Misanthropic Charity: Acting Beyond the Self

by Emily Heffring

Who am I? I am an able bodied, white, cisgendered, western, heterosexual female. Encoded in my body are privileges that are preferred by western society. However, because I am a woman and live in a patriarchal society, I suffer from forms of oppression via sexism. But because I am white, able bodied, cisgendered, western and heterosexual, I gain from privileges associated with these traits. If I was to remark that, ‘because I am oppressed and have suffered, I am able to ‘understand’ the oppression of others’ would be remarkably ignorant, AND arrogant. I do not know the oppression felt by a black woman, and I do not know the oppression of a brown queer woman, but I can understand this oppression, and I can listen. This article isn’t about injustices done by others to me, or my opinions on how people should help ‘oppressed’ people or groups of people. It is about how people, who often are trying to help, fail ‘others’ by believing themselves to understand their oppressive experiences, assuming their akin to their own, and/or offer assistance that only demonstrates their own privilege and their ignorance of it.

Compassion is incredibly important. To be able to put yourself into the shoes of another is an incredibly important act. The reason I say this is because, though you do not LIVE in those shoes, understanding that others suffer from similar experiences or from acts that you will never experience, allows you to akin yourself to them, as well as form relationships. That does not mean that because you can imagine what it feels like to be a person of color in a patriarchal white privileged society, you have a right to speak about it, or offer solutions to make their lives ‘better’ or ‘easier’. This is simply because, though compassion is a wonderful thing, there are many assumptions that underlie this cause. Assumptions, even the best intentioned or believed assumptions, can cause solidarity to crack. To assume that because you are a white woman, you suffer similarly or equally to a woman of color, solely because you are both women in a patriarchal society, is something that happens often. In particular, this mode of thought does not help feminism, as it impossible to validate women of color’s issues with patriarchy when white women are assuming that they are fighting similar fights, when they are not.

The reason I am speaking about this, is that activism, and activists often align themselves to those who they believe need protection and a louder voice, which white people, who can dominate activist communities, provide. When I say white people can dominate activist communities, I don’t want to make a generalization of global activism. As seen in the current events in Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan, change is happening everywhere and is driven by all people who are infuriated with the status quo. However, there are certain activist movements that are strongly dominated by white people. For instance, the environmental movement in especially triggered and lead by middle class white people who feel passionate about the environment, and may use green consumerism to invoke change. As well, numerous missionary organizations, which bring religion to what are considered ‘developing nations’ are also dominated by white people. Some white people seem to believe that with their guidance, influence, and participation, they will be able to help those who cannot help themselves.

I see this behavior frequently, and it has begun to bother me more and more. Recently I had a conversation with a friend who has traveled internationally many times to work for various international and global/local NGO’s. She said that she feels very deeply about people who may not have the means to help themselves, and she is interested (and participates) in organizations that help the helpless. I understand why some people feel this overwhelming need to help those who they believe are less fortunate (i.e. poor, elderly, differently-abled, environment, animals, marginalized people and more). However, I’m not exactly sure where this feeling comes from. Lately I’ve been trying to uncover why individuals are prone to this behavior. Is it because we (the activists) want ‘them’ to live like ‘us’, and anything else is unfortunate? Or is because, by helping others or the environment, we feel better about ourselves? Do we encourage ‘others’ to reach their full ‘potential’, therefore placing our value system upon them? Throughout all these actions, we are assuming that we are in the right, our lives are the standard of comparison and that others will live better lives, perhaps be better people if we help them out of the shadows of despair.

So, that brings me to, misanthropy. Misanthropy is defined as a general distrust or dislike of the human species. This is not something I advocate for; let’s just get that out of the way. However, after listening to some Slavoj Zizek, I have been forced to re-evaluate my idea of charity, and charity giving. Zizek is not against charity, but he does promote some healthy misanthropy. He urges us to look at problems at a societal level, not an individual level, and make improvements there. To me, he advocates for us to leave ourselves behind, and work forward without the ego. The warm glow feeling is a huge impetus for humans to act in a way that they perceive to be ‘good’ or ‘better’. Zizek uses the example of Starbucks coffee, and their fair-trade coffee and partially recycled travel mugs as well as Toms Shoes. If you are unfamiliar with Toms Shoes, the hitch is, that if you buy one pair of shoes, the company will donate another to an impoverish child in another country. Thus, in one act of consumerism an act of charity results. However, through that one act of consumerism (and lets be honest, there will probably be 10 more acts in that day), an individual contributes to the capitalist system, which increases class division, furthers poverty, promotes sexism, and oppresses minority populations. He also referenced Oscar Wilde’s famous passage from his book, Soul of Man Under Socialism:

“The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism– are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease… The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.”

To say that this passage is a summary of this article would be a misrepresentation. Although I do agree with Wilde’s understanding of the human psyche, as well as what drives thoughtless ‘charity’. And I use thoughtless to refer to the emotional connection not intellectual connection to idealize ‘marginalized groups’. I suppose it is more my frustration with white knight syndrome that fuels my argument for misanthropic charity. I would hope that those who are participating in any form of resistance to dominant society would question their own value system enough to unpack their own privileges but I believe that things are not that easy. If we do not release our ego from our activism, I don’t think we are creating a new world, but perpetuating ideals of an old, but in a parallel system.

In conclusion, I am not proposing a different system of participating in activism, only pondering our motives for participating at all. Make no mistake I believe that activism IS necessary, but an understanding and consultation of why we are participating must be done first. Once we remove our ego and identify the privileges we have, perhaps we can move forward with honest intentions of changing the complete system, and not our idea of what makes a better world.