From: Duncan Woods (Woods@garradhassan.com)
Date: Wed Jun 25 2003 - 15:10:57 BST
Steve,
>> when someone attacks one's ideas (intellectual self) we
>> do not see it as a personal attack
Then I need no tact when responding to your comments? :)
>> Pity is a mode of contempt not a mode of love though liberals
>> often mistake it for love
I take objection to absurdly relating contempt and pity and molesting
its synonyms to make a clumsy political slur. Pity is not the same as
condescension - that is what you will find justified by the political
right. I give a view of pity and a defence of liberal benefaction.
Pity, the emotion, is generally conceived as the result of empathy - the
imagining of oneself in another's position. Pity is a negative feeling
generated by the experience. When acting though the emotional experience
of another's perspective, any action that transpires is helping another
but as though it were oneself.
>> liberals have sympathy for the poor.
>> To see poor people makes them feel bad and results in a
>> sympathetic desire for their own bad feeling to end through
>> ending the poverty that caused it.
I emphasise the empathetic nature of pity which is otherwise obfuscated
in the statement "makes them feel bad".
>> A compassionate response is "disinterested" in the sense that
>> the compassionate person has a desire to relieve other's suffering
>> or bring others happiness but does not have a personal interest.
The redefinition of the pity synonym 'compassion' alludes to the
inclusion of altruism whereas your 'pity' does not. Altruism, defined as
an action benefiting another while harming oneself, is desperately
flawed for reasoning motivation.
I'll demonstrate using your above statement - the subject "does not have
a personal interest" yet their action is motivated in order to satisfy
their own "desire to relieve...". Your own desire is your self-interest!
It is the same desire satisfaction syllogism as your definition of
'pity' yet you tried weakly to add altruistic intent to 'compassion' and
ignore the origination of the feeling in 'pity'. This was, as far as I
can determine, only to give a pejorative sense to the term liberal.
The empathetic response should not be belittled by the absence of a
mythical concept. Without this, your distinction between the two seems
to be 'feeling' pain of others (pity) and 'seeing' pain of others
(compassion) of which the second I consider weaker.
Immorality, criminality, and anti-social personality disorders are
examples of individuals unable to determine the consequences of their
actions through understanding their emotional effect on others by being
unable to view the world from other's perspectives - i.e. lack of
empathy - psychopathic behaviour.
We prompt the 'perspective shifts' of empathy to teach children
morality: - "you wouldn't like it if someone did that to you" says the
parent, the child shifts perspective to that of little Jimmy he just
thumped and feels bad, perspective returns to themselves and they feel
regret with the result of not wishing to repeat the action. A moral rule
is learnt.
Empathetic responses to suffering may appear as strictly altruistic yet
the empathiser, as I shall describe later, does it for selfish benefit.
Outward benefits such as social acceptability are sought by others
unaware of the means, so they seek to emulate its appearance for their
own benefit - these are the sanctimonious and the pious. Not the
liberal. The trigger for their reaction would be identification of a
situation and not the automatic emotional response. Seeing and not
feeling - which has much the same end effect when responding to
suffering but not when choosing your actions. Seeing alone can only
judge the result of an action post facto and not imagine it before
performing something unfamiliar. To create a visual image of a reaction
prior to an act necessitates empathy to imagine the emotions involved!
Feeling outside of one's own immediate situation facilitates prediction
and pre-emption - reaction to seeing alone, does not.
Q. Why should one try and empathise with others if it causes pain - is
it altruistic!?
A. Feel and share someone else's joy and there will be little doubt!
Feeling many other's happiness is better than one's own in isolation.
Feel the delight of suffering lifted. Feel the pleasure of your own
child glee. Empathy is selfishly motivated yet can have the appearance
of altruism. It is a selfishness that is self stoking, non-destructive,
does not conflict with others and universally beneficial.
Many seek descriptions of Oneness. I would suggest a community thinking
and acting through each others perspective offers the much sought after
unified whole - it acts as one.
Incidentally, the liberal pities all those around an illiberal while
they ignorantly wreck pain on others. The political right requires the
parental prompting to respect, understand and feel from other's
perspectives so that they may be shamed and understand the effects of
their actions. Pity is caring and those on the right often seem not to
care at all.
D
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
[mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk] On Behalf Of Steve Peterson
Sent: 24 June 2003 19:31
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: Re: Re: MD The Transformation of Love
Hi Platt, Wim, Sam, Scott, all
Steve said:
> > I think you have agape and amor reversed. I see compassion as a
> > higher form of love than romantic love. Romantic love (amor) has an
> > "I'll love you if you'll love me" quality to it. It is indeed a
> > "personal love" which makes it a lower form of love than compassion
> > (agape) which is a disinterested love that transcends self-ishness.
>
Platt replied:
> Transcends selfishness? I think not. As a generalization, liberal
> types
> want to be admired for their "compassion." At least they talk
incessantly
> about how wonderful it would be if everyone was as caring and
> compassionate as they--with other people's money, of course. :-)
Steve:
Scott had it right about the type of compassion I'm talking about. The
type that liberals want to be admired for and that you are railing
against is their pity for the oppressed. Pity is a mode of contempt not
a mode of love though liberals often mistake it for love.
I see compassion as the highest form of love. Liberals have sympathy
for the poor. To see poor people makes them feel bad and results in a
sympathetic desire for their own bad feeling to end through ending the
poverty that caused it.
A compassionate response is "disinterested" in the sense that the
compassionate person has a desire to relieve other's suffering or bring
others happiness but does not have a personal interest. By contrast the
person in romantic love wants the object of his affection to suffer for
him as he suffers for her. He wants to be loved by her as he loves. A
compassionate love wants nothing in return.
I personally find the feeling I get of compassion to be the same as that
in appreciation of beauty. Of course here again we have a contrast.
There is the lustful (eros) kind of appreciation of beauty that seeks to
posses that beauty, and there is the the higher form that just
blissfully experiences without seeking to possess.
Platt said:
> As for Tarzan and unborn babies not being human, you've ignored human
> potential. An ape will always be an ape, but Tarzan has the potential
to
> speak like you and I.
Steve:
Wim raised the same point and I agree entirely. I didn't mean to
suggest that participating in human culture as a necessary part of a
definition of humanity solves the whole abortion issue. However, for me
it solves the question of whether killing of an unborn fetus is the
equivalent of murder as is often argued by anti-abortionists. It's not.
In an abortion, there is a killing of a potential for humanity, but no
existing humanity could be killed. I do think that that potential needs
to be taken seriously and am in agreement with Wim as to legal
consequences.
Platt said:
> Finally, a self-aware human doesn't stop at the social level.
> Internally
> you and I view our ideas as an integral part of our personalities.
Viewed
> by others, we may be seen as purely social level creatures, mere
ciphers
> in a sea of humanity. But that view can lead to all sorts of bad
things,
> like Communism for starters. The sanctity of the individual,
comprising
> all levels, is the foundation for political liberty and currently the
> pattern most capable of responding to DQ. Lest there be any doubt
about an
> individual comprising all levels, consider this quote from Pirsig:
>
> "The MOQ divides the hominem, or 'individual' into four parts:
> inorganic,
> biological, social and intellectual. Once this analysis is made, the
ad
> hominem argument can be defined more clearly: It is an attempt destroy
the
> intellectual patterns of an individual by attacking his social status.
In
> other words, a lower form of evolution is being used to destroy a
higher
> form. That is evil." Note 140-Lila's child
Steve:
I didn't mean to eliminate participation in intellectual patterns from
the individual or the self. i agree that these are part of the forest
of static patterns that comprise the self. That's fine with me if you'd
like to add participation in intellectual patterns to your definition of
humanity. I don't think it is necessary, however.
In fact, your ad hominen quote supports my case. When someone attacks
one's social self we consider the attack "personal." On the other hand,
when someone attacks one's ideas (intellectual self)we do not see it as
a personal attack. So the "person" that it is being attacked is the the
personality I was talking about as a social pattern of value.
Thanks,
Steve
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