Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about compassion. I’m in a position in my life in which I have the very real opportunity to build new relationships and change people’s lives through compassion. In thinking about this and figuring out what my core principles are as a person, it’s apparent to me that I’ve become bitter towards politics, religion, and the pervading belief that we’re so different from each other that understanding of, much less love for, one another is impossible. Social and cultural institutions, and ourselves, have upheld this belief by engaging in our own beliefs and biases before engaging with each other. What do we lack in these rigid exchanges and construction of society, then?
Compassion. It’s something that does seem to be inherent to the human condition. It allows us to empathize with, provide for, and relate to each other on a basic human level, beyond the particular beliefs– religion, politics, ethics, lifestyle, etc.– that embolden us as individuals and allow us to feel as if we belong to something greater than ourselves. But compassion, both consciously and unconsciously, is often lost in the translation from our shared human existence to our individualistic human experiences and overall journey.
It’s far too easy to find justifications for not being compassionate, being conditionally compassionate, or being compassionate for the purpose of advancing oneself or a group or belief through which we find purpose. We often base the foundation for our justifications on whatever beliefs we hold as self-evident and whatever social and cultural institutions we subscribe to. In doing this, we are also neglecting the core from which we must be operating to advance a peaceful and just society– compassion for our fellow human beings. We are all living in the same world, and while we all live in a diverse set of conditions, cultures, and social, ecological, and political environments, we still share a deep connection as human beings.
Political bodies, religious institutions, economic systems, and other things through which the world has found definition are paradoxical in that they have nurtured a very particular growth and development of society and humans, but they have also acted as the fundamental means through which discrimination, ostracization, inequity, and the individualization and isolation of the human spirit and condition have found a basis from which to thrive.
While it’s certainly necessary for the embodiment of oneself to experience the world in our own unique ways, we often let ourselves define what morality, ethics, and the world should be through those ways, without first seeing that we are all the same and connected on a basic human level. The world we seek to create, or rather “fix”, is fragile because of our own actions. Psychological, physical, and social/cultural sanctions on our fellow people is an act of aggression against compassion, and whether we realize it or not, the problems we claim a desire to assuage require us to be accountable for our contributions to those problems, such as engaging with ourselves as individuals before engaging with ourselves as a shared race.
I’m not suggesting that the complexities of the world, ethics, and human relationships are bad, because they’re not, but they often act as justification for denial of all in favor of one. Shared human existence acknowledges our differences and seeks to put those differences in conversation and connection with each other. In forgetting that, we also absolve ourselves from the primary responsibility we have to each other as human beings. We absolve ourselves from compassion.
That’s not to imply that discourse is wrong or unnecessary either, because it is important to the advancement of the world. However, discourse should not operate as a fortification of an individual or group’s comparably secular view, related bias, and marginal interpretation of the world. Discourse must exist as a means of rectification for the intrinsic biases and dispositions we have, not as an argument for those very things. Discourse levels us.
Ultimately, injustice, inequity, and conflict are directly correlated to the loss of compassion that happens when society and individuals began prioritizing their unique means of understanding and fulfillment in a confusing world over their understanding of mankind as a shared body that can only truly succeed and function through engaging constructively and meaningfully in its innate connection and relationship.
Our understanding and our actions should be deeply rooted in our relations with one another, because who are we if we are not functioning through and for one another? We’re lost and incapable of the compassion that is necessary to the formation of a just and peaceful world. We owe it to each other, above all else, to care for one another.