The Superiority of the Do-Gooder

-- By TonbaraEkiyor - 31 Mar 2015

Introduction: The Desire to Do Good.

Before the desire to join the Peace Corps or work in NGOs in Africa became a means to an end for many young people in the developed world.

Before what?

Those activities were an end in themselves. Many people with ‘consciences’ performed these charitable acts because they despised what they often described as the consumptive nature of American culture.

This was the reason people joined the Peace Corps? I don't think the people I knew were despising the US, by and large, at all. How do we know that what you are telling us is accurate?

In stepping into the roles of well builder in East Africa, or volunteer teacher in Nepal, they become better than the culture they despise. Undoubtedly, many performed these acts without thinking about the benefits conferred on them. However, for many others the feeling of elevation was intensified with the humidity and mosquitoes bites.

Again, I don't think this quite captures what the people I knew took away from their time in the Peace Corps. They were people living among people, so it was probably always a little more complex. And they weren't missionaries, who maybe had a better chance of elevation.

The exhaustion felt after a day of hard work building houses in Uganda with imported lumber was a well-deserved one. Their day’s work has a dual purpose. To show the poor Africans how benevolent they are, but also to prove to people in the developed world that they are one of the few that can rise above the drudgery of material pursuits and lend themselves to others.

It's not what I think they thought it felt like to be them. More like something someone else thought about them without really expecting them to feel it that way. If we are going to construct an idea (which we are far into the essay without having been introduced to yet) on the basis of what people thought, shouldn't we have some sources to give the reader, accurately reflecting their own voices?

An Exercise in Introspection

Most people do not consciously think of the motivation behind certain actions until they engage in some level of introspection. In Albert Camus’ The Fall, the protagonist, a lawyer named Jean-Baptiste Clamence in explaining his life-long propensity for ‘heights’, describes the joy he feels when he is above. In the physical sense, in his daily life, he enjoys the upper level of buses, and would prefer the life of a mountain climber.

This feeling translates to his practice of law. He describes how ‘the feeling of the law, the satisfaction of being right and the joy of self-esteem” work in tandem with his desire to be above everyone else. Through his good deeds, Clamence achieves more than those he describes as “the vulgar ambitious man”. This he believes helped him “rise to that supreme summit where virtue is its own reward.”

It is not clear at what point Clamence became the kind of lawyer that takes clients who cannot pay because he relishes in their gratitude. Did it occur before he became a lawyer? Or did it happen when he was already a lawyer and an incident in which he experienced such gratitude led him to realize it satisfies his propensity for heights? Camus does not tell us.

What is clear is that Clamence has thought about being this kind of lawyer and finds great satisfaction in his profession because it allows him and others to see him as the best version of himself, even though it might be a false representation.

Introspection that Leads to Clarity

The absurdity in this description by Camus lies in everyone else’s view of Clamence as the quintessential do gooder, but also in Clamence’s own understanding of the selfishness that lead to his ‘public service’. However, Clamence has developed a clear understanding of the reason why he is satisfied with his role as a lawyer. His satisfaction is drawn from the reaction of people to his good deeds not merely from the good deeds he performs. He describes an incident where he tipped his hat to a blind man after helping him cross the road. An audience is necessary for Clamence’s good deeds to bring him satisfaction. The wider the audience he gets for his beneficence the better.

Clamence gives us a different approach to understanding our decision to pursue a given area or kind of law. Clamence’s introspection begins with something simple, an understanding of who he is. He sees clearly the kind of person he is and how that speaks to the kind of lawyer he becomes. The starting point is not “what kind of lawyer do you want to be”, as that is already formed. It is formed from the kind of person that you are. The question “why are you in law school” is not one that often leads to profound answers and some kind of self-discovery. The answers given are answers that are clear in any other setting. Law school is a means to an end, what makes it particularly attractive is that it is a means to a variety of ends. It is tailored to suit the person who decides that doing good is the end, the person for whom doing good is a means to an end, and also the person for whom doing good is peripheral.

Implications

Concededly, there are many people who decide to take on the role of do-gooder with doing good as the end. Those people shall inherit the earth. The argument could be made that the motive behind one’s decision to practice a certain area of law might be irrelevant as long as one’s contribution to the world is positive. However, there is something to the knowledge that a person’s motivation for being the kind of lawyer like Clamence who declines a fee for his services because he feels ‘elevated’ by performing that act takes away from the benevolent nature of the act.

If the decision not to be ‘vulgarly ambitious’ is drawn from the desire to be a better person, then we must also find problematic the decision to be the kind of lawyer that is not a ‘corporate leech’ because he believes that he is superior to the corporate leech and the clients he defends for free.

This feels to me like something previously written about The Fall and transposed into this essay. We didn't get a clear sense at the outset what idea the essay intended to communicate, so when we wind up in a character explication it's hard to say whether we have strayed from the essay's point or not. But if we went through the line of the writing in order to conclude at the end that we shouldn't be "like" someone dislikable, we have gone too far to fetch it.

What would most improve the next draft is that missing focus. Identify the idea the essay intends to communicate and present it clearly to the reader at once, so she knows what she's paying attention to, and for. In the development of this idea, if other peoples' ideas are important, give us a link, or at least a cite, to primary sources from which we can understand those people from their own expression of themselves.