Dr Leslie Cannold used to present Both Sides Now, but she’s cutting to the chase: what’s the right way to go? In Everyday Dilemmas, Cannold brings her ethical training to your problems. Send your questions to letters@crikey.com.au with “Dear Leslie” in the subject line. She might even reply…
Dear Leslie
Is it ethical to ask friends and/or relatives to care for you when you are ill?
My concerns are that any such request would induce a sense of obligation in the other person and that they would not feel able to give an honest response to the request.
I ask in the context of public health and income support systems which choose not to provide either adequate care or the means to purchase it.
Yours sincerely,
Waiting for essential (but non-emergency) surgery
Hello my pre-operative friend,
Thanks for writing to me on what I think could be the most often experienced and least discussed ethical dilemma of our time. So here is my attempt to break it down and provide you with an answer.
You’re not alone. Asking for help is hard despite many academics believing — myself included — that most of us are hard-wired for the empathy and altruism that makes us want to say yes. For example, you might be worried that asking for help makes you look incompetent or weak. Or that asking for help feels like giving up control and that feels scary. Or that you’re not actually worth helping. If any of that sounds like you, then maybe you need some support to feel more confident about putting yourself out there and some practical tips on how to get started.
People can say no to a request for help. While a sense of moral obligation may explain why some say yes when they don’t mean it, never forget that some people like doing the right thing because it’s the right thing! Others love to help because being useful gives them a buzz. While it may be cold comfort, those who agree to help and then do it under sufferance have only themselves to blame. We are all responsible for policing our own boundaries.
The bottom line is that I think you should ask for help because you need the help, you deserve the help and the odds are good that those you ask will want to help you.
“We make a lot of excuses for not making the request,” says M Nora Bouchard, the author of Mayday! Asking for Help in Times of Need, “[when] our most natural response is to say, ‘Sure, I can help you.’”
I hope you go well, and that your surgery is a success.
Leslie
Dear Leslie
I just discovered something so outrageous. My (older) husband can retire at 65, but I can’t get the pension until I’m 67. I’m already so much younger than him and now we’re losing another two years before we can get off the treadmill and enjoy life together. How is this fair?
Not OK Boomer
Dear Not OK,
It’s not fair but it could have been worse. The Morrison government called a halt to plans to escalate the pension age to 70 for future seniors, presumably because the manual labourers who are part of the Liberal/National coalition made their voices heard.
I hear your angst. Of course you want to start living your best life with your partner as soon as possible. Given that he presumably hung up the towel at 65, it must have been a shock to learn that in addition to catching up to him because of your younger age, you had an additional two years to serve.
Could the government’s mind be changed again? If not to lower the pension age back to 65 for everyone, then to allow exceptions for those who are most hurt by the change? This includes those like you with older life partners, Indigenous Australians and other disadvantaged groups in the Australian community who have a lower life expectancy and so — if they get to claim a pension at all — are being cheated of critical years in which to enjoy their dotage.
“You never know your luck in a big city,” my grandma always said. If you feel strongly enough about it, it’s worth joining one of the many effective senior advocacy groups and finding out.
Good luck,
Leslie
I suspect that anyone in time and space outside the modern West would be bemused by the notion that this is an ethical dilemma. The question is a product of end-stage liberalism: only the autonomous individual and the state exist; no inherent obligations of family or the bonds of friendship; human relationships ultimately become only transactional. I’d hope that if I got sick, I could rely on my family and friends (as they could rely on me) rather than them being merely a backstop to state provision.
Follow up question: Is it ethical for the State to arrange healthcare based on the assumption that unpaid friends and family will provide essential care and support and that patients will be sent to beg from charities for equipment and medication that cannot afford?
Before governments started fiddling around the edges, the retirement age for Males was 65 and Females 60.
On to matters of greater import, that of asking for help but not making it an obligation. For starters, they could expunge from the English language the starter “If you don’t mind…” That automatically sets up and obligation with the automatic mental response “Well I do bloody well mind because I don’t know what you are asking for”.
Leslie’s reply to the first question neatly illuminates the fundamental flaw in conventional neoclassic economics, the strand that still dominates. I agree that humans are fundamentally altruistic, but enjoy a bit of competition. Economics assumes we are totally competitive and entirely self interested and builds all it theory and modelling on that flawed assumption.
The first old age pension was introduced in Germany in the 1800s by Chancellor Otto von Bimarck.He also set the retirement age at 65.Howeve, the catch was that in those days hardly any workes survived to be 65 and enjoy the said pension.He introduced it to stymie those wicked Socialists who were beginning to make a bit of noise.A crafty old devil was our Otto.