Human Caring — on What Scale?

Many of the problems we call “social problems” are problems of scale.

Take climate change: the nature of the problem is large, the short-term solutions are small, and in the mismatch of scale, the problem grows larger. Or take income distribution: the one percent are wealthy on a scale so disproportionate to their numbers that they and we can hardly distribute their wealth differently even when the will is there.

The act of human caring – a k a charity – is also often a problem of scale, and two stories out of Italy over Christmas make this clear.

The Times carried a vivid and affecting story about the Neapolitan practice of the caffè sospeso, or “suspended coffee,” whereby a person buying a coffee (which in Italy means buying a receipt for a coffee, which is then presented at the coffee counter) buys a second receipt, which is then left “suspended” for a stranger in need to use later on.

It’s a beautiful practice – but buried deep in the story is the fact that at the Naples coffee bar featured in the piece (and so, presumably, a showcase for the practice) about 1500 coffees are bought each day and about ten are left “suspended” for strangers. One out of 150 coffees is left for a stranger.

On the scale of things, is that good or bad? At first glance, it seems to me minuscule; and it seems to me nutty that ten “suspended” coffees a day will get you a trend piece on the front page of the Times.

All the more so when the Guardian website had posted a story about a social problem Italy is facing on a very different scale. This year more than 167,000 migranti have come to Italy, most of them from north Africa or Syria. That’s a group of people the size of the population of Parma or Salerno — or even of Rome’s historic center. And it’s a group of people whose needs can’t be met with suspended coffees and suchlike.

Or can they? What if the “suspended coffee” were extended – scaled – to apply to sandwiches, suits of clothes, apartments, and postsecondary education, as has already been done with the “suspended” pizza? One out 150 of each of these social goods, given gratis, straightforworldly and voluntarily, might make for a different society.

It might even give charity a good name.

• 26 December 2014
• 1