A Precariat Altruist’s Disturbed Mind
Before reading: This post is not for everyone and I am aiming for people who want to live in their way but still want to help the community yet are criticized by other people for only doing the “little ways” to help. This was originally written back on April 26, 2020.
With all these arising problems in our society, what does it mean to live life and be able to help your community? Is it to participate in advocacy, especially resistance, but you know the compromises and trade-offs for you? Is it to participate in activities that would benefit you a lot, but you know it wouldn’t do any significant to the society at least in a theoretical sense. But who said it is your responsibility to do so? Yet the disturbing question arises when people ask “what if you are in the situation of the oppressed?” And it is really difficult to deny that you have been in such privilege and would eventually feel degraded that you are not doing anything to help. But aren’t these words a social construct — “rights”, “privilege”, and more? Although their definitions would surely evolve as scholars would discover more about humans, especially our nature—that if forced to change, it might not do any good for the individual, the community, and/or the organization.
But each of us, as an individual, lives in different situations— that it varies how our mind works in a neurobiological sense, even our experiences, and current commitments. And what our response says is to survive which is either through a fight or a flight response and oftentimes knowing these ‘rights’, ‘privilege’ etc. ain’t going to help in order to survive in an instant or in the timeframe you needed to. Unless you are patient enough or perhaps someone carefree. But again, we live in a different situation. For instance, you have so many bills to pay, perhaps a breadwinner, but you know your salary is not enough in parallel to the hard work you are giving. And the question is, are you going to participate in mass resistance fighting for a minimum wage that is good for having a healthy standard of living, or are you going to work and have better pay? And if you choose the latter, which is working for yourself, people would think you are selfish. But you are the one who knows your situation. And on the other hand, these critics may not know a thing or two about your life. Again, our situations are different. And what you know isn’t always what people know. That not everyone knows you are working for yourself because it's a more sane way to do so. In another way to say it, a healthy standard of living is more applicable to you.
And going back to the question, what does it mean to live our lives? I would say that it is to do or get what you truly want without compromising your well-being or sanity nor causing prejudice or abuse to other people either in a subtle or evident way and able to help or at least support refining the inevitably flawed system. It should be really feasible for you but what I suggest is to do something viable that at least do something that helps in your own little ways. Not only that it would nourish individuality and considers harmonious coexistence between people from different generations and cultures, but at the same time, it tells so much that our real problems arise on how we structured the system or how we let the system structured that way.
