Revised Post about Compassion

If you've read my Xanga entry about the purpose of compassion, well... I rewrote it because I'm in a slightly better and more open mood. Plus, Dave has made a good point about the situation.

Basically, the outline of the entry says something along the lines of I don't feel like showing compassion to those who are outside of my group of close friends. The amount of compassion that I show towards people is inversely proportional to how close they are to me [think of a hyperbola, closer to x=0 means higher values, farther away means lower values]. I'm sorry to bring math into it but it most correctly describes my level of compassion for certain people. My closest friends get the cake, and those further away... don't.

Of course, I think I have an overgeneralization of reasons to not show compassion; I basically said that the whole idea was a waste of time. But that's not true. It builds strong bonds in friendship, which is extremely beneficial. But here was the problem I had. In times of stress and shortage, such as the life-boat analogy, only 7 of 10 people could survive. If everyone was compassionate, you would believe that they'd have some will to sacrifice their lives for others. But if everyone on the boat were to act with the same compassion, they would all have jumped for the sake of saving 7 people, but this ends up saving 0 people, which isn't the result that the people who jumped would want. Now the reason is, it's not fair for me to live because 3 people had to die for me. This line of reasoning doesn't make sense to me. People die every day... just because you witnessed it or indirectly caused it doesn't mean that you have to kill yourself. I say indirect because only 7 of 10 people can survive. 3 people are going to die. You get to decide who.

This was my justification for being a loner. But look at the scenario again with a slight change.

You're on a life-boat with your best friend and 8 other people that you don't know. You and your friend are going to stick together, most likely. If you both have a sense of survival, you'll stick together and try to eliminate 3 other people. With teamwork on your part and none of the other peoples', you have an extreme advantage. The only exception I could think of is the fact that the people on the raft might pick up on your usage of team work and organize to destroy you and your friend. But the point is, compassion is important on different levels depending on how well you trust the recipient.

Now that you have the jist of my point, here is an interesting refutation that DaveD made. One of my arguments in the purposelessness of compassion was the fact that I hate being categorized as part of a "whole," while at the same time I preach that nothing is more important than maintaining the ecosystem. This is a perfect example of how people value different things. I don't like to be considered as part of the "whole" human community of earth because I pretty much am discusted with humanity. I don't like how those who are unfit--even far beyond unfit get to live normal lives and reproduce. I'm not claiming that I'm fit enough to survive in the wild. I'm just a product of humanity who is enlightened with and disgusted with my origin.

I know that I can exist without the human community, however. This is the point I believe I was trying to make. I don't need other humans to help me survive. I can kill beef, cook it, and eat it. If needed, I could probably also just eat it raw. Seems disgusting but my stomach can make me do things that I've never even dreamed about when I'm hungry. However, if the ecosystem were to die, I, along with every other living thing would probably die. The only thing left over would be bacteria, possibly.

So there you have it, compassion on different levels of trust and familiarity.