• TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Definition:
    Porter (noun): a person employed to carry luggage and other loads, especially in a railway station, airport, hotel, or market.

    There maybe all sorts of reasons to put a porter into your service but one that stands out from the rest is your inability to handle your luggage - there could be just too many bags and suitcases to handle or they may be too heavy for you. Asking for a porter wherever you may be is to admit that your baggage is just too much of a burden and that you're willing to pay for that burden to be lifted off of your shoulders. When the burden is beyond your capacity, you will have to engage a porter.

    So far so good.

    There's little need to mention that burdens come in all shapes and sizes but there's one specific kind that has a starring role insofar as this post is concerned viz. psychological burden, made up of all our anxieties, worries, fears, and sorrows.

    What if it were possible to transfer our psychological burden to someone else like we do with our luggage at an airport or railway station? You know, avail the service of a porter who's willing to relieve you of your anxieties, fears, worries, and sorrow and bear them for you, all for a reasonable fee of course.

    Is such a service possible? Can we transfer our stress to someone else? How much are you willing to pay for such a service?
  • Jack Cummins
    5.1k
    The burden of carrying loads is most definitely connected to psychology anxieties and I am writing as someone who is about to move for a second time in months.
    After five years of work stress I found out in May that I had to move. I had such a problem getting rid of clutter, all the books and CDs I had bought during that time. I kept finding books buried and one main synchronicity was that I kept finding books in my room about sacred mazes and labyrinths. I spent 3 months unravelling my maze, struggling to find charity shops taking donations. I just could not believe the amount of clutter and debris and felt like I was digging a quarry.
    I finally moved and by the time I had moved the boiler had packed up and it turned out that the landlord has told me that he will need me to move to a room a short way away so once again I feel I need to carry my cross.
    My landlord has offered to offer assistance with my move, to be my porter. But I will be trying to get rid of more bags to the charity shops because the landlord is not aware of the heaviness of my burden, although I think he has picked up on a certain intensity.
    I wonder whether other people reading your thread will relate to this on the level of moving and clutter or perhaps they will offer illuminating on the idea from an entirely different perspective.
  • Pinprick
    950
    Is such a service possible? Can we transfer our stress to someone else? How much are you willing to pay for such a service?TheMadFool

    I think that’s kind of the goal of therapy; only ideally the stress of the client would not be transferred onto the therapist, it would simply dissipate, or become lightened in some sense. Apparently, people, or insurance companies at least, are willing to pay quite a lot for this service. ~$100 per hourly session, possibly multiple sessions per week for years.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    I suppose psychiatry comes closest to what I have in mind. The only difference is that the "porters" I'm talking about relieve you of stress that's considered normal like worrying about your family, exam anxiety, fear of death, grieving over a loved one's death.
  • BitconnectCarlos
    1.7k
    It's interesting to think about. I don't think such a service is possible, and I think the closest thing you're going to get to relieving psychological pain is drugs. If such a service were a thing people could charge good money for it.
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    Are you looking for temporary or permanent transfer? A porter provides a temporary service - the burden is returned to you at the completion of their service, and was never really theirs. Is it a ‘whipping boy’ you’re looking for?

    People transfer their psychological burdens to others all the time - often to those they purport to love, or at least need. They do it with words, but they can also do it with non-verbal communication, with a look or expression, or with action. Some believe they have ‘paid’ for the service, whether with money or with their affection, with their love.
  • Jack Cummins
    5.1k

    Unfortunately, people do expect others to carry their burden mostly and the ideal is for us to carry these loads individually as far as possible. Perhaps therapy can be a bridge enabling us to make contact with the figure of the porter within the soul to enable greater self-reliance.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    I don't think such a service is possible, and I think the closest thing you're going to get to relieving psychological pain is drugs.BitconnectCarlos

    I was thinking about something with no minuses whatsoever - between the porter who carries your bags and you there's no net loss - you're disburdened and the porter gets paid. A win-win situation.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Are you looking for temporary or permanent transfer?Possibility

    The first step would be to investigate the feasibility of such a transfer. Is it possible?

    Now that I think of it, I think it's a great plot for a movie/play/book in a futuristic setting.
  • ssu
    7.9k
    Is such a service possible? Can we transfer our stress to someone else? How much are you willing to pay for such a service?TheMadFool
    Comes to mind the view that a psychiatrist is from one viewpoint a prostitute: he or she gives you as a professional service something that satisfies a need that usually would be given in a functioning intimate relationship with another person. Yet the relationship is made easy as he or she is a professional and you are his or her patient. And you pay for this service.

    Yet I think that people that use a porter for their luggage aren't in any way incapable of doing the task themselves if they use a porter. They could indeed use a trolley themselves easily, but if there are people working as porters, let's say on an airport, railway station or in a hotel, they will use the services of a porter as they don't want to look to be parsimonious and understand that porters have low income. So why to be stingy and not pay 5 bucks or so for some ease? After all, you have reserved and hence bought a room in an expensive hotel.
  • Jack Cummins
    5.1k

    Most people don't pay for the service of psychiatrist in this country and often don't choose to see one. They are often referred and if they are not willing to have treatment they can end up being Sectioned. Psychotherapy is often costly but unlike prostitution you are can't just ask for your demands to be gratified and it is hard work. Perhaps there would be less need for people to need therapy if human beings could talk more openly to their families and friends.
    I am not sure about your criticism of the actual point about people being able to carry luggage without assistance because carrying heavy loads can be difficult without the large trolleys porters have. Portering is a valuable profession and should be respected as such. For dyspraxic people like me who battle with the physical world a porter can save a lot of time and energy. But perhaps I need a therapist to guide me back from philosophy to being grounded in the physical world.
  • ssu
    7.9k
    I am not sure about your criticism of the actual point about people being able to carry luggage without assistance because carrying heavy loads can be difficult without the large trolleys porters have.Jack Cummins
    Why would people have heavy loads they cannot carry?

    If we move, we will either rent a van or get a moving company. For the vast majority the clothes they need for a trip can be carried by themselves. That usually happens in airports before going through the customs check.
  • Jack Cummins
    5.1k

    Have you tried moving in lockdown and its aftermath, with all the social distancing measures. I only had a bedsit with hardly any furniture but even though I had a van I did the move with a van but the driver did not come into the old room or the new one and I was left carrying the load.
    Of course this could be seen as the weight of my clutter and I certainly don't want to go on about my issues. But I don't believe that I am the only person who has had such an experience.
    Perhaps my personal experience offers an image
    of the weight of the physical world which cannot be carried alone, in the upside down world of the pandemic all the complications arising from it. I began the telling of my move because I thought that The Mad Fool's image of the Porter has connotations of psychological baggage but also of sheer weight of the physical dimensions itself.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Comes to mind the view that a psychiatrist is from one viewpoint a prostitute: he or she gives you as a professional service something that satisfies a need that usually would be given in a functioning intimate relationship with another person. Yet the relationship is made easy as he or she is a professional and you are his or her patient. And you pay for this service.

    Yet I think that people that use a porter for their luggage aren't in any way incapable of doing the task themselves if they use a porter. They could indeed use a trolley themselves easily, but if there are people working as porters, let's say on an airport, railway station or in a hotel, they will use the services of a porter as they don't want to look to be parsimonious and understand that porters have low income. So why to be stingy and not pay 5 bucks or so for some ease? After all, you have reserved and hence bought a room in an expensive hotel.
    ssu

    Yes, the details are a bit sketchy with my analogy as you've noticed. The exchange between a porter and the person who employs one isn't equal - the porter usually gets the short end of the stick. Also, it's not always the case that someone hires a porter because the luggage is too heavy to handle - sometimes people are just plain lazy.

    However, there's enough of a resemblance between real porters and my hypothetical ones to get my point across.
  • ssu
    7.9k
    The exchange between a porter and the person who employs one isn't equal - the porter usually gets the short end of the stick. Also, it's not always the case that someone hires a porter because the luggage is too heavy to handle - sometimes people are just plain lazy.TheMadFool
    Yet isn't it beneficial for the poor guy working as a porter that people do use his services? What do you give the porter when you show that you can carry your own luggage fine and his services aren't needed? Who is really then the one giving the porter the short end of the stick?

    Menial jobs are important in a society. There ought to be a full ensemble of various job positions starting from easy and menial to the difficult, demanding high pay jobs open for everybody. Replacing the menial jobs with automation isn't a good answer in my view, because that is the answer, usually. Thinking that menial jobs are degrading to the people working in them often stops short of thinking that what other jobs would there be open for the people.

    But this of course is aside your OP, if I understood your point correctly.

    One thing that came to my mind from your OP about psychological burden is the need for people to seek help or counseling if there happens a large highly publicized catastrophe. Health professionals might even demand to go and seek help. Churches open their doors. Seeking help from a "shrink" or getting "crisis management" is suddenly very acceptable as we have learnt that there is this time for collective mourning. This can be beneficial, because there's still this stigma that if you see a psychiatrist.
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