DO-GOODERS AND THE BAD NANNY STATE

Copyright 2008,

by Surly

Many do-gooders are well-intentioned, but they often cause unintended consequences. If anyone tells you "I'm doing this for your own good.", either shoot them or run like hell. Do-gooderism is more a problem with liberals than conservatives, although both have their ideas of doing you good that they'd like to force on you. This strain of social improvement runs as a strong puritanical thread throughout American society, both from religious proscriptions and secular humanism. It's consequences have often been disastrous: Prohibitions of sexual behaviors, smoking, alcohol, now prohibition of drugs and the government war against them that largely supports law enforcement, the prison industry and lawyers, not to mention ruining the lives of many non-violent, non-dangerous offenders. These examples led to huge black markets and organized crime syndicates.

We live in a patriarchal society, a father state, but most societies consider the state or nation the motherland. There's both strains of the controlling father and mother in societies. The father is more stern, warlike, punishing; the mother is more nurturing, but also forcing behavior on the children, all citizens, for their own good. It's this aspect that forms the nanny state. This nanny is rarely nurturing, but a real bitch, the nightmare "bad nanny" who abuses the children she is bound to protect, while appearing to adults as a proper, upstanding professional.

Generally, Republicans and other right-wingers support a paternalistic state, liberals and Democrats support a maternalistic state.

Even in a democracy, we live under a paradigm of domination, hierarchy, status. Individual rights and the freedoms they supposedly protect are curtailed by this social belief structure. We buy into the concept of doing good, even when it's obvious that it curtails individual freedoms and behaviors that harm no one except perhaps the doer. We're all too ready to curtail the rights of each other, rather than expand them. Do-gooders are just cheerleaders egging us on to clamp down on each other's behaviors.

Many do-gooders are emotionally uncomfortable with certain behaviors that they consider bad and so are driven to find a justification and rationalization to force laws that penalize those behaviors. Those behaviors may or may not be bad for the individual or society; it's often a personal judgment or choice. But why should we be so ready to ban or punish personal behaviors that may only harm the doer? Shouldn't they have the freedom even to destroy themselves? Why should you care? There is the caring that is compassion and empathy, that feels and understands suffering and will attempt to help heal with the sufferer's consent, but far too much caring is really a prohibitionist attitude that only assuages the conscience and emotions of the one who ostensibly cares. It's not really caring for others, but only for the emotionally dysfunctional self.

Do-gooderism is a kind of arrogance and superiority that its practitioners think must be the best for everyone. How can they know what's good for any individual? They can't. It's the same with politicians and social leaders. Only the individual can know for self.

We created a welfare state in the 1960s that institutionalized and bureaucratized all of us. It directed us into a system and its rules that restricted our lives. It is this that many conservatives detest. However, they want another kind of institution and bureaucracy that fits their ideology of small government, national security, imperialism, religion and unrestrained business leadership of society. It's a form of Social Darwinism - survival of the fittest. Their interference in other nations political life to foster American business dominance and a perhaps wrongly perceived national security threats is just another side of do-gooderism. We believe that we are the superior nation, so we know best what's good for the world. We have suffered and caused much suffering for this dysfunctional, emotionally driven arrogance.