COMPASSION OR
INDIFFERENCE?
Yesterday’s
election (June 5, 2012) has revealed to me that many Americans have decided in
the face of confusing wars and skyrocketing debts that their path to happiness
is making money in every way possible.
We
all have seeds of compassion and indifference in our hearts. Perhaps most of the time we are
generous to others around us because we see them in need, and pity them. We may also be encouraged by our
religions that require us to act with compassion and love.
But
when we feel threatened, our basest instinct (some would say our defense of
personal freedom) can lead us to indifference, and we turn a blind eye to human
suffering and pain that is less than ours. At those times we look for any excuse to protect what we
have by any means, and to make as much money as possible by hook or crook.
I
fear that our acceptance of huge undisclosed gifts of money by corporations to
so-called conservative causes has effectively blocked poor and middle-class Americans
from a political voice. Now that
individual votes do not matter as much as money, how can a republic that
upholds the principles of democracy survive? We might as well close down all schools, hospitals,
factories and public service organizations now. Because there will be no future public service.
Surely
American democracy should allow anyone who wants to become wealthy to do so,
within limits of the law. But if
the law is written by the wealthiest in our society, what’s to stop them from
making money at the expense of the poor?
Then they can afford to build their own private institutions to provide
services for their families, and to hell with the riff-raff. And their huge military institutions
will have the power of medieval armies owned by overlords.
Many
Americans today believe that success means being wealthy. When we call a person “a success” that probably
does not mean we think that person is compassionate. We simply assume they were
ambitious, shrewd, clever, strong, hard-nosed, and ruthless in acquiring their
wealth. A “star” is someone who
has made money in some field that most people do not. No musicians, athletes, actors, etc. will be considered
successful if they haven’t made tons of money. Even if they are quite good at what
they do and are kind and compassionate to boot, they will not be on the success
list.
Then
there are the people who are quite willing to slide along in life with minimal
pay, or live on the street. They
are counterparts, in fact, to very wealthy people who inherited their wealth
and don’t aspire to “make something” of themselves. The one thing these people and all of us have in common is
we are human beings. As
unreasonable as it may sound to Ayn Rand followers, I think we all deserve to
be given respect and an equal chance to lead healthy, relatively pain-free
lives.
The
great irony for me is that conservatives (my villains in this story) seem to
trust human nature, whereas progressives (my soul mates) do not. In political party terms, Republicans
seem to feel human beings can be “trusted to do the right thing” and share
their wealth with the poor. For
them, a measure of indifference towards the “less fortunate” is fine, and “less
government” on human greed is appropriate.
In
contrast, Democrats clearly seem to be suspicious of human selfishness, and to
require a government that protects basic human rights and needs. It takes compassion, in my view, to set
up such protections in the first place.
If they are taken down, oppression of the weak by the strong becomes a
stone-age reality, and indifference will be the new American way. Much of the voting yesterday tells me
that our defenses against the enemy that lives in all of us are crumbling.
Glenn
T. Webb
Palm
Desert, CA
June
6, 2012
