Alan Asnen's Blog - Posts Tagged "empathy-compassion-new-book"
On Compassion and Empathy
I spent a few moments when younger studying the philosophy of Ayn Rand, a philosophy she called “Objectivism,” which taught that if you were not a good swimmer you should not attempt to save anyone from drowning. Among other things that sounded, at least to me, today, rather selfish.
Objectivism was very much focused upon developing one’s self-potential and seeing one’s self as, in essence, the center of the universe for all extent and purposes. The idea being that you are no good to anyone if you aren’t good to yourself first. This latter principle, somewhat sound, logically, was, and still is, a primary selling point.
As young as I was as the time, and I was very young, very fragile and very vulnerable to such thoughts, the idea kept pounding into my head, the image kept pounding into me, of this child drowning while I watched. Over and over and over. Until finally I picked up all of Rand’s books, popular at the time and still popular today, and tossed them in the trash.
Why are they still popular today?
Aside from the fact that she tells one hell of a good story, her philosophy has become the bedrock of what we have come to know as the Republican/Conservative/Libertarian movement. Paul Ryan, for example, one recently retired leader of said movement, former Speaker of the House, former Majority Leader in the House, held Ayn Rand as his personal philosophical god. You do not get anywhere in most Libertarian, Conservative or Republican circles if you are not familiar in some fashion with Ayn Rand.
Rand Paul, Republican Senator from Kentucky, was named for Ayn Rand by his Libertarian father, Ron Paul, noted perennial Presidential candidate of yore. Rand Paul is the Senator who keeps bills from passing, legislation that would make America work again.
Here’s a tidbit as recently noted by a New York Times reporter during the most recent government shutdown: Jared Kushner — handpicked by our then-President to find a way out of that quagmire, caused by the President’s intransigence on the subject of immigration, combined with the intransigence of the worst elements of the Randian GOP — pulled together the best minds he could to review the entire immigration mess. After several days of doing so with this committee, he faced them and said, “We have wasted two years on the issue of immigration.” Two years of Trump’s administration, in other words.
How cogent a moment from the maligned Kush. He understood his father-in-law and the GOP were all a bunch of Randian fools.
John Berger tells us that between men and animals it is the lack of common language that divides us, that keeps us excluded from one another, that allows us to do what we will with them with impunity, enslave them, slaughter them, eat them without conscience. It is this act of distinction between cultures that always allows people to take that last drastic step of separating self from the Other.
What do we do as the great hoarders of “European tradition,” constantly criticizing Islam, for example, if we were to make it popularly known that, in ancient Greece, cradle of our civilization, women were forced to wear the veil? This was, indeed, common practice. It is not commonly known, today, not commonly understood. But it is a fact, none the less.
We hide this fact from ourselves to keep the Western tradition “clean” and separate from those we chose to distance ourselves from, perhaps. But the facts and the record of the facts are there and clear.
We are Them and They are Us. Only time and place separates.
Only time and place.
Were people spoon-fed such information, as if told aliens had landed on Earth, they would respond defensively and say, “No, it isn’t true.” Fake news. Liberal experts making it up.
Most people, of course, those who have ideas about ancient Greece, see ancient Greece, that time and place, in terms of myth. They do not know of it in terms of the common people. At best they know of it from poetry and plays. They know nothing of the times, the life of the streets, the real life of Athens, Corinth, Thebes and Sparta.
Even the most world-wise of us at times prefer this. Prefer to hold onto myth, stay with myth, enhance it in our own minds. By seeking an interior world where it can remain alive as myth rather than forcing ourselves outward towards the world of knowledge.
The great poets of all cultures and all societies have always taught us and in teaching have given us a choice. They showed us what life was like in reality. That the world has two faces. A happy one and a sad one. The sad one, a world of pain and misery and death. Of harsh realities. The happy one of beauty both natural and man-made.
They tell us we have a choice: that we can go out into the world and by doing so confront both, equally. Or, turn the other way and look always for the beautiful inside ourselves while running the risk of finding only demons.
When we turn inside, we may find a certain happiness and peace, therefore. But perhaps not.
When we go out into the world, we will most assuredly find both misery and happiness. But we will find something else as well, always.
For a while the Confessional poets went in and came out alive with stories to tell. For a while. Stories were great and refreshing in creating a map for themselves and others so that we could then wander through similar territory. A statement perhaps about how to genuinely begin a journey, a statement as old as Virgil’s and older. As old as the Buddha’s.
But, again, this journey was not an end, only a beginning.
The real pain and misery, the real suffering is out there. Always. Even if, by virtue of scientific fact, it isn’t true. By virtue of poetry it must be. After all, we are not scientists. If we were…
Somehow, at some point, through some vehicle, we must learn to transfer our compassion outward. Before it dies. Before the child drowns.
And that’s why I write my books, this last one, ON REVELATION'S WALL, in particular.
Objectivism was very much focused upon developing one’s self-potential and seeing one’s self as, in essence, the center of the universe for all extent and purposes. The idea being that you are no good to anyone if you aren’t good to yourself first. This latter principle, somewhat sound, logically, was, and still is, a primary selling point.
As young as I was as the time, and I was very young, very fragile and very vulnerable to such thoughts, the idea kept pounding into my head, the image kept pounding into me, of this child drowning while I watched. Over and over and over. Until finally I picked up all of Rand’s books, popular at the time and still popular today, and tossed them in the trash.
Why are they still popular today?
Aside from the fact that she tells one hell of a good story, her philosophy has become the bedrock of what we have come to know as the Republican/Conservative/Libertarian movement. Paul Ryan, for example, one recently retired leader of said movement, former Speaker of the House, former Majority Leader in the House, held Ayn Rand as his personal philosophical god. You do not get anywhere in most Libertarian, Conservative or Republican circles if you are not familiar in some fashion with Ayn Rand.
Rand Paul, Republican Senator from Kentucky, was named for Ayn Rand by his Libertarian father, Ron Paul, noted perennial Presidential candidate of yore. Rand Paul is the Senator who keeps bills from passing, legislation that would make America work again.
Here’s a tidbit as recently noted by a New York Times reporter during the most recent government shutdown: Jared Kushner — handpicked by our then-President to find a way out of that quagmire, caused by the President’s intransigence on the subject of immigration, combined with the intransigence of the worst elements of the Randian GOP — pulled together the best minds he could to review the entire immigration mess. After several days of doing so with this committee, he faced them and said, “We have wasted two years on the issue of immigration.” Two years of Trump’s administration, in other words.
How cogent a moment from the maligned Kush. He understood his father-in-law and the GOP were all a bunch of Randian fools.
John Berger tells us that between men and animals it is the lack of common language that divides us, that keeps us excluded from one another, that allows us to do what we will with them with impunity, enslave them, slaughter them, eat them without conscience. It is this act of distinction between cultures that always allows people to take that last drastic step of separating self from the Other.
What do we do as the great hoarders of “European tradition,” constantly criticizing Islam, for example, if we were to make it popularly known that, in ancient Greece, cradle of our civilization, women were forced to wear the veil? This was, indeed, common practice. It is not commonly known, today, not commonly understood. But it is a fact, none the less.
We hide this fact from ourselves to keep the Western tradition “clean” and separate from those we chose to distance ourselves from, perhaps. But the facts and the record of the facts are there and clear.
We are Them and They are Us. Only time and place separates.
Only time and place.
Were people spoon-fed such information, as if told aliens had landed on Earth, they would respond defensively and say, “No, it isn’t true.” Fake news. Liberal experts making it up.
Most people, of course, those who have ideas about ancient Greece, see ancient Greece, that time and place, in terms of myth. They do not know of it in terms of the common people. At best they know of it from poetry and plays. They know nothing of the times, the life of the streets, the real life of Athens, Corinth, Thebes and Sparta.
Even the most world-wise of us at times prefer this. Prefer to hold onto myth, stay with myth, enhance it in our own minds. By seeking an interior world where it can remain alive as myth rather than forcing ourselves outward towards the world of knowledge.
The great poets of all cultures and all societies have always taught us and in teaching have given us a choice. They showed us what life was like in reality. That the world has two faces. A happy one and a sad one. The sad one, a world of pain and misery and death. Of harsh realities. The happy one of beauty both natural and man-made.
They tell us we have a choice: that we can go out into the world and by doing so confront both, equally. Or, turn the other way and look always for the beautiful inside ourselves while running the risk of finding only demons.
When we turn inside, we may find a certain happiness and peace, therefore. But perhaps not.
When we go out into the world, we will most assuredly find both misery and happiness. But we will find something else as well, always.
For a while the Confessional poets went in and came out alive with stories to tell. For a while. Stories were great and refreshing in creating a map for themselves and others so that we could then wander through similar territory. A statement perhaps about how to genuinely begin a journey, a statement as old as Virgil’s and older. As old as the Buddha’s.
But, again, this journey was not an end, only a beginning.
The real pain and misery, the real suffering is out there. Always. Even if, by virtue of scientific fact, it isn’t true. By virtue of poetry it must be. After all, we are not scientists. If we were…
Somehow, at some point, through some vehicle, we must learn to transfer our compassion outward. Before it dies. Before the child drowns.
And that’s why I write my books, this last one, ON REVELATION'S WALL, in particular.
