Hacker News Reader

Comment by gostsamo | Hacker News Reader

> I am not sure I would invite a casual tourist I met to take over my apartment, and cook for him, as many have done for me.

leaves a bad taste. I've helped and been helped in all kinds of situations. The sense of entitlement in this guy and the way he proudly explains how he is using people is just awful. Help is to give when you know that the gesture will have an disproportional effect for the other person and will make the world a better place. The way he presents it, he just relies on other people because he can and without giving ever back. Maybe I'm misreading, but I don't feel inspired.

View on HN

I think this was rhetorical hedging - the author was expressing false doubt to underscore how extraordinary the actions of his hosts were, but he didn't literally mean he wouldn't do the same for others. The tone of the rest of the piece implies he is very grateful for the kindness of strangers.

> I am having trouble seeing myself emptying my bank account to purchase a boat ticket for someone who has more money than I do.

Another strange example. In the entire article he does not give one example where he is the helper or offers reason why he would help or why people should help. It is all about the taking as far as I can read. IDK, just I'm not inspired or excited.

Well we only know what he said.

He doesn't present examples where he helped others.

That's not the point of his piece, and spending time virtue signaling to the reader would undermine the message that this kindness is a form of grace, given freely without expectation of reciprocation.

This person is being honest about how he feels about a hypothetical situation. I appreciate the humility of sharing a thought people might look down on and would be trivial to lie about. Also based on this article I would be surprised if he is not the type to show such kindness - if anything this reflection shows that such openness is not to be taken lightly, that it is special and should be appreciated as such. How wonderful then that is is so ubiquitous.

I'm pretty sure the message is about the general goodness of humanity and the positivity of connection, "the better angles of our nature." As the culture gets more divided and us vs them, people are actually fundamentally good and helpful. I'm sure the people who helped him also got a positive experience out of it. It is not zero sum that he took something from them, both were positively affected by the experience.

> I learned from hitchhiking to think of this as an exchange. During the moment the stranger offers his or her goodness, the person being aided can reciprocate with degrees of humility, dependency, gratitude, surprise, trust, delight, relief, and amusement to the stranger. It takes some practice to enable this exchange when you don’t feel desperate.

That's his view. Transactional and rehearsed.

Agreed. There are helpers and the helped, and it is a good thing to do both when you can.

> the way he proudly explains how he is using people is just awful.

TFA: “One might even call the art of accepting generosity a type of compassion.”

Turns out he’s doing them a favor!

I get what you're saying. But to me he is simply being honest.

If he did not wonder to himself how he would have felt about a scraggly, hippy knocking on his front door in the evening, I would have been suspect.

He sounds like a “begpacker.”

Reading this makes me think badly about the author. Taking from those less fortunate is horrible.

If you are rich enough to travel to a poor country, please don’t exploit the people by taking more from them.

Imagine the good he could have done if he actually paid people back! He could've bought a cart of food for the family generous enough to share their last can of meat. He could have spotted a generous driver with a full tank of gas right at the end of the trip.

They also said they spent a total of $500 over a full year of traveling, I don't think those actions would be an option.

I would offer to help someone to the tune of an hour of my time or a hundred dollars to hear a story about how they are travelling without money. It wouldn't matter to me whether they used to have a job so long as they weren't claiming they would die if someone didn't help (which I didn't hear in this article).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com