, pooled resources and shared knowledge seems like the best way of getting people to put their abundances to work in ways that will be helpful. Something about "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" or something similarly socialist. How nice that would be. I just have to remember that taking time for myself is also important and that some things can be left until later or another day so I can have the energy to do them, concentration to do them well, and so I can recognize what I've already done and celebrate that, instead of fretting over the list not being done leading to disappointment or unhappiness from the household. Or so that I can call a stop to doing things on the list, rather than getting sucked into always waiting for the next item to do instead of taking down time. (My ex was terrible at both not putting everything down on a list, but also at constantly adding things to the list in such a way that I never felt safe doing things that weren't immediately interruptible and took a short amount of time to get to a pausing point.)
Setting boundaries is hard, and sticking to them in a profession and a society that expects you to explore others and to let others exploit you, based on where you are in the hierarchy of privilege, is even harder. I hope that this upcoming year helps me more easily find the balance between helpfulness to others and taking care of myself.
- helpful (comparative more helpful, superlative most helpful)
- Furnishing help; giving aid; useful.
Ah. Something that again strikes at the core of my being, at one of the ways that I try to relate to the world. It is a way of constructing worth to other people, since I haven't yet manufactured a core belief that I am worthy just as I am, without conditions or outside approval. Being helpful is one of the techniques you deploy to possibly make friends and build a group of people. Some people will see it as a nice trait and ask for help when they need it, others will see it as a thing to be exploited for their own purposes, without caring about wanting other than what they've gotten someone to do for them. One of the designs of the capitalist system is that it lionizes the people who exploit others and tells those who are exploited that they should have negotiated better or been willing to do without if they couldn't get anything with their negotiations. Knowing the game is rigged against you doesn't stop the people doing the rigging from insisting everything is fair and equal and making sure the officials are sufficiently bribed so that they will also say that everyone is fair and equal.
Helping others is a regular part of the commands given in many major belief systems, secular or religious. And help can be given in several different ways, so that people who have a paucity of some resources can instead use the ones they have an overabundance of and still help some people. Not all of those belief systems have a healthy attitude toward seeing binaries or taking care of the self before others. The system I grew up in talked about the difference between those who "have contributed out of their abundance" and "she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." (Mark 12:44) with the clear intent that we were supposed to be more like the widow who gave well past what she could afford to give, trusting and having faith that the Deity would provide what was needed when it was needed. More recently, the exposure I have had to self-advocacy communities and those interested in greater social change refute the idea that someone should give more than they are able. Instead, they often quote part of an airline safety video and say "Secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others." To avoid burning out of overcommitment, because there will always be one more fight, one more cause, one more person to help, and it is easy to say "just one more" without understanding that you are already at five too many.
My profession is characterized as a helping profession, intentionally built and structured sai that it would be compared primarily of people who want to be helpful, who would believe it a calling, a vocation, spreading knowledge and information to the ignorant masses in a paternalistic, "civilizing" way through the use of while women. Because it was a calling, those women could be paid significantly less for their work, and because white women were intended to take up this burden of "civilization", they could be paid less on the assumption that the man in their life would be the one providing the primary wage. While the field has more than white women in it now, the underlying attitudes about librarianship have not changed significantly, so it is still primarily a field of white women. Who all are supposed to want to be helpful, including to the people who want to show them graphic (porno or otherwise) imagery, the people who always try to flirt with them, regardless of their availability or interest, and, increasingly, the people who believe that a library that isn't in complete agreement with the most authoritarian and theocratic elements of their community deserves vitriol, threats, harassment, violence, and a litany of materials challenges and demands that any staff who don't agree with them should be immediately dismissed. The demand that staff still be helpful, even to people who demonstrate their contempt, or who are specifically trying to get a reaction out of someone's for their own gratification, creates incentives and conditions to perpetuate the contempt and the shock imagery. The presumption is that the person has a right to be there and use services unless you have it on well-documented authority that this person needs to go, and probably needed to go yesterday, because of this commitment to being helpful and "neutral" to everyone. The results are that we regularly carry materials injurious to the vulnerable for "balance" and that employees who are at the intersections of minoritization are expected to shelve their experiences or their whole selves to present as someone acceptable to the hegemon and willing to help them with things that will be injurious to them. It's all been weaponized, and it is a delicate dance that libraries do every day between ensuring their funding and fulfilling their commitments to principles like equity, accessibility, and justice in their communities. "Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others" is something the profession needs to take more seriously, and so do the national organizations that wring their hands at the difficulties happening and then use them to enrich their own fundraising efforts and kick back relatively little to those places suffering. Or don't throw their power behind convincing the communities there of the errors they commit by demanding the libraries reify their biases and apologize for stepping out of line and having a thought of their own. Abuse is the fault of the abuser, but it can seem like the national organization isn't as interested in doing the abuse as much as they are about making money off of it.
I digress, sort of. I do want to be helpful, so I chose wisely, I suppose, in professions. But the dictates of giving and trusting that there will be something to catch me and taking care of my own needs first complete with each other and produce brainweasels. People who look like me, who had my upbringing, and who make the kind of money I do are playing on an easier difficulty, comparatively speaking. Not so easy as some, but definitely easier than many others. The brainweasels of privilege and many a social media post say there's a lot more I could be doing to help, whether as support or as reparations for the benefits that I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy in the current system. With significant amounts of "what you think would be helpful isn't, because you are giving from your abundances. To give anything useful, you would have to give until it hurts to give those things, and then give some more, because until you give up power and wealth to that point, you're not actually helping." With the accompanying "your other identities should not be used as an excuse to not do the work on this," and "all of these issues are all equally priority one, so you don't get to choose some of them to focus on and let others slide." This is a recipe for burnout, overwork, and ineffectiveness at being helpful before retreating in despair and not coming back.
That, and I also have people I am helping, and pets as well. Maintaining a household takes up significant amounts of resources, as does paying back the bank the cost of getting my ex out of my life. Because of the traumas involving my ex, I'm trying to build up some reserves, but it's slow going and unexpected expenses are not great for my mental health. My own oxygen mask says to get those abundances first, and then see what is possible to do from there. And so we wobble back and forth from "it's okay to think about yourself and your household" and "you are trying to disguise selfishness, laziness, and lack of caring about the Cause, using your household as the excuse." Quantifying things (some practices do that with the idea of the tithe) would provide something to grasp and wield as a defense against the weasels, but they are the kinds of weasels that wouldn't be satisfied, no matter the amount of the quantification, because if there wasn't enough suffering for it to be painful, it clearly wasn't enough. Or that all the requests left undone or un-contributed-to are more important and more damning than whatever did get done or whatever help I may have been able to provide to others that I could spare. There is no satisfying or appeasing the weasels when they are like this. They can be distracted, or a barrier built to keep them out, but they are infinitely ravenous.
I suspect this would be less of a problem to it me if it weren't for some of the other adjectives that have already gone before on this list. Things like conscientious, self-aware, kind, sympathetic. All of those things help me avoid a hardened heart, as it were, and with literate, erudite, and analytical means I get input and understanding as to what may be causes and solutions to the problems of the world. If I were more provincial, more conservative, more able to narrow my focus down to a small group of people I cared about as "me and mine," I would have a sufficiently narrow scope that many of those questions wouldn't come up as important. If I decided to adopt someone else's universal morality as my own and follow their practices about what constitutes helping, regardless of whether it is helpful, I would have answers to the questions. If I ever unlock the secrets to a self-image that doesn't check with everyone else about whether I'm worthy of self-care and self-love and doesn't listen with at least one ear to others' disapproval while doing something enjoyable, it will likely improve my ability to be helpful and make it easier to contain the brainweasels. There's a lot I could do for myself if I stopped caring and stopped trying to be helpful any more than necessary.
I think it's a bad idea to do things this way, and not just because I've played so many games where the bigger your pool of allies is, the easier the final confrontation goes. Mutual aid seems like the way things move toward sustainable and anti-exploitation modes of society. Additionally, pooled resources and shared knowledge seems like the best way of getting people to put their abundances to work in ways that will be helpful. Something about "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" or something similarly socialist. How nice that would be. I just have to remember that taking time for myself is also important and that some things can be left until later or another day so I can have the energy to do them, concentration to do them well, and so I can recognize what I've already done and celebrate that, instead of fretting over the list not being done leading to disappointment or unhappiness from the household. Or so that I can call a stop to doing things on the list, rather than getting sucked into always waiting for the next item to do instead of taking down time. (My ex was terrible at both not putting everything down on a list, but also at constantly adding things to the list in such a way that I never felt safe doing things that weren't immediately interruptible and took a short amount of time to get to a pausing point.)
Setting boundaries is hard, and sticking to them in a profession and a society that expects you to explore others and to let others exploit you, based on where you are in the hierarchy of privilege, is even harder. I hope that this upcoming year helps me more easily find the balance between helpfulness to others and taking care of myself.
