Since the Advocate started its online edition and began posting reader comments, it has been educational to discover what moves people to rage, disgust or contempt, as well as to compassion and sympathy.
There have been few debates more impassioned than those that cover our social obligations, one person to another, and as individuals to the whole. To generalize, we’ve seen that Advocate readers care about the plight of others, but also that our compassion has limits and requirements.
We help where help is needed, through either charity or the tax system, but comments on stories and letters on these issues (far and away more numerous and spirited than comments on any other) show that when we do good for others, we want to see the results. And we also want some acknowledgement from recipients for our generosity.
Ferment over these two needs reached a boiling point recently over government-supported housing. To sum up the story, a recipient of subsidized housing objected to being labelled by a sign placed outside the housing project. She felt the sign was demeaning.
That’s the story, but the furor around how people interpreted the issue is far more interesting.
People seem to agree that it is a moral value that everyone should have access to safe housing in our cold climate. But we disagree — almost violently — on how people should react when they get assistance.
Comments were divided on the obligations of the poor to help themselves and the obligations of the poor to show proper gratitude when society helps them. When these nerves were touched, comments became personal — and often nasty. That in itself was strange, given the topic.
What is the nature of gratitude? For that matter, what is the nature of charity? And why do we get so angry when we talk about it?
Some of the talk mentioned that recipients of support “need a good dose of Christianity.” But isn’t Christianity supposed to be about helping the poor — without any expectation of gratitude laid on in advance?
Others talked about growing up poor themselves, without help that they noticed as children, and of the hard work that families once did to get by.
But why should pride in one’s own success be used to demean the struggles of others, or be an excuse not to help where help is needed? Maybe it’s an attempt to show the help actually isn’t needed — in other words, that the people really worthy of charity are not the people who receive it.
Which brings up the question of labelling — which is what started this reader debate in the first place.
The starting point of our western social contract is that we will not stand by while our neighbours freeze or starve. That’s a holdover from pioneer days when people needed their neighbours’ help to survive. Our forefathers helped build each others’ houses, and brought food to people who had suffered crop failures or other disasters. The gratitude was in being able to help, not in receiving it. You can see this attitude surviving to this day, in Alberta’s approach to charity.
Past that point comes the issue of human dignity. We should be able to respect the dignity of recipients of social assistance not to require that they carry a sign around their necks — or live with one on their yards.
Because the physical cost is not high. As a total of all our incomes, Albertans give less than one per cent to charity. Albertans are tops in Canada for average yearly donations (just over $2,000), and that speaks to some people’s extreme wealth. Social housing uses only a few points more in tax money than we spend promoting tourism and farmers markets.
In all, it’s good that this debate can raise high passions. Bad things can happen when people stop caring or paying attention.
Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.