Compassion - Part One

Do you usually associate civility with compassion?

If so, how do you define compassion? 

How do you know when compassion is insufficient?

How do you know when compassion is misguided?

There is no point in attempting to express compassion without an adequate grasp of the facts.  

Non-factual compassion is usually a sign of stupidity.  It tends to be associated with gullibility.

Yet adequate compassion is always required if civility is to be meaningful.

Perhaps you are often too busy to express adequate compassion. 

Perhaps too many relatively unimportant distractions prevent you from being more compassionate.

Perhaps you have been a victim of psychological manipulation too many times.  

You may have found that far too many people have sought compassionate understanding from you without offering the same in return.

Perhaps you prefer to avoid being compassionate, possibly as a consequence of previous emotional exhaustion, occupational burnout, and experiences of being bullied or otherwise abused.

Perhaps you have never attempted to measure productivity in terms of reasonable compassion.

Perhaps you have never attempted to assess policies in terms of reasonable compassion.

How do you prefer think about compassion in relation to empathy and morality and truth, and why?

How do the theoretical aspects of your thoughts compare with your experiences in practice?

Most people have no idea how to measure productivity properly.  They try to measure it mainly in terms of quantity and money.  They do not realise that true productivity is measured in terms of morality.  

How, then, will you attempt to measure mental, physical, social, financial and environmental health in the year ahead?

How will you attempt to find evidence of the absence of harm?

What will you do when you find evidence of harm?

Objective morality is defined in secular terms, through modern philosophy and evidence-based psychology.

Any other measure of morality is subjective, regardless of the political influence of its source.

People working within bureaucratic hierarchies, whether as employees or contract labour, often become detached from compassion and community and imagination and honesty.  They are not permitted, or do not care, to express appropriate imagination or useful inventiveness or necessary compassion.

They are often therefore prevented, by the bureaucratic systems themselves, and by government policy, and possibly even by their own lack of morality, from attempting to help solve considerable societal problems.  

Who, then, is attempting to solve those problems?

How, for example, are you investing in a healthy imagination, whether that imagination belongs to you or someone else?

How do you define the qualities of a healthy imagination?

What does a healthy imagination attempt to achieve through the expression of compassion?

How does a healthy imagination thrive?

And what prevents a healthy imagination from thriving?

When people are inadequately respectful of facts, their purported compassion is actually a sham.  Their decisions, in the name of compassion, are then likely to cause more harm than good. 

How do you know you practice self-compassion in a well-informed, unselfish way?

True justice requires self-nurture as well as civility.

There is a considerable amount of compassion fatigue in the world, most usually due to the fact that self-nurture is often prevented, as is the assessment of evidence.

Decisions are often made in a rush, thereby giving emotion far too much influence and reasoning too little.

Real leaders refuse to rush.  They put measures in place to prevent themselves, and other people, from being overwhelmed.

It is impossible to express the enlightened compassion of well-informed kindness when overwhelmed. 

But who has the freedom to express enlightened compassion?

In a world where too many people are overwhelmed by experiences of chaos, confusion, corruption and incompetence, who competently examines the facts and responds to them appropriately?

Without enlightened compassion, reasonable empathy is an impossibility.

When people demand too much of you, what do you do?

They obviously lack compassion towards you in such circumstances.

How do you know you expect enough of yourself?

What do you know about sympathy and altruism in relation to compassion, empathy, courtesy and civility, and how did you acquire that knowledge?

Incivility causes much suffering.  Civility and compassion may prevent it from occurring in future, but how likely is that when incivility is so prevalent?