They mostly speak and read English in the Philippines, and my buddy John McCrarey,* who runs his own blog and lives in Barrio Barretto, in roughly the Subic region, is constantly beset by beggars who flock after the expat retirees, always looking for a buck. Charity given once or twice—that, I can understand. But when the same people hound you over and over, never learning and never doing anything to break themselves out of their cycle of poverty, well, at some point, you've just gotta say no to giving handouts. Hence the tee shirt. For all you beggars and parasites out there:
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| Yes, John's superpower is having a crotch that glows. It's why he's a hit with the ladies. |
Despite knowing how poor the PI is, John chose to retire there, so I guess he knew what he was getting into as far as needy locals are concerned. Breaking an entire people out of a cycle of poverty is a fool's game, and it's still foolish even if your focus is only on certain individuals. If people lack the will to improve themselves, then you can't even move on to a discussion of wherewithal. First comes the will: the basic decision to improve oneself, followed by the establishment of specific goals and a plan for breaking out of poverty. Then we can talk about what a person needs, in terms of help, to be able to break out of poverty. But if there's one human truth I've learned over the years, it's that we all reach a certain level of hell, and despite seeing heaven above us, we often learn just to marinate in our hell. Why? Because as M. Scott Peck rightly deduced, we're all fucking lazy. It's not evil that's the basic problem with humanity—it's laziness. This may be why sloth became one of the Catholic Church's seven deadly sins. Buddhism roots humanity's problems in a certain existential blindness (avidya), a basic ignorance about the world. But to me, you can know the world's true nature, but if you feel no urgency to improve your station, then that means there's another, equally pernicious force at work inside you, and that force is laziness (sloth, indolence, whatever you want to call it). Nothing changes until you feel the urgency that, by rights, ought to accompany the realization that there's a need to change. One of life's greatest and most difficult tasks is finding or cultivating that sense of urgency. I know I'm not there yet, and in a sense, that makes me no better than the poor people I've been talking about in this post. That said, wasting your time when "the poor, you will always have with you" (John 12:18) is not the way to move forward. Help the neediest, to be sure, but for the parasites who never learn and never try, well, save yourself first. Improve the world by starting with you.
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*John just jetted off to Thailand for a week.
Thanks again for the shirts. That picture is still blowing up my Facebook feed--most viewed and commented on in my history of posting there.
ReplyDeleteWhen I moved to the PI, one of my goals was to make a difference for some, even though I knew I could never come close to saving everyone. I get your point, though, that there is a fine line between helping and enabling. It's like that old saw, "better to give a hand up than a handout."
So, I'm proud of paying tuition for the kid of a widowed mother I've never met in Bohol. That's my hope for Mary, too--that by sponsoring some of her education, she will be able to break the cycle of poverty. Granted, in her case, I occasionally get something in return, but my heart's in the right place. Mostly.
The most irksome ones are the "I need rent money" and "I can't pay my electric this month" pleas. Yeah, if it was an actual emergency or circumstances beyond their control, I might be more receptive. But more and more, I'm like, "And why exactly is this my responsibility?"
Speaking of control and responsibility, the biggest driver of poverty in this country that I've seen is single motherhood. I know two different bar girls that each have six kids. And two others with infants born of foreigner sperm who aren't sure which of their multiple partners is the father.
When will they ever learn?
Based on what I've learned about the PI from my your blog, there seem to be two major categories of poor people. First, you've got the mountain dwellers who eke out their existence, living in humble circumstances but making do with what nature provides them. These good folks are at the margins of civilization, poor but happy and hard-working. The second category are the parasites who hang close to the cities, not doing any real work, always putting on the sad-beggar routine, and generally being a drag on civilization. These are the shiftless, indolent ones, and they're the ones who most need to see the message on that tee shirt.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's pretty much the way it is. Some of the beggars are quite skilled at what they do--I guess you could say they are professionals.
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