Not completely out of work mode over the holidays, I hunted down this scene from Spectre, where James Bond meets his love-interest-to-be (Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann). The writers introduce her via a cinematic masterclass in cutting the cloth of a character in only a few strokes.  First the visuals. She’s stunning, chic and exudes self-sufficiency to the point of frostiness. To top it off, she’s French.  Thus far: necessary but not sufficient.  How to signal her utter exceptionality?  From the mouth of Bond: “How does one train at Oxford and the Sorbonne, become a consultant, spend two years with Médecins sans Frontières … and end up here.”

A wave of disappointment. In the U.S. alone, Spectre opened in 3500 theatres. My elite club was now registering Kardashian appeal. OK, pride swelled my ego, but I didn’t really want to admit it.

It made sense.  MSFness as a character prop. MSFness as a signifier of a cool, rebellious commitment to ideals.  MSFness as the goop of the beautiful and the anointed. This MSFness that I hold so dear, my own Ferrari of humanitarian cred, increasingly bears resemblance to the sort of acquisition Choire Sicha finds in personal consumption. “Polo shirts, cars, houses, children, purebred dogs, washing machines, golf clubs, boats. These are things we buy as a shortcut to an identity.”  We must add to that the things we do, because in modern society we don’t just hold jobs and take holidays, we consume them, with a meaninfgul life reformulated as an accumulation of purchases and experiences.

Humanitarianess. No less than James Bond was hooked. So was I. So am I. We need to talk about this from an ethical perspective: the role played by humanitarian action as the personal champion of my self-image. This is my exploitation of humanitarianism’s winning formula in the competition for remarkability.  Among other traits, this is my self-curated individuality and selflessness – my ‘sacrificing’ a more common career that would have brought far greater financial reward.  But how can it be selfless if it goes so far to defining my self?

And let’s not be so negative. Work that matters.  Making a difference. Saving the world or just saving somebody. A contribution to the good of humanity. The admiration of those we admire. The praise of family and politicians and donors and beneficiaries. How much is this worth?  What price can be put on personal enrichment and contentedness? Better yet, how much should I be willing to pay for a life of purpose?  Seems a bargain now two generations (in my family) removed from a belief in God that might have conveyed similar spiritual fulfilment. Oh, and it’s lot cheaper than psychotherapy or a swish yoga retreat.

Since Henri Dunant this selfishness was certainly always present. Times, though, are changing, and humanitarianism is arguably ever more co-opted by the modern zeitgeist.  Does the next generation not require a more individualized, tangible participation in the good cause? Do they not possess a thirst to be seen embracing all the right thirsts?  Swipe right for humanitarian action. Can you name a more effective signifier of virtue?  Here is Rob Acker, CEO of Salesforce.org, speaking at a Davos panel hosted by IRIN: “Employees are the new humanitarians.… The number one attribute that millennials look for in their job is to have purpose. And companies need to give them that outlet for purpose.”

This is one example of what the IRIN article labels ‘the new players’, an assortment of newcomers to the humanitarian table who are “unapologetically redefining what it means to be humanitarian.”  A large part of me cringes, wanting to seal myself off in the comfort of humanitarianism’s exceptionality, in my club’s exclusivity.  Corporate humanitarians indeed! Yet I stop with the snobbery: we are not that different when it comes to the quest for purpose. 

Perhaps the more important question is whether this redefinition of humanitarians requires a similar redefinition of humanitarianism.  What happens if this changing of the guard exposes the sector’s ugly secret, the danger that my work has always been (ponderously) about me, then multiplied by the number of humanitarians?  

Even if that pushes cynicism too far, the point is the potential disruption of the charity model upon which the sector rests.  This life of purpose challenges the selflessness of our motivation and its insistence that benefits accrue unilaterally to the recipients of our beneficence.  Aid is not supposed to be self-interested.  Sure, we will admit that aid jobs earn us a decent wage and bring travel to exotic locations, but we treat those benefits more like incidentals.  We do not allow them to undermine the force of the charity model, and we rather easily sink into our faith in compassion as the ‘prime mover’ of our work.

The principle of humanity is compassion and it is definitive. As the sole motivation of humanitarian action it functions to distinguish it from other forms of relief aid. That ethical core needs to be discussed and it needs to change. In Madeleine Swann’s life prop, we can see that the ethics of humanitarian action must include a recognition of the dividends accruing to the humanitarian, and that nowadays act as a tax paid to us (and our organizations and donors) by the denigration of the ‘beneficiary’ to the lowly status of victim in need of being saved.  As I have written elsewhere, these are “the deeply engrained inequities of the Western charity model – plastering hierarchies such as rich/poor or developed/needy and giver/receiver or saviour/beggar upon nations, communities and people.” 

What might a better ethical model look like if not the charity model?  Perhaps it is useful (i.e., perhaps it helps deconstruct humanitarian power) to reconceptualize humanitarian action as an exchange, a transaction.  Not mere embodiments of compassion, but humanitarian action as an expression of mutual self-interest.