>So far as your wife is concerned, she may have recounted this story
>in order to share a moment of sympathy/grief and she did not want a
>sociological/intellectual/lecture instead.
>
>One must pay attention and be sensitive.
The difficulty for people like Wojtek, if I understand it correctly, is that the sort of person who tends to analyse things systematically can't just turn it off on demand. It is part of who they are.
So when someone raises those sort of personal problems to someone like Wojtek, he is automatically drawn to try to come up with systematic solutions. I know this because its how my mind works too. Think of it as a kind of social retardation if you like. Most people do, but people like me an Wojtek tend to systematically analyse *that* too. ;-)
Think of it this way perhaps, you a chiding Wotjek for failing to appreciate his wife's need to confine discuss the discussion to the personal aspects of the particular case. Yet it is apparent that Wotjek has an inherent need to discuss the systematic aspects. What about his needs? He said he at least tried to also acknowledge the personal side, though if he's anything like me he's probably not competent at such a task and he made an awful mess of it. Nevertheless, if we are to believe him he tried, his wife flatly refused to even try, in fact whinged and moaned as if it was all about her!
Mind you, I'm not blaming her. Some people don't see things in that way, most people don't probably. Most people wouldn't have seen the statue of David in that huge block of raw Marble either, and who could blame them? But by the same token it would now be perverse to accuse Michelangelo of being blind for failing to see just the same shapeless chunk of rock that everyone else saw, wouldn't you say?
Co-incidently, another co-op member rang me yesterday to tell me his problems. Won't bore you with all the details, which boil down to a financial emergency. The bottom line is that since he is behind in his rent, the co-op can't help. I explained this to him, but then he starts complaining about how he can't afford this and that and more or less trying to make me feel guilty.
In response, I told him it wasn't fair to lay all his problems on me, unless he was prepared to give me the tools to solve them. The tools I would need, I explained, would be total control of his household income. I guaranteed that his financial problems would soon be over, if he handed over his entire pension etc and let me decide what to spend it on for him. As expected, he was not in the least bit attracted to the idea. But I did my best.
Its all to do with how you perceive things you see. This fellow saw things entirely in terms of an immediate lack of funds to replace an essential piece of equipment that had failed. The only solution he could see was to get the co-op to buy it for him, which it would do, except for the fact that he was in arrears of rent.
What he failed to see (aside from the obvious expenditure-side of his financial ledger) was the wider, systematic, picture. That is, if the co-op was to operate on the basis that the generous benefits of co-op membership were to be made available to members whether or not they paid their rent, then *none* of us would bother to pay our rent. It isn't as though we couldn't all find something better to spend our money on. So in the end none of us, including him, would enjoy these benefits. So we've put in place a system to guard against that potential problem. Now eventually he'll grasp that its in his interests to pay his rent punctually, even though the co-op doesn't automatically evict someone who gets a week or two behind. It just suspends some of the additional perks.
What seems obvious to people like Wojtek and me is that the systematic issues are fundamental to addressing personal problems. Whether you like it or not, whether you can even see it or not. We can no more discuss these issues without mentioning systematic issues than we could conceive of opening a pub that doesn't sell beer.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas