Does anyone agree there is a global epidemic of a lack of compassion?...(rant)
Last edited Mon Feb 13, 2017, 11:58 PM - Edit history (1)
This is somewhat off topic and a bit of a rant. Obviously I'm not saying anything new. "Life is tough and unfair" is probably about the oldest and most boring of all observations. It is a truth though. And I don't want to make it seem like I don't understand how much more tough life has been in the past on average. Talk about lack of compassion, try seeking sympathy for just about anything if you were born in the 16th century say. Nor do I want to make it sound like the left is at fault here. I actually feel the opposite most of the time. I just wish to highlight this as an issue, period.
That being said I don't feel that the argument that things have gotten better is an excuse to say that we don't have a lot of room for improvement.
This is not a problem unique to North America. Not a problem unique to conservatives. You will find cruelty no mater where you live, from the wealthiest most conservative homes in America, to the favela slums of the 3rd world. Both an easy life and a hard life can craft hearts of stone. But it's the former that I find most inexcusable, the latter most understandable, if not always palatable.
But this is not a thread about laying blame. I merely wish to bring to light something I feel we don't talk often enough about. We talk around the subject add infinitum. We blame the cruel and the companionless for their cruelty. And rightly so, the number of people spewing racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and cruelty is heart breaking.
But I feel in our riotous hatred for the messenger and the message we too often ignore those the messages are directed at. And in so doing we share a measure of blame in being compassionless ourselves. Not in actively throwing the stones, but in failing to comfort the target.
I have been purposefully vague up to this point about the subjects of said cruelty and compassion, because I wish to be as inclusive as possible. But suffice it to say, when in your life have you been at your own most vulnerable, most in need of compassion. What have been your "dark night of the soul" moments, and I use that term in its non religious context. What difference would a comforting non judgmental shoulder to cry on have made, if you did not have one? And I speak doubly so for those who feel least deserving of compassion but in truth most often in need. Those our society writes off the fastest, with the most brutality and dismissiveness. The alcoholic, the drug addict, the suicide survivor, the mentally ill, and more. I'm not going to get into an argument of whether showing compassion for some of these would be a form of enablement or not, that is outside the scope of this topic.
But these people and so many more are invisible in our society. Be they the immigrant mother working 2 jobs that the conservative writes off as trash. Or the drug addict on the street that even a liberal might write off as a lost cause. Again I'm not saying that liberals would on average, but merely to highlight the fact that it's not a right left issue solely. They are the ghosts that walk among us.
But they are people! They have lives. And emotions. And needs. And stories. And names. They have mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. So often we relegate them to such a status of anonymity that they become invisible. EVEN by the well meaning liberals among us. We quickly chastise the conservative, correctly, for wanting to deport the illegal immigrants. But sometimes a more powerful act is not the loud dismissal of hatred, which don't get me wrong MUST be done, but the small quiet acts of daily kindness. We are so quick to scream at the billionaire, correctly, for not wanting to give his supermarket employees a 10 cent raise. So slow to treat the immigrant earning said wage, bagging our groceries, as a friend.
Sometimes the most powerful act is the smile, the "hay Miranda how are your kids doing?", The "hay man you look like you are suffering, is everything ok"?
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And I wish this were just limited to America but it's becoming a global problem. It started with Russia and Crimea, then again with Brexit, then with Trump, and it looks like it might happen in France too if LaPen gets elected. We're living in dark times. 
