Compassion
 
 
   
  Lloyd deMause gave a speech at a parenting conference in 1997.He spoke
about general worldwide and historical child-raising practice. He told a
story about ordinary people in virtually all cultures engaging in atrocity
with their children, easily as horrible and much larger scale than anything
the Nazis are credited with. His account makes sense of the willingness of
so many people to rationalize, as sane and appropriate, their own acts of
heartlessness. He also notes that each new generation appears to be slightly
kinder than the last, some more so than others, with a result that the
present world has a very broad range of outlooks about what is compassionate
normal behavior, and a general hysteria about intimacy among kinder people.
   Like I suppose nearly everyone, I presumed my parents to be fairly
righteous and sane, and arbitrarily defined my childhood as being handled
correctly. They were a bit overwhelmed at the beginning, due to being in
their early twenties and having three toddlers almost at the same time. I
don't recall any ill treatment, or much interaction with them at all.
   So for me, Mr. deMauses' stories of traditional horror worldwide is
barely believable, valid only due to the equally unbelievable routine
stories in the media of adult behavior with other adults, and the wooden
look of many of the people I've been intimate with. Mr. deMause describes
the last sixty years and my affluent culture as remarkably tame.
   Another fellow, Matt Ridley, has a new book called The Rational
Optimist, presenting a similar view, and attributing the development of
compassion to a gradual increase of worldwide marketing, of trust between
strangers for trading purpose promoting trust at home. He notes a
backsliding into inhumanity of behavior in cultures that experimented with
large scale bureaucratic economic management, whether socialist or through
monopoly corporations. Based on his evidence, anti-monopoly concern should
apply to governments as well as business, in an effort to promote
generosity, fairness, innovation, care about pollution and kinder behavior
in the public.
   He directly contradicts the Zeitgeist Movement conviction that resources
can be most kindly managed by a relatively small group of technicians,
without market forces allowed to affect their decisions. So far he has
proved correct, in that even Zeitgeist Movement management of it's own
website shows considerable illwill and lack of innovation. The prospect of
such a group managing the resources of the entire world looks like certain
disaster in a hurry, due to emotional lockdown on the part of everyone
actively involved.
   My own experience with commune management also bears this out, that any
choreographic arrangement of people, that has genuine technical effects of
any sort, will shatter the commune. Even formal meal sharing has proved
unsustainable. Some people will attempt to cope emotionally with technical
unity by becoming frenetically busy, rationalizing vast matters of
importance; but even they end up solitary, in a false appearance of
sharing, estranged by the petty demands they put on any close associates.
Unity becomes, in the long run, a condition of belief rather than a
physical rapport.
   The people like Daniel Quinn or Jacque Fresco, who promote an ideal of
unified economic management, do not live communally and spend most of their
time solitary. That I have seen, only people with explicit technical
boundaries are able to genuinely welcome me or anyone else into physical
association involving deliberately shared resources that they have any
rights about at all.
   An unknown person posting on the internet also interjected the theory
that much idealistic conviction may be emotionally driven by a need to
validate the humanity of past authority people who were grotesquely cruel
to the believer, that people cope with horror partly by deciding that it
isn't horrible. I propose an antidote in everyone overtly granting everyone
in authority permission to buckle under pressure and become a monster or a
failure of some other sort. That is, defining the authority as still
innocent but mentally ill, an actual detriment to be defended against.
   Thus as I define things, power does not corrupt people, it renders them
vulnerable to severe mental illness, with no means to obtain emotional
solace, hence their natural compassion dries up. Being a leader of a
commune, I run up against this continually, as a constant challenge to
renew my emotional linking with other people through taking care of the
shared vibe.
   I note that the women who have evolved into my life tend to be free of
this, but nearly all the men get mentally ill this way. They lose their
compassion for themselves mainly, though it affects all of those they are
close to. In a commune this really matters. Apparently the power granted to
men due to sexism or the rugged independence of a competent adult is enough
to evoke this confusion. This is a terrible irony. Out of an interest in
being considerate, they self punish and condemn any dependents, in a manner
that is hard on everybody around them, and looks seriously inconsiderate to
everybody they touch.
   I think this is evidence of how illusory having an individual identity
is. My imagination and my physical feelings appear to be a private
experience, certainly in the specifics, but somehow my general presense has
no clear boundary, that if I take a hot bath then everybody relaxes, and if
I scold myself then everybody cringes.
   A roommate of mine recently stubbed his toe, seriously injuring it, and
later told me the story of his struggle to do emotional damage control,
hiding the injury from everyone else to prevent an agonizing emotional
echo. Somehow his injury inspired highly oppressive hysteria in nearly
everyone else, prolonging the healing. By pretending that the injury was
minor, he was able to limit the antagonism, limit the defacto lack of
compassion from the others. This is terrible, that empathy can be
poisonous, but there is no avoiding it.
   We likewise have a 4 month old baby in the household, who is a hopeless
emotional lightning rod, and relentless in crying if the vibe goes sour.
Since so much vibe influence is unseen, unconscious or impossible to
remediate, this can be quite frustrating and inspiring of psychic attack on
the baby, inadvertently teaching her to attack herself, and thus seeding
more trouble later.
   This is the kind of engagement that Sara Stone was astounding with. She
took herself for granted, so I'm not sure what she would have said if asked
about it. She was an emotional lightning rod, but with world class
intelligence. She would echo back also; but carrying the mood, of whatever
scene she was in, into some kind of deliberate evolution, with everyone
mysteriously inspired to be as beautiful as they were able to be. It is that
beauty that can make me spontaneously able to feel fondness for nearly
everyone, and be easily a nice person, and does likewise for many others.
Being around someone who can light that spark was totally worthwhile, even
essential to my sanity.
   Most women I've known let this ability fade and few men can do it at
all, but I suspect the effect is cumulative and re-echoing, and the reason
for the worldwide trend towards a kinder human race. In my view, this was
Sara's sole tangible contribution to the living realm. Her dance degree and
child raising and technical production for the Country Fair or her rental
houses were the kind of thing that she based her self esteem on, but I am
not appreciative of things like that, from anyone. Many women have done
scientific research or raised several children or spent years in school
learning all manner of stuff. Some are politically active or writers of
published material, but none of that kind of accomplishment is significant
or admirable to me. I am only impressed by what I perceive as facilitation
of a link to the divine, on my part, that is out of my reach otherwise.
   The word love has gotten hopelessly muddied by the confusion around
people reflecting each other's divinity this way, to the point that I avoid
any use of that word, unless in discussion about this.
   My present girlfriend outreach in public encounter has me wrestling with
the widespread commitment to formality that nearly everyone expresses. At
Gooble Dell I have been able to break formality on my side of any relation,
through being legitimate without contract limitations. In public events,
there are always unspoken contract expectations that limit spontaneous
expression and response, and force a feeling of formality that nearly
everyone I've met appears to prefer. Nearly everyone describes a home life
that involves mostly solitude or else fairly limited formal association
with subserviant children or one sexually charged roommate.
   In discussion, almost everyone views their own association with other
people as definable as informal, even if they require tight scheduling and
clear no trespassing limits on all of them. When I report my lack of
scheduling and trespassing limits, most shrug in disbelief or remark that I
am highly unusual.
   I have always presumed a true friend to be one who guards my dreams
about them quite as carefully as their own about me. Formality prevents
communication about much of the subtlety and legitimizes indifference about
anyone else's personal hopes. Ironically, the resulting lack of dream
feeling safety inspires everyone to avoid dreaming about anyone else, in
order to avoid crushing disappointment. When I have expressed dream
disappointment, the reaction from my "friend" has nearly always been
disgust or embarrassment, as if I were being infantile; and quite often
this comes up in discussion about someone else who has been dream
disappointed. Compassion has been generally defined as an informal
technical regard rather than a recognition of being linked by social dreams
and hopes. And people keep their "compassion" feelings limited by staying
deliberately uninformed about other people, even those they supposedly live
with.
   Quite a few families demonstrate to me a tradition among them of vulgar
teasing, deliberately mocking in advance any sensitivity about feeling
sharing.
   
   
   
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