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

[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.)