by wisconsin_cur » Sun 01 Jun 2008, 15:12:35
Compassion with out action runs the risk of being hypocritical... at the very least it will look hypocritical. Sitting at a sports bar in a year I look up and see pictures of a million starving Bangledeshies (sp?) I know, intellectually, that nothing can be done, they are the leading edge of (just to pick a number out of a hat) a 4 billion die off. Again, nothing can be done, am I a hypocrite for not doing anything? I would say "no" because the damage was done a long time ago we are only now feeling the pain. Sitting at the sports bar with my friend NC, we will do nothing different.
NC will, by his nature feel no compassion for those dying, he will feel no pain, he may even feel justified. He may tell me 3 months ago I joined this site called PeakOil.com and said all those (insert racial pejoritive term here) would be dying and I don't care. I got 6 months of spam in the basement."
Are the people of South East Asia people? Is it human to feel compassion when fellow people suffer? If the two answers are "yes" than C is better engaged with truth than NC. I can not prove that it is better to be engaged with truth anymore than I can prove it is better to be sober than high on opium but I believe it is better to be engaged with the world as it is, (filled with human suffering that I acknowledge as such) than deluded (by feeling as if they are not really people or by some chance of birth they are less deserving of my hamburger and awesome blossom than I).
It also comes down to recognizing the role of luck. If I were born there, I would be the one either dying or watching my children die. I did nothing to deserve to be here rather than there. I did nothing to choose my parents as opposed to other parents, maybe parents in Asia (in one case) or parents that abused me (forming me into an abuser or one of Ayoob's "dirtbags"). Call it luck, call it providence, whatever it was, I did not choose it. Feeling for others is a way to acknowledge that the "other" could just as well be me.
Concerning the second part of the question (and assuming something productive and meaningful can be done for SH) there are a lot of variables and I'm sure that I cannot address them all. Let me hit a couple of points.
Does C have property rights equal to NC? If so than C should be able to set up tents for the SH (barring any laws or zoning regulations already in place to the opposite). For sure C should be able to write a big check to buy tents and water purification kits or what ever for SH where ever they are.
After that we then have "dueling ego-centricisms." NC goes to the zoning commission to try to limit C's property rights in order to protect his property value or "way of life," C puts pressure on the government to care for SH, using NC's tax dollars and maybe setting up the refugee camp on the prize golf course that was the whole reason for NC spending the 5 million on the house to begin with. We then have to have a debate about the time of people we as a body politic want to be. Do we care for the dispossessed or do we protect golf courses?
There is also the utilitarian question, is it really better for us in the long-term to have SH in one place (where they can be monitored and controlled) or do we let them wander looking for food? NC and C may actually agree on the same action even though for different reasons. Again no difference in behavior, but perhaps it is NC who looks (but only looks) inconsistent even as C looked hypocritical at the sports bar.
Compassion is a state, it is an emotion. I believe it is a connection to truth and, only because I value truth, I believe it is important to retain compassion.
There are other reasons but this post is already to rambling and covers too much ground.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hy would you think that? Seems to me that compassion is the solution to most of our problems.
I do not think that. I was trying to gain something from the previous posts and encouraging the authors to contribute something to the substance of the discussion other than giving voice to whatever trauma it is that they think compassion caused (personified, it seems, in myself) in their past. There is a desire to blame compassion, I want to know why. If an argument can be made I might be convinced.
Apart from a more convincing argument, however, I would argue that it is exploitation of employers which flout the law more than compassion of those who help illegals that has led to the large number of illegal immigrants in this country. It is the exploitation of others that has led to black maleness often being defined in negative terms in the last generation not the compassion of white folk.
Compassion is reactive to a bad situation, it does not profit from suffering but reacts to it. Exploitation, however, profits from war and it profits from cheap labor and it profits from making farmers dependent upon purchased seed and fertilizer as well as many other things that, in the long or short run, create suffering for one group even as it creates profits for another. This too is part of the human condition, I personally do not see how we escape it. What some posters do not understand is that I believe it is possible to have compassion for exploiters as well as the exploited, it is not a zero-sum game.
I participate in the treatment of plenty of the "exploiter class" who lose it all and are found with a gun in their mouth and brought to the psych ward. I also deal with meth heads and various other "dirtbags." They are all people. They all hurt the same when a significant other leaves them. they are all subject to a degree of luck to which I am also subject to. Tomorrow it could be my kids and wife die in a car accident, how can I invalidate their suffering while pretending that only my own is real.
I would disagree, however, that compassion is some type of cure. I agree with many that we will shed at least 4 billion in somewhere between 10-200 years (how is that for playing it safe) and how we feel about it might have some minor effect (maybe my neighbor's kid doesn't die because I help them) but it is not going to change the trend.
That should be enough fodder for a few hours.
Hopefully I still agree with it when I am better rested.
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