Compassion

When emotion is the basis for all decisions, very little progress can be made in an individual life or a societal life. Compassion is often confused with emotion in common discourse. Compassion is neither an emotion nor emotional. Compassion springs from the rational and mindful understanding of the commonality of the human, or living, condition. Emotion is likely to cloud the compassionate mind. 

I was introduced to the magnetic speaking of Brigitte Gabriel this weekend when a friend sent me a video of one of her speeches on the influence of Saudi Arabian money on American education. Among the statistics she quoted in her speeches was a claim that the Saudis donate $22.5 million dollars a year to Harvard to promote a positive presentation of Islam in the education at the institution. This is just one of many contributions which, she claims, are made annually to American universities and public school systems in an attempt to promote Islam to American children and young adults. 

I mention Ms. Gabriel as a person who raises issues of rational merit in an emotional context. As a secular humanist, I share her concern about the infiltration of an aggressive religion into our civil society. Especially into our public education system, as she claims. However, her message is imbued with fear and rage. These emotions taint her rather persuasive arguments.They make her appear to be an irrational ideologue rather than a herald of rational alarm.

On the other side of the issue of emotion and compassion, I was introduced to John S. Reed on Bill Moyers' new PBS show yesterday. Mr. Reed, a former Citigroup CEO, is now on the board of MIT in Cambridge. Mr. Reed presented the despicable facts of the financial rape of the middle class in America with the emotionless flatness, which could be construed as diagnostic of sociopathy in a psychiatric examination. His lack of emotion, suggesting his internal dissociation from any shame or guilt over his participation in setting up the conditions for this debacle which ruined millions, was stunning. 

Compassion entails the healthy integration of emotion with rationality through practice. An essential element of compassion is perspective. Perspective comes with self-exploration in the context of wide human experience. The compassionate person understands his/her emotional triggers in the face of the daily human condition. While emotion may lead a person to a practice which develops compassion, compassion itself resides in the healthy mind. It is neither emotional nor emotionless.