Motive-Based Compassion: Q & A

If you are just joining Compassion Series, the following essay will bring you up to speed, To Understand is To Forgive

Reader “TPG” writes:

“Interesting thread.

In your opinion, are there any crimes or misdeeds out there that are, in fact, unforgivable? The Holocaust? The destruction of an entire educated/merchant/intellectual class in a Cultural Revolution? The abuse of young children by trusted religious authorities, and the subsequent cover-up of that abuse by higher-up religious authorities? Even ordinary murder, where the victim is not around anymore to forgive?

Here’s what I think. There is a whole range of wrongs out there, that range from the easily forgivable to the impossibly unforgivable. If we don’t acknowledge that some crimes are, in fact, unforgivable, then we devalue the core of forgiveness.

Would love to read what you have to say on this subject. Thanks.”

PS comments:

TPG, thank you for your question. I am glad you asked. I get this question a lot. The kind of compassion I talk about is, indeed, terrifying. We are afraid of the consequences of this kind of 360-degrees-wide compassion. We just want a dose of kindness, preferably, for ourselves, maybe for our circle of significant others.

The terrifying thing about compassion is that once you understand how it works (formula is simple, French have it abbreviated to a saying – to understand is to forgive), then, with enough thinking, you can understand, and, therefore, relate to anything. Which, of course, prompts you to ask that scary question: “If I can understand this (insert the seemingly unforgiveable), if I can relate to the psychology behind it, what does that say about me?” While the question is scary, the answer is reassuring: “Nothing other than that you are human, capable of relating, and compassion.”

Having grown up in Soviet Russia and as a kid playing “Russians and Germans” I had a chance to replay Soviet rage over 20 + million dead in WW2. Four of my own male relatives (grand-father and 3 of his brothers) died in WW2. The other (grand-father) made it home with cirrhosis of liver after 5 years in the trenches. My aunt had been hauled off to Germany during WW2 for labor (and god knows what else). I got nothing against Germans but compassion: they had it just as rough. What about Hitler, you might ask? What about him? Just an overcompensating neurotic. What’s there to hate, his failed perfectionism? I feel sorry for him. His kind of neurosis is everywhere (just check the media and political circuit). It’s too cliché to not know how to relate to it.

My mom (whose father was Jewish), basically stranded as a kid during WW2, had to eventually legally change her first and middle name to spare my brother and I Soviet anti-Semitism. The grand-grandparents generation (on both sides/one grand-grandfather was a deacon, the other an industrialist) lost all they had (and some lives, a pregnant relative of mine died off a boot-party during an interrogation, according to my family lore) during Bolshevik revolution. Read Solzhenitsin about unimaginable cruelty of Gulag – at one level of analysis, you might conclude that it was a country of monsters; at a deeper level of analysis, you see that it was a country full of fear run by a mentally ill (paranoid) mind (Stalin). Mental illness is nothing new in history or politics. What’s there to hate? Compassion makes more sense. I don’t have any beef with the Soviets. I was one, I can relate…

Kozhukhovo neighborhood (Moscow, Russia) I lived in had witnessed two terrorist attacks: one at the Avtozavodskaya subway station (in 2004) that I used to take to go to school every day; the other attack (the notorious theatre hostage situation) in Nord-Ost/Dubrovka Theatre (in 2002), both attacks attributed to Chechens. I have nothing against Chechens. I can relate (to both sides of that issue). My understanding doesn’t have to be black-or-white, this-or-that. Reality is multifaceted and it is possible to see past one’s nose…

End of Soviet Union, beginning of Russia: overwhelming financial downfall for the entire population, except, of course, for a handful of well-connected and financially forward-looking, to put it politely. My parents’ hard-earned savings (and retirement dreams) evaporate due to rampant inflation. Hundreds of millions in Russia get financially screwed during the so-called “privatization.” Many more get swindled over and over in the years to come and taken advantage of during post-perestroika lawlessness. What’s there to hate? As long as there is a self, it will be self-serving. Ego (self-interest) is a normal part of human psychology. Self-preservation is instinctual. The story of ego is playing out on the world’s news non-stop (Great Wall of China, Berlin Wall, Wall Street – ego tends to wall in and separate). That’s just psychology… I am like that too, I got my ego, I can relate…

The story goes on… Everything is forgivable. If it’s a human act, it’s possible to understand the psychological determinism behind it. If it’s a human act, you can relate to it, at least on the level of motive.

My position:

• we are all motivationally innocent;
• no one is evil (I worked in the correction system, I didn’t see any monsters, just people);
• there are no socially unacceptable motives, just socially unacceptable behaviors (which reflect mind-specific interplay of nature and nurture);
• anger is a function of fear (more about this later);
• cruelty/sadism is misguided limbic imprinting (more about this later).

Acceptance/compassion isn’t passivity or inaction. I am not saying: swing the prison doors open, I am saying – open your mind to the possibility of compassion while at the same time protecting the society. Compassion is a matter of attitude, not a matter of policy. Compassion doesn’t eliminate legal consequences, it just sets up the platform for rehabilitation. If we de-humanize crime and criminals, if we fail to understand the psychology behind a criminal act, then we are handicapping any effort of rehabilitation. Crime – as all human behavior – is motivated. As I see it – at core, – there is only one motive – pursuit of wellbeing. How we go about it is a reflection of the interplay of our nature and nurture.

Once again, compassion is not passivity, it’s just a humane attitude, an attempt to reach out to a fellow mind, an offer of understanding, and, hopefully (although not always), a pre-requisite for rehabilitation. Helping a misguided human mind get back on a more humane track is easier than to turn a monster into a human. The latter (turning monsters into humans) is correctional alchemy.

I measure kindness not by how much time/money you give away but by how much you can forgive.

You don’t have to forgive everything but if you want to, you can. Compassion/forgiveness isn’t a feel-good endeavor (”letting go”/rumination control is easier). Compassion is optional; if it is an existential value of yours, then… it is possible to do the work of understanding and identification and to forgive even the incomprehensible.

At the end of it all, you might still ask: “But why should I forgive?” You shouldn’t. There are no shoulds: I repeat – compassion is optional.

For details on Compassion Series:

http://www.eatingthemoment.com/360-degrees-of-compassion/?currentPage=6 and http://www.eatingthemoment.com/360-degrees-of-compassion/

Post-scriptum:

The compassion platform I am offering is not based on Buddhist scripture but on the psychology of motive.

Thank you all. All be well.