Category Archives: Compassion

The Seductiveness of the Lie, Part 1

Posted on by under Compassion, Critical Thinking

In 1978, I remember seeing an issue of Time magazine in my dad’s study. On the cover was the lead story for the week: over 900 members of the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, killed themselves by drinking poison at the command of their organization’s leader, Rev. Jim Jones.

They killed themselves because of a lie, or more accurately, a culture of lies. The lies involved allegations that people were out to get them and “capitalist pigs” were going to destroy what they had built. That anyone outside the Peoples Temple community could not be trusted.

Photo courtesy of The Jonestown Institute, http://jonestown.sdsu.edu.

None of this was true. What was true was that the conditions at Jonestown were deteriorating and concerns were being raised about human rights violations, gaining the attention of politicians and the press.

It has been reported that Jones was going off the rails, engaging in drug use and increasingly extreme forms of control over the members of the Peoples Temple. By 1978 he had such a firm grasp on his followers that they were willing to commit murder for him and lay down their lives in response to his lies.

***

In 1954 the leader of a fringe sect in Illinois announced that the world would end on December 21. Word had been received by Dorothy Martin (a.k.a. Marian Keech; later known as Sister Thedra) that was allegedly from Jesus who was now living on an undiscovered planet called Clarion. The message was that a flood would inundate significant portions of the Earth beginning December 21, covering most of the United States, Russia, and other nations. Spacemen from the planet Clarion would arrive just before the flood to rescue the faithful, take them into flying saucers, and bring the safety on Clarion.

People found this believable, and the faithful prepared for the end of the world, many giving away all they had since they would no longer need it. They gathered to greet their rescuers on December 21. The day came, the day went, and needless to say, the spacemen did not appear, nor did the flood happen.

Confusion reigned. The prophesy was reconfigured. Followers gathered to sing Christmas carols in order to renew their resolve. Within days, Martin was threatened with criminal charges.

Martin never admitted fraud, repented, or otherwise took responsibility for the damage she did in the lives of her followers. She moved around a lot after the spacemen from Clarion failed to appear, changed her name, and eventually passed away in Sedona, Ariz.

***

Adolph Hitler–a man who needs no introduction–almost single-handedly managed to convince a nation that they were destined for greatness, if only they could eliminate the Jews and anyone else who stood in their way.

The origins of Nazi Germany have been studied extensively. I will just say that the one of the key elements of its success from 1933 to 1945 (and the groundwork that was laid in the preceding decade) was feeding people a lie, or set of lies, so attractive that they informed on their neighbors, committed genocide, and did nothing to stand up to fascism and domestic terrorists out of fear for their own lives and livelihoods.

***

People will believe lies. People will go so far as to destroy their own lives and the lives of others for a lie.

This unfortunately is a sad fact of human nature. Often our need to belong to something–a religion, a movement, a political organization–is so compelling that it short circuits the other things we ought to be doing in our lives. Things demanded of us by religion and civil society, such as showing compassion, thinking for ourselves, working together, rising above our differences, being kind.

Success That Writers Crave

Posted on by under Compassion, Connection

A few years ago, I posted a couple times in reaction to an article in the Washington Post. Not to beat a dead horse, but I have a bit more to say.

The article was written by Cynthia McCabe, who was e-mailed by a man, a complete stranger, announcing his intention to commit suicide. The reasons this man gave were that he, as a writer, had “said everything I wanted to say and consider my work finished.”

In my posts, I take issue with McCabe’s inability to relate to the man’s situation. Specifically, I found it strangely insensitive that a fellow writer could not sympathize with that man’s desire to have his writing read, and in that way find some measure of community that understood him.

Instead, McCabe’s article calls the man narcissistic and selfish, perpetrating an emotional mugging.

Narcissistic, just for wanting some success in his writing career. Success that all writers crave at some level, right?

In case further proof were needed, the latest magazine and course catalog from my local writers’ center includes a piece by a writer named Anu Altankhuyag, who has this to say:

I knew I wanted to continue writing as more than a hobby. I wanted to one day be able to walk through a bookstore and see my name on the shelf. Every writer does.

Including, one would assume, Cynthia McCabe. But seeing that desire in a fellow writer was too much to ask.

Perhaps Travel is Not the Key to Broader Horizons

Posted on by under Compassion

Growing up in California in the 70s and 80s, one of the refrains that I occasionally heard was that travel outside your home will expand your horizons. But does it?

We all have our cultural idiosyncrasies that are a result of where we grew up and who we grew up with. The challenge, then, is what do we do with that. As a young person, I was very much a product of California, a state so vast and independent–almost as if it were its own country–that one could live a full and varied life and never once leave the state. (Some people live a crabbed and limited life and never once leave the state, but that’s a topic for another time.)

Anyway, I have family in New York and traveled a bit in high school, so I was not as parochial as some. But I had a lot to learn, and still do.

Which brings me back to my original point: does travel open doors to greater understanding, as some travel writers suggest? (A recent article proclaims “To travel is to learn.”)

My gut reaction is yes, it does. It seems to me that once you see that there are different ways to achieve the same or similar results, you begin to understand that there is not (with some exceptions) one right way to do things.

And if there isn’t one right way to do things, that means that there are multiple ways of being that are just fine. With an open mind, one will see, at the very least, that one’s preferred (or accustomed) way of doing things may not be the best way.

Growing up, I was acquainted with a elderly couple, Frank and Helen Hitchin. The Hitchins were devout Christians and had spent time doing missionary work in other countries to evangelize the message of Jesus. Frank had spent time in the Belgian Congo and later, both went to Tunisia. There may be other countries that I am not aware of.

In my memory, the Hitchins were stodgy and dull, despite all of their worldly travels. This may be explained by the fact that they were old and I was young. But my grandparents were also old and did not seem nearly as stodgy and dull as the Hitchins.

Photo: Amitav Ghosh

I have a copy of a letter from the Hitchins that I recently obtained. My mother and I were sorting through some of her papers and we came across this letter, written to my parents in 1979 when the Hitchins were doing missionary work in Tunisia.

Most of the letter shows very little in the way of compassion for the Tunisians. Rather, it it strikes me as condescending and tone deaf. It belittles the Muslims for being impractical and bound by tradition. It asks us to be thankful that we are not camel herders and complains that there is no good sharp cheddar cheese to be had. It says with a regretful tone that all the newspapers in Tunis are in either French or Arabic, and the Hitchins cannot therefore read them.

It on the one hand says, disdainfully, that the Muslims can be “fiercely loyal” to their faith and on the other hand says that serving the Christian God is a “privilege” that is welcome despite hardship. It also seems reluctant to call Islam a religion.

And finally there’s this: “Frank just commented that sometimes he feels like [the apostle] Paul — in our rented apartment, a ‘prisoner’ of the Gospel….”

This makes me ask: why were they even there? Did Tunisia leave any impression on them, other than that they were glad to be Americans? How could their missionary work have been effective if they didn’t speak the language, and showed little interest in the Tunisian people’s lives?

So perhaps cross-cultural understanding is not automatic. As much as I’d like to think that stepping outside one’s American existence to learn something new will expand one’s horizons, maybe that’s an illusion.

Or at least debatable. Some argue that the saying that travel opens one’s mind is a false adage. “Travel does not automatically make you a better person,” says Travis Levius, a travel journalist and hospitality consultant. This appears to be true of Mr. and Mrs. Hitchens. I’m not saying that they weren’t good people, whatever that means in the long run. But their travel in the name of Jesus did not, evidently, make them more compassionate towards people of cultures that were different from their own.

True compassion transcends differences in culture, age, language, or religion. And compassion, I would argue, was one of the main teaching points of Jesus. But more on that some other time.

Epilogue: Mr. Hitchin claimed that he would not die before the Second Coming of Jesus. He died in 1996. Make of that what you will.

[Updated 3/17/22 with some corrected information on Frank Hitchin.]

Things That Did Not Cause the Collapse of Society: A List

Posted on by under Compassion

This week, a county school board in my area took a bold step in the direction of diversity, equity, inclusion, and frankly, justice. You may have heard the news.

Those opposed to this action have offered a variety of disconnected reasons that this was the wrong thing to do. They range from claims that the action will ruin our children (it won’t) or usurp parental rights (no more than other public education actions) to claims that the action will somehow interfere with their religious freedom (to discriminate). (Here’s just one example of hyperbolic reaction.)

I would bet money that privately, people also are thinking that it is another step in the downfall of society, another inch closer to the end of the world.

People opposed to positive social change–let’s call them conservatives–have argued for literally hundreds of years that steps taken to improve a pluralistic society and advance social justice will lead to the collapse of civilization. Which we know now is absurd. But conservatives still use that argument today anyway.

So I thought I would make a list off the top of my head of some of the things that over the years did not in fact cause social collapse (approximately in reverse chronological order):

  • the legalization of same-sex marriage
  • equal funding for women’s education
  • affirmative action
  • allowing women to enroll in historically men’s schools
  • access to contraceptives
  • the legalization of interracial marriages
  • the integration of public schools
  • the integration of the Army and Navy
  • women working outside the home
  • giving women the right to vote
  • giving Blacks the right to vote
  • ending race-based enslavement of other people
  • removing the Church as an arm of the State
  • not doffing one’s hat or bowing to one’s “betters”
  • the scientific method

What does lead to a breakdown in social cohesion? Here a few things:

  • police brutality and a militarized State (ongoing)
  • lies and misinformation (ongoing)
  • environmental degradation (ongoing)
  • income inequality and entrenched poverty (ongoing)
  • unequal access to educational or economic opportunity (probably ongoing)

As usual, I am thinking of America as I write this. I realize that many other countries are at different stages of their journey toward a modern society and I wish them the best.

America can and ought to be better than we often are. I’m constantly amazed and saddened by how many Americans want to turn back the clock and erase so much of the hard-won progress that has been made over the centuries. At the same time, I understand that those people whose identity is threatened the most are the ones who will scream the loudest.

Which raises the question of who would create their identity around maintaining injustice and inequality? Think about it.

I, for one, think that regression to some imagined former “greatness” at the expense of general social improvement would be mistake.

P.S. It is good to remember that one’s personal opinions about how things “ought to be,” no matter how strongly held or deeply felt, are not “truths” that cannot be challenged. They are only opinions and can be heeded or dismissed as circumstances warrant.

Compassionate Inquiry on Wrongness

Posted on by under Compassion

What do you call someone who privately knows they may be wrong about something but publicly advocates in favor of it, sometimes with intense fervor, because to admit they are wrong would be against their interests?

A weasel? An asshole? A hypocrite? A lost soul?

A lot of political cataclysm comes from people doubling down on things because of an unwillingness to say, “Maybe I was wrong.” Those actions affect their lives but also the lives of all the people they come in contact with and cause a lot of damage for everyone else.

Actor Joel Edgerton, in the Washington Post

For a long time, people kept many of their opinions to themselves, for a variety of reasons. But today, people’s lives are so we’ll documented, and we have more ways of learning fact than ever before in history, that now we have many examples of this kind of clinging to wrongness.

For instance, there are those who cling to the belief that the Earth is flat. There are those who hold deeply conservative religious views and who show no interest newly revealed truths. We have people who believe there is evidence that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.

Is this wise? If not, why does it happen with alarming frequency?

Based on casual observation, it appears that such persons take psychic refuge in what they are believing. Their belief system–political, religious, views of human nature–provides value to them, often in the form of a coherent narrative to their lives. Which is what belief systems have done for tens of thousands of years, so it’s human. But more often than not, such beliefs can conflict with new ways to understand the world. People willing to adapt will learn to adjust. Others, even in the face of evidence, dig in their heels.

At that point, the humane thing to do is quietly but firmly inform them of their wrongness, be strong and ignore their continued attempts to assert their opinions, and be compassionate. Some of these people can be redeemed but many are so caught up in their belief system, sometimes with intense fervor, that they are essentially lost.

Interestingly, Jesus said much about hypocrites while he was teaching 2000 years ago, none of it good. Somewhere along the line, many people stopped listening to that teaching and instead doubled down on their out-of-touch beliefs. But also, Jesus–and the Buddha, and Hindu scriptures–teach compassion for the lost.

Wise teaching indeed.