I've wanted to write piece about "compassion" for a while. Various things I've heard and read recently have come together to trigger it. Compassion is a concept much referred to in Buddhism, and it's from there that I draw some of what I'm saying. Other of it comes from stuff I've been reading about psychological concepts of "emotional fusion" and "differentiation".
A while ago, I heard Billy Bragg on Any Questions, answering a question about whether the NHS should provide a very expensive drug that might extend the lives of kidney disease patients by about a year. "You can't put a price on a human life" he said, drawing an obligatory round of clapping. Strangely, when I typed his name above, I mistyped it as Bully Bragg, and that now sounds right to me. He has that air of menace about him: if you disagree with him, he's not going to present reasoned arguments, he's going to get angry.
That cliché about not putting a price on human life is fallacious. Try asking Oxfam -- they'll tell you exactly how much money they need to save a human life. Paddy Ashdown pressed him: if the drug cost ten million pounds, to buy one person one year of life, should we spend it? "Yes", said Billy: If you don't, your priorities are wrong. When he talks about wrong priorities, he must mean spending the ten million pounds on things like housing, education, foreign aid, pensions, or indeed other medical procedures and drugs.
Billy Bragg, to me, exemplifies the false form of compassion. An apparent "caring" very much about people -- but violent emotions close to the surface. I get the feeling that his "caring" is to meet his own needs, not theirs. What that need might specifically be is the avoidance of guilt.
As a general pattern, it goes like this: lots of bad stuff seems to be happening in the world but not in the part of it where I live. I feel guilty about that. How can I prove that it's not all my fault? I know, I'll make myself feel really bad about all the badness in the world. Very unhappy, very angry about it all. That'll show it wasn't my fault.
I think this unconscious pattern is formed in childhood, as they all are. If there's a playground altercation, make sure you're crying when the grown-ups arrive, because if you look happy, they'll assume you're the one to blame.
If you look at the Buddha, he's telling us the first Noble Truth: that to be alive is to suffer. He's seeing millions of people suffering; not just material suffering, but spiritual suffering. And he's sitting there smiling peacefully. What a bastard, eh? Doesn't he care?
To me, the Buddha's compassion consists of two things: first, he knows he's okay. He is not a deity or an immortal or a super-being or anything. He's just a man. (He dies of food poisoning.) But he's okay. And secondly, he knows that he's the same as the rest of us. That's the compassion. He knows he's in the same boat. He sees everyone doing their stupid stuff, and he knows he's no different. He knows that in the end either you'll get it, or else sooner or later you'll die, and either way, it'll be fine, really: don't worry about it. He doesn't think there's any "devil" or any "wicked people" making it bad; nothing to fight against or get angry about. Just things you should be doing. No “grown-ups” coming along to assign blame and punish the wicked. Either you'll get it, or you won't.
The other thing was an episode of The Secret Millionaire. This millionaire (worth £77M actually) dresses up poor and visits the needy. Just like a traditional fairy story. He thinks he's going to judge them and decide who best deserves a handout. He's one-up on them, both financially, and in terms of judging them. But what happens, of course, is that he soon realises they are his equals, if not betters. He helps out in a school for dropouts, and tries to tell a teenage boy that he needs GCSEs. The boy out-argues him, explains the realities of life to him, and leaves the millionaire in some doubt about the value of GCSEs. The boy is clearly intelligent and articulate.
The millionaire helps out in various groups, and rapidly finds that he's learning from them, and getting as much from them as they are from him. He no longer feels better than them. It's excellent drama. At least for a moment, he reaches a position of compassion, seeing them as who they really are.
The thing about differentiation and emotional fusion comes in here. I've been re-reading a favourite book in this area. Differentiation means having a stable sense of who you are, despite the circumstances and environment. The Buddha has it. It's what Mr Millionaire doesn't have. (Not that I dislike him or disapprove of him: he seemed nice, generous, and so on). He's one person at the start; then his sense of self wobbles as he meets the various people and learns some things, and then at the end he puts back on his suit of £77M and takes up again the identity that it lends him: he becomes "millionaire" again. Differentiation is stability: for example, being the same person with your parents as you are with your friends.
Emotional fusion is the opposite: taking your mood and state and sense of self from those around you. If you're emotionally fused with someone, you "care" a great deal that they should be happy . . . not for their sake, but for your own, because their unhappiness is intolerable to you. It's proper for mothers to be like that about their babies, up to a certain age. But in adult relationships, it's a big problem. If you can't stand someone else to be unhappy, then you have to control them, and if something bad does happen to them, it makes you resent them, and makes you angry. Which is where I think Billy Bragg stands with respect to humanity. He's emotionally fused. He wants kidney patients to be given all the treatment that money can buy, so that he can feel okay. But somehow, he never does feel okay. Always angry.
