(Photo Credit: The Cheap Place)

Even though we’re still early in the 21^st century, it’s increasingly becoming a century saturated with pervasive selfishness.  One of the most frustrating things about the great selfishness I’ve witnessed in the present century is how many people will “help” people just to get people to praise them.  Numerous people pretend to provide others with genuine help but they’re really camouflaging their real dominant motivation: self-aggrandizement.  How can one tell when someone isn’t genuine about the help they offer to others?  One of the ostensible ways to discern deceitful help is to take an opportunity to witness a person in action assisting others.  When a person isn’t truly committed to helping others, he or she will pass off much of the work to others to help the people he or she is supposed to aid—while taking full credit for the results and the work itself.

Too often people are more interested in posting on Facebook and Twitter what they do for people than they are in investing the necessary time to improve the people they’re aiding.  Most authentic providers of support don’t even privately and publicly promulgate what they do for others.  When you’re a natural supporter of people, you don’t need any public credit.  The appreciation and gratitude you receive from those you help should always be sufficient.

One of the primary reasons why I love the 1950s – 1970s is these are decades in the 20^th century where people were truly committed to helping one another.  They understood the conditions of Jim Crow demanded they work together to assist one another in engendering the change necessary to break the back of Jim Crow.  I’m not nostalgic about these aforementioned decades—just pointing out that my true selfless spirit is a more apt fit for those decades than it is for this century’s reckless selfishness.

Those who are phony supporters and helpers of others will try to defend themselves against those who are willing to expose their treachery by arguing that the exposers are really the ones who don’t provide authentic support and aid to others.  True providers of authentic help and support have people who are willing to express their gratitude about their help and support.   They don’t have to go to others to complete the unfinished work that phony supporters and helpers didn’t desire to do.  You will, therefore, never be able to mar the record of a genuine helper.

The bible addresses those who give for the wrong reasons as being purposeless and unrewarded by God.  The only people feeling empty about their giving are the ones who aren’t committed to being real givers.  If you’re going to help others, help them.  Don’t waste people’s time by using them as just statistics you parade around to glorify yourself.  One of the chief reasons why self-aggrandizing people want others to see them as true givers is they’re overcompensating for myriad things they lack.  Being falsely perceived as a true giver is a way to blind people from the reality that one isn’t what he or she presents himself or herself to be.

Remove all of the facades and genuinely help people.  Resist the growing impulse in the 21 century to be recklessly selfish.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison                

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