Conscious Choice Seattle: Superiority complex

April 2005 | The EM Column

Superiority complex

Deny it. Ignore it. Feel above it. But the fact is, we have an ethical obligation to consider the fate of the homeless could be our own

by Silja J.A. Talvi

People on the frontlines of the medical profession tend to see us at our worst.
Psychiatrists and psychologists see us in the throes of life crises and manifestations of mental illness. Emergency room doctors intervene when things have gone horribly wrong with our bodies. To do their work, these people cultivate a necessary level of detachment from their patients’ plights.
Then again, it’s a long way from doing what’s necessary to having a sense of superiority.

I observed the latter recently when I was introduced to a cardiac nurse here in Seattle. Our conversation started out with his kvetch about the day’s events.
“What happened?” I asked.

The nurse—I’ll call him Brad—recounted the story of a desperate opiate addict known for making the rounds at emergency rooms across Seattle, trying to score dope of one kind or another. The problem was that, this time, she came into Brad’s particular facility exhibiting such severe symptoms associated with cardiac failure that the hospital staff actually decided to take her seriously.
Her legs were swollen and she was screaming in agony. Brad checked her in and began running tests. To treat the pain, he shot her up with a powerful, opiate-derived painkiller. A few moments later, the woman sneaked out of the hospital.

Brad was angry that he had “been played.”
“True,” I said. “But, deep down, don’t you just see the sadness of the situation?”

What is so sad, he fired back, about scoring free drugs?

The fact that this woman’s life had been reduced to faking cardiac arrest in order to be shot up with painkillers didn’t register to Brad as something very troubling. The fact that she was probably doing all kinds of other degrading things in order to get high also didn’t occur to him.

To his credit, Brad tried to hear me out. But over the course of the next couple of hours, it became obvious how he conceptualized the world in “self” and “other” terms.

Needed: Attitude adjustment

A month earlier, I was in a Belltown restaurant when a “Real Change” newspaper vendor came in to sell papers. I knew the guy, as did two other patrons sitting near me. I had already bought a paper from him a few days prior, and didn’t buy another one. Instead, we caught up on what had been going on in his life, briefly. I went back to reading the newspaper, and overheard as the couple turned him down as well.

They waited until he left to start making fun of him.

“Don’t feed the animals,” one of them said. They laughed and looked in my direction, expecting that I’d agree.

I didn’t. When I said I found that kind of attitude both unwarranted and unfair, they didn’t relent. He had been on the streets for years, they both pointed out. If he really wanted a better life for himself, wouldn’t he have it by now?
We talked a bit more. I made my case for having some compassion, but I don’t think I made a damn bit of difference.

Seeing the suffering

I actually feel blessed to have a roof over my head. I am grateful to have been a writer for nearly a decade, being paid for doing the work that is my life’s passion. I’d love to have some health insurance, but I can’t afford it. I’d love to own a house with a back yard, but I can’t afford that, either.

I’m not willing to compromise in order to get those particular luxuries. That’s a choice. Bad things that have happened to me over the years weren’t byproducts of choices so much as bad luck and circumstances.

I have suffered plenty. We have all suffered in one way or another.
As a consequence, when I see people on the street in various states of suffering, I can’t imagine feeling a sense of superiority or even disgust. That doesn’t mean that I give money to everybody I see in need, or that I take everybody in to sleep on my couch (although I’ve taken in a few people over the last few years). That doesn’t mean that I trust everybody, or that I don’t watch my back. Even the best people in the world are capable of doing bad things when they are in the wrong state of mind.

Homelessness, along with addiction and mental illness, are painful byproducts of living in a society with almost no safety net. Most of us are not as far away from those things as we might like to think.

Perhaps we’d like to think that if we disassociate ourselves from those unfortunate “others” that we will never end up in their midst. Or perhaps their suffering makes us so uncomfortable that we’d rather push it away.

Denial is a coping mechanism. It’s a useful one, at times. But, if nothing else, we have an ethical obligation to consider that the fate of other human beings could be our own. What we do with that information after that point will vary from person to person, and from situation to situation.

All I’m calling for is some compassion, people. Just have some compassion, because a little can go a long way.

Silja J.A. Talvi is an award-winning journalist and columnist for Evergreen Monthly.

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