Curious about the values/ethics that guide the lives of providers & their clients

What values do you live your life by? Do you make small exceptions in your values as they relate to the hobby? Is what you are doing working for you? Do you think it would work for others? Are you happy? I mean really...I know this is kinda deep for a SHMB post but I'm genuinely curious about what different people value and what it means to them and how it's shaped their life.

I'm still refining what values should take precedence in my own life so it'd be beneficial to hear from real people that have made concrete commitments to certain ethical paths while either indulging in P4P or deciding to walk away from it. This is an anon online board so feel free to say what you really feel...esp. if it might entertain me briefly. Oh and providers please take it easy on the trite beauty pageant style replies- I'm looking for a sincere discussion not a threAD.

Make others happy and they'll make you happy. Sharing is giving. What goes around comes back around....and other cute teddy bear stuff

This is really not a place to judge others and what they do, however that seems to not be adhered to.

I digress,, I am a very open minded person on social values, and somewhat conservative on fiscal values.. Do I swing over to the left and right now and then? yes!! I think most people do, and if they dont well thats their choice...

I think treating everyone good until proven otherwise is the best way. I may hate your guts but I will be cordial to you regardless

I would say honesty, integrity, compassion, responsibility, respect and fairness are the values I would choose. Some of those may not seem possible in a client/provider situation but I think they can all be applied. Of course I expect these from any relationship. That's not to say I actually follow them i.e. I'm not honest about what I do with my SO and I'm not honest with the provider in regards to some personal information,.

Reya, one must remember an old adage...

"To thy own self be true"...

One must wake up in the morning, stare at the person staring back at them in the bathroom mirror, and decide whether to look away, or stare straight back and smile...

I decided long ago to live my life to the fullest; I value Compassion, Understanding, Respect, Integrity to name just a few...

Notice I capitalized them; make your values important, and stand up to them...

I can blend my real world life with my hobby life; I travel extensively, and enjoy meeting people around the nation on this board; again, treating them with Respect, and enjoying each others time together and getting to know a new friend at the same time...

You do not lessen your values because you engage in pay for play; in some cases you strengthen them, Compassion, Understanding, Respect are just a few to name...

One time I was having some really strong hallucinations and a clear soft voice told me to "love and take care of one another"...

As a general rule, in or out of the hobby, it's important to realize that there can be no perfect solutions or freedom from dilemmas or failures to follow our ethical principles at all times. Even at out best we live in an imperfect world, rely on imperfect people (whether we want to or not), make decisions on imperfect or outdated information. Anyone, in any endeavor, that draws a line of zero-tolerance in the sand is being naive, whether they realize it or not.

As far as my behavior, I keep it simple. Just a few rules, in or out of the hobby.

#1 Try to not cause harm to another. "Try" is the operative word. Any action, no matter how noble or well-intentioned, can have unanticipated consequences. I don't beat myself up if something I do inconveniences, irritates or causes a loss for another if I didn't do it intentionally. Depending on the situation I may apologize or try to make amends, but if the injured party bears some responsibility, or most of it, I may just keep going on my way. I do this because when I have been the injured party, I didn't hold the other person responsible for things that went badly for me due to unintended consequences. But this leads to rule #2.

#2, I say "No" to anybody (including friends or family) who asks me for anything which I cannot afford to risk, no matter how badly they may need my help. I may point them in the direction of someone else who can help, but if helping them puts my circumstances or resources at risk, I say "No" as compassionately as I can. The reason is that I do have some people that rely on me. I take that responsibility seriously, and I will not compromise my ability to care for them should an emergency arise. They have "dibs" on me and everything I have. Everybody else in the world takes second place. Even myself.

Which kind of leads to #3. I try to be as honest as I can. But 100% honesty is impossible and sometimes is irrational, especially in the hobby, which requires some degree of deception to others (family, friends, employers, neighbors, etc.) in order to participate and function in. But as far as I can I try to be as clear and straightforward and honest as I can while maintaining my privacy. And the whole time I don't expect others to be honest with me. I know they may be telling me a fair bit of the truth, but I don't expect them to be perfectly completely candid with me. They'd be fools if they were. Now, there have been some people, very few, but some, in the hobby that have become friends of mine, to one degree or another, in the real world. We keep up with each other, some more than others. But those relationships didn't spring up overnight and were able to develop over years because I followed rules 1, 2, and 3.

Zabrina :"make others happy and they will make you happy" that is definitely true in many parts of life but it seems a bit over simplified and optimistic(or maybe I'm just a complicated pessimist?) as living your life to make others happy without any guarantees they will return the favor would leave you wide open to have moochers and hangers on that just take and take while giving you the bare minimum return on your emotional investment. I agree though that your best shot at getting people to care about making you happy is by making them happy first.

Carl: When you talk about being able to say "No" IF someone needs your help and you aren't in a position to risk helping them does that imply you should generally say "Yes" if someone needs your help and it wouldn't be critical to your survival to deny them the help but you just don't feel like it for whatever reason? Would lack of action in that situation make you an asshole since they have more to gain than you do to lose by you exerting effort on their behalf? Where does our duty to other people start and end?

Everyone that mentioned honesty: Is it just me or have y'all noticed more hobby people than civie people seem to have a fascination/obsession with honesty and "the truth"- often pursuing it past the point where it is beneficial to anyone?

Anyway for me personally I think the top 3 values I make a priority in my life are: Honesty, Gratitude, and Fairness/Justice... the fairness/justice thing tends to lead me to problems sometimes because I have a hard time forgiving people if I feel I've been wronged and I will admit I get pleasure in seeing people get what's coming to them regardless if the things they have earned coming to them are good or bad.

I wish more providers would reply and that there was a way to get purely civie comments somehow so we can compare viewpoints. Anyway, thanks y'all. I'm glad I have a place to babble early in the morning and that people respond to me with such kind, thought provoking answers.

Carl: When you talk about being able to say "No" IF someone needs your help and you aren't in a position to risk helping them does that imply you should generally say "Yes" if someone needs your help and it wouldn't be critical to your survival to deny them the help but you just don't feel like it for whatever reason? Would lack of action in that situation make you an asshole since they have more to gain than you do to lose by you exerting effort on their behalf? Where does our duty to other people start and end? Originally Posted by Reya Sunshine

It does not imply that I would say yes automatically, just that I wouldn't dismiss the request out of hand. But since I understand that some people intentionally deceive others, and some may even be deceiving themselves, it means that if I have available time, effort and resources to give to help someone that I critically examine the needs of the requester and their veracity. I have known several people, some in the hobby, that are kind of old school crunchy-granola Old-Austin hippie-ish in their outlook that are constantly going on about how people deserve a second chance. And for the most part those people have taken huge hits from people that are actually on their 102nd chance, already having burned their bridges with all known friends, family and friends of friends and family. The outlook of those idealists is that it's ok if they're taken advantage of by ten liars and manipulators if that means that one truly person gets helped. It is my view that it's best to try and help eleven truly needy and not one skeezy piece of shit. The resources given to each liar/manipulator are, in essence, stolen from a truly needy person. That may mean that sometimes a needy person's needs are passed over. As an example, I'll offer a person begging on the street whatever food I have in my possession before I give them cash. If the person declines my offer, then I think to myself that they couldn't really be that bad off.

One of the things I remember from a few years ago is a guy begging outside a fast food joint I had placed a take-out order at on the way home from work. As I was walking in, a guy outside was begging for food. Not money, not anything else, just food. Asking for somebody to get him some thing to eat. The guy was rail thin. He definitely could use a meal. A couple of soccer moms and their kids just walked past the guy like he was nothing. I hated that sight. Affluent moms in big-ass SUVs training their kids to reflexively ignore somebody begging on the street. I went inside and got my order and gave it to him. When I got home I made myself something to eat from what I had in the fridge that I was previously feeling too lazy to make, so I had placed the take-out order. I actually started crying and kept on for a while, just asking myself how those women and their kids could just walk past this human being like he was just dirt. I might have joined in their callousness if the guy had been asking for money, which could have gone for food, liquor or drugs. Had I given money in that case, that money would be gone and it wouldn't be available to help someone that might have just needed food that that money could have bought. But he was just asking for something to eat. So, I caved and gave him my food. And I couldn't understand how they didn't cave. I kind of hope those pony-tailed cunts all burn in Hell.

Maybe the "pony-tailed cunts" and their kids give to a homeless charity, so they don't feel obligated. Maybe there are other options for someone who just needs food, besides hanging out at a fast-food joint. Maybe the guy was rail-thin because of lifestyle choices, and giving him food just enables him to spend panhandling money recklessly. Maybe they choose to confine their charitable giving to victims of natural disaster, who plainly don't have any other choices.

Lots of maybe's, and not for me to judge, or condemn anyone to burn in hell. Everyone has to know their own boundaries, and we can choose to respect those boundaries or condemn them.

Personally, I don't have any hard and fast boundaries. Sometimes I'll give them something, sometimes not. Sometimes I'll walk right past them and pretend they're not there, other times I'll at least wish them good luck or a nice day. Sometimes I'll buy them some food, or give them some money, and I've even been known to take a homeless person home because he asked for a shower, and the nose knows that he needed one. Depends on my mood, truth be known.

And I can be judgmental about the stinginess of others, too. We all have our ups and downs, good days and not so good.

But today, my inclination is to give a mulligan to the pony-tailed cunts and their kids. We can't look into the souls of others. We can only look into our own souls, and some days the visibility can be murky at best.

" When in doubt ... throw it out " This is the code I live my life by. That week old take out in the fridge calling your name ? Dont do it ! Its a trap. You will be sorry in the mornin and there just isn't any General Tso's chicken that is good enough to risk it. Hot damn I do want some fried rice now though.

Oz, giving to charity does not excuse ignoring the man. They didn't even give him a "Sorry, but no." What drove me nuts is their complete ignoring of him. That to me is far more dehumanizing and degrading to the man than not meeting his request. It's like the saying goes, "The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference." Teaching their kids to shut out others like that, I feel perpetuates that sort of behavior and trains them to be insensitive to the suffering of others. And I do think there's a special place in hell for people like that. And they will have earned their ticket by practicing that indifference and spreading it to others around them and to the next generation.

I had my teenage son with me at a Burger King a couple years ago. There was a "rail thin" man begging there that my son and I both recognized because he was homeless, and lived beneath a highway overpass a mile from my home. Both of us had seen him dozens of times but always at the highway; this time he was at the BK. He was asking everyone if they would buy him a $1 burger and saying that he hadn't eaten in several days. I could believe that. We were on a very tight budget because I was unemployed at the time, and my son looked back and forth between me and the homeless guy half a dozen times before quietly telling me that he'd skip lunch and I should buy something for this guy. I don't think I've ever been prouder of my kid in my life. I ended up bringing the guy inside, buying lunch for myself and my son, and telling the gal behind the counter to give the man whatever he wanted and add it to my bill. The man didn't take advantage, and after he placed his order I told the counter gal to give him an extra Whopper to go. My son looked at me like he'd never looked at me before; I think it was the first time he'd ever been proud of me. That was a good feeling.

Oz, giving to charity does not excuse ignoring the man. They didn't even give him a "Sorry, but no." What drove me nuts is their complete ignoring of him. That to me is far more dehumanizing and degrading to the man than not meeting his request. It's like the saying goes, "The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference." Teaching their kids to shut out others like that, I feel perpetuates that sort of behavior and trains them to be insensitive to the suffering of others. And I do think there's a special place in hell for people like that. And they will have earned their ticket by practicing that indifference and spreading it to others around them and to the next generation. Originally Posted by Carl

Great post Carl. Thanks.

First and foremost: be honest with myself/yourself. It can be real easy to become very self-deluded in life and retreat into a perpetual state of fantasy, especially as a hobbyist. Set personal limits and stick to them.

Secondly: be willing to make sacrifices for the greater good, but not at the expense of life, limb, or lodging. If it means passing on lunch so that someone else can eat, then that is noble. But if you do so to the point that you make yourself sick, what good have you done since you would not be able to continue that habit? Now, I know there is some ladies in the hobby for instance that are only in it short term or to make a little extra cash, and I don't mind contributing to their cause, but not at the expense of my own ability to pay my rent.

Finally, Hope. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. That sounds a bit jaded and oxymoronic, but it helps me deal with the reality of life in general, especially where other people are concerned. Expect the best from people, but be realistic about those expectations. Forgive failures, but don't forget.

Just my buck and a quarter...