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Compassion is the basis of moralitySchopenhauer,essay by Ivan Medenica

Morality is the way we behave towards others and without others


morality is inexistent. Its the unwritten law which we tend to
follow in our social interactions and use it to measure other people
and other people use it to measure us. Everybody has different
perception of morality depending on their personal beliefs and
experience so it is hard to precisely define it but the key is that for
morality we need others and the will to interact with them.
A man without compassion would fail to understand others as
good as one with it, compassion is useful because it helps us
predict behavior of others and it helps us shift our point of view
from ourselves to others. All humans have power to imagine, by
imagining being in the place of the one we interact with we can
make sure to act towards them as we would wish them to act
towards us. Compassion is something most people lack and that is
why there is so much injustice, if everyone was compassionate
and aware of others open conflicts would cease to exist(nobody
with compassion wants conflict because conflict leads to hate and
hate leads to casualties, compassionate people dont wish others
to suffer therefore they dont wish there to be casualties). If a
person had others in mind while making all his decisions he would
never act so as to do wrong to them because nobody really wants
to be wronged, but not everyone puts themselves in the place of
others because of factors such as greed, lust ,vengeance. Its not
only good for others when were acting with compassion because
by satisfying others we satisfy ourselves, our ego gets the reward
just as others praise us and thank us for our behavior and to a real
human being this is enough to feel good. The problem is some

humans find it more rewarding to be personally successful and to


make good for themselves only so they ignore wishes and needs
of others as if they dont exist and some humans find it rewarding
to harm others and these two types of humans, overly egocentric
and hostile greatly lack compassion. We wouldnt know
compassion without lack of it because without uncompassionate
people there would be too much peace in the world which is what
humans dont seem to want. Humans are much more
compassionate on a personal level than on group based one, wars
are examples for this, in war people are capable of dehumanizing
their enemies and completely eliminating compassion, while
murder on a personal level is harder to commit. Whichever the
reason for war is and mostly it is conflict of interests between two
or more groups of people there is no excuse for this elimination of
compassion from our actions and thinking, whatever there is on
this planet is not worth a human life when we look at it from the
rational standpoint. Humans are and were in the state of war since
their creation, we are in constant conflicts with ourselves and
others and conflict seems to be in our nature, this is probably one
of the reasons why we are so capable of eliminating compassion
in certain situations. Nevertheless a real human being would act
towards Kants categorical imperatives at all times and at all
costs, despite our warrior nature an aware human being would
always have others in mind when making a certain decision or
action and not only because he puts himself in their place but
because it is the right thing to do from whichever perspective you
look at it. Morality is hard to define and varies from region to
region, even from person to person but it can be stated that
without at least some care towards others morality wouldnt exist ,
immoral people are not only judged and hated by others they
usually feel bad themselves or do not have the capability to feel

joy because of their shallow minds, immoral man doesnt


understand joy beyond personal pleasure and that is just sad. One
of the reasons why people are immoral is lack of knowledge, lack
of knowledge on what other people have been through and in
what kind of situation they are in, lack of knowledge how they
genuinely feel and what they genuinely want. Society is too big for
us to get to know everybody we meet and this is why we cant act
absolutely right towards others because we can only predict their
wishes and feelings to some extent. In order to act morally
towards others we need to know their true intentions and
expectations which is hard because nobody acts truthfully at all
situations and nobody gives us the real feedback, which we need
to understand what they want from us. Lack of truth and genuine
feedback(by genuine feedback I mean reacting the way you really
want to without making sure your reaction is socially acceptable
and without adapting it to the current situation/environment) is
one of many difficulties we face when we try to act morally.
Subjectivity is the key component of compassion but it can be an
enemy to real moral action because sometimes when we put
ourselves in the place of others and think from that perspective
our thoughts are too much colored by our personal wishes so
when we make a decision and think its moral it just might be
immoral and too selfish without us realizing and this is hard to
realize without genuine feedback. Compassion is something
women(specifically birth giving ones) understand better than men
because the mother-child bond which they have is one of the
strongest among all bonds in human interactions. It is this kind of
selfless care and devotion all of us should strive to achieve
towards every other human being, by acting so we make it clear
to others that we care. Biological purpose of a man is to live, love
and reproduce, great majority of people attach to a partner at

some point in their life and get to feel love, love is the pure
concentrate of selflessness and compassion (compassion without
selflessness is just selfish egoistic compassion which isnt really
compassion at all) and if we are all capable to feel love to a single
human being we are capable of feeling love towards all human
beings. Having in mind that great majority of people do feel
love(ultimate compassion) and then act without it in their future
decisions towards others makes humans quite hypocritical. I
wouldnt pose the question if compassion is necessary for morality
because its logical that without care for others and their
expectations and well-being there is no morale(although we do
not need to explicitly care about someone to do right by them, we
certainly are more efficient when we do). But since we live in a
diverse world which contains in it some people who cant feel
emotions I am obliged to take them into consideration. Can a man
be moral without the actual feeling of compassion , well without
the ability to feel emotions we can still use our brains to think up
the dos and do nots in our interactions, this kind of morale would
be more of a mechanic one rather than real emotion-based(one
would have to rationally predict if others will react positively or
negatively to their actions, without shifting of the point of view
due to inability to feel others emotions) but we cant deny its
existence ,I think the name utilitarian morale would fit it the
best(its main purpose would be efficiency in social interactions).
This mechanic, utilitarian, emotionless morale is harder to practice
than emotion based one but at least its the proof that all humans
with various kinds of emotional backgrounds(or lack of them) can
act towards others morally(it can be practiced by those who do
have emotions yet choose to reserve them for specific people
only). Next to being compassionate, for acting morally it is useful
to be rational and to make smart predictions of the outcome of our

social interactions, the better we predict how others will be


impacted by our actions the better we can exercise our moral
codex in the future. Another flaw of compassion is that sometimes
its the reason why we do not succeed to act morally, in cases
such as giving advantage to family when searching to employ
somebody(emotions without reason cause nepotism). Emotions
can easily get out of control in certain situations and they need to
be subdued to reason, this is why rationality while making
decisions is necessary to be moral, sometimes we need to get
past the emotional barrier to act rightfully and morally and reason
is the means of transport we use to get past that barrier. Man is a
social animal, we are pack animals and one can hardly survive
when separated from the pack, this is why some(sadly not most)
of us accept and practice morale(in its true meaning) which we
either took from others or developed ourselves
Compassion isnt the sole basis of morality, basis of morality is
made both of compassion and rationality because in order to act
morally towards others(so as to satisfy them and not to do them
wrong) we need sense as much as we need emotions. Actually Id
reckon we need sense to act morally slightly more than we need
emotions and although compassion is a useful compass in
navigating the seas of social interactions it is not the only
navigational tool.

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