This week I am thinking a lot about compassion, why some people have so much of it, and so many people have so little. And why it seems to have vanished from the moral core of our society.
Politics is compassion to me; compassion is politics.
Our leaders and us seem to no longer think in terms beyond money: we underestimate or trivialize the power of a touch, a visit, a smile, a kind word, the willingness to be heard, any one of which has the potential to bring a fading life back to life or to turn a life around.
We don’t have good choices – hate and bigotry or weakness and chaos. We have to look elsewhere, perhaps inside of ourselves. Our country is not what we thought it was, perhaps we aren’t either.
I’m choosing compassion and small acts of great kindness. No virus spreads faster than compassion. It procreates like rabbits. Compassion gives me the chance to be better than I am.
Every good work spawns more good jobs, more promising results. I believe compassion can turn our world around. Hate certainly can’t.
Compassion spreads warmth and kindness, connects us to the rest of humanity, lifts us, and gives us hope.
I gave a Bishop Maginn student a laptop recently. She called me up in tears to tell me how much it meant to her as she applied to college. There was no money for her to buy one. She has already sent a dozen applications off.
Her mother sent me a letter thanking me and asking if I knew how much this gift would change her daughter’s life.
Without it, she said, her daughter might never be able to go to college at all. I wrote this on my blog.
Six or seven people wrote me to say they had contacted their local schools and offered to buy laptops for poor juniors and seniors applying for college. One reader sent a check for thousands of dollars to the school to purchase computers and help with tuition.
The people I work with on the blog never pass up a chance to do good. They call themselves The Army Of Good.
Several people sent money to Bishop Maginn to buy laptops for other children who might need them.
I realized that this compassionate act had already touched the lives of a dozen people. I had stepped outside of myself. You can do the math.
Compassion and kindness can flip the world quicker than any politician ever imagined. The gift of compassion keeps on giving, replicates, and grows and spreads.
Hatred is not our default position as humans. Love and compassion are.
The girl’s mother wrote that this gesture of compassion “has softened our world, our home, our family. You gave my daughter hope.”
Compassion permits me to grow beyond myself, reach beyond my very flawed being, and be more significant than me. Guns or money or political dogma will never do that.
A Washington reporter messaged me and asked me why I thought Joe Biden was so unpopular when he appears to be decent and caring. He does his reporting from a desk in an office building near the capital. There is no budget for travel. He has no idea what people are thinking.
Living in the country had given me a broader perspective on life and politics than I had when I lived in the cities.
I reject the labels of liberal or conservative, left or right.
The political parties are increasingly a money-sucking fund-raising tool in our time, the hiding place of weak and lazy minds. I don’t care to belong to a political party that seeks to frighten me into giving them money.
Billions of dollars go into political pockets; very little of it gets to West Virginia or the opioid clinics all over the country or the refugee camps in the Panhandle. The Republicans have turned their backs on the American experience and succumbed to hatred and white nationalism.
The Democrats struggle to find their message and to get people to accept it. They just can’t reach people’s hearts. Neither party touches my heart or speaks to me.
Labels do not illuminate us; they are places for us to hide.
There are more than two ways to look at the world. People who paste labels on their heads are training their minds not to think; people with tags have no need or reason to believe.
I told the reporter that Biden is well-meaning but is wildly out of touch with what most Americans want from their government. I don’t know if he is genuinely nice or not. I can’t tell from those brief and flaccid talks.
I know an impoverished and struggling man down the road in our town. I would think he would crawl on his hands and knees for money from the government; his family depends on a food pantry to eat.
But although he and his family could sure use it, he doesn’t want it.
And he hates the President for thinking he does. He doesn’t want politicians telling him what he needs or handing him the money to survive.
He doesn’t want to live off the government or be rescued. “I want a good job and the chance to care for my family,” he said. Trillian dollar social programs, however worthy, sail over the heads of most ordinary people. They can’t comprehend them.
Neither can I.
It would take a Roosevelt or Winston Churchill to touch them. Or some kind of leader we haven’t yet imagined.
I believe if Donald Trump had shown compassion for anyone beyond the people licking his toes, he would still be President. He doesn’t have compassion and understanding to offer, only anger and rage; he will lose again if he runs.
He offers nothing but more of the same.
If Biden did get around more, he might sharply refine his Build Back Better plan. And if most people don’t want it, it won’t happen. And clearly, most people don’t like it. There is no national uproar about the collapse of these plans. Maybe there should be, but there isn’t. Suck it up.
It isn’t a question of what I believe in or want; it’s a question of what I see, feel and hear.
This narrow view of what is suitable for people is stifling to many, not inspiring.
“I want to do well myself,” said the man down the road. “I want to have a good job that pays enough for my family to live and eat on. I don’t want the government to give me a good life. I want them to make it possible for me to do it.”
I find that surprising, perhaps short-sighted, admirable, and thought-provoking. I always thought most people wanted to be bailed out of their troubles. I was taught that was compassion.
My party is the Compassion Party. It doesn’t exist, at least not yet. Late-night TV shows would have a blast skewering such a party; compassion is not in America in 2021. Real men don’t talk about compassion, the big men in trucks with those big flags are not peddling compassion, they drift more to bullying and whining..
But compassion is our way forward, our way back. One blogger wrote that we have to hold the hands of others, even those we disagree with.
We touch human beings with our hearts, not money or trillions of dollars.
One love, one heart, one destiny.
We rally them by reaching their hearts and souls, not mailing them checks. We inspire them by giving them the chance to better their lives rather than throwing enormous amounts of money at their problems.
If any President had compassion for the people, he or she would be busy breaking up the mega-corporations that dominate our lives, track us like dogs for our money, and own our elected leaders. Maybe one day. Grow jobs, not deficits.
We can rally people only by showing genuine compassion, not faux gestures and cliches.
The most potent political tool on the earth is compassion. To touch people’s hearts, we must know them, live among them, offer them jobs they choose and seek.
Compassion is the basis of morality. If we have no peace, said Mother Teresa, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. Love and compassion are necessities, not Hallmark Cards.
Without them, humanity suffers and declines and cannot survive. It is not a luxury, a sound bite, a campaign e-mail. It has to be authentic.
Our choices have never been more barren or disturbing. We can’t stand either party, so we keep up this Orwellian dance of election and change, and rejection and anger.
Elect one, kick one out, elect another, and go back and get the first one.
Somewhere, in our rush to make money, be secure, sink into screens and arguments, we forget to make room for compassion. We let it slip from our daily lives and consciousness. It has disappeared from our media and the proceedings of our elected officials.
When we fight for it or return on its power, light, and hope will flood our world, and we can face what we need to meet together. I won’t quit on the idea. It’s happened many times before.
All the polls show that just about 70 percent of Americans are strongly in favor of Build Back Better, which is considered a large majority. Where are you getting your data from, beyond your anecdotal chats with your neighbors?
Aliene, I don’t gather data. I wish to think for myself, an old habit, rather than quote other people. I’m happy to stick my neck out. So far, so good. We are drowning in data, and nobody really know what is happening.
I Biden’s plan is disintegrating and his popularity is at its the losest point – low 40’s – in his term. And I voted for him and like him. But reality is reality.
This figure is just one google away for you, it’s been all over the place, bou’ll have to do your own homework. Republicans are winning local elections all over the country.
If 70 percent of the people love his plans, why is he as unpopular as Donald Trump was at his lowest point. The “data” can’t really explain this. If you look at the last round of polling (also all over the news) you will find that even the people who received pandemic relief money are not happy with it, and say it made little difference in their lives. Something is wrong here, as I said, that’s my sense of it, and the example of my neighbor is very much reflected in the polls. That’s why I talked to them.
https://www.vox.com/2021/11/3/22761425/joe-biden-approval-virginia-new-jersey
Good luck on your data search.
Jon, your reasoning is poor–in fact, it’s actually what I’d use in the data reasoning seminars that I give to college freshmen when I teach them about the dangers of generalizing from a small, non-representative sample. Most people don’t understand data, and you apparently are one of them. The same polls that on the one hand you appeal to (the ones that conclude that Biden is unpopular) are the ones that you reject for concluding that Build Back Better is popular. Both things are true: the majority of Americans are strongly in favor of Build Back Better, and the majority of Americans disapprove of Joe Biden. You seem to believe that both things cannot simultaneously be true, which is a false dichotomy. Many Americans disapprove of OTHER things about Joe Biden, but not Build Back Better.
Ailene, I’m not a professor or a cable pundit. In a free society we sometimes just express what we feel and think, we don’t need to do what you make your students do. I’m not your pupil. I believe what I wrote and your big problem is not that I haven’t backed it up (I don’t need to) but that you disagree. I’d suggest your start your own blog if you haven’t, and write what you think. I’d be happy to hear what you think. No one’s honest reasoning is “poor,” that’s an elitist and arrogant position. It’s just my reasoning, for better or worse. I don’t claim to be right, just honest.
Sure, Jon–the poor understanding of data has not led directly to a public health crisis in which people do not understand the wisdom of being vaccinated. Your flawed grasp of data reasoning is as good as that of a professional statistician, and to doubt that is elitist and arrogant. We all get a participation trophy just for showing up.
Ailene, I’m confused, I have NO grasp of data, I’m not using hardly any when I form my opinions. Nor do I ever pretend my writing is data-driven, although I think my political writing has been pretty good- and pretty accurate – the past couple of years.
I was a political writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer before becoming a book writer and blogger and also worked for the Washington Post during Watergate and both experiences taught me to get out and speak to people. My first journalism job was with the New York Times, and I was an editor at the Boston Globe and several other places. I reject the contemporary practices of corporate journalism that hide behind data and polling and computers in order to justify what are mostly simple opinions. And are often disastrously wrong.
We have lost the art of speaking to ordinary people (go read the late David Broder of the Washington Post, a valuable teacher for your students and a mentor of mine) He was perhaps the greatest journalistic political writer of my time.
There is a very significant argument to be made that the poor understanding of data and the failure of data to predict politics (or Donald Trump and Trumpism) or to foresee what is happening to our political system now -have a great deal to do with the staggering public health crisis we are experiencing.
Millions of Americans are absorbing and accepting false and dangerous and increasingly political data that many health officials believe is killing thousands of people. If you haven’t asked your students to study what is on Facebook every day, you might consider it. Ask them to go and talk to some nurses.
With every post, you strike me as contemptuous and jeering at someone for approaching politics in a different way than you do, and from a different perspective, it seems. I left that world behind so I can write freely and express my own opinions, something that seems to disturb you.
I have no real grasp of data and never used it or learned it in my journalism career when we were encouraged by good editors to actually go out and talk to people, which is what I still do, even though you laugh at that idea. The polls I read and the data they offer are inconsistent and unreliable, as you must know. Even the best polls were stunned by the rise of Trumpism.
They are a poor substitute for talking to people and listening to them.
The things I hear help me understand what is happening in our country and ground my writing. I’m very happy with what I write, and unlike you, do not presume I have the only key to truth. I am often wrong and happy to say so.
We are not getting anywhere in our conversations and I don’t usually enable snide and snarky people like you or argue my beliefs on Facebook. If you have something thoughtful or revealing to offer, post it here and I’ll be happy to share it with my readers, who, fortunately, are much more open-minded than you are. These posts feel like Middle School to me, adolescent and superior. An academic disease, I think (I taught at NYU for some years) But good luck to you, I’m sure your classes are interesting and wish you well.
“I want to do well myself,” said the man down the road. “I want to have a good job that pays enough for my family to live and eat on. I don’t want the government to give me a good life. I want them to make it possible for me to do it.” Wise words. A fair wage for every American would perhaps bring us together. As far as sending people stimulus checks in the mail for many it was a life line during our pandemic. But most of my neighbors with good paying jobs were still working from home and they didn’t need those checks. Perhaps it would have been more compassionate to send greater sums to people who lost their jobs, or those who work 2 or 3 jobs and can’t make ends meet, to seniors who are trying to make it only on Social Security payments and so forth. Minimum wage is literally destroying many Americans. If you work you should be able to live a decent life. Feel strongly about this.
I don’t blame you, those things are worth feeling strongly about, thanks Jean..
my daily mantra is “It’s all chaos, be compassionate and kind”
I whisper this when someone cuts me off, when someone leaves a mean post or just when my heart hurts.
Compassion for myself has been the biggest hurdle but once it’s realized, compassion and forgiveness comes easily for everyone.
I’ve always been out of step with society and a bit ahead of my time so I’m going to predict that compassion will grow in the next year to a place we could have never imagined before. Even the most angry are disarmed when you display compassion for their suffering and views.
You are inspiring and I thank you!
Thanks Debora, I have nothing to back it up, but I also feel people are getting sick of the anger parade…nobody wants to live this way..
You, Jon, are the only one I have read who puts in print what we are feeling. The political parties are redundant with their meanderings round and round favoring the few who really believe in them. We are the majority who are partly silent in our beliefs in improving our American standards. We let the rigid party voices do our work and then complain when we don’t like what is happening. Where are all the compassionate, intelligent adept people when it comes to running for office in an election? Are there only those who want the prestige and acclaim and self importance running for office? And don’t forget the ones who accept money from businesses in order to reap kick-backs. Ok now I feel better.