Goodness is not good if it is only reflected one way
Goodness is not good if it is only reflected one way
Warning: Incoming Benevolent Contempt! It's a doozy!
What happens when we’re more invested in looking good than being good? It’s people-pleasing on steroids. It’s manipulation. It’s Benevolent Contempt! And it’s a very mundane, normal human experience.
That’ll Teach Them!
“I know you say you need to borrow some money, but I know you just need to learn the value of hard work. Your suffering is worth the lesson I want you to learn.”
“You told me what you like in bed, but I know you’ll like what I do better, so I’ll just do that. You’re welcome.”
“You need Jesus. You’re behaving in ways I don’t understand and don’t want to understand. Jesus and the church will fix you so I’ll feel more comfortable around you. That’s what’s most important to our relationship; my comfort “
“I must civilize this savage; bring them nobility, values, and religion so they’ll understand my inherent superiority in the natural hierarchy of life. Then they’ll be able to better navigate this culture that I’m imposing on them!”
“They’re privileged so they could never know how to navigate community more skillfully than someone who isn’t as privileged. I will alienate them to teach them a lesson on community.”
Benevolent contempt is that person driving slow in the left lane who, whenever you try to pass them, speeds up and does everything they can to keep you behind them.
Benevolent Contempt all comes down to these internalized statements:
“I know what’s good for you better than you do.”
“I’ll hide behind doing what’s ‘good for you’ when really I’m only doing what’s good for me. This way people won’t judge or punish ME for doing what I want– because I would judge or punish someone for going for what they want.”
It’s about maintaining hierarchy - and it’s so so so sneaky.
The “Good” Word
Let’s start with the difference between regular ol’ average contempt and benevolent contempt: the word “good.”
Regular contempt is how we outwardly express our inner acceptance of hierarchy. Such as, “Immigrants are stealing our jobs.” “There are only 2 genders.” “You’re just a lazy millennial.”
Here’s How All Contempt Happens…
1) We accept a hierarchy
2) We embody our accepted hierarchy inwardly
3) We enforce our accepted hierarchy outside ourselves
This creates a never-ending swirl of "better thans, and less thans" - the tightening spiral of binary thinking.
Contempt is the fuel that keeps racism, homophobia, ageism, and other supremacy mindsets aflame. Without it, we’d know how equal and important we all are - how good we all are.
Benevolent Contempt is Contempt that hides behind the guise of doing what’s good for someone else without taking their needs & personhood into consideration.
“Good” - what a word! So versatile, so vague, and yet so energetically and bodily recognizable.
We can recognize and feel “good” when an offering feels so right for us to receive. We can give, knowing that it feels good to us. And - the in-between can get so wildly messy. I kind of love it. Defining the word “good” is like defining a god - nearly impossible and full of impact and power.
Zooming out for a moment, we see that throughout history, we have so many examples of “good” deities or archetypes - so brilliant, at ease, attractive, joyful, heartfelt, and whole in their prosperity. Dagda, Lakshmi, Balder, Apollo, Fu, Lu, & Shu come to mind, to name a few. They all share similar aspects: health, wealth, radiance, equanimity, and luck but we’re never quite sure about how to name their essence other than “good.” They are there to remind us that we can embody these aspects within ourselves in order to live “like gods” together here on Earth. We can celebrate and live the “good life,” and dissolve the hierarchy between humans and deities -isn’t that what Jesus was for?
Equally throughout human history, spiritually powerful people, systems, and leaders have used “goodness” to justify horrific injustices.
The innate goodness of spirit those deities or archetypes embody in us has been twisted and broken to justify enslavement, warfare, racism, homophobia - the hierarchical control of resources and life.
This sounds like – “If you’re a good person, you’ll get some of these resources we stole and now control.” It’s not always on such a grand scale like colonialism. Sometimes it looks like ignoring our own authenticity for the sake of looking good to others - like when we buy a shirt that we don’t feel vibrant or powerful in and we just buy it because it’s a popular brand and someone else will notice.
Sometimes Benevolent Contempt looks like restricting our own financial flow - in or out - so we look like a good person -whatever our culture dictates as “good.” Either being good by having so much money to control (not spending, but only gaining) or by refusing money because we get paid with intrinsic satisfaction. No matter what, Benevolent Contempt ALWAYS comes with a reward like money, prestige, or privilege and it keeps us from achieving collective joy, pleasure, and liberation because it maintains unnecessary hierarchies.
The term “Benevolent Contempt” found its way to my brain through the mouth of someone I LOVE - James-Olivia Chu Hillman. Since that day, I haven’t been able to unsee it . . . everywhere.
Also hiiiii James-Olivia! I miss you, I love you, and I want more of you. Send me a link to hang out when you feel the same. If you’re reading this and you’re NOT James-Olivia, consider looking them up. They do amazing work and taught me so much about everything I find important.
CONTROL
The goal of contempt, benevolent or otherwise is always control.
Control is how we enforce the hierarchies we’ve accepted. Often, promises of prestige or privilege are used to gain or maintain control over another. It’s often unconscious and always an uneven trade.
For example: corporate pizza parties.
The corporation offers a low-cost way to “boost morale” which is a less nefarious way of saying “we will placate you as cheaply as possible in order to keep you under control.” They invest very little money to make sure that the employees remain content with their low wages. By framing it through “boosting morale” it makes it appear that they care enough about their employees to invest in their wellbeing - and they might at the managerial level - but did they ask their employees what would boost their morale? Did they find out if any dietary restrictions needed to be considered? Does the CEO care about the wellness of those entry level employees or did they just want to continue making mass profits off of cheap labor to benefit their already wealthy shareholders? Are you a CEO? I’d love to ask you.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t eat the pizza. Please, for the love of all things sacred, take joy wherever you can get it! And remember that we’re participating in an unnecessary hierarchy and be aware that someone might be trying to control you by pretending to do what’s good for you. That’s what makes benevolent contempt so hard to let go of, we still benefit from it either as an employee or a CEO, but one benefits dramatically more than the other.
When you get down to it, Benevolent Contempt is a strategy for mismanaging energy and resources. When essentials are mismanaged with Benevolent Contempt, we all suffer, including the earth.
Comfort
To succor our suffering, we seek comforts wherever possible, we’re only human.
The most insidious experience of benevolent contempt is when we’re comfortable with it. When we’re ok with pizza parties that keep us below others - when we accept that we don’t matter enough to be equal.
We can also become comfortable “at the top” and actually believe that we know what’s best for our friends, family, community, business, country, economy all based on our own internal understandings and never seeking outside information or someone else’s truth. We will fight and organize to keep our power. We will kill to keep our comfort and control the resources that keep us comfortable.
Our instinct to control and seemingly keep ourselves safe and comfortable can actually keep us from achieving the success we need to experience actual, sovereign safety; a confident comfort.
Example: Brilliant Coaches, Consultants, & Community Organizers
I’ve worked with many coaches who offer free services and try to control who will receive what they have to offer. I can see it a mile away because I used to do it. I used to want to help people so badly that I would control (i.e. suppress) my own needs (getting paid) in order to experience a taste of validation of my services - to feel understood by someone - to feel like what I had to offer was Good. How insidious.
I already knew that what I had to offer was good. Why on earth was I trying to put the “good validation” from someone else ABOVE my own truth and validation? Why was I willing to do it at my own expense?(literally) Benevolent Contempt. Ouch.
I was new to entrepreneurship then and I was working with what I inherited in my own money story; I hadn’t yet begun to heal my relationship to money.
I learned that because I was good at what I did and because I was a “good person” and that I would get internal reward for my work- which I did. I was also hungry. It wasn’t enough. I am no saint who sacrifices themself for an idea or belief or only internal goodness. I am a messy, loving human who needs to be nourished and I am here, on this earth, right now and I want to feel good inside and have it reflected back to me —— equally, not in a hierarchical, binary way.
I had learned that if something was worth doing for the world, it was worth doing for free or little money - that I should love it enough to do it for nothing in exchange.
I felt like a sucker, and worse, I was comfortable with it. And then it all made sense to me.
Controlling the idea of “what’s good” is a perfect way to control humans through one of their most endearing qualities - their love.
We say things like: “If you love someone, you’ll be a good person and if you’re good, someone will love you. If you’re good, you’ll get what you want in life. If you’re a good person, it will all work out. If you’re a good American, you will not be punished. If you’re a good person, you’ll attract wealth” etc.
I see a lot of other money coaches say “if you raise your vibe, you raise your income. If you spend more, you’ll make more. If you do exactly what I tell you to do, you’ll experience wealth because I know what’s best for other people.”
While there are some benefits to those strategies, I have found that the most effective, useful, efficient, financially balancing wisdom comes from my clients on their own behalf - I’m just really skilled at bringing it out in them. Even with all my extensive liberated frameworks, practices, and personal wisdom, I know that the only truth for my clients that matters lies within them. That’s how they make more money. They become more who they are and who they want to be instead of who they were told to be. They shed limiting financial beliefs, play, and become more. We get a little…. uncomfortable, safely together.
Good Grief
Benevolent contempt, itself isn’t bad - it’s simply part of being a messy, perfectly human, human. Most of us want the best for ourselves and those we love, and we can manage ourselves or others in order to make it happen.
So if you find yourself judging yourself harshly throughout this article or experiencing existential horror of seeing it everywhere like I did, give yourself some grace. Grieve with me. Consider taking a moment to remember all those times you thought you knew better for someone like your kids, students, clients, parents, partners, and sit with that feeling for a moment. Consider the ways you might have impeded them and yourself. Consider the distance between you both that your judgments or assumptions created.
When you’re ready, consider thanking those memories for being so present with you now because they are part of the fuel that will help you move away from benevolent contempt and more toward our collective, joyful truth.
Please know there is grace for all of us if you want to receive it. It’s ok. It’s not your fault - it’s just your responsibility, now that you can see it, to try something else when you can. No shame, no perfection; only good, responsible, loving power.
Speaking of grace, do you remember those deities I mentioned before? Their power lies in reminding us of our own divinity, our own innate goodness, and something that we can embody if and when we want to. There are even Buddhist practices that practice non-duality with the idea of selfishness - meaning: selfishness is not good or bad, but rather by practicing what is truly good for me it will also be good for someone or something else. The trick is finding what’s truly good for us in the first place.
To find what’s good for us, we begin by practicing Having. (more on that in another article)
Goodness is not good if it is only reflected one way - it is benevolent contempt.
What do we HAVE with benevolent contempt? Not enough. Chronic not-enoughness. It’s what hierarchy gives us after it gorges itself - we get the leftovers and scraps of a cheap pizza party or told that we’re good leaders for making it happen.
We can know what’s truly for the greatest good if it is reflected in both our inner and outer experiences. And for us to truly know it, we must be open to receiving the truth and sharing our own truth.
For instance, if I know I’m good at what I do and if someone gives me a compliment and I disregard it - I’m not actually receiving that reflection of the goodness that that person actually experienced because of me. I’m controlling, restricting, and rejecting the good they wanted to share with me about me. I keep myself from the good being reflected back to me because I’m more comfortable with being “beneath someone else”.
The same thing goes for money. If I know what I have is good and I don’t receive payment for it, I’m not actually receiving the goodness of my work reflected back to me. I’m not actually serving the greatest good (because I am not separate from, above or below the greatest good). I did, however get a lot of praise for rejecting adequate payment by people who don’t care about my wellbeing, and they got to feel like good people for enforcing it. (Benevolent Contempt Cycle)
So if you’re a coach, service professional, or someone who just gives a fuck about the world and you feel guilty about doing what’s good for you, let’s chat. I have a whole new world to show you.
Financial Wellness Offerings
Money Mindset Quiz - Free
Financial Wellness Consultation - Free
Shameless Money Workbook - Sliding scale
Leadership/Team/Partner Money, Power, Intimacy Coaching - Contact for pricing
Exclusive/Personalized Money, Power, Intimacy Coaching - Contact for Pricing
Candis Fox
Candis Fox is a Financial Wellness Coach, Consultant, and Speaker. They've combined their 10+ years in cognitive & behavioral science, spirit & education with radical finance to bring transformational experiences that impact our systems & communities - one valuable life at a time. Find out how much you matter.
BONUS BENEVOLENT CONTEMPT STATEMENTS!
Any of these sound familiar?
“That beggar would just use my money to buy drugs. I’ll save them from themselves and not give them anything.”
“You told me you needed an abortion. I know you need to understand the weight of your sexual experience, so I’ll make sure you learn a lesson and carry that baby then decide if you’ll keep it or not.”
“We don’t need DEI, I’m a good leader. You need to toughen up buttercup and get in line because I know what’s best for us, and that includes you.”