There is nothing Simple About Being Human

Posted on December 1, 2004 in Class Compassion Morals & Ethics

I think it is time to acknowledge the complexity of human emotion. Last night, I listened as members of a school which held that our feelings are entirely generated by us controlled the floor. Each of us, said various members of the upper middle class assemblage, was responsible for how she or he reacted to a situation. I do not deny that many of us need to learn that we don’t have to explode every time someone says something we don’t like or froth at the mouth when we are taunted. But as I told the group, I see a danger in placing the whole of responsibility for feelings on those who feel them. We lose, I said, compassion for victims.

Have we not heard that the poor are entirely responsible for their plight? Now and then, we run into someone talking of a rape victim who claims that “she brought it on herself”. Even more common are those who tell us to “get over” our grief, our hurt feelings, etc. at a schedule which suits them not us. When a wise counselor bids us to take charge of our feelings, I do not believe that he or she means to deny the suffering of the helpless. In fact, the wisest counselors urged us to be mindful of the feelings of others. They did not put the blame for suffering on the victims but urged us to take responsibility for actions and ways of life which might afflict suffering on others.

I dare say — based on my reading and rereading of the New Testament, particularly the Gospels — that if you blame the poor for being poor or tell someone who is undergoing emotional anguish to “lighten up” or “get over it” you’re not Christian. If you claim to be a Leftist — which I hold to be the closest thing to Christianity in the secular world — and you ridicule the feelings of others, then you haven’t quite understood what the Struggle is all about.

I would like to say that it is wise that we learn to channel our feelings but not to take such unreasonable account of them so as to blame ourselves for things beyond our control. In this, I part with New Age/Rich Christianity. For one thing, the horrors inflicted on the poor in their day to day life exceed those experienced by those living in self-realized terror within gated communities. For another, as human beings we do have a range of reactions, but for some situations that range is limited. When someone is attacking you, it is difficult to break out singing in a joyful voice. Who is to blame for your feelings when a lead pipe comes crashing down on your head or a bullet is shot into your chest? In the purist “We are responsible for our own feelings and nothing else” view, the rape victim and the poor are turned into victims a few more times — by themselves first and by others who expect them to assume impossible and unreasonable burdens for their condition.

What will change the world is understanding its complexity and understanding humanity. We can, to a degree, control our feelings and our reactions. It is worth our while to test just how far we can go and keep striving to expand those limits. We do, to a degree, afflict others with pain and suffering. It is likewise worth our while to see how much we can limit that.

I, for one, am seeking a string theory which unifies personal accountability with social justice without disrupting either.