But isnt it about helping someone when they need help? If we all just put in a few bucks, our collective effort solves his/her problem. It isnt difficult to donate a few dollars, we all have so much.
Then, when we ourselves need help, we can get it from the bigger community. Thats what caring looks like in a beautiful, compassionate community. Kumbaeya.
/sarcasm
Indeed! Of course, in reality, there are people who just can't keep from jumping into the shitheap.
When we see someone drowning in shit and begging for help, it's only human nature to pull that person out again especially if we've got no clue as to how that person got there. Medical emergencies happen. People are the victims of crime. A big enough wave can sink even the sturdiest ship, etc., etc. It's good that human beings have these altruistic impulses, because it allows us to survive as a species even through adverse circumstances. It allows more humans to survive to adulthood despite having a biologically imposed childhood and adolescence much longer, proportionately, than nearly all other mammals. However, our society is now large enough and comfortable enough that the cause of someone's distress is not always obvious.
When someone is drowning in shit, a lot of the times another person will provide the help necessary to pull that person out, only for the recipient of aid to turn around and jump right back into the shit again. I've seen it too many times to count. The only conclusion I can possibly draw is that the person who does this simply likes the feel, smell, and taste of being in the shit.
There exists a class of human beings who really do prefer to live like pigs, with no regard for the well-being of others. They turn every possible home or refuge into a sty, either figuratively or literally, with toxic behavior, drama, and sometimes literal filth. That's their comfort zone. They may express dissatisfaction with the sty that they're in, but if you take them out of it and put them in, say, your living room or your personal life, they immediately start shitting everywhere and rooting around in order to create as sty-like an environment as possible. You can take the pig out of the sty, but you can't take the sty lifestyle out of a domesticated pig.
Life with a pig is a one-way street, until and unless you decide it's time for bacon and are prepared to follow through with it. You can work yourself stupid providing slops and sty space, but you'll receive diddly-ding in return especially if you're the one in need. The most you can ever expect is an invitation to share the sty. If a sty is what you want... go for it. For most of us Mustachians, a sty is not what we want. A humble dwelling, yes. But we skip the flies, filth, and disorganization that goes with a sty.
Pigs are intelligent animals, and the human variety learns quickly how to make the proper mouth noises to get others to top up the trough. They're good at oinking about how they're "gonna" go back to school, settle their debts, manage their finances, quit smoking, care for their multiple children, get a job, or do something that stands a chance of improving their situation, in reality it's not going to happen, because the pig-human does not function like an adult despite having survived to reproductive age or beyond.
An adult human has his or her ducks in a row, and his or her fucks in a row. Not so with the pig-human. Pig-humans are so disorganized, so irresponsible, so unreliable, so inconsiderate of others, and so subject to changing their plans at a whim that they are incapable of following through on a commitment or an initiative. Their ducks aren't in a row. Also, their priorities are so radically out of whack that they either don't realize or don't care about what the most important expenses or activities are. So instead of studying for the GED, they sit in front of the idiot box or hunt for virtual goodies online. Instead of cleaning the homes they live in, they build elaborate Minecraft edifices or virtual farms. Instead of spending time with their (usually multiple) children to make sure they learn how to read, they spend their off hours cavorting in a mall or going out for yet another restaurant meal or else socializing. Instead of treating their benefactors with decency, they bite the hands that feed them. That's what I mean by not having their fucks in a row.
People always go after what they want, and when every possible effort is bent on having and maintaining a sty lifestyle, you have to conclude that
the sty is what they want. They are so much in love with the sty lifestyle that they do their best to pull other people into it.
Now, the thing with pigs, and by this I mean the human sort, is... they're greedy. They always want a bigger and fancier sty, and they always want more slops. They waste the vast majority of whatever slops they are given, treading them underfoot to the point where they can't be used by any other animal, but that doesn't keep them from grunting for more every chance they get. They learn that the only way to out-compete the other pigs, and the other animals (thank you, George Orwell) is to be louder and more assertive with their depiction of need. The fastest way to make someone refill the trough is to empty it. So people who live like pigs are professional victims and professionally needy.
People who live like pigs go through far more resources than people who don't live like pigs but who are in distress. Part of the reason is that the people who live like pigs are far more experienced and skilled at latching on to an available farmer, and at claiming what resources exist and are available. An experienced pig-man or pig-woman can easily outcompete, say, a genuinely vulnerable person (such as a child) when competing for resources from the extended family or community. That's why addicts, for example, suck down so much within a family that other less competitive family members end up going without.
Having established this rather disgusting analogy, I'd like to return to the point so beautifully and sarcastically made by Iris Lily: giving a little bit more to a pig doesn't help the pig long-term. Nor does it create an infrastructure in which a person in need can obtain relief. It's a fashionable and politically correct custom to pretend that voluntary and ongoing pigdom is somehow the same as being overwhelmed by unavoidable or unpredictable circumstances, but in reality it's not.
When deciding whether to offer aid, I first give the person space to show me the extent to which they embrace pig culture. One of the biggest indicators of pigdom, to me, is the inability to distinguish between "earning" money (by providing services or goods of reasonable value in exchange for it) and simply "getting" money through begging, solicitation of gifts, or dipping into the public reserves.
In a perfectly compassionate community (following Iris Lily's sarcastically presented ultra-liberal example), the pigs quickly commandeer all the available resources, leaving none for people whose distress is anything but self inflicted.