Us vs. Ourselves
I was at a celebration once when I noticed a severely obese child sitting at a table across from me. She could not have been more than five or six years old, and I became curious about what I was seeing. One grandmother brought the girl a plate of food and a piece of cake. Nothing particularly unusual about that. Mom and Dad came to the table, neither of them overweight, and a short time later what must have been Grandma number two arrived carrying another piece of cake. Much to her consternation, her granddaughter was already halfway through the first one. She patted the girl on the head, kissed her on the cheek, and set the second piece beside the one she was about to finish. Two grandmothers, neither of whom was obese, had each brought this small child a piece of cake. Nearby, the child's mother appeared frustrated, shrugged her shoulders, and walked away. I couldn't help wondering how often some version of this happened.
I did not know those women well enough to know what was happening inside their minds. Perhaps the grandmothers were competing for affection and had convinced themselves that one more piece of cake did not matter as much as the affection they received in return. Perhaps the mother had fought this battle many times and simply did not have the energy to fight it again. From the outside, there were only so many conclusions an observer could reasonably draw.
What was visible was a small child already carrying a physical burden that the adults around her were not carrying themselves, while two adults who presumably understood food and restraint better than she possibly could were offering her more of something she was in no position to evaluate. Whatever had created the child's condition, she had the least knowledge and control over the environment around her, yet she could potentially live with its consequences for the rest of her life.
Most of us have seen some version of this expressed in other ways. Imagine an overweight little dog being offered another treat. The dog becomes excited, the owner enjoys the response, and another treat is handed over. The exchange makes both of them happy. Eventually the dog becomes overweight, but the ritual continues because each individual treat seems too insignificant to matter, while denying the dog something it clearly wants somehow feels more wrong than giving it.
We know better, of course. The dog cannot understand the cumulative consequences of thousands of small indulgences. The person holding the treat knows more, which is precisely why responsibility belongs disproportionately to the person holding it. The dog's desire cannot be the only measure of whether giving the dog what it wants is good for it.
A five-year-old deserves at least as sophisticated a moral calculation.
We understand this when the child gets into an automobile. We do not ask whether a five-year-old wants to sit in an approved child restraint or whether fastening one makes the child happy. Adults possess knowledge the child does not yet possess, so adults are expected, and often legally required, to make decisions based upon the child's welfare rather than the child's immediate preference. We accept that responsibility because childhood necessarily involves an imbalance of knowledge, authority, and experience.
Food complicates the principle because feeding is associated with nurturing. Giving someone something delicious feels generous, and the pleasure it produces provides immediate evidence that we have done something good. The child smiles, the dog wags its tail, Grandma feels appreciated, and everyone receives something from the exchange. The consequence, if there is one, may be years away and impossible to attribute to any particular piece of cake.
Perhaps this reveals a weakness in the way we think about giving itself.
Human beings tend to associate giving with goodness. Generosity is a virtue. Feeding people is caring. Providing for our children is responsible. Helping someone in difficulty is compassionate. Protecting someone from pain feels loving. These associations are generally useful, but they can also prevent us from asking a more difficult question: Is what I am giving actually good for the person receiving it?
Giving can become harmful without ceasing to feel generous. We can give a child too much food, an adult child too much rescue, an addict too much money, an employee too much protection from consequences, or someone we love so much assistance that they never develop the ability to function without us. We can provide approval for behavior that should not be encouraged and remove discomfort that might otherwise have produced growth. None of this requires malicious intent. Sometimes we create dependency precisely because helping another person makes us feel helpful.
That introduces another question we may not ask often enough: Who is the gift really for?
There is nothing inherently selfish about enjoying another person's happiness. Reciprocity is part of human relationships, and generosity that benefits both people does not somehow become corrupt because the giver feels good too. Problems begin when our need for the response starts determining what we are willing to give. If I need the child's excitement, the dog's affection, my adult child's dependence, my spouse's approval, or another person's gratitude strongly enough, I may eventually give them something that serves my needs better than theirs.
I wrote about a version of this in Volume 2 of The Ant Matrix Series, The Stranger Secret, in a chapter called “Mother's Mom Syndrome.” Grandparents provide an interesting example because aging can change the sources from which people once derived value. Children grow up, establish families of their own, make their own decisions, and no longer need their parents in the way they once did. For much of human history, elders retained an important role because they carried knowledge, skills, family history, cultural memory, experience, and lessons younger generations had not yet acquired. Their physical capabilities might decline while the value of what they knew increased.
Modern civilization has altered some of that exchange. Families are geographically dispersed, traditions are weaker, and information that once had to be passed from one generation to another can now be retrieved in seconds. A young parent can search for advice rather than call Mom. A grandchild can learn to cook, repair something, play an instrument, identify a plant, or understand almost any subject without asking Grandpa. Technology changes quickly enough that the direction of instruction sometimes reverses, with grandchildren teaching grandparents how to navigate the world.
None of that makes elders less valuable, but it can make their value less obvious. Someone who once found meaning in being needed may have to discover another way of being important. Teaching requires patience, wisdom may not be requested, and advice does not always produce gratitude. Giving a treat is considerably easier.
That does not mean Grandma gives a child cake because she is insecure, nor does it mean every grandparent who spoils a grandchild is engaged in psychological competition. A treat can simply be a treat, potentially multiplied by several well-meaning offenders on all sides of the family. Mom may simply be outnumbered. What matters is that human beings are capable of learning what produces affection, and once we understand another person's desires, we acquire the ability to use that knowledge for purposes the other person may not understand.
That is where the role of an elder becomes particularly interesting. Experience should provide some understanding of temptation because older people have had more opportunities to encounter it and witness its consequences. One of the great values of accumulated experience is the ability to help someone with less experience recognize a danger before they have to personally suffer everything required to learn it.
The person who should have been teaching the child how to understand and navigate temptation instead can become the person who learns how to use it to gain favor.
Perhaps Moral Science should therefore ask something more of knowledge than simple understanding. The more we understand another person's vulnerability, the greater our responsibility becomes for what we do with that understanding. Greater knowledge can become greater protection, or it can become greater opportunity for exploitation.
That possibility extends far beyond grandparents. Universities and research institutions study human psychology and sociology. Advertisers study consumers. Technology companies study attention and algorithms. Politicians study voters. Businesses study customers. Knowledge of another human being inevitably creates some capacity for influence, while two of our most basic desires, comfort and security, frequently sit somewhere in the crosshairs.
In 1956, Earl Nightingale's The Strangest Secret proposed that we become what we think about. This is one of the ideas underlying The Stranger Secret. My inversion was that in a world increasingly sophisticated at studying and influencing human behavior, we become what they think about. Someone who understands what attracts us, frightens us, comforts us, excites us, or satisfies us possesses knowledge that can be used either to strengthen our agency or circumvent it. In an Us vs Them environment, circumvention seems to be the preferred method.
That principle becomes especially important when the balance of agency is unequal. A five-year-old does not meet a grandmother, parent, advertiser, or food manufacturer as an equal participant in a transaction. We hope the adult possesses greater knowledge and control, while the child possesses greater vulnerability. Moral responsibility should take that imbalance into account.
Perhaps this means we should also reconsider restraint as a moral act. Restraint frequently provides no immediate reward. Saying no may produce disappointment, anger, resentment, or even temporary rejection. The person exercising restraint may have to accept being liked less in the present because they believe someone else's future matters more. That may be one of the more difficult forms of love because it asks us to surrender the immediate pleasure of being the person who says yes.
The mother I watched shrug her shoulders and walk away adds another layer to the problem. I do not know what preceded that moment. Perhaps she had fought the battle repeatedly and become exhausted. Perhaps she did not know what to do. Perhaps family relationships had made intervention more difficult than it appeared from the outside. Her reaction nevertheless illustrates how harmful patterns can survive within families even when someone recognizes them. Confrontation has a cost, accommodation has a cost, and sometimes people choose the cost they can endure today while leaving someone else to absorb the cost tomorrow.
That is why the image of those two grandmothers remains difficult for me to forget. It is not because I know whether they were good women or bad women, loving or manipulative, secure or insecure. What I saw was something much simpler: adults offering immediate gratification to a child with less knowledge while an already visible consequence suggested that gratification might not be what the child needed.
There is probably some version of that scene in most of our lives, including mine. The details change, but the temptation does not. We want to help, comfort, provide, rescue, indulge, protect, or simply make someone happy, and sometimes we receive enough emotional benefit from doing so that we stop asking whether what feels good to give is actually what is best.
Perhaps generosity therefore requires more than a willingness to give. It also requires the honesty to recognize when our giving may be mainly serving us, the wisdom to understand the consequences for the person receiving it, and the restraint to stop before more harm is done.
The little dog will still want another treat, and the child may still want another piece of cake. Desire is doing exactly what desire does. The greater moral responsibility belongs to the person who knows better, while one of the greatest gifts we may eventually give the person who does not is the ability to recognize temptation, exercise restraint, and reclaim the agency to say no for themselves.
