Selfish acts of charity

I read a very interesting article recently on the oftwominds.com website entitled “The art of survival, Taoism and the warring states”. In the article the author Charles Hugh Smith talks about what he thinks is the best strategy to survive a meltdown in society.

There were a couple of things that stood out for me. The author questions the long held assumption that the best place to survive the Armageddon is in a rural area – the more remote the area the better. At first this would have been my preference for waiting it out but the author makes a compelling argument as to why this is not the case.

The author outlines what he thinks is the best strategy for surviving such an event. In a nutshell he says that in order to maximise your chances of survival your best bet is to move close to a town and begin to form strong close relationships with the people who live in the town. Begin to bond with people and play your role in the community. The benefit of this and the whole key to your survival is that you will now have people who care about you and want to ensure your survival because they like you and you contribute to the community. You will have a support network.

As usual this got me thinking about debt and I wondered if a similar strategy could be used to help someone who is in debt.

The answer of course is yes.

I have come up with a strategy that I call “selfish acts of charity” to help you survive the debt meltdown. It is based loosely on the strategy in the article with more of a focus on your giving now in the expectation of receiving later when times get tough for you.

Cynical? Maybe, but wait until you have heard the strategy.

The simple strategy can be summed up in four words.

Help people in debt.

Pretty obvious? Well no, not really. It’s not as obvious as you might think. You see when you are in debt you tend to be focused on your problems and your problems alone. There is a tendency to be insular when confronted with what is a very personal problem. I can understand this tendency completely – who wants to air their personal problems in public? Many times I have said that the only person who can get you out of debt is you but that does not mean that you have to go it alone.

Reach out.

The chances are a lot of your friends are probably going through something similar. Debt’s icy hand has a hold on a lot more people than you would at first think. I say reach out to your friends and help them. The help doesn’t have to be in the form of money. The help you give can be in any form. Simply listening to your friends debt problems could be enough help to get them though a rough patch.

Expand this concept even further. Why not help people in debt who are not your friends? Maybe join an online forum and start offering moral support to people in debt? Or perhaps even join Debtors anonymous?

The point is that while you reach out to people who are in debt you will find that people in debt will start to reach out to you. The feelings of isolation and desperation will be hugely reduced because while you are trying to solve your debt problems on your own you are making sure that you are not alone.

Ok I admit the title of the strategy “selfish acts of charity” is a bit of a misnomer but I wanted to get your attention. Humans are social animals in that we crave human attention and interaction. In order to survive and thrive we need to build and maintain relationships with other human beings. If you are to survive and thrive through your debt problems then you will need to build and maintain relationships with others who can help you.

Help yourself first but don’t be slow about helping other people. If you are in debt then stabilize your situation but as soon as you can go try help other people in debt. There is the saying that “you only get what you give” so if you don’t give any help then don’t expect to receive it when your turn comes. On the flip side if you have helped a lot of people and formed strong relationships then you can be assured that you have the support network in place to help you weather your debt storm.