The spirituality of compassion (and why we should preserve it)

[ProfessorX]

Humans are being manipulated into giving up their compassion, at least in the way compassion is an emotion, a very directly felt experience. We can still preserve in us the idea and understanding of compassion, and of its importance. But an idea without passion, without emotion and feeling is not the same. Compassion comes from somewhere other than ideas alone, it is an experience born of experiences and of shared structures of information. What I mean by that is: the mind is something like a structure of information, or information-as-structure, and each one of us has that (or maybe it is better to say each one of us is that).

When our structure resonates or aligns with another person’s structure, that is a sympathetic resonance that can develop and be felt. We identify this as understanding, trust, connection, and it is a felt experience. Lots of human emotions are built upon this sort of foundation.

Without compassion we are like robots. Mechanical machines. That was redundant but you get the point. Soulless, zombie-like. This might not be noticed at first because even as compassion is fading there are still many other feelings and even emotions to experience. We might fill our lives with people and situations that cause wide ranges of feeling and emotion for us to enjoy. But without compassion, over time this all begins to fade and reduce to flattened, simpler forms. There is something very important about the experience of compassion as an emotion and strong feeling and all this implies, somehow this is important to the overall structure of not just the rest of our emotions but also to consciousness itself, to the total body of information-as-structure which is our experiencing subjective world.

Don’t let your compassion be taken from you. It is not worth allowing other ideas, people, situations or even truths to interfere with this in a negative way. There are other paths to take to those same ideas, people, situations and truths. If something is causing you to lose compassion then ask yourself, what is doing that and why is it doing that to you? And do you want to allow it to have that effect? It is up to you, we are free beings in our souls. Our intentions shape our decisions and outcomes even if imperfectly.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Why did you use the word spirituality in the OP?

Can spirituality or compassion be exploitable?

How can one preserve them without being exploited, or be unexploitable while preserving them?

Ththththnx.

[futureone]

I invented Futarani in order to achieve a compassionate, loving society.

You won’t find compassion amongst right-wingers or leftist.

Cis or trans, all the same. No compassion to be found.

If anything, leftists are the bigots. I found right-wingers do not fear me. Leftists fear me, because I look Mexican or East-Asian. Leftists virtue signal as anti-racists to compensate for their own inadequacies.

With any leftist you will find some contradictions, maybe you will find leftists that have Mexican friends, but usually because those particular Mexicans look domesticated. Anyone that looks slightly edgy, or slightly dangerous, like a slightly edgy slightly dangerous Mexican, the leftists will run away from, the white yuppie hipster leftists are afraid.

[MrAuthoritarian]

@ProfessorX

This is for you friend.

[Vince]

The clown face and the picture makes so much sense… ignorance is 100% owned by you my friend and I’m glad you are able to present it proudly

[MrAuthoritarian]

@Vince

Oh no, guy here is saying mean things to me.

My night has now been ruined, what ever will I do?

[Vince]

Cry… take your ball and go home… back to the mother land…. Oh wait you live in the US… liberal commy

[Bob]

@ProfessorX

Humans are being manipulated into giving up their compassion, at least in the way compassion is an emotion, a very directly felt experience. We can still preserve in us the idea and understanding of compassion, and of its importance. But an idea without passion, without emotion and feeling is not the same. Compassion comes from somewhere other than ideas alone, it is an experience born of experiences and of shared structures of information. What I mean by that is: the mind is something like a structure of information, or information-as-structure, and each one of us has that (or maybe it is better to say each one of us is that).

I’m quite surprised at this text judging from out past conversations, because you must have noticed that it is compassion that is probably my biggest motivator. Echoing @Ichthus77, it is also where I was most vulnerable. I would say that compassion is less something that we can understand or conceptualise, but the emergent result of paying more attention.

@ProfessorX

When our structure resonates or aligns with another person’s structure, that is a sympathetic resonance that can develop and be felt. We identify this as understanding, trust, connection, and it is a felt experience. Lots of human emotions are built upon this sort of foundation.

I can’t help but understand this as saying that compassion is mutual sympathy, which it can be, but not necessarily. It is a spontaneous inclination to be helpful in some way and may result in mutual sympathy, but not always. Understanding, trust and connection are dependent upon the mutuality of sympathy, but speaking from a nursing perspective, that may be something a patient cannot achieve.

What I think you are referring to is empathy, which is necessary for the kind of relationships you mean. This is indeed something that we must preserve and in many cases rebuild so that mutual sympathy can work on building understanding, trust and connection.

@ProfessorX

Without compassion we are like robots. Mechanical machines. That was redundant but you get the point. Soulless, zombie-like. This might not be noticed at first because even as compassion is fading there are still many other feelings and even emotions to experience. We might fill our lives with people and situations that cause wide ranges of feeling and emotion for us to enjoy. But without compassion, over time this all begins to fade and reduce to flattened, simpler forms. There is something very important about the experience of compassion as an emotion and strong feeling and all this implies, somehow this is important to the overall structure of not just the rest of our emotions but also to consciousness itself, to the total body of information-as-structure which is our experiencing subjective world.

The condition you are describing fits much better to a lack of empathy, which is indeed a huge problem. If we can’t engage with our fellow human beings and lack interest in where they are coming from or what they are feeling, we remain inattentive and unresponsive, which makes relationships very superficial or even impossible. That is even worse than lacking compassion, which is a step further.

@ProfessorX

Don’t let your compassion be taken from you. It is not worth allowing other ideas, people, situations or even truths to interfere with this in a negative way. There are other paths to take to those same ideas, people, situations and truths. If something is causing you to lose compassion then ask yourself, what is doing that and why is it doing that to you? And do you want to allow it to have that effect? It is up to you, we are free beings in our souls. Our intentions shape our decisions and outcomes even if imperfectly.

I would therefore add that we should avoid becoming inattentive and disinterested so that when someone is in need we can also be compassionate.

[ProfessorX]

Yes, I realize the words sympathy, empathy and compassion have distinct meanings, although they are all similar enough in their meaning that I didn’t feel a need to really nitpick which terms I was going to use for this post. But compassion seemed most accurate to me since, for me anyway, it involves not only emotional alignment and feeling what the other person is feeling ( to at least a minimum ) but also indicates a powerful intention and desire, it is less purely reactive-feeling-based compared to sympathy or empathy, at least how I see it. But yeah, it doesn’t really matter. Words are just words. The meaning behind them is all that matters. Feel free to substitute different words for the ones I use if that makes things clearer.

@Bob

I’m quite surprised at this text judging from out past conversations, because you must have noticed that it is compassion that is probably my biggest motivator.

I understand where you are coming from, but it would be a mistake to judge me as a non-compassionate person simply because I take an honest look at the causes of something like violence in society. I am quite certain there is a genetic component to this, as I am also certain there is a genetic component to most (not all) aspects of humans. Biology is powerful and I reject the modern notions that biology is meaningless (“race is a social construct” stuff) and thinking everything is environmental. A lot is environmental, in many cases environmental influences are more powerful than genetic influences. But they work in tandem.

I used to think the genes were like the outline or shape, and the experiences filled in that shape or adjusted it slightly. However, now I see the interactions are far more complex and subtle. Genes do set an initial template of sorts, but it takes certain environmental experiences and influences to often trigger those genes to express. And we are VERY influences by other people, in fact there are very complex gene-to-gene interpersonal correlations in society that we never see, for example the frequency of certain genes and gene expressions in myself are influences by the presence or lack of presence of other genes and gene expressions in the people around me, and these sort of interactive relationships are also proportional. It is very complex. Some current researchers believe we need to abandon the “genes + environment” model (which accurately improved upon the “genes or environment” model) and instead see the environment as a kind of subtler and extended genotype. That the genes are cross-interacting between individuals and through the medium of our shared experiences and contexts. A very interesting idea.

Think about it this way: the same environmental experience will impact different people differently. Why? In part because of their different genes. And those experiences may or may not turn on or off certain genes, further changing things. As we change or do not change, we react in ways that may alter our environmental experiences, further causing feedbacks of more changes. All of that is taking place in the context of society and being around lots of other people who are similar yet different from ourselves and going through a lot of the same things we are, and remember that WE are also part of THEIR shared environmental experience too.

Bringing this back to compassion then in context of the other discussion we were having, a compassionate view would want to educate people honestly and accurately if indeed they had a genetic predisposition to something harmful. If you have alcoholics in your family you may have genes that predispose you in that direction. Likewise if I have people with antisocial personality or other crime-associated tendencies in my family or ancestry it would be good for me to know this, so I can be more aware and have more consciousness and intentional control over my impulses and reactions. I see this as a very compassionate approach. But covering up the truth because it feels unfair or not very nice, is not compassionate at all because it enforces ignorance and robs someone of knowledge and self-knowledge that may have been very useful for them.

That being said, we should approach giving that kind of knowledge in the right way. Bitter truths can be damaging if we are not ready for them, and can also create self-fulfilling results. Tell someone they are X, and we better be sure it is true because they will now be unconsciously primed to act as if they are X. This has been shown in research many times in different ways. So while I believe in telling the truth directly and ‘bluntly’ I also believe in putting it in context and framing it as best as possible with all of this in mind. If I were crafting social policy that is certainly what I would advocate. Granted that on this website, a little corner niche of the internet for people already focused on philosophy, I may not always take the time to present ideas that carefully… maybe that is my own lack of compassion that I need to work on.

[Bob]

@ProfessorX

But yeah, it doesn’t really matter. Words are just words. The meaning behind them is all that matters.

But that is exactly what I am speaking to. As a nurse, I noticed very soon the difference between empathy, sympathy, compassion and pity when I was caring for terminal patients. It isn’t just a question of words, but the actions attached.

Empathy means stepping into a patient’s perspective—understanding their pain cognitively and feeling it affectively without losing your own boundaries. It drives actions like active listening or validating fears, fostering trust.

Emotional stance: Empathy feels with the patient (resonance)

Actions attached: Empathy validates (“I see how scared you are”)

Patient impact: Terminal patients find empathy supportive

Sympathy acknowledges suffering from a distance, often as “I’m sorry this is happening,” paired with gestures like a pat on the shoulder, but it risks feeling detached or pitying.​

Emotional stance: sympathy feels for them (sorrow)

Actions attached: sympathy consoles (“Poor you”)

Patient impact: Terminal patients often reject sympathy

Compassion builds on empathy by adding motivation to act altruistically, such as adjusting care plans or offering small kindnesses to ease suffering.​

Emotional stance: compassion acts for them (help)

Actions attached: compassion intervenes (“Let’s make this more comfortable”)

Patient impact: Terminal patients prefer compassion for its empowerment

Pity resembles sympathy but implies condescension, viewing the patient as helpless, which can undermine their agency and feel demeaning.​

Emotional stance: pity looks down on them (superiority).

Actions attached: pity avoids deeper engagement.​

Patient impact: Terminal patients reject pity as it heightens isolation.