Compassion: The Destroyer of Virtue

An ideal is a precondition for a functioning psyche. Do you know where you are? Do you know where you wish to be? If you could get where you wanted, would you prefer it was a second-best destination, or would you like it to be what you want, even if it meant a greater sacrifice? If you decide to aim at something, and if you have a standard by which you hold yourself to get there, you have an ideal.

What happens when we live in a society that tells the populace that unless you are a minority or an oppressed creature—or, more so, a minority and an oppressed creature (or, by fiat, because a minority, they are an oppressed creature)—you should settle? Settle for what is realistic, or, at the very least, make damn well sure that you do not get in the way of those said creatures. What happens when a culture values people who have been harmed—or, more despicably, assumed to have been harmed because of their group identification—more than the people who have done something with their life? What type of creature can live in a place where up is down, achievement is privilege, victimhood is virtue, and judgment to say otherwise is a sin?

Oh, how the maternal protectors germinate. They swarm over the inflicted as maggots on wounds, and the victims welcome their protectors, claiming that they would have never survived were it not for their mastication. Never mind their potential to overcome adversity. That is excused, ignored, hidden from, covered over, sacrificed. Who would one be without their failures? When the substrate of a nation is composed of men without strength—by choice, by beating, or by fiat—it is the weakest among them that rise.

How dare I notice? How dare I judge? Who am I to say such things? My response? Those are not arguments, and I will not close my eyes to what I see. I do not accept your sentence that judgment is evil. Judgment protects the victims from the offenders and the bystanders from the embittered victims. To judge is to choose what is valuable and what is irreparable. I decline your invitation to coddle the afflicted rather than trust in their capacity to rise. I reject your supposition that man is inherently evil, in need of a tyrant; corrupt, in need of a big brother; weak, in need of a protector; or sinners, in need of a savior. No. I refuse to accept your premise that man is despicable throughout every avenue of his life. I refuse that the solution to his “tragedy” is fixable by your ideas, edicts, or religious rulings. I refuse to take from man that which even the God of Abraham refused to take: his mind and his volition.

Perhaps, what man needs to thrive is judgment—on behalf of himself and on behalf of those around him—from those bold enough to risk the consequences of their words. Perhaps, weakness comes by default, and strength comes through adversity—voluntary or otherwise.

Perhaps, as our society accepted the belief that ideals are futile, unpragmatic, or evil, it gave room for man to fall prey to temptation. What was that temptation? To live in meandrous apathetic servility, blown by the winds of the power-hungry drivers who were desperate to claim their life for them. The drivers came in the same form they always do when men refuse to live: as advisers, protectors, coddlers, foster mothers, spiritual leaders, counselors, and advocates of the greater good. Perhaps, as these men’s souls became corrupted—as they passed on the responsibility of their life—they gravitated towards statements like, “Sure, in an ideal world, it’s good, but we should be realistic, practical, and probable.” Perhaps, these statements exist for the sole purpose of staying in the swamp—or, at the very least, to prevent people from looking too closely at the swamp because they are covered in slime.

Is it here that the call for limitless compassion without judgment comes forth? Does the degree of the demand one makes for compassion coincide with the degree of his corruption? Is it here that the sages and pastors capitalize on the failures of their flocks, beating them down into prostrate poses, weaponizing them of the words of their Savior? And is it that by being in such a constitution, that man finds the image of himself as fallen, incapable of rising again?

“They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

—Mark 2:17, KJV

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever. ”

—Orwell, 1984