Mythmakers: Compassion, One of the Things That Makes Us Human

       An earlier Mythmaker post, Mythmakers: A Diversion into the Political, was provoked by the incident at the RNC where someone threw nuts at a black camerawoman and said, "This how we feed the animals." In that essay, I discussed how human beings are all the same species, sharing the same DNA, and therefore are entitled to be treated equally.  I cited Precept No. 17: There are creatures on this planet [amended later to in the universe] who speak, form symbols, and share emotions; these may be called human.

       Now another article, an op-ed piece written by Nicholas D. Kristof, spurs me to elaborate further on a related topic.

       The article deals with a man who in midlife decided he wanted to do what he had always wanted to do, so he quit his job and didn't have sufficient funds to pay for health insurance.  He then developed prostate cancer, didn't get treatment soon enough because of lack of resources, and subsequently died from it.  The article in question promotes Obamacare. I happen to support  universal health insurance, but my purpose today is not political but humanist.  Many of the responses to the article demonstrated a callous rejection of one of the essential qualities that make us human.

       To quote from the article: “ 'Not sure why I’m to feel guilty about your friend’s problem,' Terry from Oregon wrote on my blog. 'I take care of myself and mine, and I am not responsible for anyone else.'       

       "Bruce wrote that many people in hospitals are there because of their own poor choices: 'Smoking, obesity, drugs, alcohol, noncompliance with medical advice. Extreme age and debility, patients so sick, old, demented, weak, that if families had to pay one-tenth the cost of keeping the poor souls alive, they would instantly see that it was money wasted.' "
       The more often I read these statements, the more arrogant and insensate they appear to me.  These people may be creationists for all I know, but they apparently are fervent supporters of the concept of survival of the fittest!  And they may be "good Christians," but if they are, they have forgotten two New Testament admonitions (Mythmaker philosophy is eclectic, willing to extract whatever is valuable from any spiritual writing):

        From John 8:7 (KJV): "He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone."

        From Matthew 7:1, 5 (KJV): "Judge not, that ye be not judged. ... Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

 

        To quote from Kristof:  "The proportion of Republicans who agree that 'it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves' has slipped from 58 percent in 2007 to just 40 percent today.'"
       These same people are probably anti-abortion, but why care for a fetus any more than you would care for your Alzheimer-stricken parent -- neither can take care of itself or has any ability to contribute to society or its own welfare.  The argument would be -- but the fetus has the potential to contribute.  OK, but don't we owe something to our parent, for the contribution it made to our own lives in the past?  Do we simply lay our failing family members out on the curb and sit rocking on the porch, sipping lemonade and watching while they die?  Quite a reality show, yes?

       Kristof goes on to present counterarguments to the implications of this statement, only one of which I will consider here:  "A civilized society compensates for the human propensity to screw up. ... To err is human, but so is to forgive.  Compassion isn’t a sign of weakness, but of civilization."

       So this brings me to a discussion of certain Mythmaker precepts.  I believe Mr. Kristof would find them compatible with his own philosophy. 

 

       Precept No. 4: Humans must take responsibility for their own behavior, not seeking to put blame on imposed rules (of deity or human) or on fate, chance, or the intervention or willfulness of deity.

       I discussed this one in my earlier post, Beginning My Mythmaker Analysis.  It's central tenet of the philosophy -- when you screw up, you don't try to blame somebody else and you don't try to blame society or a warped code of behavior.  Humans have the power to do this where no other animal does, because we have developed reason and a sense of right and wrong.  We don't act merely on survival instinct.

 

       However, the seemingly heartless absolutism of this is immediately tempered by Precept No. 5: 

       Humans will never succeed absolutely in achieving these goals; nevertheless striving for right action is its own purpose.

       Humans are an imperfect work-in-progress and they will always fail in this attempt to take responsibility and to find the Right Way.  Therefore, we have to forgive -- to show compassion for one another and to help our fellow humans live up to their responsibilities.  Whether that is a responsibility of government may be debated in the 21st century, but it becomes one of the two primary functions of government in the Earth of the 27th century and beyond. (The other is keeping  the peace among these contentious and imperfect creatures called humans.)

       The Precepts never actually mention the word "compassion," but Precept No. 17 (cited at the top of this post) introduces humans' ability to share emotions as one of the fundamental characteristics of what makes us human.  If a human shares someone's grief and pain (the ability is called empathy), that person instinctively wants to do something to alleviate the suffering.  What is that but compassion?  Fortunately, we see many true examples of this human feeling in the 21st century, but it is regrettable that a such a sizable majority of our fellow species members seems to reject it.
       So, the empathy that impels us to care for the weak and less fortunate -- those who can't take of themselves -- is a distinctly human trait.   This may be to our detriment as a species, because it throws off the balance of nature (there are too many humans on the Earth and we are very good at finding ways to keep ourselves alive), but however that may be, I would not want to exist in a world where the dominant intelligent species lacks qualities of compassion and empathy and the instinct to take care of the less fortunate.

       The next Mythmaker post will delve more deeply into what it means to be human.