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this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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Asklemmy
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Even with the "worst" motivation, why couldn't OP apply the "best" strategy towards helping?
Which strategy is "best"? How would you know?
And, once again for you and everyone in the back, I'm not trying to grade OP's motivation. Motivations are motivations. I'm not interested in good or better, but rather more or less likely to actually help.
Just use your interpretation of best when you said "better" advice in your original comment. Seems like the metric towards "best" is "more likely to actually help".
Also, you can give a few example of motivations that would end up with the strategies most likely to actually work. Maybe OP didn't think of these motivations themselves, but they would adopt when you state them out loud for us.
But coming back to my main point, I still don't see how the motivation could dictate strategies most likely to help.
Let me see whether I understand.
I could make a handful of guesses about OP and their situation, and then use those guesses to write hundreds or even thousands of words, some of which might help and many of which wouldn't. On the contrary, some of them could be downright damaging, depending on a bunch of factors I don't know about OP, their relative, and the relationship between them.
Or I could ask some questions and wait for the answers, then narrow my suggestions to those that, given that additional context, are more likely to help.
I'm trying to help one person, not write a chapter of a book.
You're assuming that a strategy that is most likely to help on average for spherical relatives in a vacuum couldn't be damaging in some situations. I'm telling you it can, because I've witnessed it, so I'd like to avoid that here.
Even the advice you seemed to side with in another thread (Offer help once, be as sincere as you can, then shut up and wait for them to come to you.) is quite decent advice, but might not address OP's desire to help and OP might struggle to truly let go and shut up and wait. Many many people struggle with that. "Just do this thing that sounds simple, but might cause you to ruminate about this indefinitely and build up resentment" sounds risky and invites failure.
As for this:
You said that. I told you that the answer fills a bookshelf. I suggested two books to start. I totally understand if you don't care enough about the answer to read a book. I guess you could ask an LLM to summarize one of those books for you, in case that would be more palatable to you.
And yes, I know that this sounds evasive. I genuinely don't mean it that way. I don't have a 50-word answer for you that distills decades of research into why people choose to do what they do, such as OP's relative choosing not to learn to read. They might not understand it at all themself.
It's fine with me if we disagree on this point. Indeed, I don't need to convince you. I'd like to help OP and I'm not much concerned about justifying my methods to you. If you're actually interested, read the Deci book. I really liked it.
I've had enough of this discussion, so I'm going to stop. Peace.
On giving guesses: you could just give the strategy you think will be the most effective in helping and then pair the strategy with motivations if you think it's still necessary. That way you can really help OP be the most effective. If you don't do that, just sounds like you wanna critique and whine about OP's motivations.
On the motivations behind the same actions having different consequences: you are correct, it really sounds like you've avoided the question. When people have read and understood books, they usually are able to bring the argument in themselves.
Here I'll give you a simple counter-example of the exact same act with two different motivators and the same consequence:
Person A wants to help and asks person B in some specific way: "Do you wanna learn how to read?" The result is: Person B answers yes.
Person A wants to look good and asks person B in the same specific way: "Do you wanna learn how to read?". The result is: Person B answers yes.
Even if the motivation behind the same exact act would change the consequences, you'd have to demonstrate that's true instead of vaguely pointing at literature.