(no subject)
Dec. 17th, 2010 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionHaving compassion is apparently nearly universal, and the exceptions pretty clearly traceable to damage, whether neurological or developmental, but universal compassion is obviously not itself universal. So if the impulse to feel for or with is all we can base personal ethics on, as compared to institutional ethics, how can we condemn anyone for not caring (then acting as though they don't care) about whoever they happen to not care about?
The answer to this, near as I can see, is that though we obviously still have a lot of cultural and probably biological mechanisms for limiting compassion, which presumably served some important purpose in their time, we have as much of a need to justify limitations on our compassion as we have to feel it in the first place. We don't just make a circle around some Us and regard everyone else as an obstacle, we're ready with a story about why we get to. And that story has to make sense to us, and be one we feel can make sense to others.
A huge watershed in anyone's life who makes it to that watershed is the moment when you realize that there's the sense you put together that has no holes in it, or whose holes can be filled by words on the fly, and then there's the much stronger sense that you did not put together but found, and that has no holes at all (though it may have hazings of the whole, may be in one of the many holes that anything may be in). The first gets abandoned for that second wherever possible, and the first is also now categorically distrusted because of one's new knowledge of its terrible inadequacy.
Limitations based on family don't make sense - as compared to reasons why we might be tempted toward such limitings, why they might feel very good. Limitations based on race, sex, nation likewise are seen to be unjustifiable. Species becomes an iffy one, hence the place where the conversation drifts.
There may be a reduction in enthusiasm once one's compassion is forced to widen this far - it may lose in energy what it gains in coverage. But that's arguable. Whereas I don't think you can argue that compassion can be kept narrow without a failure of (now readily available) knowledge.
The answer to this, near as I can see, is that though we obviously still have a lot of cultural and probably biological mechanisms for limiting compassion, which presumably served some important purpose in their time, we have as much of a need to justify limitations on our compassion as we have to feel it in the first place. We don't just make a circle around some Us and regard everyone else as an obstacle, we're ready with a story about why we get to. And that story has to make sense to us, and be one we feel can make sense to others.
A huge watershed in anyone's life who makes it to that watershed is the moment when you realize that there's the sense you put together that has no holes in it, or whose holes can be filled by words on the fly, and then there's the much stronger sense that you did not put together but found, and that has no holes at all (though it may have hazings of the whole, may be in one of the many holes that anything may be in). The first gets abandoned for that second wherever possible, and the first is also now categorically distrusted because of one's new knowledge of its terrible inadequacy.
Limitations based on family don't make sense - as compared to reasons why we might be tempted toward such limitings, why they might feel very good. Limitations based on race, sex, nation likewise are seen to be unjustifiable. Species becomes an iffy one, hence the place where the conversation drifts.
There may be a reduction in enthusiasm once one's compassion is forced to widen this far - it may lose in energy what it gains in coverage. But that's arguable. Whereas I don't think you can argue that compassion can be kept narrow without a failure of (now readily available) knowledge.
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 07:04 pm (UTC)So if the impulse to feel for or with is all we can base personal ethics on, as compared to institutional ethics, how can we condemn anyone for not caring (then acting as though they don't care) about whoever they happen to not care about?
Is my immediate reaction to reading this sentence -- "our compassion should extend to those who don't have it" -- self-congratulatory and paternalistic? (I'm not saying your post wouldn't agree with that, I'm just saying that's the first thing I thought.)
I used to have a tendency to excuse at least myself for feeling what I feel. But I also used to really think that people can't change themselves, that if you can change then that ability was in you in the first place. It's this whole deterministic way of thinking. I'm not sure where I stand on all that now.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 07:19 pm (UTC)2. Whenever you know you know something someone else does not but would benefit by then you are in something like a parental position, dangerous and annoying as that can be for both you and them. It's usually not in either of your interests to emphasize this position - especially as they usually know a lot of other things you don't, and you don't want to start a "who's the parent" war.
3. Compassion doesn't necessitate tolerance.
4. Knowledge that you face knowing is a kind of determinism as strong as any other. The ground is where it is, and you can't wish it somewhere else. Which means getting those people who don't to know the few things they need to to transcend all these horrible limitations is ridiculously important.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 07:48 pm (UTC)I have this sentence I read years ago ringing in my head right now, I think it was Nietzsche, it goes something like, "No one can get out of my books anything that was not already in him."
Which would seem to go with the way of thinking I called deterministic above, but maybe what it is is optimistic -- optimism that (most) people can change, that that's built in to us.
I am so oddly nidgy about what might be grossly and maybe ignorantly called moral elitism. I'm not entirely sure why. I know what I believe, ethically, and how I behave, and how I would like others to, but going from "I would like others to" to "they should" is a step I seem to be uncomfortable taking.
Which is odd considering that if there's one thing I'm sure is evil, it is hurting people.
I wonder if it has to do with self-esteem, the lack thereof, and the persistent lack of a strong sense of self. I feel uncomfortable prescribing, in general. Then again, I don't think it's wrong of those I admire to say e.g. what you say in this post and this comment, in fact I admire it.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 08:03 pm (UTC)I partly agree with the Nietzsche quote, because I think it's in all of us to know the truth (with some small print caveats). Nietzsche's quarrying bits of Emerson, as he often did, including this one, relevant to what you're saying:
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 08:17 pm (UTC)It's like the pendulum swung the other way. I'm wary of believing in objective truth (redundant?) because I want so much to. But I think I do believe.
The Emerson quote is wow, thanks! Did Borges say something resonant of it? I recall something about, when we read great lines of poetry, there's some inner conviction that we wrote them ourselves, or could have -- the attitude isn't one of self-aggrandizement but rather a sense of shared humanity and greatness and indeed truth.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 08:28 pm (UTC)I think all these quotes tend to divide the self into a hard, arbitrary, temporary portion and an eternal one hovering nearby where we all overlap. Makes for a kind of loose gnosticism - who I am right now may be no good, but you'd be amazed, I'd be amazed at who I, you can be. The little me is sacred as the one place I experience that big me (often catalyzed by some you without, like Emerson).
no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 08:37 pm (UTC)I just love that, who I am right now may be no good, but you'd be amazed, I'd be amazed at who I, you can be. I love it.