This is a very important consideration. I would phrase the actionable portion as: for any relationship between a pair of people A worse off than B, A is as likely to drag B down as the other way around. Do not go around assuming you have what it takes to help people just because you’re better off than them (even in situations where it’s obvious from both sides who is better off).
in general it’s not paradigmatically manipulative
My priors disagree with this, having been somewhat needy and pathetic in the past. In such a state I have been, for example, gripped by destructive rage when my friends succeed more than I imagine they deserve. Zizek likes to say poverty is a moral crisis as well as a humanitarian one—suffering brings the worst out of people, and the worst part of a human being is plenty bad.
I think it’s right to treat people as if they have good intentions, because people generally have both good and bad intentions and play tit-for-tat in life. But we shouldn’t confuse this with actually believing that most people only have good intentions.
I suspect alkjash’s description is the same phenomenon, just somewhat less visible to your social group (because your group rewards/tolerates misery and sympathy demands, but rejects overt anger). There’re a lot of variants of “uncontroll[ed|able] bad feelings”; Anger and sadness are fairly common to find together in the pathologies you’re talking about.
It’s not obvious to me that this topic is much different than any other human suffering—the vast majority of cases are emotionally distant enough that I’m not able/willing to make the sacrifices that would significantly help. I haven’t found many charities that seem likely to be effective for this kind of suffering, but I’m open to suggestions.
This is a very important consideration. I would phrase the actionable portion as: for any relationship between a pair of people A worse off than B, A is as likely to drag B down as the other way around. Do not go around assuming you have what it takes to help people just because you’re better off than them (even in situations where it’s obvious from both sides who is better off).
My priors disagree with this, having been somewhat needy and pathetic in the past. In such a state I have been, for example, gripped by destructive rage when my friends succeed more than I imagine they deserve. Zizek likes to say poverty is a moral crisis as well as a humanitarian one—suffering brings the worst out of people, and the worst part of a human being is plenty bad.
I think it’s right to treat people as if they have good intentions, because people generally have both good and bad intentions and play tit-for-tat in life. But we shouldn’t confuse this with actually believing that most people only have good intentions.
Being gripped by destructive rage when your friends succeed sounds like not a central case of the thing I was trying to describe.
I suspect alkjash’s description is the same phenomenon, just somewhat less visible to your social group (because your group rewards/tolerates misery and sympathy demands, but rejects overt anger). There’re a lot of variants of “uncontroll[ed|able] bad feelings”; Anger and sadness are fairly common to find together in the pathologies you’re talking about.
It’s not obvious to me that this topic is much different than any other human suffering—the vast majority of cases are emotionally distant enough that I’m not able/willing to make the sacrifices that would significantly help. I haven’t found many charities that seem likely to be effective for this kind of suffering, but I’m open to suggestions.