Malinda Words: Helplessness and innocence

A suspected new mural by artist Banksy is pictured in Marsh Lane in Bristol, Britain, February 13, 2020. REUTERS/Rebecca Naden

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 212th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

Helpless, in Sinhala would be asarana, literally without succour of any kind; innocence would be ahinsaka or without the compulsion to cause harm. I’ve heard politicians, journalists, commentators on social media platforms and even academics use these words interchangeably as though one implies the other or, preposterously, that they are synonymous.

It is not always incorrect, for there are people in this world who would not harm a fly, so to speak, who are also helpless in many ways. On the other hand there are similarly harmless people who are not exactly helpless.

It is tragic when people are both innocent and helpless, but how often do we, when encountering helplessness, ask ourselves, ‘is there innocence here as well?’

I’ve seen helplessness and the helpless. I’ve seen the helpless engaged in activities that are not necessarily compatible with words like innocent and innocence. There are times when I brush off such transgressions on account of perceived helplessness. But there are times when those who are helpless are certainly nothing close to innocent. And there are situations where those who are hardly helpless act as though there can’t be anyone more innocent. At such times I wonder about language, words and their abuse. And I wonder about ignorance and naïveté.

People are resourceful. They have to live. They have to eat and breathe. They have to do something with the ‘everyday’ to obtain some semblance of meaning regarding their existence so that they can do it all over again the next day. To do this, it is possible that innocence has to be compromised in some way.

Then again there are those who exaggerate their trials and tribulations, they use perceived helplessness as a tool to obtain pity and exploit it.

The question, then, is, should anyone assume that the helpless are innocent? Are there ways of determining quickly whether innocence is in fact a companion of helplessness? Is it easier to assume ‘probably not innocent,’ and turn away?

Many decades ago my father offered some advice on all this without exactly using these words. He was talking of privilege.

Now anyone can always name someone who is more privileged and someone who is less. Anyone can abuse privilege. Anyone can abuse absence of privilege or the condition of being less privileged. He didn’t say all that but he said something along the following lines:

‘Remember that you are privileged in certain ways. So if anyone decides to harm you out of envy or some notion of justice, don’t think bad of that person. But remember that if you allow it to happen a second time it just means you are foolish.’

I believe it was in the course of a discussion about politics and that he added, ‘in politics you cannot afford to be innocent.’

These are not theories and formulae that are cast in stone of course. Someone else might say, ‘be alert, don’t let anyone take you for a fool.’

Over the years, I’ve learned that it is tedious to be alert at all times. It requires one to be suspicious of one and all. It pushes one to assume that anything said is a lie, that there’s manipulation and mischief afoot. Those are dark thoughts that can cloud the particular interaction. This can be extrapolated to larger contexts made of more than one individual, made of multiple processes and applied even to even entire systems.

That’s cynicism through and through and I am not saying that is necessarily bad. After all, the world’s blemishes are so many that it would be absolutely naive to assume the opposite, that it’s all about sunshiny days and seasons of fragrances and orchards of the sweetest fruits.

We live, we learn, we notice patterns and tendencies and we become better at reading signs and extracting their meanings, this is true. There’s always the possibility of error, though. There’s always the possibility of being hit between the eyes by a pernicious brick hurled by someone or some group or some movement believed to be innocent, benign, unblemished and saintly.

Over the years, I’ve developed a technique that yields peace of mind if not anything else. Here goes:

Someone claims helplessness and solicits help, that is support that can be rendered. A promise is often made: ‘I will repay you.’ Typically it is financial but even in situations where no money is involved, similar pledges are made: ‘thanks, I appreciate and will never forget; in fact one day I will do the same for you.’

And so I respond thus: ‘No, there’s nothing to repay. This, in fact, is me repaying some kindness rendered to me in some previous lifetimes. It’s all done. Even. Don’t even think about repayment.’

What gets shelved by this is the burden of feeling indebted and the burden of giving residence to the thought that someone owes something to the giver.

Such processes could impoverish in some way, but they leave one thing intact. Innocence, the softer, more beautiful and far more fragile cousin of helplessness, contrary to what I believe is common belief.

01 September 2023

Helplessness and innocence

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