Is Compassion really all that Groovy?

Compassionate gestures have a purpose we seldom admit: they confirm our feeling of superiority, gratifying us with the certainty that those who receive out “help” are, indeed, below us. This makes the recipients loathe us. They gladly exchange the food and blankets we send for the opportunity to look down upon their “benefactors.”
-Howard Bloom in The Lucifer Principle

Read this passage earlier today and it got me thinking, is compassion really all that it is cracked up to be? It particular it made me step back and consider the motivation for my own actions. I do try to be a compassionate and generous person and I have never thought of these actions in anything less than glowing terms. Now I have cause to step back and reconsider what is going on here. Is my “compassion” and “generosity” actually benevolent? It is genuinely a good thing to do?

What’s your take?

Well, I have done things for people that they didn’t even know was done for them. I try to never talk about my good deeds with other people that know me (in person).

I think that in a capitalist culture like ours some but not all people feel like the owe the person that did something for them, or that they are being bought to some degree. That creates anger that I think is just if indeed that is even slightly the intension.

Anyway, secret orsubtle compassion is the best.

It comes to mind right at this moment that the overt “compassionate” ways of the “spiritual” annoy me for just this reason.

The paragraph is amasing, because it poses as so big a temptation to reconsider one of the basic moral precepts of man.

My take is this. Compassion is natural, and is recommended, because it stems good deeds. I don’t personally know the people on tv, but I feel compassion for them, so I pick up the phone and donate some money to come in their aid. Now Kant would say that compassion is useless alongside the categoric imperative, but let’s let Kant mind his own business.

So, as it is, compassion is not to be cast aside. Me, for instance, I don’t like to know that someone is feeling sorry for me, but I can’t stop it anyone from it, especially if they care about me.

Now the secret is how you help those who you feel compassion for.

If help comes as a gift, neatly wrapped with red ribbons, then it’s a flop. If help comes as a finite product, then it is normal that I should feel inferior. My benefactor offers me help, because he thinks that I need it. Need is the want for something you do not have, in my case the ability to solve my own problems. He has that and is willing to offer it to me benevolently. He, therefore, has something that I do not, this making him superior. Him giving me that what I need and asking nothing in return is an assessment that I lack something that he possesses, meaning that I am inferior to him in this matter. Now, there may be people who do not mind feeling inferior, but I, for one, do.

I am for the expression of compassion as an urge to try and do it for yourself. If someone feels compassionate about me, I don’t mind if he lends me a hand, offers me his services and gives me advice, but he has to leave the main part all to myself to figure out. This way he is a catalyst for my own abilities, this eliminating the certain feeling of superiority on his part or inferiority on mine.
I prefer to be helped in this way, and I guess most do.
I don’t like feeling indebted, all though I do have a pleasant feeling when helping one out.

This is a good topic before Christmas. I hope users will flock to answer it.

Cheerio.

Well, in characteristic Jungian style, there’re two ways to approach that. To you, there’s a conflict between what you think your motivation is, deep moral questioning, etc etc. But to the homeless guy you just gave food to, all he knows is he aint hungry anymore and probably doesn’t give a damn about your philosophical conflicts. Introvesion vs. extraversion. Yup.

Howard Bloom was a butt head!
His mommy spanked his butt too much.
(just kidding, i get a rush out of insolance at thee, sorry.)

If people had no compassion, they would have no understanding of feelings of others of the same species, and then we confuse it with charity? Charity is because we value the lives of others instead of just our own. Even chimps have a measure of compassion/forgiveness (cant quote that old documentory id watched).
People who claim what he claimed, are talking about personal motive-of-action methods/structures. He feels this and that as he gives and cares, but its up to us how we react or why we react sometimes.

Do i feel superior when i give love to 1 or the other?
No… i feel blessed that they are even alive,
and just want to be there for them, even if it hurts…
^
Thats just a personal expression; its not like everyone is like that!

maybe he was actualy noteing a massive lack of humility and apreshiation in average people? Sorry to call him “butt-head”, i was only jokeing.

The Adlerian pointed out something interesting, which I am in total support of, and would like to add it also as a P.S to my original thread.

Indeed, if, let’s say, you are in the position of bestowing your help to an unfortunate one, the best thing to do is keep yourself anonymous. Help is something so intimate, that it can easily turn into pedantry when done as an affirmation of your ego. Secrecy guarantees its validity.

Maybe the foremost benefactors of human kind have remained anonymous too. Alas, then…

With a sulky mean, Cheers.

Hi xanderman,

I think that this is a correct observation that acts of charity can be misused to show that those requiring help are in some way lacking and therefore inferior. But I think that compassion is different: “A deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it” dictionary.reference.com/search?q=compassion

Compassion shows solidarity and gives up the advantages it has over those in need. That is why there is so little compassion in the world today although people are charitable. I feel that it is even a fear of compassion that makes people charitable which those in need feel intuitively and resent.

Shalom

Xanderman, you’re quite right to point this out. this is why words like compassion, love, art, faith, and the like have lost their meaning. They’ve been adopted by our self importance which doesn’t comprehend degrees of meaning.

Don’t say it too loud though. Such thought at best will only get a warning scowl from the “Great Beast” since it knows people will not concern themselves with this observation. If enough started to contemplate such ideas, you’d better run. Jesus suggested this very same thing to the Pharisees and he got strung up. Who knows what your fate would be.

Hi xander,

IMO, one must seperate the concept of compassion from charitable acts. What most would call compassion is nothing more than thinly disguised charity - false compassion. For me, compassion is a lot more than “poor baby, let me help you.”

As others have suggested, genuine compassion isn’t a public display, but is kept as private as possible. I would even go so far as to suggest that it is a spontaneous feeling/understanding/action of empathy with another living thing. (yes, we have compassion with other than humans as well)

I like Bob’s definition but there is an added dimension I would consider. Compassion is helping others to grow in their lives. Sometimes true compassion appears to be the opposite of the conventional warm fuzzies definition. Example: You see me screwing up (drugs, alcohol, whatever) and you summon up the courage to confront me with my destructive behavior. You risk making me angry or even risk our relationship because you care. THAT is compassion at its’ hardest and best times.

And so, compassion isn’t just working a shift at the soup kitchen on Christmas Eve, it is a sensitivity to those around us that need a warm meal - or a kick in the butt, whatever is needed to help them. Compassion is probably best summed up in the phrase, “But for the grace of God, there go I…”

JT

Right is better, so doing the right thing will make us feel better about ourselves, and anything that makes us feel better about ourselves could stroke our ego. I don’t see a way to deny that. But to jump from there to a conclusion that we do nice things for the ego stroking it gives us seems like huge leap of faith (faith in cynicism, if you can imagine such a thing). I think it’s much simpler, and equally valid to point out that the mere fact we get good feelings for being generous is a sign of our true altruism.

Hi Ucc,

Is it true that altruism provides good feelings always? Is there any chance that altruism could also be just sensitivity to an understanding that we share responsibility for all of life? Is it possible that altruism goes beyond feeling good and is just doing what we empathetically see as required?

JT

 I would say all of those could be, and in fact are, the case. I was responding to the implication of the original post, that because generosity makes us feel good, there's something selfish or impure about it.

Hi Uccisore,

I was trying to get to the perspective of the person being helped and resenting that help - because it isn’t compassion, but charitableness for personal reasons. If we were honest about those reasons, it wouldn’t be selfish or impure, but it wouldn’t be compassion either.

Shalom

Uccisore writes:

I’m not sure about the selfish or impure part, but perhaps not genuine? Some would suggest that generosity named is simply pre-conceived morality and merely stroking one’s ego. Of course, this narrows the definition of altruism and comes dangerously close to starting the selfish/selflessness argument again. :astonished: IMO, generosity arises spontaneously and comes from the heart, not the mind. The explanations of real generosity are always after-the-fact and is a mind game trying to analyze intent in an effort to explain away the mystery of irrational doing without thinking.

JT

So might we conclude that compassion is beneficial and charity is harmful? Separating those two does seem to be an important distinction here. At the same time I wonder if compassion without charity hollow?

Then again, one of the main points from Bloom’s book is that charitable acts reinforce the social status hierarchy. Those on top use charitable acts to reinforce their position. Those on top almost say, “I have so much more than you that I can afford to give it away and suffer no pangs.”

Bloom notes, “…giving things to people is a way of humiliating them.”

“Even our recent ancestors were aware of generosity’s subversive power. Medieval Europeans aristocrats threw an annual feast and invited the peasants in to stuff themselves. The ritual drove home that the noble was on top and the peasants on the bottom. The Anglo-Saxon word for someone on the crest of the social heap -lord- was a testament to the put-down powers of the handout. The word’s literal meaning: ‘loaf giver.’”

Hi xander,

As a social mechanism, charitable giving is a worthy thing. It does give some relief to the have-nots even as it reinforces class distinctions. Another example of the social reinforcement of power is the potlatch tradition of the American coastal indian tribes. I suppose that even in a social setting, certain individuals may be motivated by compassion, but that isn’t a given, and the more public the display the less likely that compassion plays any part of ‘charity’.

I’d agree that compassion/charity are really two seperate issues even though the terms are often used interchangably.

I’d say that compassion may involve charity, but compassion has a much broader scope than mere charitable acts. Compassion is from the heart. Charity may be compassionate, but usually is a ‘look at me being charitable’ mind game.

JT

Thought we might continue this investigation here:

Investigating Charity