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.