Are there situations in which compassion is NOT a helpful response? If so, when and why? – question from the Charter for Compassion Facebook page
As I write this, there are three dozen or so responses to that question on Facebook. Some are asking for, or offering their own, definitions of “compassion” and “response.” And rightly so, because we have to set the context of the discussion. Context is essential to understanding.
If the writer’s intent was to equate “compassion” with “sympathy” or “tolerance”, then there are, I believe many times when, as some commenters noted, “compassion” becomes confused with “enabling.” In which case, the answer is “Yes indeed, there are many situations in which compassion is not an appropriate response.”
For me, however, compassion, like the Golden Rule, is a summary component of agapé – the inseverable relationship that binds all. It provides a sort of “operational hub” to work out of.
To respond to a situation compassionately requires us to “experience” it from the perspective of as many “others” as we can. Not just the most immediate “other”, but also the many peripheral “others” who will also be affected by our actions. In that sense, the answer is “No, there are no situations in which compassion is NOT a helpful response.” In fact, I would suggest that not responding compassionately on that level is a failure to respond at all.
And in that sense, I confess to failing frequently.
Which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. It’s just a lot harder than simply thinking in one-to-one terms. As they would say in the database world, compassion is a one-to-many relationship.
There’s’ a criticism of the Golden Rule that I think also applies here. It says that to follow it we would have to let criminals of all sorts go free.
Nonsense.
That would only be true if we ignored the effect such an action would have on the perpetrator’s past and potential future victims. To respond compassionately to a criminal means not only empathy for the life experiences that have led him or her to the point they’re at, but also consideration for all of the “others” that have been, or might be, harmed because of their current situation. To be truly compassionate, our response has to include justice, protection, and change.
We intuitively engage in this sort of exercise daily. Whether with our families or in the workplace, we’re continually weighing the effect a decision in regards to one person will have on others.
We know that hugging one child and not another, for example, isn’t “fair.” Or that going to lunch with Tom and not inviting John could be misunderstood as favouritism. We often adjust our response, just as often unconsciously, to compensate.
The value of questions like the one from the Charter for Compassion is in their ability to challenge us to become more intentional in doing what we do intuitively. That helps us to expand how we apply it.
And while we will certainly still fail to apply it everywhere and all the time, even if we fail just a tiny bit less, we will have succeeded exponentially more.
And together, we will make this a truly Golden Rule world.
Some ideas, like believing that everything is made of “fire”, fade away as we learn more about the mechanics of the universe. Others, like the concept expressed in the quote above, just seem to become more relevant. We might even think of them, in a world more and more obviously globally connected, as bordering on the prophetic.
