compassion

You are currently browsing articles tagged compassion.

As you may already know, in my previous post I reacted to a tweet I’d noticed, which said

A 15 year old girl who has terminal cancer wants to trend on twitter, let’s make that wish come true!! #alicebucketlist Pls RT

…leading to my statement that we have failed as a society. I intended this partly as comic hyperbole, but not entirely.

It simply struck me as silly that being a trending topic on twitter would be a worthwhile aspiration. Is that how low the celebrity status bar has been set? What kind of fulfillment would that provide? Does anybody think that in 30 or 40 years we’ll be sitting around reminiscing about the great twitter memes of yesteryear?

Plus, I figured, it’s probably not even for real. The very mention of a youngster with terminal cancer raised in me a set of red flags normally reserved for chain email hoaxes. I half expected the end of the tweet to tell me to DM all my followers.

Turns out it was even simpler than that — I’m just a cynical asshole:
Read the rest of this entry »


Today is the day after the day that was supposed to be The Day. Reviewing the coverage of what didn’t happen, the following things came to mind.

NPR/Associated Press
:

The hour of the apocalypse came quietly and went the same way — leaving those who believed that Saturday evening would mark the world’s end confused, or more faithful, or just philosophical.

Some had given away earthly belongings, [and] others drained their savings accounts.

“I had some skepticism but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God,” said Keith Bauer — who hopped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 3,000 miles to California for the Rapture.

“I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth,” said Bauer…

Read the rest of this entry »


No, these Twitter meme lists aren’t going to become the only blog entries I write. Unless they’re wildly popular, in which case I’ll become unwilling to write enough of them. So, for now…

  1. Blood sugar ESP (invisibl3Freddy)
  2. The ability to see other people’s Facebook profiles without being their friend (rhyseOneil)
  3. The ability to teleport your left hand to Exeter (bridgetjonesUK)
  4. Ice cream headache ray (peterhaglich
  5. Wielding the Lasso of Half-Truth (elissaryan)
  6. Retractable cup holders in your forearms (people next to you at the movies always hog them) (cheekandbluster)
  7. Power to turn pickles back into cucumbers (spiffingjewelry)
  8. Super-contempt (devilgotmywoman)
  9. Captain Compassion (CharlotteinPa)
  10. Power to turn lights on or off with handclaps — for REAL! (cheekandbluster)

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.

justice vs. compassion fight posterAfter 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.
Read the rest of this entry »