Saviour Complex

Some of you may have visited my company's website by now. As you must have noticed, we have defined an ambitious mandate for ourselves, to become a technology company that uses technology as a means to do socially-relevant work. This blog is an attempt to put into words my thoughts on social entrepreneurship lest I be accused of falling into the trap of the "saviour complex".

What is the "saviour complex"? The way I see it, saviour complex is the phenomenon in which perfectly sane people fall into the misconception that they have been born to save the world, that they are the saviours of a particular section of people in the world. When someone jumps into the world of social work, it is quite easy to get carried away with the good work you do and think of yourself as a "better" human being than others who do not do such work. Its perfectly natural to think that way and I want to consciously avoid getting into this trap.

Let me walk you through my thought process...

I believe there is no such thing as a "sacrifice". Every second of our lives, at a conscious or subconscious level, all of us are performing a cost-benefit analysis in our heads. One of the strongest manifestations of the instinct of self-preservation is a necessity to feel good about oneself. When we do something which we normally won't (sacrifice, in other words), we do it only because it increases our internal feel-good factor. We actually "want" to perform that sacrifice. (Well, thats my belief and it is fine if you don't share it. I am not trying to convince you)

So, when all this is going on inside your head, it is quite easy to feel good about yourself when you are helping out others. With a little bit of imagination, your world view could turn into proclaiming yourself a "saviour". Nothing wrong in doing so, but it has a tremendous downside, as you can probably see. The moment our work becomes about "saving them", we are wired to think of ourselves as superior. We start making decisions "for them", which is a foolish thing to do. People who need to be "saved" are not looking for our pity or compassion; they are looking for a way out of the mess they are in.

I strongly believe we should empower the underprivileged of the world to find a way out of the "situation" they are in, rather than provide humanitarian aid to get them out of it. Of course, in some situations, humanitarian aid is the best way. But one size does not fit all and this is not a universal solution. The long-term strategy for helping the poor and eradicating poverty has to be to provide them means to a better life. Let them be the final decision-makers; we should just try to set up the options for them to choose from.

With this sort of thinking, I have analyzed my motivations in pursuing social entrepreneurship. The fact that I recognize the "saviour complex" is a good thing. I will be more wary of it and even if I do eventually fall into that pit, I hope to realize it soon enough to get out of it quickly. I also have realized that my mandate is not to make decisions for the poor and underprivileged; my mandate is to create the opportunities and the environment required for them to rise upto the challenge of poverty and get to what they consider a better standard of living.

For now we are focussed on building a successful commercial enterprise and trying to figure out the pieces needed to make social entrepreneurship work. I intend to keep you posted on what I discover along the way...