True Compassion
July 18, 2005 Posted by Amy Hall
Over the past couple of years I've had to learn the hard way that my strong feelings of compassion and empathy coupled with my desire to help people and make them happy can sometimes obscure the path of true compassion. I watched with horror as the actions of my emotion-driven “compassion” led only to greater harm to the friends I was trying to help. What was wrong? I was giving them what they said they needed. I couldn't stand to see them suffer! I was confused and conflicted–I loved these people and wanted to help, but my short-term help was causing them long-term harm. When I finally accepted the fact that the truly compassionate thing to do was to withhold what these people were asking for, I had to do the most difficult thing I've ever done–I stopped giving it to them. I fought my feelings and forced myself to stand firm. I endured accusations of cruelty and lack of Christian charity. I withstood slander and gossip. I was rejected and berated. Believe me, it would have been much easier to give them what they wanted, and I certainly would have been happier about myself, but I desired to be truly compassionate to these people I loved–and that meant doing what was best for them, regardless of my feelings.
True compassion is not directed by a feeling. In fact, it may entail actions that cause our feelings of compassion to scream with protest. But, as I've said before, our emotions must submit to our minds. The impulse to be compassionate is good, but if we let our emotions determine the way we carry out that compassion, we will often be deceived. A careful examination of the long-term results of our actions is necessary to determine whether or not those actions are truly compassionate.
Consider the following interview (HT: Micah Watson) with Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati:
SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for
Shikwati: … for God's sake, please just stop.
SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.
Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to
SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?
Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for
Unfortunately, the Europeans' devastating urge to do good can no longer be countered with reason….
Why do we get these mountains of clothes? No one is freezing here. Instead, our tailors lose their livelihoods. They're in the same position as our farmers. No one in the low-wage world of
If what this man is saying is true (and see here and here for more arguments that it is), our feelings of compassion are causing us to do harm.
This is something we should at least consider.
To be truly compassionate to countries in desperate poverty, we may need to submit our compassion to reason and truth and think carefully about other ways to help–for example, by promoting policies of economic freedom. No doubt we'll be called selfish and uncaring, and our own feelings may even condemn us. I know how difficult this is. All we can do is continue to remind ourselves that helping people in a real and lasting way is more important than satisfying and protecting our own feelings.
Related posts:
- For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!
- Beautiful, Alive, True Christianity
- True Freedom
- Controlling the Nurturing Instinct
- Irrelevant Characteristics
- More Than One True Meaning?: A Case For 'Multi-Objectivism'
Posted in Amy's Posts, Main Page, Politics
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July 18th, 2005 at 3:34 pm
I have a couple of observations.
I believe you have overstated the distinction between reason and emotion, and this concerns me as it privileges intellect over volition and emotion in a way that I find innacurate. Our emotions, volition and intellect work in tandem. If your giving to people is not in their long term best interest, this will express itself not just in your intellect, but also in your emotions. You will feel cowardly and irresponsible for continuing to give, as I am sure you would have if you had continued to give to your freinds. The distinction you are making is not between our emotions and intellect but between a short term and long term perspective. If you consider the long term perspective, your conflict will exist in both your intellect and your emotions. I believe you described your experience of choosing not to give to your friends in just this way.
This distinction is important in part because of the characterization that liberals decide based on their emotions whereas conservatives decide based on their intellect. That is off of this present topic, though.
Second, our sacrificial giving to others needs to be intelligently directed. Though Shikwati is critical of the way aid was given in the past, his argument calls me to intelligent giving rather than neglecting giving until economic reform is acheived.
I offer for those who are interested, the Micro-loan concept. One of the things missing in the developing world is capital. Micro-loan programs are not patronizing, nor do they disrupt markets. They offer the same benefits to economies that our lending agencies and investors do to our economy. I have not explored this particular program, but it is an example:
http://www.accion.org/about_accolades.asp
July 18th, 2005 at 11:03 pm
This is a pretty big divide, even among Christians. I side wholeheartedly with Amy on this one, as Bill already knows. I think the situation Bill describes is the goal of a proper moral education, where one's emotions have been trained through reason and, so as not to appear too Aristotelian, God's grace and Holy Spirit, in order to feel the proper emotion for the proper stimuli.
Even if one reaches that state, I still think reason has to order and master the emotions. I'm not even sure what it would mean for emotions, as emotions, to be on the same plane as our reason. In real life for real flesh-and-blood human beings our decisions will always arrive out of both reason and emotion, this much is true. But while I can imagine myself “putting down” what an emotion tells me to do, I can't imagine myself thinking it's right to ignore what my reason tells me to do (though in my weakness I have).
I can question what my reason tells me, particularly if I have strong emotions that weigh in a contrary direction, but even my “questioning” there is my reason acting.
I think the short and long term perspective angle is helpful, but not dispositive. Feelings just don't help me much with thinking long term as they are so transient. I can't speak for anyone else, but I think the vast majority of times I've done something stupid it's a result of me acting on something I was feeling without giving it enough thought. There's a reason we say “think before you act” rather than “feel before you act”. (granted, we do say “listen to your heart”, but I think we'd be foolish to add, “and do whatever it tells you”).
And nothing in this vein need rely on a pure, cold, impotent rationalism that puts all emphasis on thinking. But there is a hierarchy (which I think is plain once one tries to describe how emotions should guide decision-making, though I'm all ears if someone can do this without resorting to one's reason).
Darn, wrote too much again . . .
July 19th, 2005 at 4:14 am
Bill, sorry I couldn't get to this earlier. I see Micah has already given a great response! I just want to add a couple things.
There is definitely interplay between emotion and intellect, but I still think the distinction needs to be made between these two rather than comparing long-term emotions with short-term emotions. Better to battle the misleading emotions at the beginning before you have to deal with the bad emotions (e.g., feeling irresponsible and cowardly) that result from choosing the wrong actions based on your original emotions.
At times, even when I know clearly what the correct course of action is, I still have to battle my emotions. For example, my roommate puppy-sits for guide dogs-in-training. I know I have to say “no” when the puppies jump up on me or run to greet me, and I know why. But nothing, nothing in my emotional state wants me to say “no.” In fact, I feel terrible when I say “no.” My emotions are strongly encouraging me to let the puppies do what they want, and I have to reject what my emotions are telling me for what my intellect is telling me. You're right that if I didn't do this, I would feel bad later on, but then it would be too late!
You're right that intellect, emotion, and volition work together, but there is a certain order required for them to work in the best possible way. Our intellect must judge the (not unimportant) input of our emotions and then inform our volition. Then we must either choose or not choose to exert our will in the direction of wisdom.
Thank you also for the micro-loan suggestion. There may well be possible options for giving that would be more effective than the current giving. We just need to take time to think carefully through the long-term ramifications of the options.
July 19th, 2005 at 4:15 am
Not at all! Thanks for the response, Micah.
July 19th, 2005 at 8:20 am
Micah and Amy, I agree in part with what you are saying, but I am interested in exploring this further. Each of us have within us basic but powerful drives that in this moment seek to maximize our pleasure, minimize our pain and expend as little effort as possible. In any particular moment, we desire what is easy. Operating in oposition to these drives in any moment takes an act of will. Not eating the chocolate in front of us takes an act of will. Continuing to sit in the uncomfortable seat takes an act of will. Running another step instead of walking takes an act of will. I will grant you that we have to overcome these primitive drives regularly.
I believe our emotions are much richer than these primitive drives, and I would like to ask if you could please describe which of the more complex emotions beyond these simple drives did you have to act against?
In the example ofyour friends, I can understand that in the moment you would have had a strong desire to maximize the pleasure of keeping your friends and others around you happy. You would have wanted to avoid the pain of their displeasure, the censure of others and the loss of relationship with all of the above. It would take a significant act of will to overcome those desires. However, I find it difficult to believe that it was your compassion that you had to overcome. Indeed compassion is an emotion that motivates us to take those hard steps. If you had truly recognized that giving these friends what they wanted was harming them, how could compassion have led you to give it to them? Perhaps it was a desire to avoid the pain you would feel empathetically as these people were hurt and disapointed in the moment.
My thoughts on this aren't finished. I am interested in your ideas.
July 20th, 2005 at 7:36 am
I think heated agreement may have struck again.
We may be dancing around different semantic emphases. The compassion you describe, Bill, strikes me as one that is mixed with reason, indeed informed by reason and ultimately subject to it (though you are right to say that volition is motivated by compassion, rightly understood).
I guess I would have to say I'm not sure I think of compassion as an emotion. Perhaps the word “pity” is the word I would use for the feeling we have. Pity tells us to stop the needle from going into the kid no matter what. Reason asks whether the needle is being used for an MMR innoculation, or for injecting an illegal substance.
If the former, we pity the pain the child feels, but our compassion (perhaps pity under the direction of reason) tells us that it's a good thing, and perhaps even that we should hold down the screaming child so the shot can be given (as every emotion in us tells us this is awful).
I understand emotions as “feelings”: anger, jealousy, delight, fear. These come and go. As Lewis writes, they are the keys on the piano, and reason is that which tells us how they should be played. The job of moral education is training the child to feel the right emotion for the right situation. Disgust rather than delight for pulling the wings off flies (or watching lions eat Christians), etc.
I think emotions tell us things too, and we would be foolish to ignore them. In our fallenness, neither our reason nor our emotions are reliable, but I'll stick with the position that there is a director-type quality that reason has in relation to the emotions/feelings.
July 20th, 2005 at 10:08 am
“No emotion is, in itself, a judgement: in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.”
—C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
July 20th, 2005 at 11:14 am
Well that settles it!
July 20th, 2005 at 12:20 pm
Good challenge, Bill. I would say my feelings were more than just trying to avoid my own pain. I genuinely cared about the plight of my friends, and that compassion never changed, it was just redirected. In this way, the situation changed from compassionate actions (where my actions are judged by my motivation) to compassionate results (where my actions resulted in actual good).
When I realized my first impulse was harming them, of course I decided in my head to discontinue, but my feelings–whatever you want to label them–wanted to immediately take care of these people and put an end to their suffering instead of letting them work themselves through it on their own. Maybe this is a primitive nurturing impulse to help people, take care of them, and make things easy for them. All I'm saying is that sometimes the impulse to help people can lead us to do things that aren't helpful. The impulse came from a good place, it just needs to be directed carefully.
I think women have a harder time controlling this nurturing impulse than men do. A good (and different) example of this is the strange fact that many women correspond with, fall in love with, and marry murderers in prison and/or remain in abusive relationships. Why? I think it's because we have this overwhelming desire to help people and turn them into better people. This is a completely different situation from the one we've been discussing, but it's another example of how the desire to nurture and help can lead us astray and must be overcome by reason.
July 20th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
Thank you all for the dialogue.
Tim, as much as I admire Lewis, I would put a proviso on his statements. While emotions are not judgements and therefore may be “alogical”, they are not unreasoned or devoid of intellectual content. When we are angry, there are reasons why we are angry. Sometimes it takes a bit of work to identify those reasons, as our intellect is complex and parts of it are masked to us. There are though reasons and thoughts associated with them. When I am elated, there is an intellectual thought tied to it. I am elated about receiving a new camera lens:
-because I believe this lens will add to my photographic ability
-because I love technology and I believe I will enjoy marveling at its features
-etc.
I think that Micah's distinction between reasonable and unreasonable emotions is valuable. There are times when our emotions are unreasonable, when they even defy reason. There are times when they are clearly immature. There are times as in Amy's example when they are damaging and not in ours or other's interests.
I think that perhaps my experience of emotions may be a little different than others. You who have some experience of me in person might be able to relate to this as you think back on me. I am not a very empathetic person. At camp, you may recall, I was known for the expression, “How sad for you,” which was a genuine intellectual assent of their loss devoid of empathy.
While I care for people, I believe I have a very small quantity of the traditionally female empathetic impulse that Amy describes. I don't at all believe this makes me superior to anyone else- in fact my whole line of argument intends to undermine that perspective. My wife will affirm that I am an amazingly un-empathetic person and this does not impress her.
When something happens to Tracy, I am sorry that she is hurt and I care about her, but I don't feel the hurt as she does. This is particularly evident in contrast to my sister-in-law Priscilla, who seems to personally mourn with Tracy in very emotional and dramatic ways as she describes her situation.
My point in all of this, I guess, is that I may experience my emotions more through an intellectual framework than others do. This is not to say that I don't swear at the player who shoots me in a computer game. It is just that I can't identify with the experience Amy describes of having a strong impulse to do something to alleviate the person's immediate suffering when I know rationally that what is best for them is to continue suffering. This trait has sometimes been valuable, in that I have been able to for instance say needed frank truths to people more easily than it might have been for others. On the other hand, my lack of empathy has led me to fear others would perceive me to be cold hearted.
And so my perspective on this may be skewed. It is rare that I can not see the intellectual reasons behind my emotions, or failing that, the primitive drives I mentioned before.
July 20th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
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July 20th, 2005 at 4:34 pm
Bill, this is very insightful of both you and, I think, the differences between women and men in general.
“It is just that I can't identify with the experience Amy describes of having a strong impulse to do something to alleviate the person's immediate suffering when I know rationally that what is best for them is to continue suffering.”
Not to start a new controversy here, but this is precisely why I think men should be the heads of families and churches. Nurturing empathy is essential in certain situations but can be detrimental in areas of leadership if it isn't controlled and submitted to reason. In general, men are better at this. Unfortunately, I think women do often wrongly accuse men of being cold-hearted.
July 21st, 2005 at 12:57 pm
I can appreciate the tendencies toward these differences between men and women, Amy. We are clearly different, men from women. There was a time in Western society when it was commonly accepted that women were not rational, logical beings. While I affirm that we are different in the way that you describe, I still believe that women are able to overcome the nurturing impulses you describe to make sound reasonable decisions. I think that you demonstrated that in your difficult decisions regarding your friends.
I do not speak against men being the leaders in their families, or in other situations. I hold the position tentatively, though. I believe my understanding of the power relationship that is suggested by this structure is different from the understanding some other more conservative people would have.
I appreciate and respect, Amy, the way your views are a submission to your interpretation of scripture. At the same time, I see in scripture a reasonable trajectory toward an equality of opportunity for men and women in roles of leadership.
To sum up, I respect and appreciate what I believe to be your position, but I also affirm a position that you might find contrary to your own.
July 21st, 2005 at 2:17 pm
Bill, I actually wasn't basing the comment on Scripture, but on observation. I'd like to flesh out this new angle a bit more, so I'll blog on this later today.
September 1st, 2005 at 8:22 pm
The key to understanding compassion is that there are 2 things. There is Compassion, and there is the perception of Compassion. These things hold the same relationship to each other that a tree and the perception of a tree hold to each other.
Now it is not Compassion unless there is an action. If there is only thought and perception then it cannot be Compassion. That is, if someone claims to “have compassion” for the suffering of another but fails to relieve that suffering when she can, her claim of “having compassion” is not credible. Acting to change the situation is a necessary element to identify the existence of Compassion. Anyone can claim to be thinking anything they like. The proof is in the action.
Furthermore, if someone claims not to have compassion, but acts compassionately anyway, it is in no one's interest to deny the Compassion of those actions, no matter what the actor may claim. Again, the proof is in the action.
So Compassion is the action and the perception of Compassion is our judgement about that action, be it ourselves or another. Once one sees this is becomes clear that thought is not required for Compassion, and brute, dumb animals, and even plants and inanimate objects may be capable of Compassion, depending upon your point of view as to whether they are capable of action or not. They may not be capable of the perception of Compassion — that may be uniquely human. But if they may be able to act, since we see that it is the act itself that determines the Compassion, they may be able to show Compassion.
For those of us who believe we see Compassion from the non-thinking majority of our universe, the argument over whether Compassion arises from intellect or from emotion seems silly. Neither is required. Compassion arises from another source, wholly beyond ourselves.
If anyone would care read further on my views on this fascinating subject I direct you to http://towardsfreedom.com/RTWhatIsCompassion.html.
September 2nd, 2005 at 11:00 am
Michael, I read your article on compassion. We have very different views on what it means to be human and what our purpose is here on this earth. So I welcome you here, and I hope you'll continue to read this blog and give your input so we can discuss these extremely important topics as they come up here. Thanks for stopping by!
September 2nd, 2005 at 3:34 pm
Amy: Thank very much for reading my article. I much appreciate your giving it your time. I seriously doubt we differ significantly, although the words may differ. After all, our views on what it means to be human and our purpose is of no real importance, is it? What is important is what it actually means to be human and what is our actual purpose. I'm delighted to abandon my views at any time for the actual. And since we are both actually human, well, obviously the differences cannot be actual, only verbal. I look forward to reading further.
September 4th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
Just ran accross this statement: “In the Bible, compassion always means action on behalf of someone. Study Jesus' life. It's not sentiment, but action.” This is from http://www.hopeforlife.org/faith/. Good to see that others have seen the same thing, from a completely different context. The essence of Compassion is the act. Follow this understanding to its many implications and it makes perfectly clear our place and purpose in the world.
April 2nd, 2010 at 7:31 pm
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