The more you need help, the less likely society is to be willing to help you.

I can't find a link for it but I remember an article where they got a dishevelled, homeless looking man to go into restaurants and ask for leftover food. He was rudely turned away every time. Then they got a man dressed in a smart, expensive business suit to go into the same restaurants and ask for free food (saying he'd lost his job/forgotten his credit card or whatever). He was treated politely and given free food every time.

The link above is to a youtube video, in which an able bodied woman asks for help zipping up her dress and people help her. But when a disabled woman asks for help doing up her buttons, people refuse.

You see the same thing with millionaire celebrities being given free things while poor people are refused the basics of life.

Why is human society like this?

Comradeship // Freechat @lemmygrad.ml

DisabledAceSocialist @lemmygrad.ml

5d ago

The more you need help, the less likely society is to be willing to help you.

19 comments

because no one wants to be the one that has to deal with additional issues that come along from personally helping others one on one
It's cynical, but like the guy that's not disheveled is less likely to be a hassle for you later on than the homeless guy.
This is not a defense of the thought process, but it's not as simple as hating poor people it's much more of a structural issue. The reality is, that in the states, a good chunk of the homeless population need healthcare to become stable. Interactions between workers, acting as stand-ins for state provided care, and the homeless population in cities can go south and they do. Pretty much everyone has experienced it at least once, and then the cynicism slowly develops.
As far as the celebrities go that's more to do with marketing and the desire to develop a relationship with a famous person than the other things.
- There's definitely a lot of classism and discrimination against homeless people at work in situations like this, but yeah, it's hard to deny that this isn't a factor as well. In the restaurant situation for example, it's easy to see how the owners would think that giving free food to a visibly homeless person would lead to them coming back repeatedly asking for more food, while giving free food to a person in a suit might lead to them coming back as a paying customer. It's an unfortunate situation, and evidence I think of why charity can't be the solution to such things. Only systemic change can.
- I also struggle with this mentality. When I do introspection, I find the following thought patterns:
  Not wanting a hassle, as you mentioned (risk aversion, lack of self-confidence)
  Constant messaging by society and parents that I can be taken advantage of and to mind my own business (individualism).
  Knowing that someone or a cause needs much more help than I can provide, like you also said, so any amount of help I give feels like a pittance and I feel guilty. ("letting perfect be the enemy of good")
  Knowing that many people or causes need money but I can't help all, so any choice I make feels random or biased to the most sympathetic.
  Getting a sense that the only moral thing to do then is to give up my relatively well-off existence to charity, mutual aid etc. and me not wanting to keep money for myself is selfish and "treatler-brained".
  Rather than accept the imperfect, I avoid the matter altogether and try excuses like: "I don't have cash on me right now, sorry"
There's also the classic "you have been fined for not having enough money in your account" vs. "we are paying you interest to thank you for having so much money."
I think this stems from capitalist/liberal environments imposing risk/liability at the individual level rather than the collective level in most cases.
In a society of personal responsibility prescriptions (rather than solidarity) - culturally speaking, desperation appears contagious.
Used to work at a pizza place by a trailer park, we'd help people out every time. Sometimes kids would come up from the trailer park with not nearly enough money to get a pizza so we'd just make them a free pizza and let them keep their money for the arcade games we had.
They were definitely some of the better small business tyrants I worked under.
I have two siblings. My parents offered to buy each of us something, up to a maximum. I'm chronically single and a recovering addict (sober for at this point about three or four years iirc); both my siblings are successful and partnered up in dual income households. When I decided what I wanted - at about 2/3 the value they offered and deliberately BELOW the max, my very charming mother said "well you can pay the balance...". She wanted to only offer half as much to me, because of course my siblings are both coupled up. Never mind that they're both financially stable and I haven't been in years due to my health issues. Honestly despise that woman.
"Never let them see you bleed"
People generally would rather have a shiny surface level impression of each other that glides through the brain than a deeper, more detailed relationship that requires them to think very hard. They care less about broader implications and meanings and more about "does being around Sterling feel good/bad" and then deciding what to do based on that
Some that is because people, some of that is society forcing us to each be our own little cowboy and giddy on up with none of that bellyaching! I wish people were more inclined to just help each other, but alas.
- does being around Sterling feel good/bad" and then deciding what to do based on that
  This is exactly what people are like. When I became ill and no longer fun, people just drifted away and now I'm alone with no-one.
  
  I can relate
  Like I said, I wish people were more sympathetic. I found that by telling people I was struggling, I was starting a countdown timer before they'd get sick of me. Don't know what I could've done, short of being someone else.
I've received different government benefits throughout my life ranging from social security to tax breaks for having a home office during the pandemic
The more I needed the benefits, the harder they were to apply for and get approved, and the more I was punished for having any kind of money
When I was on social security and I had to borrow money from someone, I had to either do it in cash or pay it all back (and have it show up as "a loan" and "paying back a loan" or something similar in the bank statement's message field) before the next month's social security application, or they'd subtract the amount of the loan from my benefits (that I was relying on to pay anything back)
Unfortunately, under neoliberal capitalism and the influence of its mass media, the average politically backwards worker becomes a mercenary, selfish scumbag, governed by fear of the outsider and the vagrant, aspiring towards becoming rich through any number of ridiculous schemes (penny stocks, crypto, influencer nonsense etc), and inclined to trust the bourgeois politician and businessman. These people are nothing more than slaves and need thorough political education to be cured.
Same with sex if you think about it. Is this something incel boards talk about?
- Same with sex if you think about it.
- As in poor, disabled or otherwise vulnerable people are sexually exploited to a way higher degree and noone gives a shit about them? Then, yes. It's the same.
  But sex isn't neccessary to survive. You can't compare that to food.
- Do you mean, are incels are talking about The more you crave sex the less you have?
  Yeah, who would've thought being a desperate creep would turn people off.
  
  I don't think it's so hard to understand. There's an ick-factor in people who seem needy, or who your values allow you to shun as desperate.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
yewtu.be
inv.nadeko.net
yt.artemislena.eu
piped.video

19 comments