It’s been a while, so the specifics are a bit vague, but I can tell you it was plush, believe you me.
I’m referring to the “classroom” where we met one fine day in the office of the “master” of one of Yale’s fourteen residential colleges. (“Master,” I’ll have you know, was recently changed to “head of college,” to accord with the current fashions of political correctness.)
Normally, the class was held up Prospect Hill, at the divinity school, but on this particular day we were treated to the master’s palatial digs. It was opulent in that understated, clubby way – stuffed chairs and muted academic tones, as if a Hollywood set. Cigars and snifters of brandy would not have been out of place.
The occasion was a lecture by an acquaintance of our professor’s, a gentlemanly psychiatrist hailing from Lima, Peru. For the full hour, we were granted entry into the appalling conditions found within the slums of Lima. It sounded truly horrific, and I have no doubt what he reported was accurate, if not insufficient in describing the human tragedy born of such degradation.
My classmates and I were moved. Very moved. As we filed out onto the streets of New Haven, one could sense the outrage as well as the abiding desire to somehow right these wrongs, if only by registering a silent protest.
And yet I couldn’t help but think of our situation. If any one of us were to walk just three or four blocks from the master’s quarters, we’d have encountered some of the worst living conditions in the state, if not the entire country.
Pictured above is Elm Haven, an inappositely named housing project built in the late 30s in the Dixwell section of the city and described at the time as a “modern utopia” by city planners (it was demolished ignominiously in the 1990s).
“By the 1980s,” as one publication put it, “Dixwell’s Elm Haven projects, the home turf of the Tribe, had become one of the city’s chief sites for the sale of cocaine by violent, neighborhood-based drug gangs. Abandoned factory buildings, vacant lots, and burned out houses provided the backdrop for rampant property crime, theft, and street robberies to fund drug addictions, and shoot-outs between rival gangs sparked by turf disputes, acts of disrespect, and money debts.”
As I say, this was just a few blocks from the Yale campus where my classmates and I had just heard about conditions in Lima, Peru. And yet, not one of the students, myself included, was motivated to lift a finger to address the human blight just a few steps away. The exotic image of faraway Lima seemed much more entrancing somehow, romantic even. Having to face the hard realities in our own backyard just didn’t seem to occur to anyone.
I’m reminded of Charles Dickens’ famous phrase from his book, Bleak House: “telescopic philanthropy.” Dickens, that is to say, reserved particularly harsh criticism for individuals who styled themselves as philanthropists, but whose charitable motives were to serve their own vanity by high-status projects in exotic and faraway places, while ignoring less prestigious problems at or near home.
“Compassion,” writes Roger Kimball, “ceases if there is nothing but compassion, and revulsion turns to insensitivity. Our ‘soft pity,’ as Stefan Zweig calls it, is stimulated, because guilt is a convenient substitute for action where action is impossible. Without the power to do anything, sensitivity becomes our main aim, the aim is not so much to do anything, as to be judged.” As compassionate, that is.
Barbara Tuchman put it more simply in The Proud Tower: “Humanitarian instincts grow fiercer in proportion to the distance by which their causes are removed and it is always easier to build Jerusalem in Africa than at home.”
As with the main character in Dostoevsky’s famous short story, The Underground Man, we risk caring unconditionally for “humanity” in the abstract while ignoring the specific individuals in our lives. The underground man, you see, loves humanity; it’s just people he can’t stand!
Much human compassion risks being of this sort. It exteriorizes our feelings and projects them onto distant circumstances. We might feel better (less guilty) but do we really assist those we purport to help?
Years ago, I read a sermon by the late John Claypool, an Episcopal priest, entitled, The Platinum Rule. The title is a take-off on the far more famous “Golden Rule” which commands us to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
In describing his platinum rule, he offers an example. It’s the story of a man who was about to turn 40. His wife, eager to demonstrate her love, decides to put together a surprise birthday bash.
So she goes out and rents a large banquet hall at a downtown hotel, hires a band, provides for an array of his favorite foods, and invites all their friends and relatives.
The evening goes off without a hitch. Afterwards, however, after returning home, the husband gently confides in his wife.
“You know,” he says, “that was really a special night. I’m so very grateful to you for all the work you put into making it a memorable evening. And I love you for it.”
“But,” he continues, “if I were to be totally honest, I’d rather have had a small gathering of just a few friends at home, a quiet evening of conversation and intimacy.” [I made up all this dialogue, but it does convey Claypool’s message.]
The “platinum rule,” thus, is that which commands us to “do unto others as they would have us do unto them.”
The wife, though clearly well-intentioned, offered her husband what she’d have wanted rather than what he in fact did want.
The key to providing for others, then, is first knowing what they desire and need, not offering what we would want or need. The difference is vast.
The trouble with much philanthropy (and the compassion that accompanies it), found perhaps especially in today’s mainline “social gospel” church, is that it risks focusing on our thoughts and feelings rather than those we would otherwise seek to assist.
So we must ask ourselves, do our actions provide any real relief? For if we’re honest, we know not all benefactory actions (or intentions) produce the desired results. Sometimes they produce the exact opposite (think Elm Haven).
The key to genuinely helping others, then, has a lot to do with knowing who they are, knowing what makes them tick, knowing what’s really going on in their hearts and in their souls. Good intentions are not enough. That’s why, as the old expression wisely asserts, charity begins at home.
If we can care for those around us, often in quite pedestrian, ordinary ways, we have achieved a great deal. Certainly it’s more glamorous, and far easier, to imagine the plight of those in faraway places and those, not coincidentally, at a safe distance. Yet most often it’s the simple day-to-day struggles, sacrifices, and unglamorous duties that are, in the end, most meaningful – and which have the most salient effect.
Am I saying that we should avoid charitable efforts in faraway places? Certainly not. What I am saying is that perhaps we’d do well to attend also to those we too easily neglect, those whom God has given us to love and care for, our family, friends, neighbors, and church community.