Eric has a post on Christian interference and coercion with respect to assisted suicide. One aspect in particular hooked my attention.
Christians who are anti-choice-in-dying have been complaining for some time now that it’s not just about pain. In fact, they point out that of those in Oregon who choose assisted suicide very few are in intense pain. It is, they say, because of loss of independence, loss of dignity, loss of control that people choose to end their lives, not just because the pain is unrelenting and uncontrollable. And that is true. Choice in dying is not just about pain. It is about choice. It is to provide choice for people who do not want to go on living with the kinds of disabilities and distresses that make their lives no longer worth living — for them, not for others. It’s about individual life choices. And they are choosing only for themselves, not for others. It is about their sense of the worth and value of theirown lives, not about the lives of others. And Christians don’t want people to have that choice. They are determined, along with many of their Muslim and Jewish partners in crime, to make their will felt somewhere and by someone. Let it not be said that their influence does not stretch to some suffering person. They are still a vital force in society. Indeed, they say, they should be given a greater part to play in decisions regarding social policy, for religion is, after all, as the fatuous Karen Armstrong keeps repeating like a dripping faucet, about love and compassion, and about compassion and care for the sick and the dying especially. And they want someone left to have compassion on.
And that’s exactly what I don’t want, and I’m not the only one.
It’s pretty much the last refuge of the piously-inclined to say that slow miserable death provides a wonderful opportunity for compassion to roll up its sleeves and get to work. But here’s the thing: I don’t want compassion. I want to be in no need of compassion.
I don’t want to be helpless and dependent. It’s that simple. Being that way and getting lots of compassion doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse. It just underlines the helplessness and dependency.
Compassion is a very over-rated virtue. It’s good in emergencies, to motivate people to act, and that includes slow-motion emergencies like chronic poverty and underdevelopment and exploitation. But it’s lousy as a permanent fixture, and it’s nightmarish as a reason to keep people alive who would prefer to escape precisely the condition that is the object of compassion.
I would argue that feeling compassion could lead one to support assisted dying.
Religion is often not motivated by compassion, but by biblical commands and dogma. And it’s this dogma that actually short-circuits genuine compassion.
And that is, in part, why religious faith can be so dangerous: It allows good people to do evil things by overriding our natural inclinations for compassion and empathy, and replacing them with dogmatic rule worship.
Yes, fair point – it’s a different kind of compassion though. Maybe respect-compatible-compassion as opposed to thrust-upon-you-compassion. Or maybe that’s just an ornate way of saying secular compassion as opposed to theocratic compassion.
Still, I think I’m trying to get at a genuine distinction between compassion that pays attention to what the object of it actually wants, and the kind that wants a suffering victim to do busy active compassion on.
Compassion is definitely one of the main reasons why I support assisted dying. The first reason is that people have every right to choose to die, but I think compassion is something that is incorporated into that stance. If someone wants to die, I assume they have a reason for it. No matter if that reason is pain or wish to die with dignity or something completely different (which I don’t need to know because it’s none of my business, but whatever it is I assume it’s good enough reason for them), it is my empathy and compassion that makes me hope they will be able to do it or find someone to help them if they are already too weak or incapacitated.
Driven by our ‘compassion’ (i.e. morality and human feeling) we should strive to live in a world where compassion is unnecessary because there is nobody who is in need of it.
This is, of course, an impossible goal.
However, if you can reduce the number of people who by their circumstances require your compassion, either by direct assistance, charitable giving or allowing them to end their lives if they so choose, then you should.
It’s almost as though those being kept alive against their desire are being so treated expressly for the purpose of being objects of “compassion”; with failure upon the part of the rest of us to demonstrate the right quality and quantity of compassion resulting in bad karma.
I posted (large post) on this on my blog on 23 August. (Go to my blog via the link in my name, then click on the “Dying” tag). But I’ll summarise here. (I’m a paid-up member of “Dignity in Dying”, the UK organisation lobbying for assisted dying).
There are factors that nearly all commentators, on both sides of the argument, miss. But they have been expressed clearly by Debby Purdy. Having the option of assisted dying isn’t just about dying. For example, it is also about peace of mind.
Some advantages of the legalisation of assisted dying / assisted suicide:
– Some people will be able to avoid intolerable loss of quality of life and/or pain. (Intolerable according to the only people qualified to judge: themselves).
– Many people will have “peace of mind”, knowing that they have the option available to them, even if (as is typically the case) they may never use it. This is one of the arguments of the heroic Debbie Purdy. (Diane Pretty made similar arguments).
– Some will will be able to live longer, knowing that instead of having to commit suicide (perhaps in the UK, perhaps at Dignitas) while they can do so unaided, they can afford to wait beyond the time when they will need assistance. (And, of course, they may never take up the option).
– Instead of people committing suicide elsewhere, only for friends and relatives who travel with them to be investigated after they return, the whole process will be under UK law, and any investigation will take place before anyone dies.
– There is clearly already a trickle of hidden suicides, probably including a high proportion of assisted suicides, which could be brought into the open and under control.
– Suicide carries risk of collateral damage. (Jumping off a building onto someone; giving a train driver nightmares for the rest of their life; turning yourself into a vegetable to be catered for for years; etc). With assistance, it will be done properly.
While I think this is a very apt summary of Christian thinking, I thought I should point out that the disabled community is very much *against* euthanasia.
I used to see the issue in pure libertarian “it’s my body, GTFO!” terms, but a friend of mine who’s in very poor health and in chronic pain pointed out the issue is much more a statement about which lives are and aren’t worth living. That’s why the arguments for euthanasia inevitably wind up going “when I’m in condition X, I should be allowed to end my life” when, really, shouldn’t you just be saying “I should be allowed to end my life whenever I want, for whatever reason I want”? I have my fair share of reservations arguing against autonomy in any form, but this is only about autonomy if you think we also shouldn’t keep young, healthy people from committing suicide.
In principle one should “be allowed to end my life whenever I want, for whatever reason I want”
However, as in the discussion about the terminally ill, it is not something that one will be allowed to do on the spur of the moment, there will be procedures that mean that hopefully those who are able to be assisted in other ways will be so assisted.
One would hope that these procedures, in the same way that they would prevent an elderly person being pressured into ending their life would also dissuade “young, healthy people from committing suicide”
Ophelia, I would argue that “thrust-upon-you-compassion” is not compassion at all. It’s something else. It’s most likely not motivated by the compassionate impulse, but by fear of god, and following god’s commands.
I don’t see how a genuine act of compassion can be motivated by fear or be commanded.
Anonymous – is there really such a thing as the disabled community? Do we really know what the whole of it thinks about assisted suicide? Are you sure you don’t mean just that some disabled people (and/or perhaps some groups or their representatives) are against assisted suicide?
At any rate I think that branch of the opposition suffers from a kind of narcissism – because its position boils down to preventing anyone from being able to get assisted suicide, for the sake of protecting or shoring up their sense of their lives as worth living. I think that’s a crappy self-centered reason.
Felix:
One would hope that no one is pressured into euthanasia, certainly. But that’s where the reality of the situation becomes important – the old, the infirm, and the disabled are some of the most devalued people in our society. They are frequently the targets of abuse, rape, and murder; and more subtly, they’re made to feel like their lives are worthless, even by the people they love, and by you if you say you’d rather die than live their life. That’s the point – euthanasia becomes really about whose life has value and whose doesn’t.
The pressure to consent to euthanasia cannot be removed from the debate, (nor can the fact that consent is often not even required). There was a reason the majority of Dr. Kevorkian’s patients were women suffering with depression (a good number of whom had conditions that were easily treated or didn’t have illnesses at all). And beyond the personal coercion is where our grand American Health Insurers step in – many people have already found themselves in the position of not being able to afford the medicine, procedure, or counseling that would fix whatever’s wrong with them, but euthanasia is well within their means.
That thing being called “thrust-upon-you compassion?” I call it “pity.” And that’s not welcome in my life at all, and I don’t give it to others.
Ophelia:
Yes, there is such a thing as the disabled community. I don’t think you can ever make a statement as to what a community believes “on the whole”, as it’s comprised of individuals with individual opinions. But as far as I know, there is not a single disability-rights organization that supports euthanasia. And more importantly, this is an issue that disproportionately targets them, so I think their perspective is important.
To be a little blunt, it’s discouraging to see you dismiss that perspective like this. People with severe disabilities are at a very high risk for abuse – I think about half of all people with disabilities say they’ve been the victim of a hate crime (or “abuse” as it’s usually called) because of it. They have a very real reason to fear euthanasia, and it seems a little dickish to call that “narcissistic”, imo.
As I said before, it’s not about taking away rights from you, it’s about applying the same rights from person to person. Do you think we should prevent suicide, especially when committed by the young and the healthy? Because *that’s* about autonomy. Either everyone is allowed that right, or we have to examine why some people get it and some people don’t, and everything I see points to fact that we are saying some lives are worth living and some aren’t.
I think all lives are valuable – not in the terribly dehumanizing Christian sense, as all lives have practical value for a God, but in the Humanist sense that places a value in the self independent of its value to other people. I feel very uncomfortable standing against autonomy (especially on the side of some really despicable whackos), but I would feel much, much worse implying that someone’s life is not worth living.
I am in the UK were we have the NHS (long may it last), I appreciate your point about the financial pressure.
It would be a bad combination to have the current US system along with a ‘way out’ for those who couldn’t afford proper support.
The old, the infirm, and the disabled are frequently the targets of abuse, rape, and murder? Really? That’s a very sweeping yet vague claim.
No; that’s just the kind of bullying narcissism I was talking about. I get to decide what kind of life I would or wouldn’t rather die than live. Period. That’s my business. It’s not the business of people who think (who have been nudged into thinking) that my decision about that is somehow directly connected to their view of their life. I wouldn’t want to be a woman in a Quiverfull family; I get to think that and say it; I don’t owe women in Quiverfull families any duty of saying their lives sound worth living to me.
Do you have an interest, Anonymous? You sound like a propagandist.
Anonymous – well that’s exactly what I said, isn’t it – you don’t mean “the disabled community”; you mean disability-rights organizations. Yet you said the former, not the latter – as people so often do when they’re trying to deploy the putative views of a large group. You don’t know what disabled people think, so you shouldn’t talk as if you do.
I don’t know that disabled people do have a real reason to fear euthanasia. They do under a Nazi regime, of course, but that’s not the issue. I don’t know that this stuff isn’t just scare-mongering. And whether you think it’s “dickish” or not, I do think it’s narcissistic to want to prevent people who need and want assisted suicide from getting it on the grounds that it “devalues” someone else’s life.
What do you mean it’s not about taking rights away from me? Yes it is. What else are you talking about?
“points to fact that we are saying some lives are worth living and some aren’t”
But it’s not you saying that my life isn’t worth living or vice versa.
It’s about what I am allowed to do under strict guidelines once I have made a decision about my life.
Re “Humanist sense that places a value in the self independent of its value to other people”
But there isn’t inherent value in the self independent of its value to other people AND that individual. What would such a value be?
It is of course sensible to promote a general respect for human life, but that is not strengthened by forcing people to live in suffering rather it is undermined.
No, not necessarily – especially not “we” in the sense of the state (or the neighbors). Certainly I think the right people should do what they can to talk the would-be suicide out of it and offer help and so on, and in some cases prevent immediate suicide via temporary force. But just prevent suicide no matter what? No.
Ophelia:
don’t want to side track the conversation but your statement:
“I don’t owe women in Quiverfull families any duty of saying their lives sound worth living to me”
sounds like you are suggesting that suicide would be something you would consider if you were in such a position and couldn’t get out by other means.
However, as you yourself noted today, whilst certain aspects of the life are far from ideal others are not so bad. Whilst one may be living in a position of servitude one does have the simple pleasures of raising children, etc and the hope that their husband will die before them!
I think that if this form of life was considered bad enough to kill oneself then in prior centuries 95% of the human race would have done so!
Anonymous you’re jumbling things up here.
“Worth living” is one thing and “valuable” is another. Furthermore I don’t think anyone is saying “some lives are not worth living” period – we (those of us who are) are saying some lives may not be worth living for me and I want the option of escape when (and if) I reach that point. There’s no need to generalize from that to other people’s lives. One person’s wanting to escape a particular kind of life is not a reflection on the value of anyone else’s. That’s where the narcissism comes in. It’s not about you, as the useful saying goes.
I don’t want some “Humanist sense that places a value in the self” if it translates to forcing me to go on living in a way I don’t want to live. I’m not interested. Place value anywhere you want to, but leave me out of it.
And if you have a specific agenda, I wish you would declare it.
Ophelia:
Um, what? You don’t believe people with disabilities are disproportionately targeted for abuse?
http://www.miller-mccune.com/legal-affairs/the-invisible-hate-crime-27984/
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I’m… not really sure what an interest would be. I said I have a friend who this affects, if that’s what you mean.
Felix – no, I’m not saying that. Saying X life doesn’t sound worth living isn’t the same as saying I would kill myself if I were in it – especially since I could just leave instead.
Anonymous, ok, thanks for the citation.
By an interest I meant active campaigning against right to die legislation, I think. No, having such a friend isn’t what I meant.
Only…what do you mean “affects”? It doesn’t affect anyone who doesn’t want it to.
Ophelia said “especially since I could just leave instead.”
but I had said “and couldn’t get out by other means”
With that proviso, and purely in the context of the current discussion, I disagree that “Saying X life doesn’t sound worth living isn’t the same as saying I would kill myself if I were in it”
If I can decide when putting my dog to sleep is best for my dog, because its continuing life would be horrible, and full of pain, I certainly hope I can decide when putting myself to sleep is best for me.
I’ve been in a few situations where death or agonizing-life-leading-to-death were possibilities (I’m still fairly young, but cancer in my 20’s led to interesting health issues – I’m fairly healthy now, at least). And after being in a few of those possibly life-disabling situations, I’m even more convinced that allowing people to choose their own end is a good thing if that’s what they desire.
Ophelia said (and I agree):
“Certainly I think the right people should do what they can to talk the would-be suicide out of it and offer help and so on, and in some cases prevent immediate suicide via temporary force. But just prevent suicide no matter what? No”
What would it take to prevent all suicides that happen today? Massive intrusion upon the liberties we enjoy, a sort of “Minority Report” scenario, and long term deprivation of liberty of those judged to be ‘at risk’.
The point being that most of us have the option!
(And possibly this includes a large proportion of those affected by the figures you are quoting.)
Of course this means that there are many suicides that appear, and probably are, a response to problems which could be overcome. But a small number are amongst people who, were a system in place to oversee such things, would be permitted to take their own lives.
The purpose of legislation would to be give to the dis-empowered (usually by disease or physical trauma) the natural right that the rest of us enjoy.
Felix – oh, sorry, I forgot you’d said can’t get out.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to say “I would kill myself if I were trapped in a Quiverfull life.” But then that’s not the issue anyway. Part of the point is that we don’t know in advance what we can put up with and what we can’t and knowing we have the option means we don’t have to rush it.
In any case my point was just to say that I don’t have to say Quiverfull life sounds rewarding just so that Quiverfull people won’t feel bad about their lives. I think that’s what the much-repeated claims that talk about “what lives are better” is bad for disabled people boils down to.
Ophelia:
Do you mean no one here is saying that? Because a lot of people *are* saying that at least outside this blog, and I think that context is really important to this debate.
And to the same degree, the issue of euthanasia is not particularly about the choice you want in that hypothetical situation either. To you (if I’m reading you right, and I apologize if I’m not), this is an issue of your freedom with regard to your body. If that was *all* this debate is about, I’d certainly be on the pro-freedom side; but legal euthanasia negatively affects the rights and freedoms of other people, particularly people with disabilities, whose treatment and decency is compromised by a society that treats ending lives as superior to expensive long-term care.
And this is the problem. It affects how hospitals provide care for the incurably ill. It affects the kind of treatment they receive – in a response to Felix, I mentioned that there are insurance providers that will deny the treatment you need but help pay for euthanasia. This is even more of a problem with government-financed health care. Disability-rights advocates are really concerned about the situation in otherwise lovely hyper-liberal countries like Norway. Especially as I’d really like America to nationalize our crappy health care system, we do need to prevent the actualization of that screeching Palin paranoia about “death panels.”
If there’s one thing I’d like to convince you of, it’s that there’s, at the very least, a nuance to this issue that prevents it from fitting cleanly into a liberal-conservative archetype. I think that because it seems so much like a standard liberal position that so many people get it wrong.
I guess in general, I see occasional hints that ableism is something the atheist community still needs to work past, as it’s currently doing with classism and sexism. But I’m not accusing you of anything, I just had my opinion recently changed on this issue and I like this blog and respect your intelligence, so I thought I’d share.
I wanna make clear, btw, that I do support the right to DNR, and that if I didn’t think euthanasia had other negative consequences, that I’d be in favor of that, too.
Well obviously one shouldn’t be allowed to terminate one’s life early because otherwise you will live for ever. I mean it’s not like that even with the best of intentions, preventing somebody terminally ill ending their life, delays the same outcome by a matter of months, weeks or days.
Even more transparently, those trying to block voluntary euthanasia are not people who are utterly unable to cope with the prospect of their personal extinction and therefore cannot believe that anybody else can.
And it certainly isn’t that those who are most concerned make choices to leave other people to die (of poverty) every day by not beggaring themselves donating to the Red Cross because that is a difficult choice they are happy to leave to themselves.
I certainly hope not anyway, because otherwise it would imply that these people are not a very good choice for making decisions about how other people live their lives, including how they arrange for the inevitable end of them.
It’s an interesting thing about compassion. Being a sufferer of chronic health problems I can say that sometimes dependency is thrust upon you without your permission – it’s not so bad that you’d rather die, but you do need the help of others, or your quality of life suffers greatly.
Over the years I’ve seen what compassion looks like – it’s an attitude that truly has the interests of the dependent/etc person at heart. It’s scary to need help from people, but if said people help you without resentment, and treat you with respect and like you own your own life (which of course you still do) then they are being truly compassionate. They do not wish you to be in this dependent role, and they will support every effort for you to be independent, but when help is needed, they provide it.
I agree with Charles Sullivan that compassion would lead one to support assisted dying, as it is what the person wants.
I think I know what you’re getting at though. It’s ‘compassion’ as you say ‘thrust upon’ a person, when the carer thinks they know best and infantilises the dependent person, ignoring their true wishes because THEY, the carer, are getting something out of it. I would say this would be the real insult to disabled people – someone thinking that a disabled person does not know their own mind and needs to be coddled.
Everyone should have the right to say ‘this is my threshold for wanting to live’, it’s not about society deciding which lives are worth living, it’s saying, each individual decides. In an ideal world of course.
Compassion is over-rated…
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Good point.
Stealing it!
It might be better to say that the necessity of compassion is lousy as a permanent fixture. There isn’t anything obviously wrong with a disposition towards compassion as a permanent feature if it is required (i.e., with compassion as an available response).
The problem is with treating compassion as an absolute virtue, rather than a conditional one. Soul-making theodicies treat it as an absolute – the purpose of evil and suffering is first and foremost to provide opportunities for compassion, and compassion is so big a virtue that this justifies the existence of even the most appalling and seemingly gratuitous suffering. To the defenders of such theodicies, a world with suffering is better than one without, because a world without suffering would provide no (or at least considerably fewer) opportunities to be compassionate.
However, to someone with an ounce of empathy, it seems more obvious that compassion is a virtue only to the extent that we do live in a world where sentient agents suffer. I.e., its value is entirely conditional on, and presupposes, the existence of suffering. In a world without suffering, compassion would be redundant and would so cease to be a virtue (except counter-factually), and such a world would be no worse – and indeed better – for it.
In any case, the kind of religious compassion you discuss in the OP seems to me to be the kind of narcissistic Mother Teresa style of “compassion”, which actually revels in suffering because it brings the sufferer and the carer “closer to God”. This doesn’t seem to be based on empathy so much as an abstract and authoritarian notion of duty towards some ideal that transcends mere humanity – so much so that one hesitates to dignify it with the term “compassion” at all.
Ophelia Benson & Anonymous, re: “disabled community”.
In the UK, by far the best known people lobbying for assisted dying are disabled in some sense. Diane Pretty (RIP), Debbie Purdy, Terry Pratchett.
It is absolutely right to distinguish between people and organizations. About 70% of religious people in the UK want the law changed for this, while the Church of England is opposed.
I believe disabled people who oppose a change to the law are missing an important point. They are implicitly saying “I want the state to be the entity that determines the value of my life, and I want the state to value my life highly”.
But once you’ve chosen that it is the state that determines the value of your life, you are at its mercy.
Why not say “the person living a life is the entity that determines the value of that life, not the state nor anyone else”. A law that permits assisted dying on (carefully checked) request should also mean “if you haven’t requested assisted dying, implicitly you have opposed it, and you must value your life highly”.
Anonymous –
No need; I already know that. I don’t think of it in those terms at all.
Anonymous, again –
Yes it is. Of course it is. That’s what the issue is. If there is no legal right to assisted suicide then it is very difficult or impossible to get it when/if one needs it. The same is not true of people’s opinions about what kind of life is worth living. The mere fact that some people think that some kinds of life might not be worth living does not make it difficult or impossible for other people to think that their own lives are worth living. It’s self-indulgent to think it does. It’s the kind of hunting for grievances that people have been accusing feminists of lately.
You say “It affects how hospitals provide care for the incurably ill,” but I don’t know that that’s true, and I think it isn’t.
Ophelia
May I suggest a further resource to learn more about empathy and compassion.
The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
The Culture of Empathy website is the largest internet portal for resources and information about the values of empathy and compassion. It contains articles, conferences, definitions, experts, history, interviews, videos, science and much more about empathy and compassion.
http://CultureOfEmpathy.com
I posted a link to your article in our
Empathy and Compassion Magazine
Under the compassion section.
http://bit.ly/dSXjfF
Thanks Edwin.
It’s not actually as if I don’t know anything about them…but I think compassion in particular gets pressed into service for some very dubious projects. “Mother” Teresa is one classic example of this – lots of putative compassion but no actual medical treatment or even pain reduction. And I’ve had experience of people – young people, probably self-consciously Christian – offering me unwanted unsought compassion merely because they thought I looked “sad.” (Actually I was just thinking, or daydreaming.) I think people need to realize where it’s not wanted as well as where it is.
Empathy may be more relevant since it’s just about being heard and seen without people trying to fix, console, analyze, etc, you.
Indeed. They should make her the patron saint of sadists and fascists while they’re at it.
Edwin – yes, plus it’s more distant from pity, and has less baggage. Plus it’s more cognitive than compassion.
Charles Sullivan began the comments by remarking that compassion might be a reason for supporting choice in dying, and a few commenters have agreed. Well, I don’t want people to have compassion on me in my suffering, and for that reason to support assistance in dying. I don’t want that at all. I want people to respect me as a person, as a person with choices to make, even though I may be at the end of my life, or living through some of life’s darker rooms; I don’t want Charles’ or any other person’s compassion. I want to be respected as a person with choices to make. Keep your compassion to yourself. It’s an imposition, not a kindness. And I will tell you now that Elizabeth (my wife) would not have welcomed compassion. Indeed, she would have been the first to tell you just where you could shove it. She wanted to be respected as a person in command of herself, living her life to the very end as she had chosen to do. Compassion would have been seen immediately as an intrusion into her life, an interference in her autonomy, an attempt to put her in a separate class of people, viz., those who are suffering. She would not have welcomed the intrusion. Compassion is a highly overrated virtue.
Just what I think, Eric (as I’ve probably made pretty clear by now!).
And I think it’s a much more widespread feeling than is generally admitted. People put up with a lot of misery and/or risk precisely because they don’t want to “be a burden.” I think that gets misunderstood as excess altruism for the people who would bear the burden but I don’t think it is – I think it’s that people really don’t want to be a burden. It’s not an ontological condition that most people want to occupy. That’s why insurance and social security are preferable to charity. That’s why sane people would rather die in an alley than find themselves in one of “Mother” Teresa’s hell-holes.
This needs to be more widely recognized and understood. Being an object of compassion is really not a desirable state.
Oh oh … Gabriel Anderson and John Jefferson are spam bots.
Grr. Bastards keep getting through.
I think I know what you’re getting at though. It’s ‘compassion’ as you say ‘thrust upon’ a person, when the carer thinks they know best and infantilises the dependent person, ignoring their true wishes because THEY, the carer, are getting something out of it.
Welcome to living with my mother. She’s a nurse anesthetist, so she knows so much about what needs doing, but she just goes overboard with trying to do too much, especially with her family. When my grandfather was dying of leukemia, he used to yell at my mother all the time, “For the love of all that is holy, woman, quit fussing, and get the hell out of here! You’re driving me crazy!”
Don’t worry. He was always that blunt. To everybody. We were used to it.
I took a look at this website after reading a recommendation in a recent issue of The Philosophers’ Magazine. My impression is that your blanket condemnation of religious belief is as blindered as the extremists you criticize. Saying that all religion is evil is as accurate as saying that all philosophers are cold-blooded, white-haired, misogynous old men. Yes, there is a lot of nonsense in the Bible and other religious books. Yes, a lot of people abuse others in the name of their faith. In the world of philosophy, however, there is just as much rancor and self-righteousness. I propose that compassion is not a dirty word. It is a noble alternative to selfishness. Did philosophers end the slave trade in the 19th century? Did philosophers lead the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s? Nope. Christians did these things. They also founded hospitals and universities in the Middle Ages. Where would the Western Canon of philosophy be without the Islamic scholars who preserved it after Rome fell apart? Even as dedicated an atheist as Julian Baggini admits that, on some social issues, religious folk can be allies. They aren’t all nasty morons.
Steve Poppino:
Did you actually bother to read this thread? The argument is that compassion is over-rated as a virtue, which is not the same thing. Also, the point has been made by several commenters that in the hands of the religious, compassion often is selfish, and/or is rooted not in empathy but in a notion of duty towards an abstract ideal.
In other words, there’s a specific argument here (and not a “blanket condemnation”) which you’re ignoring.
Eric:
Ophelia, just after:
I thought I understood what you were saying, up to this point. I thought Ophelia’s objection to compassion was the sort you get when someone just wants to “feel compassionate” and experience “being compassionate,” which truly would be selfish and rather narcissistic.
But now I’m confused. I don’t see how the compassion that just genuinely wants to help those suffering, and would prefer they are not suffering at all, in any way shows a lack of respect for you as a person with choices to make. This seems to imply that the two are mutually exclusive, but I’m not seeing how this could be the case. How is it an imposition, not a kindness?
Steve Poppino:
Firstly, ditto what Iain said.
Secondly – think about it for a few minutes.
Genuine compassion is a reaction to and a sharing in the suffering of another person.
The end-goal of any feelings of compassion we have should be to remove the stimulus that is causing that suffering. As a result of this there should no longer be the same basis for feeling that compassion.
In other words: Genuine compassion should seek to destroy itself by undoing the features of the world that make it necessary.
So it makes perfect sense to say that compassion is over-rated virtue. Uttering such a statement is itself a compassionate action.
Also: Of the 193 words you wrote, only 16 of them were in sentences that were actually on-topic. That’s just a little bit under 8.3% of relevancy to the topic at hand in your post.
You might want to think about going for a higher ratio of relevance-to-noise next time.
I remembered Anonymous’ posts when reading this site (one of the links at a page Carlie linked on PZ’s thread about Jerry Lewis and telethon) : Not Dead Yet
I’m really not sure what to think. I’m still for legalizing assisted suicide, but the views of (some) disabled people make the issue a bit less black and white.
Although, this just makes me more in favor of assisted suicide. That case always felt like a fight for some warped principles instead of that woman’s benefit.
Nathan – no, you understood the first time. What I don’t want is compassion as an end in itself; a stable state; a condition. As a motivation to make things better, it’s another thing.
(Mind you, it did occur to me later that that’s not entirely true, because I certainly don’t refrain from whining when I have a sore throat.)
Beatrice – but the next sentence at “Not Dead Yet” is
In other words, the idea is that those two women should not be able to get help with suicide, so, they should be forced to go on living with their disabilities even though they don’t want to. I still don’t think people get to decide that for other people. I don’t believe the claim about a “deadly double standard.”