Hey, another foray into desk-chair philosophy, including herein such warnings and disclaimers as to that these are merely thoughts, based on no research, etc., etc…

Those of you have have regularly attended Christian church services are probably familiar with the “Life-Saving Station” story. The gist is that some folks set up a life-saving station near a dangerous shore. At first, they focus on their mission, but gradually it transforms into more of a clubhouse. Ultimately, a small group splinters off, returns to original mission, cycle ensues.

This reality is not at all limited to the Christian church, but seems to me to be quite widespread amongst any “movement”, be it a political party, an environmental movement, another religion, a *-rights movement, or any other. While for some people, the cause of the degradation from active movement to clubhouse is due to laziness or the infiltration of an existing group for a pat on the back, etc., I realized another avenue I had not previously considered: community.

Movements tend to be both born out of, and create communities. It is probably not necessary to state this, but it happens to be the principle axiom of my ill-formed argument. That is, membership in a movement tends to come from within communities to which the initial members belong, and the movement itself creates, or perhaps even becomes, a community. This makes sense. Communities tend to be defined shared identities of the members. It is no surprise that a feminist will hang out with another feminist, a FairTax supporter with another supporter.

The crucial difference to my mind between a community and a movement is in how the members value immediate needs. Successful movements (according to my lax observation) focus on meeting a need and recruiting others to share in meeting that need. A movement which fails to meet any immediate needs of those being “reached” will not have any success. Hence, preaching is often best paired with meeting some physical need. Most movements have initial success because whatever the movement offers includes some immediate and significant benefit. La la la. A movement sustains its growth only so long as it continues to provide such benefit.

Initial excitement and conviction, however, tend to wane. For most people, resources are scarce (or, at least, they view resources as scarce). Decisions must be made. A movement says focus the resources on the external mission. However, a community has developed within the movement. A community places greater relative value on needs within the community. Hence, it says that internal needs are more important, regardless of “objective” comparison between the needs. A person with a sprained ankle within the community will receive more care from the community than a person having a heart attack outside.

Now, we have arrived at the clubhouse. Our community is now outweighing our movement when distributing resources. The movement suffers. Outsiders, examining the movement, see it as a failure, hypocritical, no longer caring. Insiders continue to see value, because of the community. A few insiders will receive the external criticism, relaunch the movement, refocus on meeting the external need. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Perhaps, this is a “natural” social balancing mechanism. It doesn’t seem to be overly problematic. While those at the point of “movement re-ignition”, if you will, will perhaps inevitably be frustrated with the system, but with a frustration necessary for its continuance. On the other hand, it does strike me as an imperfect balancing act.

As a thought problem, I suppose a movement whose beneficiaries are necessarily inside that community. Probably among those within the community who do not receive as much, some will become resentful, and perhaps split into another community, but in general this setup seems intuitively (read: my guess) to be more stable, hence more often focused on the goals of the movement because those goals coincide with needs within the community. As to what movements could fall into such a category, I don’t have any immediate ideas.

I wonder how possible it is to intentionally define our communities in such a way as to include the beneficiaries of our movements. For example, as a Christian, one of the communities I consider myself to belong to is that of “Christians” with a movement (that is, the movement from which the community was born) of telling the general world populace the good news of Jesus (NB: that’s “telling”, not “beating”). Is there a way to internally–both within the movement and within myself–redefine our community from “Christians in [city]” to “people in city”. If possible, is it a) beneficial and/or b) sustainable?

Again, just some desk-chair thoughts.

A final note: my wife and I finished reading (well, she had already read it, but finished reading together) Sherri S. Tepper’s The Companions. There’s a discussion towards the end about some humans acting as “pack animals”, which (for the main characters, at least) is presented as a negative thing for a people with a language because it leads to exclusion of those outside the pack (movement? community?). So, I’m rethinking the previous discussion in those terms. Maybe I will have more to say…

NB: The following article is purely desk-chair philosophy. It has no other basis than the beautiful (?) randomness of my thoughts. There is no research, no call to ancient works, no reliance on political stump speeches (except insofar as what I may have internalized over time). I’m not altogether sure I believe it.

A lot of people I know have a deep desire to help those who are (in some way or another) “less fortunate”. In such desire (calling, if you will), there’s often the complementary question of what is the best way to do so. And, probably, there is no anywhere-near-universal answer to that question. Which is okay.

NB-sub-2: By weak and strong, throughout the rest of this post, I meaning something very general which I’ve yet to define well. It could be more or less wealthy, more or less intelligent, more or less technologically advanced (your pick which is the strong), etc.

But I have noticed a tendency on the part of some people to try focus their help on the weakest. Meanwhile, I find myself wanting more to focus my efforts to help on those only slightly weaker in a given area. It occurs to me that this could actually be a pretty good system, that is that most people focus their help on those slightly weaker, while a few–those with a calling, if you will–focus on those much weaker than themselves. It’s not a system one might institute formally, but I think it could benefit people who feel guilted into helping in a way which is wrong for them. So, let me dig a bit deeper here.

Here’s what I’m seeing: The majority of people would focus on helping those “slightly weaker” in a given area. For example, I might help someone who knows a little about Subversion Ruby bindings but not a lot, or someone who is looking at buying their first rental property (although with an understanding that I may not be a lot of help); rather than someone who has never used a computer, or, for a more extreme example, a child with cancer on a different continent. The main point here is that I know about the former things–I can actually provide real help. I don’t know how best to introduce someone to computers for the first time, and I certainly don’t know what a child with cancer on another continent needs.

However, there is a very real danger of simply ignoring those more extreme problems. I might occasionally do something along the lines of traveling to [wherever] and giving a child [what do you give a child with cancer?], in order to raise my awareness and understanding, but, for me, it should be for that purpose, rather than imagining that I somehow making a definitive difference. Because, frankly, I know that I’m not going to save this kid’s life. Pretending that I can, in my opinion, serves only to foolishly boost my pride. How I am actually going to help this kid is by helping those who will more directly help the child.

That is, some people are both skilled and called to help those much weaker than themselves in some area. This is wonderful and I admire such people, but I think they’re in the minority. To do so requires an exceptional dedication to studying and addressing the deepest problems of the weakness. It probably should be a full-time occupation or risk causing hurt rather than help. The beauty (and maybe part of God’s plan, if I’m not just talking out of my rear here) is that these people need help from “the rest of us” in areas in which we are slightly stronger.

So, then, a secondary benefit of occasionally participating in helping the much weaker is being better prepared to help those who help them. And, again, I don’t mean weaker in all it’s negative connotations, just more in need in a particular area. So, yeah, a bunch of thoughts. Probably in need of greater clarification.