There is no true compassion.

[Ex-User (5841)]

Not for others. There is only schadenfreude. Pity, compassion, guilt, sorrow, mercy, etc. All under the schadenfreude umbrella, exist for no other reason than to make us, the one dishing out the pity, feel good. Every one of those wonderful thesaurus-generated words above are learned behaviors. We don't care about others, we simply care about what others think about us.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

>exist for no other reason than to make us, the one dishing out the pity, feel good

>We don't care about others, we simply care about what others think about us

Two different conclusions that I don't think are necessarily related, nor are mutually exclusive to authentic care for others.


If we want to feel good why don't we just seek egoistic pleasure in itself? Why do some people not only feel good through others (i.e. when exercising compassion) but seek it ?

Is it just social conditioning or psychoemotional background as a motivating factor?

1. If social conditioning, then how did good feelings from compassion originate? Attending to the weak couldn't have been very evolutionary effective for the strong tribe.
   
2. And if psychoemotional background, again what in the psyche makes a person feel good from helping others? Identification? Possibly, but there is still a lack of a rewarding factor.

 

[Red myst]

I think it is a mixed bag of things, including making oneself feel better, but I do think empathy could also be a genitic neurological response through mirror neurons.

 

[nanook]

schadenfreude is when you get more and more happy, as someone fails more and more.

compassion is when you see that someone fails, you feel into what it's like to fail like that, so your mind comes up with a fitting duality, meaning you imagine how much better he could feel, if he would not fail and perhaps what that would look like and you have so much love for that imagination that you take the time to figure out how the other person could make it real, you teach the other person about your ideas and in return you may have just invented another way to that attractive place of your imagination, a way that may also work for yourself one day, when you are in his situation. you are lending and training your problem solving capabilities.

look, egocentricity is an illusion to begin with, therefore it is meaningless to point out how doing something for the ego of another person is an illusion, as the ego of the other person is only as much of an illusion as yours, not more or less. you are doing nothing for your self, all you do is for the maintenance evolution of your subject. if you are doing something for someone else, you are still working for the same boss, nature, evolution. too bad, you suck at that job. (not meant as an offence at a particular person, just my general sense of black humor)

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

>exist for no other reason than to make us, the one dishing out the pity, feel good

>We don't care about others, we simply care about what others think about us

Two different conclusions that I don't think are necessarily related, nor are mutually exclusive to authentic care for others.

If we want to feel good why don't we just seek egoistic pleasure in itself? Why do some people not only feel good through others (i.e. when exercising compassion) but seek it ?

Is it just social conditioning or psychoemotional background as a motivating factor?

1. If social conditioning, then how did good feelings from compassion originate? Attending to the weak couldn't have been very evolutionary effective for the strong tribe.
   
2. And if psychoemotional background, again what in the psyche makes a person feel good from helping others? Identification? Possibly, but there is still a lack of a rewarding factor.

I'm pretty sure they're the same conclusion, i.e. other people make us feel good. It isn't always the result of a positive, but also avoiding a negative.

We can't overtly seek out egoistic pleasure because of the pain it inflicts on others. Pleasure functions in much the same way as reciprocal causality, i.e. there's a limited amount of niche space for a given means of deriving pleasure. It's not that some can only feel good through others, but that pleasure is what's being sought regardless of the path taken.

Good feelings derived from compassion originated from the same that spawn pleasure from overt pleasure-seeking. I can't sit on this next part for as long as I'd hoped... I was sort of hoping for the "But what about love? We get married ffs!" response, to which my prepared response is that love feels good because we view those we love as extensions of ourselves. Compassion's goal is to win over those who deem the target of pity to be one with themselves through love. Attending to the weak gives the attendee power over those identifiers through social capital. The reward is derived from the use of this social capital.

 

[nanook]

there isn't much more free compassion, other than what is already applied in the world. it's probably somewhat rare, that true opportunities for compassion are missed. because compassion is so much inborn. of course, some people have lost all naturalness. we go through life like robots, not noticing anything left and right. that trance is a particular problem, it's not specifically a lack of compassion. it's perhaps a tremendous fear of doing something wrong. the world around us is so alien to us. we are evolved to deal with a small tribe of people.

by compassion i mean the actual capacity to deal with something, that another particular person can't fully deal with.

making compassion into a doctrine will probably cause mostly fake behavior or fake compassion. such as our constant fantasies about how we could have been more compassionate in particular situations, if we had only wanted it much more. fake fantasies. in reality, a part of us was just aware of how what we had to give was just not exactly what was required.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

I'm pretty sure they're the same conclusion, i.e. other people make us feel good. It isn't always the result of a positive, but also avoiding a negative.

>exist for no other reason than to make us, the one dishing out the pity, feel good

Obtaining positive feelings from compassion can be done without caring what someone else thinks of you. e.g. People who do "good deeds" without making an announcement.

>We don't care about others, we simply care about what others think about us

Caring what someone thinks about you can be done without being compassionate. This one should be more obvious: narcissism, vanity, conceit etc.

We can't overtly seek out egoistic pleasure because of the pain it inflicts on others. Pleasure functions in much the same way as reciprocal causality, i.e. there's a limited amount of niche space for a given means of deriving pleasure. It's not that some can only feel good through others, but that pleasure is what's being sought regardless of the path taken.

But why do we care about the pain we inflict on others? What initially sublimated egoistic pleasure into false compassion?

Good feelings derived from compassion originated from the same that spawn pleasure from overt pleasure-seeking. I can't sit on this next part for as long as I'd hoped... I was sort of hoping for the "But what about love? We get married ffs!" response, to which my prepared response is that love feels good because we view those we love as extensions of ourselves. Compassion's goal is to win over those who deem the target of pity to be one with themselves through love. Attending to the weak gives the attendee power over those identifiers through social capital. The reward is derived from the use of this social capital.

How would social capital be a motivating factor when some people don't go around advertising their compassion? Ones who just do a good deed and forget about it?

^could be a case for self-pleasure, to not stick with a person in-need for a long term, though then are some people who would.

 

[BigApplePi]

Compassion? What if you see yourself in the other suffering person? "There but for the grace of God go I." You may identify and profit by compassion because if you can do something* for them it means you will have had practice when it comes to you.

*Or at least ask yourself what you would do or what attitude you would take if you were to be in that situation.

Added: If the other person is suffering because they are in a situation you don't approve of, you would refuse to feel compassion. Let's say a hit man is suffering because he failed in his job. You might not feel compassion ... unless ...

 

[Polaris]

I prefer to think of compassion as a symbiotic interaction between two subjects; what we in biology refer to as a mutualistic relationship which benefits both parties.

 

[Duxwing]

This conversation will never end because "true" compassion, like "true" anything, is subjective. Compassion is a tender care that exists because of another's suffering and motivates action to end it; e.g., if my friend cried, then I would hold him.

-Duxwing