So I was goofing off and taking silly quizzes on the web when suddenly I came across a question that wasn’t so silly. It went a little something like this:
If you had to make an important decision about something that would affect others, which of these factors would you consider most strongly?
- Justice
- Compassion
- Practicality
- Self-interest
I sat here for about 5 whole minutes mentally kicking this one around. I immediately eliminated Self-interest – it’s a perfectly worthwhile answer, but given that my judgment is going to carry repercussions for many others it automatically feels least important to me. In the broader scheme of things I’m not sure that this tendency is such a plus; it’s often been suggested to me that I am by nature too unselfish for my own good… but I digress.
After another minute or two I eliminated Practicality. A course of action, I reasoned, shouldn’t be considered more right because it’s the easiest or most practical way to go. Here again, I like my decision but readily admit it as evidence that I’m a lousy capitalist.
I finally settled on Compassion, mainly because I’m a big fan of it. If you’re surprised, hear me out.
Justice seems like the obvious answer. Everyone loves Justice, me included, but the problem is that no two people’s notions of Justice are quite the same. For only one example, If you’re deciding what to do with a confessed murderer, the victim’s family is most likely going to have a different idea of justice than the murderer’s mother would have. This, of course, is a single specific example, not necessarily correlative to the hypothetical decision I’d be making.
Looking around our culture I see a lot of people sitting in judgment, pushing their own individual notions of justice. I think it appeals to the American ideal of rugged individualism, not to mention the American ideal of profit. Talk radio, 24-hour cable news with its duelling “analyst” punditiots and so-called Reality TV all lucratively exploit our varying perspectives on justice. Compassion, by contrast, seems much rarer; it even has become a fashionable target for mockery in the aforementioned media melee.
I prefer to be part of the solution. We can all benefit from a general increase in compassion – it’s in short supply, there is a big demand for it, and yet it costs us nothing to produce. How’s that for capitalist cred? 
What do you think? Would you have picked a different answer? Load up and make a case for Practicality, or Self-interest… or something else. Any aspiring Podhoretzes or Ponnurus (or even less wrong, more reasonable people) who want to call me a pussy for pushing Compassion over Justice, bring it. My Compassion and I will kick your ass… very gently.
Tags: (in)humanity, (in)justice, compassion, ethics, news media, punditiots
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Wow, Derek! What a great post! Who’d have thought after bristling at writing essays in high school that we’d be rocking blog posts like this stuff later…
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This is the kind of writing that I’d turn in back in high school, and get back a day later with no mark except for the note “See me” in red ink.
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Awesome post! And, I have to admit that I’m a fan of the compassion, though it is certainly the most difficult to impliment. Especially with all those who fall in the Justice camp around. Don’t get me wrong. Justice is necessary and good. However, in the end it often brings us to cycle after cycle of injustice and/or retaliation. I will say though, one’s view of what is compassionate may be inextricabley linked to one’s view of what constitutes justice.
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Don’t leave us hanging, Serge – how so?
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To pick up where I left off oh so long ago. . . .
My thought about justice vs. compassion goes back to (and may be quite similar to) your well-made point about what is justice to the family of a murder victim may be different than justice for the mother of the murderer.
Justice is about what is fair/right in a sort of legalistic context–tit for tat, eye for eye, etc. What is fair to the family of the murdered is not necessarily what is considered fair by the mother of the murderer (though it may be). It is your concept of what is fair that tells you where the line is between justice and compassion.
To me, compassion goes beyond what you feel is fair–beyond what is legalistic. Compassion goes to the idea of what would be best for all the parties involved. This does not mean that it is sort of a flimsy, no consequences, let’s all join hands and sing “Kumbaya” kind of a thing. In the same way forgiveness of a wrong done to you is not a condoning of the wrong act.
Is it better for the murderer and the family of the murdered for us to perform capital punishment upon the murderer? Certainly, it is justice. But killing the murderer does not bring the murdered back to his family. The only thing that happens is that the family of the murdered gets the satisfaction of revenge. Though I have not been in that situation, it would seem to me to be a cold comfort. Would it not be more compassionate to lock up the murderer, and force him to work with other victims’ family members?
Not sure if that clarified my point, but that was an attempt. . . and now that I will have internet in my house soon, I’ll try to be more responsive.
–Serge
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