Do Unto Those You Know

“A man is a free being who is always changing into himself. This changing is never merely indifferent. We are always getting either better or worse. Our development is measured by our acts of free choice, and we make ourselves by the patterns of our desires.

If our desires reach out for the things that we were created to have and to make and to become, then we will develop into what we were truly meant to be.

But if our desires reach out for things that have no meaning for the growth of our spirit, if they lose themselves in dreams or passions or illusions, we will be false to ourselves and to other men… We will judge ourselves as aliens and exiles from ourselves

-Thomas Merton

The other day I found myself becoming very frustrated with another substack persona who often comments on columns that I read.

And he made a comment that those who get food stamps should work in order to be able to obtain food stamps. I looked on the official govt. website because I thought a great many did some”work”.

The page was dated February of 2025 but I don’t know when the stats themselves were actually compiled. Nevertheless, neither Doge nor anyone else had removed the page. And I must admit my own estimation that probably a third of those who received food stamps did try to earn some money and had jobs.

Boy was I off! The actual number was seventy-five percent of all those households that received food assistance had at least one family member who worked.

The third I estimated? Well actually 33% of the recipients have two household members. I suggested to this commentator that perhaps he, and members of Congress ought to actually check the facts before spouting off about these leeches who got free food from the govt. and were too lazy to work.

He completely ignored the stats I had provided but felt in claiming but thought he shouldn’t need to pay tax dollars to support others.

So I suggested he was living in a cloud of ignorance and had no idea what the suffering of mind and/or body could be or the circumstances that might lead to not having enough funds to provide food for self or family.

His reply was not to judge him and that he had done a variety of laboring jobs. Well I saw no benefit in arguing that many people labor and think just because they may have “made it” that everyone else can do so as well.

So instead I wrote that if he really thought he shouldn't need to pay taxes for others then he needed to support them himself and I asked have you done ABC to assist others while they try to get back on their feet. I said I agreed that many aid programs created a demeaning nature that made it harder to get back on their feet. So the alternative was to supply others with support through sheltering or giving money to support them and if we do so as individuals there is (generally) less of a debasement to the gift and most will really try to help themselves or help others in turn.

Well he replied that I was just trying to make myself look saintly and he helped those he knew.

I responded a last time and ignored his final missives. If we only help those we know and have no concern for those we don’t know then two things occur, one is that society as a whole selfishly diminishes what everyone has; and two, we develop a society that is antagonistic to those we don’t know and we remain at odds. And I said if you read what I had done as some sort of self-aggrandizement, then I apologize, you misread my point, because I had begun by asking him what he had done and concluded that if we don’t help those we don’t know then we only doing so because we think we are better than they are.

In fact I had to sacrifice the idea of my betterness and emphasize the betterness of the other. That is the point, get rid of the idea of your specialness. The truth is that frequently in helping others I have to learn to lessen my demands on them and realize no one can ever be “helped” by their better, only by someone who they see as their equal.

That is exactly the problem with government programs. They do become a dead end because being given by the government as their superior always makes them feel inferior.

It is difficult to keep yourself from being the better in any gift–that is why the Kula Ring gains praise by being the most insignificant gift.

But one of the first things we need to consider for a post-Trump society is a manner to have our governors (at whatever level they represent us) to not consider themselves more important than those they represent. Perhaps they need to become anonymously drawn from a hat and remain anonymous throughout their term of service, like jurors don’t usually know who the other jurors are.

I’m not suggesting that is the solution, but if we leave the selection to a cult of personalities. I mean there must be a better way than long elections and candidate promotion. Winners are those who gain the greatest name recognition or are simply affiliated with the part we think we are supposed to belong to.

It’s kind of like the Christmas gift donated anonymously frequently becomes more cherished than the gift to one’s own child who expects the parent must give them a gift whether or not they’ve been naughty or nice.

And yet the anguish we feel by neglecting those we don’t know leads to the anguished souls whose identity develops from this neglect…it leads to the dislike and disrespect of those we don’t know and to the diminishment of self that cannot respect even those we do know including ourselves.

It leads to depressed people unable to exist in a society built on the irrelevant. But if I help, if I give, can I ever accomplish anything in a society of those who disrespect and feel disrespected? The answer is no I can’t, so of course I cannot brag of myself unless…and until…we can all respect the other and the other can respect in return.

The respect comes not from the gift itself or in what is given,it can only be valuable if it becomes a gift of the culture itself that becomes inclusive of everyone and grants everyone the dignity of being heard.

And in the meantime I find myself overwhelmed that I can’t help anyone and angry that everyone doesn’t recognize the doorway to heaven is not a future paradise, but a better harmony towards the other in the present…and if our own self-respect becomes diverted to blaming the culture for our feelings of lack; that meanwhile are ever-more what our lives become about, then our gift is dollar bills to the poor that neither help the poor find the acceptance into the culture and they remain feeling unwanted in that culture…the lack of respect attacks inside us and we seemingly self…mission remaining unaccomplished.

The true mission impossible without redeveloping our cultures of gratitude for those we don’t know that enables us to live harmoniously with those we do know.

A system, a democracy, built on competing methods of forcible conquest that creates lack in spirit, no matter the materiality it might give, must inevitably fail.

It takes deeds of the heart, not words of the mind.

And the future restoration of humanity has to disclude the fractious battles between those who are us and those whom we do not see as us.