graphic reads: "The Trouble with Do-Gooders"

by

Billy Golfus

When I say DO-GOODERS I don't just mean the counselors, staff, vocational (do you really need four syllables to say work?) personnel and assorted helpers. I mean the agencies, programs, or what they call care providers.
The phrase DO-GOODERS appears to suggest the kind of neighbors who bring chicken soup when you're sick -- and once in a while somebody'll even do that. But that's not what I mean.
I guess for the most part I'm talking about the professionals. When Silent Cal said "The Business of America is Business" we gots to include the professional DO-GOODERS.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes it can look like sadism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Language is always political.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm wealthy and healthy because God loves me. Suffering is optional, remember?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those of us who live in the opulence and plenty that the Social Security cornucopia provides have a different feeling about the bounty of America.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They talk like it's care, and we like to believe that it's about care, but it's not. It's about money and careers. You want to understand motivation, just follow the money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the deals about the Social Security system -- and probably every big organization is the same -- is they won't tell you who you're dealing with or who made the decision. You're supposed to get the feeling that Social Security is a monolith; a person didn't do this. Something all powerful like God, or the system, or the Wizard of Oz did this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whenever anyone tells me that they know what's best for me, or how I should act, a buzzer goes off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the time they're patting themselves on the back for how they're helping, and how they're professionals and quack quack.

It
took me years to process--like they say-- what had happened. While the physical disabilities and the brain damage that I have are inconvenient, a drag even, they're not as bad as the treatment by friends, social systems and especially the Do-Gooders.
Of course they said I'd never walk again. When I first started standing up from the wheelchair I had a platform cane with four tips which I called "four on the floor." Me and my brother Richy had to run a heavy con to get a copy of it from the physical therapy people so I could practice walking. I suppose that they were afraid that I'd fall... and sue.... "You can use it for a half an hour a day--under supervision." Somehow Richy and I got one for my room. Unheard of. Boy, I wouldn't want me in my hospital.

The Do-Gooders
always say, "This is for the good of the clients," whereas you know in your heart they're just covering their ass. CYA is in section B in the hypocrites oath.
Even the phrase "helping professionals" is an oxymoron and misleading. Doctor Professor John McKnight at Northwestern University points out that the word "care" gets commandeered by everybody including Medicare. "You know and I know that Medicare doesn't care," McKnight says.
"Care is always voluntary. You can't buy it, you can't manufacture it or produce it," McKnight reminds us. Sometimes hookers or Do-Gooders will fake it, if you pay them good. I forget, is it in hospitals or with hookers where you're supposed to put the money on the bed?
When their car payments, rent, insurance premiums and careers come out of helping, maybe their altruism's not really what it's about. It's an exchange of goods and services for money that we're talking about. You can call that "care," but that would just be the standard PR in my book.

"Maintaining the pretense that we're trying to help people in this society is a lot more destructive than trying to cut a fair deal with them," says therapist Chris Ringer. "Our society has difficulty distinguishing between the unwilling and the unable. Consequently it rewards the unwilling who are good whiners and deprives the unable who just want a chance to do for themselves as best they can."
To hang the word helping on it gives the connotation of humanity, generosity, and compassion. Give me a break. Obviously the Do-Gooders don't go into that line of work for the money (except for some doctors, maybe) -- although they are making a better living than the people they serve -- and even though the words are about supporting and serving, they're basically trying to fill their own needs, to use the jargon.
Your mission, should you choose to to accept it, is to read Disabling Professions by Ivan Illich, Irving Zola, John McKnight, et. al. (ISBN 0-7145-2510-2, paperback). It's highly recommended because it explains the relationship of the Do-Gooders to those helped. This short, juicy-with-ideas book explains helping like it really is.

The most reprinted essay in the English Language (in case you're ever on a quiz program) is George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language." He talks about the use of language to hide meanings. For example, the use of multi-syllabic and complex phrases to euphemize things and make them sound fancy-schmancy. Just look at the long names of some of these agencies if you want to see how important they think they are. Or the names they use for the clients. I used to be a closed head injured client instead of brain damaged, but I think that they're on to some new trendy lingo by now. There are even gimps who think of themselves as TBI, like it elevates them some way. Not that I can ever keep up.
For example, Do-Gooders call kids "at risk" that we used to call delinquents when I was one. But, if you look at it, the phrase at risk sets up a relationship between the Do-Gooders and the kids. For ten points, whose values does that phrase validate? Does clients & professionals and service providers make you think the Do-Gooders think they have more in common with doctors or patients? Language is always political. How could it be otherwise? It's got to do with power and the distribution of goods and services. Think about it: does a Mercedes mechanic see more doctors or more patients? I suppose it's OK if you wanta hang some fancy monniker on yourself, but you got to be careful and not get co-opted.

Chris Ringer is a therapist who does a seminar about co-dependency for the helping professions. You can see already that the lingo is spread on a couple of inches thick. Used to be you was a drunk before the chemical dependency industry showed failing hospitals how to get to the third party reimbursements. See, they had these hospitals losing money in the Fifties when some bright boy (don't want the feminists jumping down my throat -- for all I know it was some bright girl) when some bright boy or girl discovered you could charge the same day rate without the heavy overhead of all that expensive scientific machinery. Fact o' business: what they sell for drunks -- for the same day rate--is a higher power (AKA God). Selling God and hooking Him to Health Care meant a trip straight to the bank--do not pass Go. The words Health Care and care are really a big part of the helping professionals' smoke screen. For example, that care word gets appropriated by all kinds of systems -- excuse my ass, I mean helping systems.
Minnesota is the alcoholism state--actually the phrase chemical dependency has more profit potential than alcoholism. Minnesota is the land of 10,000 treatment centers. One Governor tried to sell alky treatment as Minnesota's new growth industry and [this is true] tried to have it named the state disease. What state has a state disease? Must be good for business, huh?

As a rule,
the Do-Gooders see themselves as different from and superior to their clients. Because -- also, dig -- Do-Gooders make so much more money than most of those they allegedly serve. "The culture says that it's virtuous and commendable to be a helper," therapist Chris Ringer points out. "But the other side is, those who need help are thought [to be] probably responsible for their own misfortune. Who knows, it may be God punishing them, so the very fact that people are helpers is proof of their virtue...The underbelly of that is that we live in a culture where suffering is thought optional. Where having problems is optional. Or, worse, that suffering is God punishing you for being human."

One of our helpless vegetable leaders just had a stroke. This view says that it was probably his own fault for not eating the right kind of new age food and drinking the right brand of bubbly water while talking to his broker (on the cordless phone). Some people say that's a revision of the Puritan ethic. You know, I'm wealthy and healthy because God loves me. And you're not because you just didn't do it right, and this is what you get for it. Suffering is optional, remember? It's a very dangerous model.

Helpers are in a one-up position from those whom they help. A lot of this junk seems to be about being better than someone else. While the Do-Gooders' come-on isn't overtly superior, it's concerned in a smarmy and unctuous way. And this charade gets them a steady paycheck and some kind of cockamamie validation (about being better than you know who).
Chris Ringer always calls the gimps, homeless, unwed mothers, etc., the customers. He's constantly trying to remind us that this whole thing is an exchange for money.
Actually, I think the mistake is in believing that the customers are the persons served. In fact, the customers are the ones who pay for the service. You know, like when you go to the hospital and the nurses want you to fill out the three forms before you get the chicken soup. They are less concerned with your comfort because they know who pays their salary. The patients are not the customers; the third party reimbursers are the customers.

They talk like it's care,
and we like to believe that it's about care, but it's not. It's about money and careers. You want to understand motivation, just follow the money.
Those allegedly helped by the Do-Gooders actually come last on the list after the "other constraints" of the agencies and their "guidelines." And, let's not forget the personal and psychological motivations of the Do-Gooders, & their career trajectories.
For the last few years it's been real trendy for the Do-Gooders to talk about the "consumers" of their services. Nothing's changed. It's just a language trend like when it was real hip to say twenty-three skidoo. Linguist Noam Chomsky pointed that you used to have your Negroes, who became Black, who became Afro-American, who became African American, but behavior toward them and their opportunities did not change. The system's still set up so that your chances are a lot better for going to prison than going to the university if you're Black than if you're White.
Liberals and Do-Gooders think that if you change the language and say head injured, or persons with disabilities, or African American, or woman, that attitudes will change. It doesn't seem to work that way, liberals to the contrary. I'm with Professor Chomsky on this one, and calling it Head Injury and giving your money to George Zitnay and the National Head Injury Foundation don't do diddly squat to make things better for the brain damaged.

Probably
one of the places where it's easiest to see the adversary roles of the alleged Do-Gooders and those served is in the Social Security System. Most of the "non-disabled" (another whistle in the dark term--like they're not the standard) have the fantasy that "you'll always be taken care of" and "nobody goes hungry" in this country. Those of us who live in the opulence and plenty that the Social Security cornucopia provides have a different feeling about the bounty of America.
One of the deals about the Social Security system -- and probably every big organization is the same -- is they won't tell you who you're dealing with or who made the decision. You're supposed to get the feeling that Social Security is a monolith; a person didn't do this. Something all powerful like God, or the system, or the Wizard of Oz did this. 'Course all Do-Gooders and their agencies use that come-on. You know, they've got their "guidelines" and "I vas only followink horders." They're never responsible, it's always someone else or their damn "policy."
But, like I say, the Social Security system is a clear example, like vocational rehabilitation, or medical "assistance." Down that alley, when I got a cost of living increase to $522 a month ("and don't spend it all in one place"), it knocked me off medical assistance because I now make "too much money." I've got to admit that living on $522 a month is too much and I've considered hiring financial planners to decide how to invest all that money.

Janie,
who was just mangled by a car, loves to tell me that she was in coma longer than the quarter of a year I was in the hospital. Janie used to get $388, so there's no fairness or logic to it. Since they try to cut people off the rolls, I'll bet that the Social Security attitude is, "Shut up. You're lucky to get anything at all."
I figured maybe I could supplement my $522 so I called Washington and asked how much I could make and maintain my Social Security benefits. They told me, "We can't tell you."
As it happens, I'm a seasoned, award-winning journalist and I'm skilled at getting answers. The Social Security people, like other government employees, are skilled at dodging questions.
My Mom was a big deal in business. Traffic Manager of 20 corporations . She tried to find out. Wrote her Congressman and quack quack. She couldn't find out how much you could make on top of your benefits.
Dr. Professor Shapiro teaches at the University, has been a consultant to business, government and all manner of organizations. He tried to find out. He knows people; called his congressman. Same brick wall.
Igor aka Michael Nedenfer, a financial planner, tried. Kathleen, his wife told me that she heard him make 15 phone calls. Same dead end.
Years later, I haven't been able to find out how much you can make. If you're disabled, the government keeps you scared, and in the dark, and dependent on some Do-Gooder to dispense information and interpretations to you. And you better do exactly what they tell you.

Do you think someone grows up always wanting to work in one of those offices keeping the gimps corralled? "Keep a-moving along, little dogies."
Chris Ringer says, "Different kinds of people seem attracted to the helping professions. Some of them seem to have high control needs. With those high control needs there may, or may not be, empathy."
Right!
"Sometimes it can look like sadism"
It doesn't just look like it's sadistic. Sometimes it is sadistic.
Personally what attracts them, beyond a conscious awareness of wanting to do good, is this "control need," like they say in shrink talk.

"I think it was the Buddha
that said, how many centuries ago," therapist Chris Ringer pontificates, "that the most deadly of all human impulses is the impulse to control. And, so the [self-appointed] saint has no choice It's their God-given duty to stick their noses into other people's business." Or, force their idea of what is 'right' on the world. To me it don't matter if that crap comes from Do-Gooders or people who call themselves disability activists. Control freaks look the same to me in white coats or in wheelchairs. Control freaks are control freaks. Whenever anyone tells me that they know what's best for me, or how I should act, a buzzer goes off.

I'm heavy into autonomy, the control of one's own life. "I assume and presume a value in autonomy," Chris Ringer goes on. "There are people who believe that people are not responsible for themselves and should be controlled from the outside." And this is just a microcosm of systems all over the country in cities and counties and states and in the big Federal Government. Some departments are worse than others, but all the time they're patting themselves on the back for how they're helping, and how they're professionals and quack quack.
This is so you should know you're not the only one who feels this way.

photo of Billy Golfus in his mean black leathers working at his computer
photo of Billy Golfus by Ramon Muxter

This article was first published in Mouth #27, in September 1994. It is copyright Billy Golfus, 1994.

In 1998, the Social Security Administration began giving annual notice to "beneficiaries" of how much they are allowed to earn. Billy may now earn $699 per month and still keep his Social Security "allowance." Yes, that's what they call it. Thank you, Billy.

Maybe what you need right now is a snake poem.

To meet a totally nasty do-gooder, click here.

Or maybe you'd just like to glue 'em all down.

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Billy Golfus was once a regular contributor to Mouth magazine. But now he's famous and it seems like he's always on the phone with Spielberg's people. His video documentary, "When Billy Broke His Head," won so many awards in 1995 and 1996 that the list of them would be longer than this article. He's working on another script, "Sex and the Single Gimp." "When Billy Broke His Head" is available for purchase in our Attitude Catalog. Coming soon online.

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