Good Help versus Bad Help - Seeking Input

David Trammel's picture

This link was posted in the comments of the July 4th post on Greer's Ecosophia

https://media.nesta.org.uk/documents/good_and_bad_help_0.pdf

It is a discussion about programs geared to helping people, and makes a point of what seems to work (good help) and what doesn't "bad help".

"Only Ryan could decide what changes he wanted to make in his life. Aisha supported him to identify his sense of purpose and develop the confidence he needed to act. This kind of support is core to the work of many community and voluntary organisations and is also backed up by decades of research. This help is not a substitute for addressing structural inequalities or discrimination. But these organisations recognize that the right help at the right time can make it possible for people to change their lives for the better, even in very difficult circumstances.

We call this approach ‘good help’ because it equips people to take positive action to improve their lives, whether this is to find work, improve their health or to get the most out of education. ‘Good help’ increases people’s confidence, sense of purpose and hope. It involves listening carefully to what matters to people, what’s going on in their lives, their skills and motivations, and it strengthens their sense of what is possible. ‘Good help’ enables people to take actionable steps that lead to long-term improvements in their lives.

By contrast, many mainstream public services and social programs continue to offer ‘bad help’ that tries to fix things for people in the short term or encourages them to take action that fits with the service’s priorities and not their own. ‘Bad help’ leaves people without clarity about the changes they want to make or the knowledge, confidence or support to get there. It often only addresses a single (and often most visible) aspect of people’s lives, without taking account of what else is going on."

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I wonder what kind of advice people here would give, as a way to make the tutorials on becoming a Green Wizard something that is "good help"?

I am beginning to write the tutorials that I feel are of the necessary "skills", you will need to live and prosper in the Collapsing World of the Long Descent that Greer often spoke of on the Archdruid Report, to ultimately become a companion book to his original "Green Wizardry".

While the Workbook will cover many of the various Circle we have here on the forum, it will also take a person through some simple (I hope) courses of training that will help them reorientate their high tech consumer orientated lifestyle that our current society tries to force them to live back into a simpler and more fulfilling path.

As an example, the first thing I talk to people about, in discussing Green Wizardry or just about any way to improve their lives, is to understand where and why the money in the Life goes. I don't know how many people I talk to, lament the fact they don't have enough money to meet their day to day needs, and yet drive a brand new car, just bought a new "toy" (big screen tv or motorcycle), live in a house way too large or just got back from a vacation in some hot destination 10 hours away by plane.

To me its not that they have too little money for their needs, but they have too many wants for their money.

So such a short tutorial would begin with a personal audit, like this one:

http://teresamcguffey.com/greenwizards.org/?q=node/1345

(I need to find the follow on thread, which goes over my results)

Figuring out where your money goes each money is to me, the first step in figuring out whether you can budget money to make the changes in your life to be a Green Wizard. Once you have identified where you can cut unnecessary expenses, you can then move on to fund the projects and such to help you improve your survival in a collapsed world.

I can see where my thoughts on the subject are, perhaps too clearly. How then can I make the way I, and this website, present learning the skills and acquiring the tools to do that, in a way that will help and not hurt?

In everything, you have to define who is your audience, how did they find you, what do they need from you, where else can they get it, and most importantly, why should they get it from you? What are your credentials, and more importantly what networks are you using to demonstrate your credentials?

If we are sitting in the backwaters of the Internet, how do we connect with the general public? I've been reading about networks and connected hubs. About three degrees of separation. Aside from JMG, how exactly are we connected to people in the Peak Oil movement? In the environmental movement. In the sustainability movement. How are we connected to people in our own communities?

David Trammel's picture

How to outreach is definitely in my mind, and something of a different subject but related.

As a bit of cosmic synchronicity, I discovered last night that a long time acquaintance and her husband now own a small farm in nearby Illinois. They have a group of friends who also are looking to get more green in their lives, and are going to have a barbecue/get together in September at their farm. I'm going to try hard to attend and make some new friends.

I believe that one of the important things I need to do, is get together people here locally first and spread the word. Lessons learned from that, can then be used for outreach further, and for those of us here who want to do something similar in their locality.

Based solely on the quote you selected, this analysis seems like a cognitive binary that has a paralyzing effect: it essentially promotes doing nothing for people who need help except putting all the burden on the person who is helpless. When it comes to helping others, I do not see any use in a strategy that does not provide a judicious and adjustable mix of immediate practical relief, long-range tactical training, development and maintenance of mutual support systems, and forceful removal of social barriers. This mix must be tweaked to fit the circs of each individual, just as tailoring fits a suit to the person not the person to the suit.

Of course helping people requires a systems approach: EVERYTHING requires a systems approach.

But sometimes people just need a cash handout to meet straitened circumstances. When this happens to a business the PTB call it “cash flow problems” and they have a slush fund to draw on to tide them over the bank holiday or whatever the looming crisis is. When it happens to poor people they call it “poor judgment” or “bad management” and whittle their fingers to shame the person in need. If a person is constantly failing to meet basic obligations because they are indulging drug gambling or luxury habits, sure, they need to be weaned off the cash teat and offered character building options like mental health tx, sweat equity or peer group pressure to help them achive a better level of self-discipline. Likewise, iIf a business is badly structured so that it constantly has cash flow problems, then it too must take a hard look at its budget and marketing plans and impose financial discipline on itself.

I do not see what you are doing as providing ‘help’ to the helpless. You are sharing knowledge and experience, acquired wisdom and reality-tested philosophy. Limits and boundaries are what we are up against as individuals and as a cohesive group. There is no one-size fits all silver bullet solution to anyone’s problems. Therefore, I think the most fundamental and important thing this group can offer is the technology of the soul: training people to access their powers of intuition, centering, prioritzing, triage, and focus. Once they have those tools in hand, they can zero in on whatever they need most, then comb through the compiled information, accumulated wisdom, and accounts of trial and error here at hand to meet their self-selected objectives.