How to be a Better Person

Seb Hunter

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781843549772
• eBook ISBN: 9781848874862
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Why is it so difficult to find the time to help others? When Seb Hunter became aware of a nagging ache in the place where his soul ought to be, he embarked on a two year odyssey of volunteering - with hilarious results. He collects litter, teaches pensioners how to use the internet, works at Oxfam (where he meets Gladys, his septuagenarian nemesis), mans a steam train line, becomes a star DJ on hospital radio, visits prisoners, and runs a very long way for charity... But will his quest for self-improvement be successful? How to Be a Better Person is the tale of a cynic's attempt to become a better person by helping others. For nothing. It's a volunteering call-to-arms! Oh no it's not! Well it is, sort of...

Contents

My house, Brentford, west London
Tuesday afternoon, during Countdown

Step One

Step Two

Step Three

Step Four

Step Five

Step Six

Step Seven

Step Eight

Step Nine

Step Ten

Step Eleven

Step Twelve

Pledge Coda

Conclusion

The End

Exit

Organizational Contact Details

Thank You

Last Exit

My house, Brentford, west London
Tuesday afternoon, during Countdown

The phone rang.

Unlike a lot of people, I like it when the phone rings; it might be something exciting: somebody with some money,¹ or good news, or a friend inviting me down the pub, or my agent with heady news of lucrative foreign rights sales.²

Usually it’s none of those things; usually it’s someone in a call centre, often a call centre somewhere on the Indian subcontinent. Their name is Keith, even though their name’s not really Keith, it’s Tajinder, but the powers that be demand they anglicize their names to make you and me feel more comfortable. I hate these cold calls as much as the next person (every time I hang up I make a promise that I’m going to go ex-directory) but I always try to be polite and hear them out, before explaining firmly that I’m not interested in a free mobile phone or anything else thank you very much, sorry, no really, goodbye now, sorry again, cheerio, goodbye! I make it cheery so as not to make them feel rejected or bad about themselves. Then I feel bad about myself for five to ten seconds before getting on with whatever I was doing before, i.e. waiting for my agent to call with news of lucrative foreign rights sales.

So the phone rang and all this went through my head again. Maybe, at last, it’s someone with some money! I snatched at the receiver excitedly.

‘Hello?’

‘Am I speaking with the homeowner?’

The heart sinks.

‘Yeesssss.’

‘My name’s Sue and I’m calling from the NBCS . . .’

The Nautical . . . Bird . . . Canoeing . . . Society?

‘ . . . that’s the National Blind Children’s Society. And we’re looking for volunteers to collect money in their own neighbourhood, delivering envelopes and then a few days later collecting them again. Would you mind helping out?’

My mouth opened to say no thanks but then my untrustworthy subconscious lurched into action: deliver a few envelopes on my own street? Go and collect them afterwards? Why the hell not? In a moment of sudden madness I heard myself unexpectedly pronounce: ‘Yes, why not. I think. Yes, OK. But hang on, erm.’

‘Yes?’

‘All right then.’

‘Great. Just give me your address and I’ll pop it all in the post. Instructions are included. Thanks.’ And she hung up.

I was immediately flooded with wave after wave of delicious, self-righteous serotonin. Somewhat pathetically, I felt an urge to text some of my friends, informing them what a wonderful and selfless thing it was that I had just agreed to do. I imagine this was a similar sensation to having just had one’s bank details expertly stripped by Tigger-esque charity muggers down on the high street: feeling a little more buoyant in your soul but with a slight yet distinct sense of unease. Did I really want to do that? Have I been had somehow?

Sadly, this kind of reaction to having done something even vaguely altruistic is these days the rule rather than the exception. Most of us lead incredibly selfish lives – straight-ahead, blinkers-on, me, moi, ich – looking out for number one. Lifelong, short-sighted self-interest is wholly acceptable here in the early twenty-first century, indeed often positively encouraged by our inescapable double-barrelled godheads: consumerism and cynicism.

I am a consumer. I am a cynic. But I would like to be less so. I believe that being a ‘good person’, with all the responsibility and possibly hard work that might entail, is fundamental to leading a full and rewarding life. I’m not religious, so I have no spiritual dogma going down here – it’s just a yin and yang thing: cause and effect, effect and cause making a unity of opposites. You get what you give. The love you make is equal to the love you take. As you can see, I have started to regurgitate pop song lyrics, probably in a consumerist and cynical way. And all this pop-cultural meaninglessness clogs up the parts of the brain that presumably used to – back in the olden days – be filled with hale and hearty doses of fraternal philanthropy. We used to be nicer. It’s true, our grandparents insist; or at least they would if we ever listened to them. Nowadays we can’t because they’re in a care home, as this makes our lives easier. Is this the world we created?³

We children of the seventies and eighties certainly do less for other people than our parents’ generation did and, indeed, still do. Part of this has to do with the fragmentation of the community, a process hurried along by Margaret Thatcher and her infamous line: ‘There’s no such thing as society – only individuals.’ Licence to ill, in other words. More cynical is the less famous yet eviller still Thatcher quote: ‘No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.’

This state-sponsored selfishness was unprecedented; it branded a deep ideological fissure into the nation’s consciousness. The great myopic gold rush had begun; a gold rush barely even mediated by over a decade of Labour government; indeed they positively encouraged it. And it’s too late to force this particular genie back into its bottle now – the genie is a hedge fund expert and has assured his dominance by wiping out magic lanterns through relentless speculation on futures trading. Sigh.

My own parents were always active in their community and elsewhere. My mother was a teacher and Red Cross volunteer. My late father would get involved in good deeds locally if there was a drink in there for him somewhere (anything pub-sponsored, for example). This giving of themselves to the community at large defined them and others like them, and continues to this day. It conferred a sense of innate Goodness; of wisdom and trustworthiness – proof that there was such a thing as society after all. In being fundamentally unfashionable myself, I feel it’s my generational responsibility to attempt to preserve this unfashionable attitude. By taking my foot off the egocentric gas, could I possibly become a bit more (although not too much, thanks) like my parents and less like . . . well, me?

As an archetypical, work-shy writer who does nothing but sit on his arse all day,⁴ I have quite a lot of spare time, probably more than most people. In the chaotic metaphysical and moral fallout I am experiencing post-NBCS phone call, I have come up with an idea of how to spend some of this time: a programme of self-improvement through volunteering. Because volunteer work – i.e. working for zero financial reward – is a far more structured and measurable way of leading a ‘better’ life than just giving beggars money or helping mothers with pushchairs up flights of stairs. By volunteering, you contribute to an organized infrastructure functioning exclusively in the direction of the Greater Good.

I want what follows to be an honest portrayal of these multitudinous, righteous labourings. I give myself two whole years – two years of part-time volunteer work; two years of getting properly stuck in. Not reportage: rather, earthy immersion, genuine participation and involvement; and cynicism (even pub-sponsorship) begone. Consider this a kind of learn-as-one-goes instruction manual: of fatigue-free compassion; of idealized citizenship; of inevitable humiliation, failure and deluded hubris. A step-by-step, live journal documenting the attempts of a charitable neophyte to better himself and perhaps even those around him too, through enlisted benevolence. I want to prove Margaret Thatcher⁵ wrong. All over again.

As a structure for this prolonged course in resensitization, I plan to utilize that traditional methodology of the vice-afflicted: the Twelve Step Programme; although having just perused the actual steps, I have decided to ignore their specific exhortations, since, for example, ‘Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs’ (Step 5), and ‘Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out’ (Step 11), seem to me somewhat long-winded and, to be frank, frightening. And it’s fear – this extant paralysis of idleness – that I’m so keen to move beyond.

By the end of this tough, anti-ennui regime, I hope to be in a position where I’ll be able to answer these two, crucial questions: can a thirty-something middle-class Englishman become a better person through volunteering? And might a prolonged prescription of selflessness deliver enlightenment even to a foul-mouthed commoner such as myself?⁶

A week after the phone call, the NBCS envelopes arrived. On the front of each was a pretty, smiling, wonky-eyed albino girl, surrounded by Harry Potter books. ‘A Brighter Outlook’ promised their slogan. I didn’t really understand, so instead I decided to count the envelopes. There were forty-two. Isn’t forty-two supposed to be the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything? It was a brilliant omen.

Well, I never delivered the envelopes. I couldn’t be arsed.

I’m not going to patronize you, OK?

Step One

Oxfam, Kensington High Street branch
Monday morning

Number of Oxfam shops in the United Kingdom: 750
Oxfam net funds, April 2006: £73.5 million

The west London borough of Kensington and Chelsea is one of the most affluent urban zones in the world and the wealthiest area, per capita, in the whole of the UK. It also holds the dubious honour of being the safest Conservative parliamentary seat in the country. Kensington High Street is these people’s ‘strip’: the cars are Porsche or Mercedes or, more likely, giant 4x4s manufactured by Porsche or Mercedes. Sunglasses are vast; children, Tarquins, out of control. The large Oxfam store is down at the north-west end of the st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author biography
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents