I Want To Teach the World to Sing

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

When I was a kid I went through years of angst, because you see, what I wanted to do – all I wanted to do, the only work I didn’t find boring or annoying – was write, and yet I had imbued the belief that I should do something that “was socially relevant” or “contributed to society.”

In part this is why I ended up studying languages.  Yep, I was going to “foster international understanding.”  (Which of you giggled?  Have a carp!)

Do I need to go into why this was stupid?  Yes?

Look, I have nothing against believing you have something to contribute to the world beyond what the world is willing to pay you for.  If I did, I wouldn’t have done the years of soul-sucking making no money whatsoever work needed to actually get good enough at my work to make money.  Unfortunately writing is one of those things that really can’t be taught in the classroom.  Or not well.

The problem I have is with believing that you should do something that “contributes to society” beyond, you know, what people are willing to pay you for.

The reason I object to this, is that this sort of do-goodism tends to fall into the “Christmas gifts to total strangers.”  You’re giving someone things they don’t want, at great expense to yourself, and the things will just get discarded or used in ways you’ll never think of.  In the worst case scenario, in which your desire to ‘give back to society’ leads you to become a politician, you end up making laws to make people use those ‘gifts’ that you insist on giving them because you’re sure they’re good for them.  Obamacare for instance, is sort of like passing a law that forces everyone to wear the Christmas sweater knit by their aunt Peggy, the one with the odd color tastes, who is near blind and has the attention span of a hamster, so that the thing is ugly, shoddy and full of dropped stitches that start unravelling the moment you put the sweater on.

Look, first all – why do you need to give back to society?  When did you steal it?

I’m not saying that the fact we live in a civilized society isn’t a great boon.  (Though becoming less of one as… never mind) I’m not saying we all don’t make use of the various inventions since fire, or that I’m not grateful that people with more engineering skill than I have made things like this here computer I’m bootstrapping onto the information superhighway (which might have been started with a government program – so, arguably, if you want to go there, legalized theft – but which became what it is by the grace of porn, lolcats and Heinlein flame wars.  I’m an active participant in the last two!)

What I’m saying is that none of those things was done for my benefit.  It’s not like at the dawn of mankind someone said “Hey, Og, somewhere in the future there will be this chick named Sarah who will need this fire thing.  Let’s do it for her!”  It’s not even like it’s being maintained for my benefit.  In the bowels of the technocracy, Engineer 24 doesn’t get up every morning and say “Hey, let’s make sure that Sarah has the internet up so she can write her blogs, so that her huns are distracted a few more hours.  You know, if those guys became disgruntled, they could be dangerous.”  (Okay, maybe Engineer 24 says that.  He doesn’t know ya’ll were never, so to put it, gruntled.)

Yes, I have the benefit of living in a civilized (waggles hand) society.  But that is mostly because every member in it gets up in the morning, scratches a place or two, grumbles through a shower and breakfast and then goes to work (those of us who work – a brave and increasingly small minority.  We few, we lucky few) because it’s in his/her best interests to go to work – because work benefits him/her in ways either monetary or psychological.  (And here, no fooling, though I’m making a point about working for money not immaterial yayas, if you’re unemployed and it looks to be long term – and in this economy… — consider setting a schedule and working every day at something.  It could be “just” looking for a job, or it could be learning a new skill that might allow you to contract out.  Or it might be, if your spouse/support person is working, cleaning the house and taking burdens off his/her shoulders so you’re contributing something.  I’m not saying get up, put work clothes on and sit down to work 9 to 5.  You might, of course.  I often do.  BUT the important thing is to do something focused and organized, so your day isn’t a blob.  It is not good for man – or woman – to be idle.  But the point is do it for your own benefit.  Have what you do contribute something to your values and your way of life.  Don’t do it “for the people.”)

This idea of doing something “to benefit” faceless others, whether they’re “society” or “the people.” When I was eight, my father told me that the greatest crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of “the people” – I’m now fifty one.  I have only seen this confirmed over and over again.

The reason for this is that “the people” or “society” can’t talk.  (Not really.  Yes, there’s polls.  There’s also lies, damn lies and statistics.)  That means that “doing something for the people” becomes “doing something to the people” which involves in turn “forcing the people to do things I want.”  And the “best” part is you can do it with a glow of virtue because you’re “giving back to society” for all the roads and internet and things.

The sheer and rank stupidity of these “altruistic” “gifts” to society is obvious when you think of trying to “give back” to say, your family.  No, seriously.  My family gives me tons in emotional support, work, sudden help with something I screwed up (thank you honey for keeping the computers running, and sons for driving me to the vet because I don’t want to drive in snow, and for countless cups of tea fetched, and for moving furniture so I can paint walls, and–.)  So, periodically I try to give back.  Unless this is focused and specific (say, they’re sick, and I make them lemon tea) it tends to backfire.  Like when the boys were 12 and 8 and I decided to take time to play with them, because I was always writing.  A) they’d planned a computer game marathon, and I really couldn’t play on their computer.  B) they became very suspicious of my motives, and got weird.  C) they led me to the office and told me to write.  Or take the time I rearranged my husband’s office to “make it nice” for him, and we had one of the worst arguments of our marriage.  (Turned out he liked the way his office was.)

If you can’t “give back” to your nearest and dearest with any degree of accuracy – beyond doing your part in the running of house and family – even supposing you owe society something… HOW are you going to give it back?

If only there were some way to be able to tell when society wants something.  I mean, wants it enough to value it, and not to receive it with a half-embarrassed smile and a “thank you, aunt Peggy” and then pitch it in the trash – laws allowing?  If only there were some arcane way of telling when someone wanted something enough!

Oh, I know – we’ll have these tokens that people can give each other in exchange for goods and services – cool, uh?

You’ll know that a good or service is needed/wanted by how many tokens people are willing to give you for it.

It’s a little risky, of course.  Say that you wish to do something, and train for it, and later find that no one will give you tokens for it.  There will be a few of those tragedies, but fortunately the cost will be born by individuals and is usually recoverable-from, since all skills have auxiliary skills that can be used to get the tokens, even though they might not be what the person REALLY wants to do.  But they can do that in their spare time, when they’ve exchanged their tokens for food and rent, right?

At least we can dispense with the massive bureaucracy to weigh the contributions of engineers one through twenty four and decide what compensation they should receive!  Yeah.  Let’s install the token-exchange system.

What?  What do you mean it’s already been done?  Oh.  I see.  Og sold the secret of fire for enough salt to put on the meat he cooked?  Miraculous.  You mean he didn’t invent fire “to give back to society” for the pelts and things he got? And then, over time, the exchange evolved to symbolic tokens, so we can all shop for what we want and need without carrying a live goat in each pocket?  And all of this takes place on its own, without government intervention?  And in fact goes on despite government intervention, in the form of black markets, in tyrannies?  And it gives us an accurate representation of what large numbers of people want and need?  (Don’t blame me if what they want and need is often the sham wow.) Who would have thought of that?

… Certainly not our enlightened leaders, and not anyone who has gone through school systems in western countries, where we are taught that greed (i.e. making money in exchange for what you produce) is bad, and that your aim in life should be to “improve the world” and “change society.”

Heck, they convinced even me.

I’m not the best example.  Translation would probably have paid better in the long run.  But I couldn’t take it.  Turns out – I know, shocker – that if people understood what everyone says the world over, we’d have a ton more wars.  (Not to mention murders of entire countries.  Think of it as the family of nations babbling loudly in the back seat of the world car.  “If Syria doesn’t stop singing that annoying song, I’m going to bash its collective head.”  “Iran, if you don’t stop whining about Israel, I’m going to come back there and give you what for.”  “No, honestly, Greece, if you ate all your cookies, Germany doesn’t have to give you any.”  “And no one touch anyone else!”)

So, I went into writing and so far – slowly – it pays enough for my simple needs, though the irregularity of pay makes me neurotic like a shaved Persian.  And besides, I have plans to make more.  And I bear the cost of my failures – i.e. I throw my own d*mn Christmas sweaters in the trash, instead of making laws to force everyone to wear them.

Honestly, given the fractured histories and fraught personalities of people who devote their lives to “giving back to society” all I can think is “and they give it to society good and hard.”

For the rest of us – particularly the idealistic fools among us – by all means don’t turn your back on charity.  Help those in need if you know what they need and are sure you’re not projecting.  (The best way to do this is to give to those you know well, because then you also know when aid becomes a shackle and know when to stop. Always remember, in charity as in anything else, that your first rule should be “first do no harm.”)

But as your main work in life?  Do what people will pay you for.  Study how to optimize your work so they give you more.  If you fail, pick yourself up, figure out what your mistake was, and start again.

And don’t worry about being “greedy.”  Unless you’re making money by playing currency speculation (and even that might have its uses in G-d’s wide world.  I just don’t understand enough to tell you what they are) or other financial shell games dependent on a system of crony capitalism, take that money as a sign you’re doing something society wants.

Heaven knows why society would want the sham wow.  But if that’s what they do want, give it to them and take the money, and laugh all the way to the bank.

The other way lies incompetence, greed for power, coercion, and truly nasty Christmas sweaters (or non functional health systems) that you’re required by law to use and pay for.

Give back to society like Og did – go make some money!

Tangentially related post What’s Love Got To do With it? Over at MGC.

196 thoughts on “I Want To Teach the World to Sing”

  1. Coincidentally, in todays post by Pournelle, while discussing among other things the SOTU address the other night, he covers the folly (one I only saw in retrospect) of “trying to do good by” the middle east instead of setting up an empire (our benefit), or smashing them flat, propping up some form of stable government, and walking away, democracy be damned.

    http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/the-state-of-the-union-moores-law-education/

    Had we intended to establish Empire, there was an Iraqi Army for hire, and its soldiers desperate for jobs; and there were plenty of candidates to be the new President of Iraq with an American Resident Advisor. But that was not what we wanted. And what we wanted, which was to give them a liberal democracy, was not in our power of gift. We could have held on for a while, established a new and relatively stable dictatorship – or more likely three relatively stable dictatorships – and left gracefully; but what we could not do was leave behind a stable liberal democracy. But leave that, for those games are over, and the President is wise to retreat.

    Like

  2. “Give back?” Crabs in a bucket! Covetous, grabby, greedy, eeeevil!

    I earned my way. F*** you; pay me. What I have was exchanged with me, voluntarily, for value received. What I “give back” to “the community” (can you get any more nakedly Marxist?) is the valued goods for which people paid me, with their own hard-earned cash.

    Any fool tries to sell me that commie booshwa gets most heartily bitch-slapped.

    M

    Like

  3. This is going to sound tangential, but it really isn’t. Or not entirely; it could go either here or back in the thread about schools.

    Your post title got me reflecting on how much I hated music class in elementary school. This was a significant thing, because for the most part, I was pretty much a goody two-shoes kid all through school, getting straight “A”s (i.e. gaming the tests and brown nosing the teachers), behaving properly (i.e. sitting quietly in my chair and letting myself be bullied) and so on. Hey, it was adaptive behavior, and and it qualified me for some real educational opportunities after I’d marked enough time in the lower circles of the public school system.

    But I hated music class. Even more than I hated P.E.

    Oh, not the real music class. I enjoyed playing a trumpet in band, but that was considered somewhat extracurricular at the elementary school level. It wasn’t mandatory and the time I was given to participate was given somewhat grudgingly. I’m talking about the mandatory music class that all of us were marched off to once a week.

    I hated it, though I could never really articulate exacty why. Something about the songs made me queasy. I hated it so much that I snuck out of the marching order one week with a couple of like-minded friends and headed for the library. I figured I’d much rather find a good book to read than participate in music class. Of course, we got caught, and it was one of maybe two times I ever got sent to the principal’s office in all my years in elementary school. The principal demanded that I explain myself; my response more or less boiled down to “music class sucks and I’d rather spend the time in the library reading a good book.” His response boiled down to “you better learn to do some things you don’t like”, which was good advice as far as it went, and didn’t make the mistake of trying to convince me that music class was something I should like.

    Looking back, I understand now what I couldn’t articulate then: The music we were taught was not just crap in the sense of being musically crap. It was crap in the sense of being leftist screeds unartfully disguised as musical crap. Kumbaya. One Tin Soldier. Arnold Guthrie. Peeter Seeger. I was ignorant of politics but I still sensed it was crap even then.

    What does this have to do with the SOTU? Well, not so much as just something triggered by the title of your post. But it allows me to pithily explain why I don’t listen to Obama’s speeches: That crap got old back in elementary school music class, and no one’s making me listen this time. Not yet, anyway.

    Like

    1. Didn’t have a lot of music classes in school. I tried a couple of instruments but I have no talent at all. However, I had one choral class once that had the class do the song “My Favorite Things”. I hate that song to this day four decades later.

      Well, except for Tam’s “Gun Show Song” lyrics for it.

      Like

    2. Ahhh, my old nemesis, “One Tin Soldier”. The Mountain People are morons. They literally have the high ground, and apparently no defenses. And if they wanted to share their treasure, they should have left it out in plain sight, not hide it. No wonder they get wiped out.

      Like

    3. I came through late enough that we were back to folk songs. And bopping each other on the heads with the padded xylophone sticks was kinda fun (Orff instruments for the win!) To this day I can sing all the verses to “Boil Them Hoecakes down.” Otherwise I don’t remember much about grade school music. To me “I want to teach the world to sing” makes me want to reach for a coke. (Preferably a Dr. Pepper.)

      Like

      2. We had some fun old songs here. I don’t know if something like the old folk song ‘Isontalon Antti ja Rannanjärvi’ is still taught to little kids, considering it tells of two notorious criminals from the 19th century, starts by them planning how one would murder a local police official so other could then marry the handsome widow, and includes words like ‘if he won’t agree then grab him by the neck and hit him in the back with steel’ (can’t manage a better translation since I suck when it comes to poetry or rhyming, but that’s the exact meaning). :D

        And a nice picture of the two men in that song – well, may be the only photo, that’s the only one I have ever seen – in very respectable chains:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antti_Rannanj%C3%A4rvi

        Like

  4. And now a more topical rant: The problem with leftists talking about “giving back” is that the idea that you owe the future a return on the patrimony you received from the past is a very conservative idea. It’s straight out of Kirk, and Kirk wasn’t even being that original. So when it comes out of the mouth of a leftist, you know at once it’s a lie.

    One clue is that “giving” is not actually involved. Let to my own devices, I figure I’d give the government about half the amount it’s now taking from me in taxes, because the legitimate things government does could be amply funded on about half the revenues it is now taking in. (I’m generously assuming that the tax system should be as progressive as it is, but I digress.) When the government is receiving twice as much from me as I’d give if left to my own devices, you know coercion is involved. And there’s none of this “giving” crap when coercion is involved. All those foreign labor conscripts working in the Nazi arms factories in 1944 weren’t “giving” their time to the Nazi war machine.

    Put another way, there is a certainly place for “giving back”, but that place is through conservative institutions, not the government, because “giving back” is properly understood as a very Kirkian conservative idea and the government is a very liberal (in the corrupted modern sense) institution. For one thing, when my church gives a impoverished father some help with the rent, and he uses it to go on a drunken spree, my church stops giving him help with the rent. Government can’t or won’t stop “helping”.

    Yeah, I know. Food stamps can only be used for food. Right. What bothers me is not so much that the system is abused and cheated on as that no one running the system seems to care that the system is being abused and cheated on.

    Like

        1. Well, arguably it makes people more hungry… leading to greater demand… for food stamps. So if your goal is to increase food stamp usage, this is genius. If your goal is to decrease food stamp usage… ah, but what fool would seriously argue for that? Ha ha ha ha…

          Like

          1. Ah-hah! Their plot revealed: It’s a covert nutrition push, the munchies = food consumption = good food choices = better nutrition!

            Somebody tell the First Lady she can stand down in CO.

            Like

            1. Somebody tell the First Lady she can stand down in CO.

              Um, wait. She doesn’t want us to eat more, she wants us to eat less. They should be making speed legal and available for Food Stamps.

              Like

              1. But — I really want her to shut up… Please?

                It’s government, it doesn’t have to make sense, right? Nutrition is nutrition, right? So munching on healthy/nutritious/obnoxious snack foods when high is all to the good right?

                Nah, I give up, I have no idea what brilliant pol decided food stamps and pot go together. Somebody who heard about brownies? Now, if they were talking about Medicaid coverage for pot — at least that’d fit with the whole ‘medical use’ meme. (Not that I doubt the palliative effects of marijuana, just that I doubt the sincerity of all of the ‘patients.’)

                Like

              2. Now in the category of completely unrelated to anything going on here:

                We were talking about indie movies and alternative filming and you discussed quad copters and I was in a bookstore this week. Now that you have the setting ;) :

                Make Magazine

                Didn’t have time to read the article, but thought I’d toss this out there randomly. Because I listen, Wayne, I listen.

                :P

                Like

        1. Absolutely not. No one would ever use food stamps for anything other than wholesome, healthy food. Really.

          Can I interest you in some beachfront property in Iowa?

          Like

      4. It’s my understanding that while the official rules do constrain what aid recipients can buy with Federal food stamp moneys (which are now, at least here in CA and in at least some other states as well, actually debit card balances), the actual limitations depend on the individual stores redemption/payment systems. As a data point see the recent story of the result of a payment system outage where balances were not able to be verified, with the result that big screen TVs were among the items piled into shopping carts for “purchase”.

        Also note that CO pot, like anything else purchasable, is obviously in turn resellable, so food aid balances can and are routinely converted to unconstrained cash in hand. Pretending otherwise is yet another symptom of the welfare state fantasy.

        Like

        1. Almost any chattel can be liquidated if you know how to go about it.

          I was once a counselor in a Mormon bishopric. This would be something like a lay assistant pastor in a Protestant congregation or a deacon in a Catholic parish. (Both are imperfect analogies, but good enough for present purposes.)

          One of the duties of a Mormon bishop is to provide aid to needy Church members. The aid is almost never given as a cash handout, for the reasons we’ve been discussing, and others. When the aid takes the form of consumables such as food or clothing, in an area with enough Mormon presence to support a Bishop’s Storehouse, the aid is generally provided by giving the needy member a Bishop’s Storehouse order. This is a standard form that lists standard consumables stocked at the Storehouse. The bishop checks off those that are needed and the form is taken to the Storehouse to be filled. Usually it’s taken by a counselor or other trusted member of the congregation, not the person receiving the aid — again, for the reasons we’ve been discussing here. But rare exceptions are made.

          The system is audited every six months by an auditor from outside the congregation. One of my duties, besides occasionally getting orders filled and delivering them to the needy member, was being at the audit to help produce the required records and explain any discrepancies. (There are almost always a few — almost always fairly trivial and quickly resolved.)

          One of the things audited is the Bishop’s Storehouse orders. The auditor doesn’t question the bishop’s decision on what aid is given, except in special circumstances (aid to the bishop’s own immediate family, aid in excess of $10,000 on a single order, that kind of thing.) But he checks that the report from the Storehouse on how each order was filled matches the bishop’s original copy (c’mon, you know what I mean) so ensure that the order wasn’t modified somewhere between the bishop and the storehouse. Because, you know, it happens. Extra commodities snuck onto the order can be liquidated for cash if you know how. A good storehouse manager can spot suspicious patterns (for instance, an order consisting mostly of expensive cuts of beef) and call the bishop to double-check the order, but things still slip through.

          The auditor threw off a comment once, during one of these audits, that has stuck with me: For a time, blank Bishop’s Storehouse forms were selling on the streets of Salt Lake City for $20 each.

          Not all the poor are actually con artists out to play the charities. But it should surprise no one with more than one functioning brain cell that it happens.

          Like

          1. I wouldn’t categorize them together, even. There are the poor, and there are the con artists, and any overlap between them is purely a matter of coincidence.

            Like

              1. Indeed. Con artists, like many other criminals, expend as much if not more energy on work than those who draw a paycheck – but by the very nature of the class, they spend that energy making willfully bad decisions, whether consciously or habitually.

                And the making of habitual and willful bad decisions, without regards to cost of consequences, does tend to keep biting the decider in the butt and bringing “bad luck” and other consequences that keep them poor.

                Like

    2. The fallacy in their argument rests in their failure to recognize that any and every voluntary exchange benefits — “gives back to” — The Community, because each participant has increased his personal wealth through the exchange.

      The ones not “giving back” to the community are the ones drawing “warm body stipends” — payments, such as food stamps, for which they provide no service beyond leaving the productive members of society unharmed.

      Oh, there is one other group not “giving back” to society: politicians and their support groups who act as gatekeepers, extorting payments from productive members and disbursing the wherewithal to their subject groups — cronies, dependents, hangers-on — while taking a tidy little sum off the top to compensate them for their not doing anything productive to “give back” to the community. (See: Reid, Harry & Sons.)

      Like

  5. Well, what Mark said – with minor linguistic variables. I’ve known few millionaires, but only one I knew well enough to size up their character. And I admired him immensely.
    He was considered a skinflint by many; but by several people he was regarded as the most generous man they knew.
    He gave to some organizations, mostly community related, but he also gave (secretly) to individuals in real need. I’ve heard people badmouth him; and I’ve heard other correct them regarding it. Giving was his choice, in his way, to those he deemed worthy
    -a widowed mom of three who somehow never paid her rent because it was always taken care of. That lasted over a year, until she regained her footing.
    -a young man who lost his job due to a mishap out of his control, who was told, Go ask (someone) for a job.After a week of dithering, he went ans asked, got the job, and was able to pay back his creditors by assidously scrimping.
    -a missionary couple who was loaned a car while on furlough. They were miles down the road before the wife exclaimed, “We’re driving a Lincoln!”
    He never spoke of his generosity to others; but each person he so blessed were people who strove to make something of themselves. They never had their hands out for alms. But they were the ones who received it. And those are the cases I heard about, piecemeal.
    Giving out to others is fine, if it comes from the heart.
    Case in point (and not to blow my own horn), a local manager of a Starbucks was killed yesterday in an ice-related accident. Two other adults, in the oncoming car she struck after sliding were hospitalized, one in serious enough condition to be airlifted to San Antonio, 60 miles south. The woman’s 3 year old daughter was in the car with her. She’s in stable condition. My wife and a daughter has known the woman for several years. I went to Starbucks this morning to grab a coffee for my daughter (hate the stuff, personally) and left the change as a donation. The donation was more than the coffee cost. And I’ve been imploring others via social pages to do likewise. That’s their need right now, And I feel pretty good about helping. But it wasn’t demanded.
    yes, I believe that ‘Pay to the Order of’ is the sincerest form of flattery. And I believe that all giving should come from the heart, or it’s a worthless effort.

    Like

    1. Good points. I get so het up by the mendacious “Robin Hood” (who was an anti-government TAX protestor) carp of the “give back” crowd that I sometimes forget VOLUNTARY charity.

      When I get the chance to realize that the government hasn’t QUITE stolen ALL of my disposable income at gunpoint and there’s a widow’s mite left to disburse charitably, I try to be on the lookout for worthy organizations to help or promote.

      Mostly turns out to be local animal rescue-and-adoption shelters, as they get good value for donations and, being local, are responsive to the needs of both the community they live in and the population they serve.

      But, frex, I heard this AM of a charity which has a mere 8% overhead. (I.E., 92% of money donated actually goes to the children.) Damned good. It’s called Child Hope International. And I heard of them in the context of a project in which they are engaged with Chick-Fil-A, called Cookies for Orphans, whereby the purchase of a cookie at the restaurant will buy four days’ protein and vitamins for orphans in the Third World.

      It is possible to do good without being a do-gooder.

      M

      Like

    2. As for private non-friends-and-family charity, we participate at a level few people do, as a religious practice, so don’t let’s argue. We follow the principle of donating to organizations that do not seek government funding. Having already “donated” at gunpoint via government funding to so many very media-prominent and over-mission-statemented charities (apparently spreading the wealth at widest dispersion), we seek out lesser-known groups that hew to their specific missions and eschew government funding. I think of it as building a “shadow economy” of charity that actually works, rather than just providing a bureaucracy of sentimentality. Well, it’s what we’re doing for the time being.

      Like

    4. Yes and no. By all means measure the value of what you do by the needs it meets – and many of those needs by what people will exchange for it.
      BUT – much of what’s good in this society comes from mutual trust, the knowledge that, much of the time, if you have an emergent need someone – not just friends, but sometimes strangers – will voluntarily fill it. That knowledge can only be true if you, in turn, will at least sometimes voluntarily help someone else – perhaps a stranger – whether they can pay for it or not.
      Sometimes it’s paying it back; sometimes it’s paying it forward. In any case, it’s helping to keep the social trust account solvent.

      Like

    5. We give to Step13, and have done so for years, because we believe they do good work. They’re also a completely private entity.

      Around this time last year, we needed a car. Badly. Or else we’d be homeless. Mostly a combination of tragedies and bad economy all ganged up at once.

      I got a call from my mother asking how much money I had on hand or could withdraw from the bank without going overdrawn. Having just gotten paid, we had about $200 left. She told me she was picking me up and taking me to the bank to get it and to get a car. I told her I didn’t want to buy a car or have them cosign for one because we couldn’t afford the payments. She said not to worry, get the money and she’d help.

      She drove me out to the Step13 house where they charged me $197 (sales tax) for a car that had been donated but wasn’t suitable for their work program. You see, the car was in perfect working order. They needed cars to work on to teach the men who enrolled how to diagnose and work on cars. They could sell it at auction or they could give it to a family that needed it.

      I cried, donated my change (all $3 of it) and drove off in my gold station wagon.

      That’s the kind of charity I’m comfortable with and the kind of works program I’m willing to support. I’ve had multiple times over the last year where I was asked about places to donate a vehicle that had seen better days and I know they’ve received at least 5 cars based on my recommendations alone.

      I contrast all of this with my husbands late grandmother. She didn’t do charity. She gave people money with the understanding that they would owe her forever. She didn’t want the money repaid, it was a “gift”, but somewhere, some time in the future, she would need a favor…

      People always thought she was so generous. I always wondered that some of them held their souls so cheap.

      Like

  6. If I were Supreme Dictator for a day, I would:
    -force all the OWS proto-commies to go on the goat standard. They don’t like money? They don’t get to have any. All exchanges of goods and services must be in kind. My prediction is one day with a bus full of chickens would get them back loving currency tout suite.
    -round up any and all liberal lovies with clipboards trying to get me to sign up for ${GoodCauseDuJour}, give them two bottles of water, a granola bar, and a handy phrase book and drop them off in the middle of whatever war-torn region they want to raise awareness about so they can explain all their pre-digested silly ideas to the locals (and their weapons) instead of standing on nice safe US street corners. They want to make a difference, don’t they?

    Furthermore, I consider my debt to society fully repaid when I do things like stop at stopsigns and refrain from personal vendetta. My obligation is simply to follow the rules of society if I expect the benefits of society. I don’t owe nobody nuttin’ further. Now, if in my benevolence I invent the automatic junk mail vaporizer (lives in your mailbox, takes 2 AA batteries) and sell it to the grateful public at cut rates, everyone benefits–but I sure as hell don’t OWE them. And, to be clear, they don’t owe me. I saw a desperate need, found a solution, and I benefit from making that solution generally available ;-)

    Like

          2. I’m glad that somebody’s comfortable, because I haven’t been this uncomfortable since my sister dragged me to the Castro district.

            Like

            1. I think it was H. Allen Smith who once said that he had not done something because of the mis-construction of the horse: not even wild ones could drag him to do that.

              Like

              1. Well it wasn’t advertised like that. I was invited to hang out in San Francisco with some of her friends. I, not having many opportunities to meet women of approximately my own age, agreed. At some point it was decided we would go to this one bar, my first inclination something was amiss was when I stepped of the trolley and realized there were 4 or 5 old naked dudes at the top of the hill.

                Like

        2. Our condo complex has a large paper reclycling bin in the mail enclosure. I actually suggested to the mailman I met once that he’d save us a lot of work if he just stuck the supermarket offer sheets directly in the bin

          Like

  7. “I Want To Teach the World to Sing”

    As a general rule, beginning something with “I want” is a good way to get me to snap, “After all, it’s all about what YOU want.”

    I think it’s all the people who’ve whined, “I want to be your friend,” when I’ve repulsed their decidedly unfriendly overtures.

    Like

  8. “I rearranged my husband’s office to ‘make it nice’ for him, and we had one of the worst arguments of our marriage.”

    Handy tip, for spouses (and, for that matter, other sorts of people) everywhere:

    If a person is cool with you rearranging part of their space for them without their active participation, it’s because they don’t really care about that space…or at least their use of it is so trivial and unimportant that they have no preferences one way or another regarding how it’s organized. Which amounts to the same thing as “don’t care” in the end anyway.

    (No, this is not a pointed comment directed at my wife. She already knows better. She did before we met.)

    Like

    2. And this personal space includes *their* computer, or at least their profile. Rearranging it to make it “better” is an invitation to warfare. (sending pointed glare in ex-husband’s direction) I swear, I taught myself how to fix computers just by undoing what he’d done.

      Like

  9. Good on you! I’ve been making this point for a while now. There’s this thing called “consumer surplus,” which says basically that no one ever makes an exchange unless they value what they get more than they value what they give—so both parties to the exchange end up better off. In a highly efficient economy the margin of “better off” is small on any one transaction, but it’s always there, or the transaction won’t be. So when I spent money on my latest computer, what I got from Apple was worth more to me than the money; and I tend to feel that every dollar Apple takes in, out of their incredible sales volume, is a sign of their having conferred more than a dollar of benefit on other people.

    Of course, there are people who get money by less legitimate means: by force, or threats, or fraud, or government subsidies extracted from taxpayers, or government monopoly grants, or government regulation that strangles their competitors. The wealth of those people is not a measure of benefits conferred. I may value my life more than my money, but the person who threatens my life is conferring harm on me in the first place. But people who get rich by production and trade are making other people better off, and the world is a better place for having them in it. Wealth as such is morally neutral. What matters is how the person got the wealth.

    Like

    1. Basically, in voluntary exchanges, both parties walk away better off. Force clearly makes it an involuntary exchange on one party’s part. Fraud likewise, because the deceived party would not have agreed to the exchange had he/she known the actual facts involved. And so on.

      I try to mention this fact in conversation from time to time. Not in an obvious, “Hey, I’m pushing a political idea at you” way — because people tend to just sigh and change the subject when you do that. But in an under-the-radar, hey-here’s-how-the-world-works kind of way… it gives a foundation on which I can build more facts later on (“You know how the government forced you to buy those CFLs instead of the old light bulbs? That’s the kind of exchange that wasn’t voluntary. Want to guess who benefits from that one? Want to guess who pushed for those laws?”)

      Like

  10. There is a law in my house that if I knit, crochet, or cross-stitch something, then the hubby gets it (unless I call dibs). I am working on socks right now– light blue.

    Like

  11. It’s interesting, the commonalities between much of your experience in Portugal and mine here. Oh, I know, Western society, shared meta-culture/philosophy, yada-yada somebody choke the sociologist. That’s macro. Looked at closely there are vast differences in the experiences of people from Texas and Louisiana, much less someplace in the far hinterlands like Portugal. And that holds true, I’ve enjoyed the glimpses into your youth and marveled at crazy humanity. Then one of those meta-concepts crops up and sounds just like the crap shoveled down my throat! Stubborn, obnoxious, contrary individual that I am — I bought into it.

    It was subtle, but it was “expected of the intellectual,” for the great gifts you had received. A responsibility to give to society so that the great unwashed could benefit from your accident of birth (you have no ownership of your talents, they’re random and so you owe them to society…). When you lay it out with the benefit of maturity and hind-sight it’s blatant and — silly. But in small doses, and subtle encouragements, tied to the praise for your successes and the criticisms for your missteps (failing your potential is now a bigger deal, because you’re letting everybody down), incrementally over years, it’s insidious and effective. I’d dismissed a great deal of the obvious sewage by high school, but that subtle indoctrination? Harder to root out. I still have the odd back-brain impulse that pops up, only these days the fore-brain pulls out the sap and lays about liberally.

    Part of my susceptibility to this nonsense (I suspect) was a result of my canted brain and my constant observation of these alien creatures all around me. I didn’t understand them, why they did things, what their motivations were, or their expectations. I was frequently shocked and emotionally battered by one or another emotional landmine I tripped by failed mimicry. Incomprehensible. So, when I started to get a handle on expectations I grabbed tight and followed where it lead. That it lead to something logically inconsistent with my observations lead to a lot of twisted writing in my yoot, and more than one screed against ‘society’ for it’s contradictory expectations (learning ‘society’ didn’t really give a damn was a wonderful moment). ‘Twas much fun. :\

    Or I was a hideously gullible twit. That’s as likely as the other.

    Working out that the average construction worker does more to improve the world each day than the average intellectual does in a year was — a complicated revelation. And the construction folks do it because they like working with their hands, being outside, or getting off early enough to drink more beer before bedtime. Not because they’re overly worried about ‘giving back.’ It’s obvious, when you strip out all the indoctrination. And simple. Thus all that subtle time trying to set a different pattern in the head.

    Because this simple understanding simply wrecks progressive thought. Since I like wrecking progressive thought, let’s spread it far and wide.

    Now, time for the second cup and the hope that the fog lifts. If this is random and incoherent somebody slap me.

    Oh, by the way, did anybody get that recipe for mammoth cookies? I’d sure like it. And I’ve got a goat in my pocket. Or maybe this pocket? Hey! Who grabbed my goat!?

    Like

    1. “the average construction worker does more to improve the world each day than the average intellectual does in a year”

      A humbling reminder: plumbers have saved more human lives in the last 200 years than doctors have in all the centuries since Hippocrates combined. :) (It’s just that since doctors tend to do it retail-style, one at a time with people who are already sick, they can count more easily…whereas plumbers do it wholesale-style to keep people from getting sick in the first place.)

      Like

      1. I’ve always been rather fond of that tidbit of info. I’ve been inclined to recommend the observation to more than one doctor. Alas, I have not acted on my inclinations.

        Like

      1. You put a goat in your pocket you naturally expect to find the goat in your pocket later. You just do. At least until he’s done eating the pants.

        Like

    3. Remember what the term “talent” came from?

      Only a slight modification to the parable, of course, to make it due to Society rather than God.

      Like

        1. yep. To God, it makes sense that “from whom much is given, much is required”. To society, not so much.

          Like

  12. Another note– my debt to society … what the heck. Did I go to prison or jail? Did I stand before a judge and was called guilty? I just don’t know where these ***** get the idea that we owe a debt. Heck, I went into the military for six years– if there was a debt, that would have paid for it a thousand-fold.

    Like

    1. When prisoners are released from prison, they often say that they have paid their debt to society. This is absurd, of course: crime is not a matter of double-entry bookkeeping. You cannot pay a debt by having caused even greater expense, nor can you pay in advance for a bank robbery by offering to serve a prison sentence before you commit it. Perhaps, metaphorically speaking, the slate is wiped clean once a prisoner is released from prison, but the debt is not paid off.

      It would be just as absurd for me to say, on my imminent retirement after 14 years of my hospital and prison work, that I have paid my debt to society. I had the choice to do something more pleasing if I had wished, and I was paid, if not munificently, at least adequately. I chose the disagreeable neighborhood in which I practiced because, medically speaking, the poor are more interesting, at least to me, than the rich: their pathology is more florid, their need for attention greater. Their dilemmas, if cruder, seem to me more compelling, nearer to the fundamentals of human existence. No doubt I also felt my services would be more valuable there: in other words, that I had some kind of duty to perform. Perhaps for that reason, like the prisoner on his release, I feel I have paid my debt to society. Certainly, the work has taken a toll on me, and it is time to do something else. Someone else can do battle with the metastasizing social pathology of Great Britain, while I lead a life aesthetically more pleasing to me.

      More here:
      http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_4_oh_to_be.html

      Like

    2. No, no. You joined the Military because you’re a jingoist. That actually increases your debt. :-\

      Have heard variations on this in the wilds of the internet. Was not amused.

      Like

      1. Nope not amused– I found out a have a warrior gene combined with a worrier gene. So you can imagine– or maybe not (War feathers and then feel bad afterwards)

        Like

        1. That sounds — inconvenient. :-)

          I get a little irritable when people tell me what my service really was, and then they wanna say “jingoist”? Internet anonymity…

          Like

  13. Pingback: How to Give Back |

  14. The shamwow towel does actually have one great use: swimming competitions. It’s tiny, lightweight, and can hold a lot of water and is easy to wring out, so you can hand ’em to the kids who just got out of the pool, and they can go from sopping wet to dry with damp hair in a few seconds, without having to carry bulky stacks of towels around. If they’re competing in multiple forms (and they usually are), this means they can be relatively dry after they swim hard, then cool down waiting, then get sopping wet again, repeat – and you’re not trying to dry them off with waterlogged towels before bundling them out into a snowy parking lot for the ride home.

    See, bet you never would have thought of that – but Billie Mays did, and parents of small children zipping around in speedos are willing to pay for his nifty towel!

    Like

    1. We bought the nifty towel too for our emergency kit. The hubby also uses it for his bug-out bag that he takes to work. (His whole job is about emergency preparedness)

      Like

        1. I hesitate — it might be disturbingly compelling. Or the ear-worm that ate the brain. Hard to predict.

          Like

          1. Disturbing. Compelling, or funny? Depends on how twisted your sense of humor is, and which way it twists.

            Like

        2. Oh, now the temptation to mock up a “graduation speech” about “making a difference” with Adolf Hitler, Temujin (Ghenghis khan), etc as the examples, and include Billie Mays as the modern example – you may not agree with what he did, but he certainly took his work, owned it, ran with it, and died with his name known to millions. Why be social work case worker #567i7p98[09i, when you could be Billie Mays? ,

          Like

      3. I don’t know . . . one of the neatest pitch men I ever heard was selling a pulley-like device at a Manitoba ag-expo. He had to be from Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, judging by his accent. Talk about the gift! He had his sales patter down, gave great demonstrations, and kept everyone entertained. Normally pitches make my teeth ache, but this gent could have sold sand to the Saudies.

        Like

        1. Every once in a while I hear a pitch that leaves me no choice but to admire the sheer mastery. More frequent in the Middle East than elsewhere, usually.

          Like

                1. Hm — I, uh — hm.

                  The field, over there to the left, yeah, that one. I was just standing there and “zoom!”

                  Like

        2. When I was a kid my hometown had an ag fair every fall — the Gourd Festival — and one of the booths that was there every year was a “game” where you bet on which hole a rat would run into on a spinning table. The guy who ran it was one of the local auctioneers…

          Great sales patter, given what he was selling…

          Like

    1. I was going to say: That article was actually helpful. Any author who recommends The Handmaid’s Tale to new science fiction readers, or pretty much anyone, is an author to avoid.

      Like

        2. I read it because it was part of the assigned freshman reading program when I went to college. The slant, bias, and implausibility all, I think, go without saying, considering that it was picked out by members of the humanities faculty.

          Unlike the other items on the same list, though, at least it had a story one could read all the way through.

          Like

        3. I read it. I took away the wrong message, apparently, because it made me even more libertarian and religious. I’ve never been able to get through her other books.

          Like

          1. I don’t think many people get through her books. She’s the jewel in the crown of the Canadian literati, but a bore and a chore.

            Like

        4. In the country of the blind, they practice sculpture. It’s tactile sculpture, of course.

          When they come to our sculpture, let us just say that their judgments seldom if ever match up to ours.

          So too with genre fiction. Why are 1984 and Brave New World the SF classics the ivory tower inhabitants acknowledge? Because as satires, they were reflections of the modern world. The inhabitants can not recognize value in anything except as bearing on the modern world. As a consequence their judgments get — warped.

          Like

    3. OK, I’ve read LeGuin, Moon but not that one, A.C. Crispin, the Star Trek novels, Atwood, the Scalzi, aaaaannnnd that’s it. Oh, and “Ender’s Game” (and wasn’t the commentary a nice slap at OSC?) A few I’d looked at but opted not because either the message was too strong or the premise didn’t work for me. I guess I’m not a sci-fi or fantasy fan. *shrugs*

      Like

      2. There’s one more on that list I’d recommend: John M. Ford. Ford, may he rest in peace, was actually a really good writer, and I liked his Trek novels – but the book of his I liked best was “Growing Up Weightless”, a beautiful coming of age story set on Luna. With economics snuck in, and shakespear, and crowd dynamics, and a lovely idea (not that far off, either) of what an RPG game with virtual reality added would look like between friends, long before MMORPG’s hit the net.

        Like

  16. One thought on “owing something to society”.

    IMO there’s a “good thought” behind it but worked best when we lived in small tribes.

    The tribe survived when everybody in the tribe worked for the betterment of the tribe and survival of the individual tribe member depended on the survival of the tribe.

    If an individual tribe member didn’t work for the betterment of the tribe then the other tribe members would have seen them as a “freeloader” who took the benefit of being a member of the tribe but didn’t accept the obligation of being a member of the tribe.

    Obviously, the other tribe members would have killed or exiled (which amounted to the same thing) the freeloader.

    Now I don’t see the government as being the best judge of what obligations we owe society.

    But the idea still touches on something in us because we’re the descendants of people who met the obligations and we still have the dislike for the “freeloader”.

    Like

    1. Also, we live in neighborhoods – not the kind the govt recognizes, but voluntary associations. They have some tribe-like properties. And the best ones, IMHO, don’t formalize what each person needs to do for the betterment – rather, people just pick up their load according to what they can do, now.

      Like

      1. Wait, you mean “from each according to his ability” actually works when it’s voluntary? Kind of like how economic exchanges only benefit both people when they’re truly voluntary (i.e., no force, fraud, etc. involved)?

        Hmmm, there’s got to be some factor in common between those two thoughts. What could it be, what could it be…

        Like

  17. Personally, writing books people enjoy is a great contribution to individuals, without whom, there is no society. A much worthier goal.

    Like

  18. “You didn’t build that” – Prof. Ditherton Wiggleroom

    The F*** I didn’t. You and Pajama Boy can try to come and take it.

    Like

    2. Mayhaps upon arrival they may learn that the proceeds from building that were used to buy some handy things from other people building other things with a few tokens left over to feed those handy things…

      Like

      1. Look, economics is only one item on the list of things liberals don’t understand. It’s a very long list. It’s nearly identical with an encyclopedia’s index.

        Like

  19. If you need to give something back to your family, do one of the standardized chores when it’s not your turn.
    Just make sure you know the standard, because if you shrink your wife’s angora sweater there will be hell to pay! Or at least tears and wailing. (He’s learned to stick to the dishes, cooking, and the bathroom cleaning: he’s smart, and he also learned that I don’t mind laundry and I do mind dishes and toilets.)

    Like

    1. My favorite thing for my husband to do is not household chores (he does those, mind) — it’s when he says “honey, you look frazzled” and takes me off for a day of bumming around. It’s the best times off ever. Even if all we do is go look at the ducks on the lake.

      Like

      2. We go to the farmers market, if it’s the season to get ripe tomatoes. Sure, they’re expensive once you figure in the cost of the gas and the cheesecake (there’s a master pastry chef there on the weekends who sells apple pie moonshine flavored cheesecake), but it’s still cheaper than the movies. :-)

        Like

          1. Me too. It is cruel to mention such a thing without providing samples ;-) Hmm. I think after I invent the Automatic Junk Mail Vaporizer, I will work on a scratch-n-sniff plugin for web browsers…and then a site for people to upload scents. I shall call it YouSnoot! (millions, I tell you. Millions.)

            Like

            1. YouSnoot, sniff closely…

              But there are people who will ‘post’ smells for shock factor — the places that will go…

              Like

  20. Two of the worst commencement speeches I had the “pleasure” of sitting through were based on “giving back.” In one case the speaker informed the grads that they had a “debt to society” because they were “allowed” to go to college and for that privilege they needed to do buckets of community service. The general consensus of the grads was that 1) most had already paid off because they were coop or work-study students and 2) if they had a “debt to society,” what did felons have? The other speech was by some lady with the Social Security bureau extolling government employment (“service”) and assuring the grads that Social Security would be solvent in 2010. The ed and sociology majors cheered, the parents snarled.

    Like

    1. “Oh, does that mean you are going to refund the tuition? Pay off everyone’s student loans? Because otherwise I paid through the nose for this specific education, and this being a State University, my parents have been supporting the whole university system since before I was born.”

      Like

  22. Well, shoot. Now I have to write a response to that “entry-level” SF post. With the caveat being that it has to be sf for the non-leftist. Why you decide to alienate and exclude roughly half the potential audience is beyond me…

    Like

    1. Simple. It’s because they assume that anyone who disagrees with them is, if not technically too stupid to be capable of reading, then certainly at the very least too stupid to be interested in reading recreationally.

      Like

      1. Whereas I simply shrug, mumble something to myself regarding different foundational principles / starting premises, and am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they come by their own opinions after careful thought and stu…

        Okay, I can’t really say that I do that with a straight face. But I do TRY. I try SO HARD.

        Like

        1. It was a magnificent effort. It really was. Have you entered an “Eye of Argon” reading contest? You’d do pretty well.

          Like

    3. To be fair – Kratman also excludes at least half his potential audience. That said, he also takes great joy in doing so, and doesn’t even begin to pretend he doesn’t.

      Like

        1. But again – even though you and Tom may believe you are closer to a clear view of reality and humanity, you make no bones about what you believe, and don’t try to pretend that people must agree with you or they are evil/bad.

          And frankly, even a moderately “evenhanded” book like the ones in the Expanse Series (Leviathan Wakes, etc. – which I still enjoyed overall) can still have high levels of (slightly tempered) progressivism and “can’t we get along?” (the latter vastly undercut by a case of one side having “equivalent to magic” tech that rendered the other sides catastrophically helpless.)

          It’s sort of like CNN using reasonable-sounding words while picking and choosing what to portray.

          Like

      2. That’s part of why they hate him so much: he doesn’t apologize, doesn’t back down, and throws an attitude right back at them. It upsets them as much as a bluenose running into someone who isn’t ashamed to admit they shop at the “adult” store, and refuses to kowtow to “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you holder of deviant views from my worldview!”

        By the way, sex shops usually have the best selection of spiffy-patterned hose and stockings you’re ever likely to find, and in sizes for women who aren’t built like stick insects. A fact that my poor Calmer Half has tried hard to be philosophical about, given he grew up in a nation with a State Censor Board and a much more puritanical atmosphere than liberal, libertine America. I try not to tease him about it too much, but the woman who wants to look down her nose at me and chew me out for walking out those doors and not be slinking in shame? Yeah, these are my middle fingers.

        Like

            3. No, not far enough. I can’t wait for the day that artificial organ replication is advanced enough that you can buy a new liver, kidney, heart or lung. To h-ll with dying because you’re not politically connected or rich enough to jump queue on the transplant list, or waiting and begging at the feet of people drawing fat salaries off parting out the remains!

              Like

              1. What will sell it in the US, my opinion of course, will be when they can get to replacing herniated discs and pancreases(eseseses) to cure diabetes.

                Like

                  1. type I I think. Type II is insulin resistant. However it might help in type II. I have type II and I take insulin.

                    Like

                2. No matter which type or types it helps, I echo the Professor: “Faster, please!” I have family and friends with both types (including a little girl with Type I, celiac, a nerve disorder, and kidney trouble), as well as many lovely people I’ve never met who ought to have that help. Viva humanity!

                  Like

  23. Dagnabit! You put that tune in my head and I couldn’t get rid of it until I got to work and fired up pandora with some flamenco. Gah!

    Like

  24. Of course Engineer 24 may actually be making sure the intertubes work so that HE can read accordingtohoyt….

    Like

  25. Og’s first law: if you see someone in need, and you don’t try to help them, YOU are the problem.
    Og’s second law: if you don’t see someone in need, you’re not looking hard enough.

    Like

  27. This sorta fits here, and I don’t have anywhere else to post it:

    People not sucking.

    It’s been talked about before, but this sort of thing does not happen in all societies. Occasionally I like the reminder that it does still happen in this one.

    Like

  28. OT: My stuff is now available on Nook.

    And “Technology? aRRRRrrrrrggggghhhhhh!” *pant, pant, pant* “Arrrrrrrrrgh!” That is all.

    Like

Comments are closed.