This Poll Is Not Particularly Funny

[snurri]

[Poll #1198203]

Be glad all you're getting is the poll, because the rambling was starting to bore even me.

Comments

[glvalentine.livejournal.com]

Possibly the most interesting one-question poll ever.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I like the ones where they ask whether Abe Vigoda is alive or dead, myself.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

What is "universal compassion?"

I am not trying to be funny, here.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Compassion that extends beyond one's personal monkeysphere.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Ah! In that case, I go with "learned" since I don't give a shit about anyone except the people I know.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Still trying to claim that "insensitive bitch" ground, eh? GIVE IT UP. :-P

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

No, really. The only reason I actually felt something during the Tsunami is because Asantha was there. Otherwise, I think vaguely after wars and disasters and dictators: "oh, those poor fuckers" and it immediately leaves my mind.

I think I am far from alone in this, even including the non-insensitive-bitch population.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Well, part of that is coping strategy, and I think that's common to the compassionate and non-compassionate alike. I'm not sure I think that disasters and dictators are the best examples, but I can't think of a better one offhand.

[imago1.livejournal.com]

"Well, part of that is coping strategy, and I think that's common to the compassionate and non-compassionate alike."

I believe that one hundred percent. *edited to say, I had to start letting go of some rage and grief in regard to the suffering and injustice that surrounds us. Not all, but some. My blood pressure was through the roof and my television on its way through a wall. To stay sane and compassionate,

I think most of us need to pick our battles. Otherwise, after a while we become neither. Look what happens to police, psychologists, social workers.

[10yroldwhizkid.livejournal.com]

I always thought it was innate and beaten out of you around middle school, but I'm not sure. I had to think for awhile. I answered the poll but am still thinking. hmm.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

That's part of what interests me about the question; the answer, for me, would depend on the period of time when it was asked. I know what I think now, and I know what I thought twenty years ago, but I don't know what I'll think twenty years from now.

[sarah-prineas.livejournal.com]

I think we're hard-wired.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

There was a time when I would have agreed with you, but not so much nowadays.

[justinhowe.livejournal.com]

I think some level of compassion is innate, or at least the capability to exercise that compassion. However, I agree with 10yroldwhizkid and think that social pressures and experience modulate our compassion into what our society considers acceptable or ultimately profittable.

I actually had a sarcastic answer, but the question deserves better than that. Damn you, Snurri!

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I guess what I'm asking is, at what point does it extend beyond our immediate surroundings--the people we love and who are a part of our own well-being, and perhaps a degree further, insofar as their well-being impacts our own. At what point is there empathy for people with whom we have no connection at all?

[justinhowe.livejournal.com]

I still say basic compassion is innate to each of us and socialized to what society sees as being acceptable.

Since this development is haphazard and often occurs in tandem with abuse, our compassion becomes a somewhat weak and unpredictable thing. We can't rely on it in ourselves, we can't rely on it in others, at times we might be surprised by it, at other times we might despair at our own lack of it.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

That's fair enough. I'll definitely grant that it's not an entirely consistent thing; people who seem kind-hearted can become suddenly steely and cold to particular kinds of suffering, whereas someone who appears to have a heart of stone may prove to be easily moved given a specific set of circumstances. And I agree that it's idiosyncratic and peculiar to each person's experience.

[zhai.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting modification on the question that I hadn't considered from how you presented it in the poll. I answered that it was learned, but could understand why it would be a question; the way you're putting it here, I think it is most certainly learned, and further that you have to reach a mental comprehension of why you should do this that goes against instinct.

What's interesting is that from a cognitive development standpoint we go through very distinct periods where we have zero empathy but expect 100% empathy -- literally the mind of a child below a certain age cannot perceive that their experiences are not shared by others. And then we go through another phase where we have cognitive realization of the fact that we don't share experience -- and then the lying starts. ;)

I think that true compassion is a very sophisticated thing, not at all natural to basic survivalist instincts.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

That more or less tracks with my own thinking. Piaget's theory is a part of it, but much more immediate for me is my own experience, because as an adolescent things like movie violence, RPG violence, even real violence presented on the news were something that I experienced only in a very abstract way; whereas now I sometimes find it difficult to enjoy the sort of shoot-em-up action films I used to love because I am so bothered by the death and injury. Which kind of sounds like I'm saying that I have evolved some sort of higher thinking on it, but I think it's as much accidental as anything. Maybe part of what I'm wondering is whether we're doing well enough, as a society, in teaching this.

[zhai.livejournal.com]

The thing is, your question also led me to some knotty ethical problems, such as, just as an example, is death and even violence not sometimes a compassionate act, if those things preserve life in the larger scale? When you're talking about enlightened compassion, is that an immediate thing where you oppose all forms of harm, or is it longer-viewed? For instance, if you are compassionate, are you in favor of or opposed to capital punishment, faults in the system aside? If you oppose it, are you not hardening yourself to empathy with the victims and victims' families, and if you are in favor of it, are you not hardening yourself to the suffering of the criminal?

I've never had much tolerance for violent movies, and especially not for gore or depiction of suffering. I don't know if that's some instinctive level of empathy going on or if I just learned that very early -- but I've never been able to handle them. I think in that case I actually attach the intolerance more to my vivid imagination, which is very suggestible -- I get nightmares easily and have trouble getting some things out of my head. I guess you could see that as empathetic, but it could also be self-interested.

These questions get complicated. :) And I didn't even get to your last interesting point about what society is nurturing. I was just thinking about something like this a few days ago... wondering whether Japan, for instance, does a better job of teaching empathy, philosophically speaking. But then even in that very Buddhist environment you get things like their behavior during WW2...

I do think that, in the west, with education comes compassion. The trouble is not enough people have access to education.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was actually thinking about how compassion as an ethos may ultimately turn back on itself in some ways, as needs collide.

[bondgwendabond.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it's easier to be empathetic to people to whom you have no connection at all. (Again, my take on this is biased this evening.)

[jocelina.livejournal.com]

I think the capacity for it is innate, but it usually (though not always) needs some nurturing to develop properly.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

That's a very nuanced and thoughtful way of trying to have it both ways ;-)

In all seriousness, though, that's a good answer which the poll does not really make room for.

[jocelina.livejournal.com]

It all sprang from my deep and abiding love of ticky boxes. :)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Ahhh. Essentially what I was going to try to get at, but much more elegantly than I'd have managed to put it. Thanks.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Boy howdy, is this ever a poll in need of a ticky box...

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Ticky Box killed my brother!

not an either/or

[rsheslin.livejournal.com]

I actually just read a fascinating article about recent research that showed that the instinct for revenge and the instinct for forgiveness were both innate, yet influenced by environment.

Basically, the theory is that, in situations in which strength is paramount for safety, the instinct for revenge takes the lead because you're less likely to be attacked if you make an example of someone.

Similarly, in situations in which cooperation is more conducive to survival, the instinct for forgiveness becomes more pronounced.

(If you're interested, you can download the article at http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/greatergood/2008spring/.)

Re: not an either/or

[snurri.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. I guess I was thinking from my comfortable middle-class context, where it's more common to watch Bad Things on TV than to experience them personally. But certainly there are situations in which survival makes compassion a liability.

[bondgwendabond.livejournal.com]

And I answered as I did because my mom was just telling me about my severely ADHD (and then some) nephew getting the cold shoulder at gifted and talented camp. GRRRRR.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Jeez, that's shitty. From counselors/teachers, or students, or both?

[bondgwendabond.livejournal.com]

Other students. Little monsters.

[snale.livejournal.com]

Is it cheating to say "a little bit of both"? I think compassion is part of our nature, as social animals. Extending that compassion to people we don't know takes a bit of abstract thinking, which must be learned.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

It's not cheating, I don't think; it's a more nuanced answer than the poll provides for, but it makes sense to me.