JasonCable.com

Podcasting is the concept of recording one’s voice for distribution on the Internet. These recordings take the form of advice columns, talk radio, indie music, and personal accounts (blogs). I was turned on to this phenomenon in June of 2005. Egoism fueled my passion for creating the show. I was in it for the money and the fame. After a few months I realized that there was no practical way of making money in a niche market. I also found out through listener feedback that I was indeed helping people through helping myself ramble on about topics important to me.

The break came one day when I received a letter from a young man in desperate need of help. He had started coming out to his family and friends (as gay) just four months earlier. He was feeling more comfortable with himself after listening to my show and finding that more people like him exist in the world.

My moment came while reading this young man’s letter and seeing how depressed he was over a recent attempt by his mother to get him interested in the “conversion” programs offered by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. These programs use drastic measures including unethical implementations of Skinner’s operant conditioning theories to change a gay person straight. His email was so frantic that I truly feared for his safety from his mother and himself. At that moment I vowed to help others and not myself. As I am not trained to help people in these kinds of situations, I referred him to a gay youth suicide prevention hotline.

I do not know if he ever called them, but knowing that I possibly averted disaster taught me that sometimes we must put others before ourselves. There are always people worse off than we are. This change towards altruism in the show really changed how it was going. I started teaching people in other countries about gay life in America and they shared their stories, too. Today it is not about me hearing their stories, but being able to share those with other listeners. I truly felt empathetic to this young man’s troubles as I had been suicidal while going through the “coming out” process. The reward today is knowing through people’s voices that I have helped them.

I never did hear back from this young man. If he was appreciative or not of my help, I believe that it is my duty to help him again if he were in trouble. I believe that we all have a moral obligation to help those in need. Unfortunately, this is one area in which my state lacks. By shutting down the state mental institutions we are letting ill people out to families that cannot care for them, group homes where they receive no psychiatric care, and the streets. Many of these individuals end up in prison with no care at all. Is this simply the egoistic personality of our elected officials because they look better and are easier elected due to lowering the state budget?

Daniel Batson writes that helping others is both self-serving and selfless (Myers, 2005). I certainly believe this is true. We may not always help others to feel good about performing the act of kindness, but we often do. Yes, there are truly altruistic people in this world, but I believe that egoism and altruism go hand-in-hand. By helping others we are reducing the distress of others and at the same time lessening our distress over the empathetic feelings we have.

Tags:   coming out · gayNo Comments