Anti-narcissism: Do do-gooders turn you off?

Stuart Scheiderman writes about anti-narcissism:

Rather than making oneself the center of the universe, one erases oneself in acts of giving that will never benefit oneself, directly or indirectly.

...One suspects that the do-gooders do not really ask themselves whether they are doing good for others. They often latch on to international do-goodist organizations and assume that, since their hearts are in the right place they are doing good. They do not seem to ask themselves whether the objects of their charity are really living better lives.

And yet, as the standard argument goes, when you bring a boatload of free food into a primitive community—to fight hunger—it will help starving people, except when there are local farmers who, thanks to your largesse, will be put out of business. Why would anyone pay for anything they can get for free? If you put local farmers out of business, next year the people of the village will be facing starvation again.

Note that giving things away for free is antithetical to economic activity. Taken to the extreme level that the do-gooders prefer, it makes underprivileged people into permanent wards of the do-gooders.

Would it be better for local villagers to be hired by NGOs or to be hired by international agricultural or industrial corporations? The question does not enter the minds of do-gooders, but they do not really consider that it might be better, as Nicholas Kristof once opined, to build a Coca-Cola factory in Haiti than to send so much relief.

It makes good sense that people feel turned off by do-gooders. If everyone did as they did, the world would be a bleak and barren, thoroughly non-productive place. Only by producing more wealth and offering more jobs can we hope to lift the poor and unfortunate from their misery. We cannot do that if people do not want to be productive citizens, to work for their livelihood.

Scheiderman tells us about a new book by Larissa MacFarquhar Strangers Drowning that will soon be published. MacFarquhar writes,

The term “do-gooder” is, of course, often demeaning. It can mean a silly or intrusive person who tries to do good but ends up only meddling. It can mean someone who seems annoyingly earnest, or priggish, or judgmental. But even when “do-gooder” simply means a person who does good deeds, there is still some scepticism, even antagonism, in it. One reason may be guilt: nobody likes to be reminded, even implicitly, of his own selfishness. Another is irritation: nobody likes to be told, even implicitly, how he should live his life, or be reproached for how he is living it. And nobody likes to be the recipient of charity.

Scheiderman concludes,

I would add that do-gooders do not identify as members of a family or a community. They see themselves primarily as citizens of the world, as members of the human species. They are living out the cosmopolitan reverie of escaping all social ties in order to live for humanity.

Read more here.