What Do We Do Now? How to Be a Better Helper in These Times (POY 10th Anniversary)

Man, the world sure seems like a dumpster fire right now, doesn't it? If you're looking for answers as to what to do now besides googling how to immigrate to Norway, I guess I've got an audio essay for you to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this podcast. I'm Josh Morgan. That's coming up next on the Plural of you, the podcast about people helping people. I'm an applied sociologist and aspiring helper who just moved from Baltimore, Maryland to Huntsville, Alabama, and I'm on a mission to promote two beliefs in my life that humans are social beings and that we all benefit when we help one another. I publish this podcast on the 15th of every month to share how we can all be better helpers for those that we care about. If you haven't already, subscribe to the Plural Review wherever you get your podcasts, and sign up for the Monthly [email protected] Newsletter for now, put this episode on in the background of whatever you're doing and enjoy the show. Like I mentioned before, this month marks the 10th anniversary of the Plural View, and instead of a guest this month, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share my philosophy of helping. Given everything that's going on in the world right now, it seems to me that the people who would disagree with the idea that we all needed one another, their voices are the loudest and the most organized right now. But that doesn't mean they're right. So this is my humble attempt to speak up in favor of the helpers like you and like me. You can compare my thoughts to yours on the subject, and if you find anything useful, feel free to kind of incorporate it into what you believe. So let's get started. I'll lead off by defining what helping means, at least in my opinion. So one definition that I like comes from Jess Baker and Rod Vincent, who I interviewed not long ago on this podcast, and I modified it a little bit, but here it is. Helping happens when you offer to make something easier or possible for someone else. A couple of related terms I'll define here, since I'll use them later on, are kindness and compassion. I know you've heard those before. The definitions that I've kind of cobbled together from different sources over the years go like this. So kindness is loaning someone your strength instead of reminding them of their weakness. Whereas compassion occurs when we notice pain in others or in ourselves, and we act to help alleviate or prevent it. Moving on from that, a lot of the techniques I'll mention in this episode require practice, like building a muscle. It will take motivation and commitment on your part, but I know you can do it. You just have to believe that it's possible. Helping others requires a few things in place. First, like a compatible set of beliefs which we're talking about now, as well as the time, the energy and the means to act on these beliefs. We'll talk about that as the episode goes along. And then finally as a disclaimer, you know what works for me? What I'm laying out in this episode may not work for you. You may not agree with everything that I say here, and that's fine. Like I mentioned, just kind of use this as a framework as you think about your own beliefs related to other people. So like I mentioned, it's been 10 years since the beginning of this podcast and a lot of things have changed in the last 10 years. So just broadly speaking, as far as the history of the United States, when I started the podcast in 2014, Barack Obama was still president. 2016, we had Donald Trump elected president. We had Covid in 2020. It lasted a couple years there. Donald Trump has just been elected again as president. There's been a lot that's gone on. And what I've noticed, I mentioned in the beginning of the episode that I'm an applied sociologist. And what that means is I try to practice sociology, find real world applications for the theories and the beliefs that I hold related to social factors. One of those social forces that I study is the decline of social trust. This is something I've written about on the plural of you before. I've written about it for other publications. But what it looks like is that with the decline of social trust, we've had a rise of divisive politics, we've had a rise of economic and equality, and then of course, different culture war issues. So what this has led to in the last 10 years is an increase of this us versus them mentality. There's more conflict between in groups and out groups, and everything just seems like team sports now. It's not about the process anymore, it's about winning. But on the other hand, if you look at what's happened over the last 10 years, we've had all these horrible factors that have come into play or increased, all these other forces that have increased. But there are also lots of groups and organizations that have emerged out of nowhere to kind of bridge these divides that have sprung up. And that's an encouraging thing to me. It's not all bad. Like I just said, there are a lot of organizations out there, a lot of people, a lot of helpers that are trying to make a difference. But I want to focus first on how we became so divisive. And of course, it's a complicated thing to explain. There's plenty of blame to go around, but what it comes down to is that groups of people want to blame other groups of people for the things that are going wrong in the world. There are a lot of scapegoats over the last 10 years. There have been several. There have been illegal immigrants, quote, unquote. There have been transgender people that have been blamed for things. And of course, you and I know as listeners, if you're listening to this podcast, I feel like you are a little more enlightened than default for some of those things. And you probably know it's not that simple. There are lots of different factors that go into the world's problems. It's not one group's fault, and it's also not one leader's fault. A lot of people want to blame whoever the president is at the time, or blame some politician or blame politicians in general. And of course, they contribute to these problems, but they're not the only people responsible. But in my opinion, as an applied sociologist, it comes down to the decline of social trust. That's not entirely the reason for why our country has become so divisive, but to me it's a huge factor. So just to give you a sense of what social trust is, it's kind of the glue that holds society together. And that's why I focus on it so much in my research that I do in my spare time. Social trust is correlated with all sorts of positive things that we can measure in society, like increased civic participation, decreased corruption among politicians and other officials, increased resilience to disasters, decreased economic inequality, and decreases in illegal activities like crime. It's also correlated with increased health, happiness and intelligence. So there's a lot of benefits to an increase in social trust. I mentioned before, I wrote about the decline of social trust over the summer among Americans. It's been in decline over the last 50 years. It peaked in the mid-60s at about, I believe it was. Almost 55% of Americans said that most people can be trusted. Now that's down to about 25% as of 2022. If you want to read more about my research and see some data visualizations that I put together, you can go to pluralofyou.org trust24 that' the short link for the article that I wrote in July, I believe it was of 2024. And what I concluded in that article that some of the most important factors behind that decline of trust were race. So white people are generally not as trusting as they used to be compared to non white people who have never really trusted people to begin with. I mean, it's unfortunate, but it's true. According to the data, education is also a factor. People that are more educated tend to trust people more than people who have less education. And then economic inequality can also be a factor. Now, I mentioned these factors. I mentioned the decline of social trust. And before I go any further, I wanted to share a story that I don't think I've ever shared in a podcast format before. But it's one of the main motivations that keeps me going for this podcast. Many years ago, I was the director of data analysis at a nonprofit organization in Baltimore, Maryland that was seeking to improve children and youth outcomes in the city of Baltimore. Before some big meeting, I remember that someone who was in charge of giving like development at a large nonprofit in the city, a large philanthropy organization, sat down at the table and somehow in the conversation people were making small talk. She said something about, I really wish I could do more for this city, but I don't know where to start. And I like that story because it's relatable. That's why I call myself an aspiring helper, because I want to do more, but I don't know what to do all the time. Maybe I get a sense, and I hope I'm not assuming too much, but you probably feel the same way, that there's all sorts of problems in the world or even in your own community. But it's like, where do you start? I like that story too, because it sort of implies this notion that I want to do more and you want to be kinder in general. I guess in a way that sort of indicates a form of social privilege. Not everyone has the motivation or the courage or the time or the energy to be kind and compassionate towards others. It requires all sorts of things in addition to practice and commitment and consistency. And I like that story too, because I think that quote unquote notion of I don't know where to start, that's a common problem. So what I wanted to do in this episode is to talk about, okay, what can we do? You know, what do we do from here? Given everything that's going on in the world? In my humble opinion, I have some suggestions for things that we can do. And I think it starts with evaluating how you see yourself in relation to other people. So you can be kind and compassionate more consistently when you're stable in who you are as a person. Mostly it involves the idea that you deserve to be loved and valued. So you have to work on yourself first if you feel like you need it in order to be more effective at helping other people. And you have to get to a place in your life where you respect your choices and that you know for sure that you're doing your best and that you can't reach everyone that you want to and that you know when you do act to help somebody, you have to be content with whatever choices you've made. Something that has helped me with this and that I've mentioned before in this podcast feed, is a therapy system called the Internal Family Systems Therapy model. So the idea behind this is that you have a core self, and you have different parts of your personality that have formed around your core self based on experiences that you've gone through in your life. Many of those parts that are around your core self have been formed out of traumatic experiences especially, and they can hold you back even though they're trying to help you. So, for an example, if you have a highly critical part of you that's always in your head telling you what you've done wrong, that may be sourced at your earliest memory, and it's something that you may need to seek a therapist to talk about, but you can think of your core self a little bit like an inner child, if that would help you visualize it. Like, for me, I have an image of being five years old. There's a particular photograph that I remember my mom taking of me. And I call that Little Josh. And what has helped me is thinking of if little Josh was next to me in real life, you know, wouldn't I want the best for him? And if he made the same decision that I was making about something at my age, today I might be more critical of me, but I wouldn't criticize little Josh the same as I would myself. So it teaches to me to be more kind and compassionate towards myself. So all that to say it may help to think, you know, if you do struggle with how you see yourself in relation to others, look into the IFS model. You know, try working with your parts and working with a therapist especially to see if you can change how you see yourself in relation to others. The next thing I'll mention is that you may need to change how you see others. And I'm going to mention something a little controversial, and that is that all humans deserve value and deserve love. It's that notion of an intrinsic value for all humanity. So what that means, to me at least, is that everyone who is alive today or has ever lived deserve to be alive, from Fred Rogers to Adolf Hitler. I mean, that may sound ridiculous, and I get that, but I had a hard time accepting that at first. And I think what helped convince me was the notion that what people have done with their lives, for better or worse, is irrelevant to the notion of value. It's just that being alive in itself, being a human, means that everybody who fits those criteria should be deserving of love and a chance to live their lives, regardless of what they've done with it. At least for me, it goes back to that notion of the internal family systems model. It helps me to look at other people, especially if I'm in a conflict with someone. Like, if someone. Not that people get angry with me a lot, but, you know, if I'm ever in a disagreement with someone, that helps me to think that sometimes people may be out of touch with their core selves, like their inner children. And it's not necessarily my job to try to fix that for these people, but it helps me empathize and maybe even sympathize with other people. Recognizing that other people may be out of touch with their core cells can help you stop and consider what they might need, too. So just keep that in mind as you're thinking about your position in how you see other people. Something else that has helped me too was a recent conversation that I had with Jess Baker and Rod Vincent and their book the Super Helper Syndrome. So I interviewed Jess and Rod for this podcast not too long ago. And what I identified from talking with them and from reading their book was that there are four types of help. And it helped me to figure out which of these four types that I tend to fall into most often. So that I can think of. I tend to be this kind of helper as I read these, try to think of, you know, which type you might fall into the most. So the first one is resource helping, and that means offering what you have by way of physical resources or money or labor in its different forms. One example of that might be giving something to someone or lending something to someone, or providing labor to help someone with what they need. So that's an example of resources. So just giving the resources that you have, that's the first type. The second type is information helping, and that's offering useful information. So an example of that might be telling someone where to find something. Like if somebody asks for directions, that's a simple way of describing what an information helper is. I think this type describes me pretty well because I love organizing and documenting information so people can find it and use it more efficiently. Just keep that type in mind too, because it may describe you. The third type is expert helping, and that's offering to do something that someone else doesn't know how to do. An example of that might be showing someone how to do something that they don't already know how to do or don't have the capacity to do in that moment. The example I think of the most would be like a car mechanic, something I've always admired, but I've never known how to work on a car. But having someone in your life that can help you mechanically, you know, can come in handy sometimes, and maybe that describes you as well. And then the fourth and final type that Jess and Rod described as far as types of helping is the supportive helping type. And they refer to this as a type that sort of overlaps with the other three, but it means offering to show someone that they have the resources or the information or the expertise that they need to do something. So we all engage in these different types of helping from time to time, but each of us has a more frequent type that we engage in and that we find satisfaction in. Jess and Rod suggest that it's good to know which type we are most frequently so that we don't become super helpers, which is the whole point of why they wrote the book and that we talked on this podcast. Super helpers refers to this concept that you know if you have helping tendencies, that they can be abused or that you can offer them too frequently and violate your own boundaries, in other words. So just be mindful of that. I also think it's good to know what type you are as far as helping, so you can be conscious of it when opportunities arise. So are you more generous with what you have than others? Or maybe you're like me, like I mentioned, and you like being a trusted source of information, or maybe you enjoy being an expert. And then again, maybe you could be someone who likes to be a supportive president more than any of the other types. So just give it some thought, see if any of those four types resonate with you and decide which type is right for you. So after you make some decisions about what you choose to believe, you know what's next? What, what do you do with those beliefs? How do you identify where to start, in other words? And my suggestion would be start with the people that are in your orbit. Your Friends, your family members, maybe your coworkers, see what they need first and foremost. So I have a model here that I borrowed from Monica Worline and Jane Dutton and their book Awakening Compassion at Work. I interviewed Monica for this podcast a few years ago, and she has four steps for Awakening compassion. And I thought they would be appropriate here as far as helping out your loved ones. So the first step Monica called this noticing, is just paying attention to the people around you and identifying what they might need. And it could be something as simple as, you know, just someone to talk to or someone to be in their presence talking with. A lot of the people that I have on this podcast over the last 10 years, what I've learned is sometimes the best form of support is just being in the same room with them and listening. Like, you don't necessarily have to have the world's best advice. It's just voting with your presence that you support them. So the first step there would be noticing. The second step would be to interpret what that person may be going through. And this goes back to changing how you see others, because it's important to believe that the person that's in front of you that you're thinking about is deserving of compassion, because without that belief in place, you probably wouldn't proceed any further to help them. With that in mind, just try to be curious about what the person's going through or what they need instead of being judgmental. And what I mean by that is that you focus more on meeting the need in front of you than on the circumstances of why they found themselves there. Don't focus on the choices they made. Focus on what do they need and how can you help them meet that need. And another thing to remind you of is just that everyone is doing their best with what they have, just like you are. So just keep that in mind when you're interpreting what someone needs. Now, a couple of caveats I would add to that is that this idea depends on if you can clearly interpret that a person would be taking advantage of you somehow. Like, if that's going on, then that changes the situation, especially if they approach you for something you have. First, it's different if you approach someone else based on something that they might need. If someone approaches you, then you have to decide whether or not you trust the person and then act based on the information that you have about that person's situation. And the second caveat I would add to this is that you make sure you're not overextending yourself. It goes back to the concept of the super helper that I mentioned earlier, you just have to be comfortable with what you're willing to offer when you're interpreting what the person needs. So back to the model of compassion. The third step is that you feel concern and that you want for the person to be whole again based on whatever it is that they need. So if you decide that you can trust the person and the information you have about them, then you can act on your concern for their well being. So with all that in place, you can approach them unless they've approached you first, and you can ask them about their situation. And sometimes pressing past the small talk and just asking a simple no, really, how are you doing? You know, that can be enough, like getting them to open up, depending on how open they are to being vulnerable with you. That also depends on how confident you are in yourself to take on somebody else's problem. I mean, that's another consideration in all of this too. So just keep those things in mind as you go to the fourth step, which is to take action to alleviate a person's suffering or meet their need, as it were. Again, just do the best with what you have. Sometimes showing concern and being supportive, you know, that can be enough to meet the person's need. Just like I said, just showing concern might be enough. And start with your loved ones and the people you see the most. Don't go around your workplace or your friend circle and try to solve everybody's problems. More than likely, you're not a therapist, so don't be a therapist, but try to be tuned into what others need with respect to their boundaries. You know, wait for situations to present themselves. Don't necessarily go around looking for situations. And that covers how to help people, like in everyday situations. And I mentioned before, you know, there's a lot of problems in the world that are big and scary that you see and you may wish you had more of a say in, you know, how can we help with those kinds of problems? That switches to the next section of this episode. And my answer to that is, you know, realistically, we can't, we can't make a dent in those problems, at least on an individual level. They're just too big and too complicated. They're systemic. They involve a lot of moving parts. If you're a generational leader like Martin Luther King Jr. Maybe you could make a small dent. But even he only moved the needle on things like civil rights and social justice in the US So far by himself. Plus he had a legendary team of people behind him too. So what can we do really about these big problems? Well, to start with, my advice is that you can start by picking at least one pet cause, some issue that you have seen affect your life or others lives that you want to help out others with. I was asked not long ago what my three pet social issues were, which were the ones that I think are the most important to tackle. And my three issues were women's rights because women are the largest of all marginalized groups in the world. They make up half the population, but they're still marginalized. The second issue I said was the decline of trust in the United States, which I mentioned before and a topic that we covered a few episodes ago, universal free school meals. I'll tack on two other issues to that list. Climate change and economic inequality. But those last two are kind of enormous and complicated, more so than anybody can affect, even at a group level. But those first three, I feel like those are much more approachable, just in my opinion. I'll stop here and say you probably have your own list. What would your list of pet social issues be? Or if you only had to pick one, what would that issue be? What's something that has affected you, that you know has affected others? It's just something to think about. While you think about that, start looking around for local opportunities for whatever potential cause that you take on might be. And I want to emphasize local, because at the local level you can definitely make a difference. If you think about something like climate change, for example, at the local level you might can have more of a chance to do something about it. And I will say there have been several examples on this podcast of people that have made a difference at the local level. So you can go back and look through the feed if you want some examples of that. So what I'll say is while you're looking for local opportunities, look in particular for local groups or local meetups or even nonprofit organizations that are involved in the kind of work that you like to support. Don't go trying to recreate the wheel because someone else is probably already on top of that issue that you're considering. But if not, then another option for you would be to look at a regional or national organization that's doing the same work. See how you can get involved based on your helping type. So I mean whether that comes down to like making a monthly recurring donation or sharing information or becoming an expert and lending your advice, being a supportive presence, I mean, there's lots of different ways based on your helping type that you can get involved in an organization, whether it's in your local area or if it's located somewhere else. Another option, if you can't find something that exists in your area for what you're looking for, is to start a Facebook post or maybe post a thread on your local subreddit and see if anybody else is interested, like you are, in helping out with that thing. I've seen that be successful several times over the years. So yeah, just give it a shot. If something doesn't exist that you're looking for. It also takes some confidence, too. Of course, you got to step outside your comfort zone, but I think you can do it. And that's my intention with this episode. I just wanted to jump on and say, don't give up yet. It's much easier to look around at what's going on in the world and throw up your hands, mentally speaking, and kind of assume that there's no point to trying to solve any of these problems with all that's going wrong. Or, you know, maybe it's somebody else's problem, somebody else has a solution. But that may not be true. There's still something you can do as long as you try your best and be content that doing a little bit of something is better than doing nothing. So, yeah, that's. That's my ultimate advice, is just don't give up yet. There's something you can do out there. I believe in you and I'm proud of you and I appreciate you listening today. This is the Plural of youf. I'm Josh Morgan, and the show's website is pluralofu.org that's all for now. Thank you for being kind today. Take care.