Day 10 - To Hell with Good Intentions

Next to money 
and guns, 
the third largest 
North American export 
to the world 
is you, the U.S. idealist.
You turns up 
in every theater of the world:
as missionaries, 
as teachers and volunteers,
the community organizer, 
the economic developer, 
and the vacationing do-gooders. 

You define your role as service. 
Actually, you frequently wind up 
alleviating the damage 
done by money and weapons, 
or "seducing" the "underdeveloped" 
to the benefits of the world 
of affluence and achievement. 

Perhaps 
this is the moment 
to instead bring home 
to the people of the U.S. 
the knowledge 
that the way of life 
they have chosen 
simply is not 
alive enough 
to be shared.

Good intentions
have not much
to do with what 
we are discussing here

To hell with good intentions!
No, you don't help nobody
with your good intentions.
the road to hell
is paved with good intentions,
as goes the Irish saying. 

If you still want to go ahead,
close your eyes, otherwise 
the facts will make it hard 
for you to move.

Oh! you enlightened white american,
your sentimental concern
for the newly-discovered poverty
south of the border
combined with total blindness
to much worse poverty
at home justified
such benevolent excursions.

While Peace Corps spends
around $10,000 on you
to help you adopt 
to your new environment
and to guard you 
against culture shock,
how odd that nobody 
ever thought
about spending money
to educate poor Mexicans
in order to prevent them
from the culture shock
of meeting you?

If you have 
any sense of responsibility at all,
stay with your riots here at home.
Work for the coming elections:

you will know 

what you are doing,

why you are doing it,

and how to communicate 

with those to whom you speak.

And you will know when you fail.

If you insist on working with poor,

if this is your vocation,

then at least work

among the poor 

who can tell you to go to hell.

it is incredibly unfair for you 

to impose yourselves

on a village

where you are

so linguistically deaf and dumb

that you don't even understand 

what you are doing,

or what people think of you.

And it is, profoundly 

damaging to yourselves

when you define 

something 

that you want to do

as "good",

a "sacrifice",

or  "help".

damages you do willy-nilly,

through your vacation-mission,

or two year exotic fellowships,

is too high a price

for the belated insight

that you shouldn't have been

there in the first place. 

So, I am here

to entreat you

to use your money,

your status and your education

to travel in Latin America.

Come to look, 

to climb our mountains,

to enjoy our flowers.

Come to study.

But do not come to help!

- Based on Ivan Illich's address, To Hell With Good Intention, 1968.

#Day10 #The100DayProject #100DaysOfProseToPoetry Ivan Illich #Volunteering #Charity