What’s So Wrong With Helping?

How a cult of victimhood tries to stamp out good deeds.

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(Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Dear Reader (especially those of you secretly recording your would-be bosses because you can’t believe a thing they say),

If you came here for insightful commentary and analysis about the giant Chinese balloon over Montana, I’m sorry to disappoint you—I’ve got little to add to the riot of balloon discourse. 

But I do love how so much of our life seems like it was written for Mad Libs. I don’t mean surly or insane editors of the New York Times and MSNBC—those libs are mad! I mean the old party game where you insert random verbs and nouns into sentences to create some whacky content. 

We live in an age of whacky content. 

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  1. Ackemma1

    This is an old "news" story by now, but I thought of it this morning while I was reading the Sermon on the Mount. In the same address Jesus says to "let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works" he says to "be not as the hypocrites" who do their good works in front of others in order to be seen and to be praised.

    How you square these I don't exactly know, although I suppose it comes down to your primary motivation for why you did what you did.

    I would suspect that Mr. Beast likely did do it for the spectacle; for the likes and the subscribes. (Although that's not really for me to judge.) But. As a mother of kids who want to watch this type of content, can I say that this is rather more wholesome fare than what they could be watching? That it's entirely possible that they might be inspired to do some good because Mr. Beast did?

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  2. Emma

    I love it when I can dead a piece that quotes Nietzsche! He's my favorite.

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    Ms. SSM

    People who complain about Mr Beast should be examined for whatever gene Eboneezer Scrooge had. I mean the man gives nice stuff away. What’s not to like?!?!

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    Jeff Younger

    $10 says the same progressive good-deed-shamers howling about MrBeast’s methods will phone the local PBS station if their pledge drive tote bag doesn’t show up in a timely fashion.

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    WKDawson

    At least I found this rather humorous. One does wonder how curing people of blindness would be seen as "bad". There can be no end to questioning our motives for things. Even if you don't profit from doing good and you hide the good that you do, people will say you are ingratiating yourself. So you simply cannot win. Just do good because you want to do good, and let people talk their talk I guess.

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  6. Hartzlk

    Jonah, you are inspiring me to go read Nietzsche and Auden. I'll confess, I don't think I've heard of Auden before. Time to go learn some things.

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    CP

    What if we need to dismantle Western culture to end victimhood culture?

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  8. Joe1776

    Why is it ok to kill and eat other animals but not humans?

    The Religious view is human life is a sacred gift from God. It is of infinite value because humans are made in the image of God. Not so other animals. We see this in the earliest existing extended argument against the institution of slavery. It was written by Saint Gregory, the Bishop of Nyssa who lived 335-395 AD
    https://trueandreasonable.co/2019/07/01/slavery-and-christianity-the-first-known-abolitionist-speech/

    Non religious are left to find a different answer to this question. And they often focus on certain traits humans seem to have or have more of than animals. Rationality, etc. But then when people have more or less of these traits it seems their value may go up or down. Which leads to many views we find offensive (but perhaps Nietzsche didn't, I don't know.). Peter Singer argues along the lines that pigs have more intellectual abilities than newborn humans so newborns should not necessarily have more rights.

    This loss of the sacredness of human life is why people get very sensitive about valuing certain traits. They are trying to stick to the traditional view that human life is sacred but they can't accept that anything is sacred so they resort to traits being the source of the value.

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  9. Dougrhon

    The problem with this "don't have standards of normalcy" cult (because that is what it is) is that while it seems laughable to normals (Sure the blind want to stay blind), it has a way of seeping in and becoming the new normal. This is how our civilization will fall. Not with a bang but with a whimper.

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    Ben Connelly

    The cult of victimhood and its perverse incentives have long been a hobbyhorse of mine, too. People compete for status as victims, rather than as honorable individuals, and while there certainly were problems with the previous status quo, at least the incentives weren’t so noxious. The cult of victimhood began on the left, but it has infected the right, too - Donald Trump perfected it.

    That Nietzsche quotation about despising oneself is prophetic and very apt, although I disagree with him to some extent about Christianity. All the handwringing about how Americans always complain that they’re unhappy and stressed out ignores the fact that we like to think of ourselves that way because it indicates we’re hardworking or something.

    We’ve gone from stigmatizing mental health to stigmatizing people who say they’re happy and fine, from stigmatizing fat people to stigmatizing people who get in shape (see Adele), from stigmatizing disabled people to stigmatizing healthy people. It’s sick. I don’t believe in stigmatizing anyone. I do believe in relieving human suffering and I don’t think alleviating pain is anything other than a good thing. To suggest that we shouldn’t help people because their identity as a sufferer is more important than improving their quality of life is a morally disgusting suggestion.

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